-Prologue-

Eternity’s Highway

Chygrin IV

Confederation of the Galactic Core

17 June 2562 (Thursday)

Captain Thelonius Steran sat at his command console, on the bridge of the Aegis class heavy cruiser Judgement, and sighed. So far nothing had happened, four weeks earlier he had arrived, tipped off by the Confederation’s information and espionage arm, about a possible insurrection. He swung his chair toward an auxiliary console and once again browsed through the file. Blue-white bars of light shined across his face in the dimly lit bridge, causing his normally fair features to look sinister and harsh.

The file was not long, just a summary of the areas that needed to be patrolled for pirates and rebels, and so Steran closed it again after a few minutes. Turning his chair to face forwards, out the poly-alloy glass view port, he surveyed the bridge of his vessel. His chair was on a platform, elevated above the rest of the bridge by half a metre. To his left were two consoles against the wall, both sensor stations, one for tracking and targeting, the other for long range scans and communications links. On the right were a similar pair of consoles, these each displayed identical readouts of the Judgement’s current status. Either could be changed to show any number of different things, from the state of a sub system to the relative status of a battlegroup’s ships. Forwards from the command chair a trench ran the length of the bridge, terminating in a full body holographic display at the bow, the pilot’s station.

Strangely for a heavy cruiser there were no weapon consoles visible on the bridge. The reason was that they were controlled from another, armoured, section of the ship, somewhat behind the bridge, so that if the bridge was damaged or destroyed, the ship could still defend itself in an emergency. In that heavily armoured section was a secondary bridge, along with four weapon holo-consoles, similar to the pilot’s station. One holo-console controlled the Judgement’s primary weapon, a powerful Dagger class Railcannon. The other three controlled various turret systems, in which each turret could be either manned, and the display’s feeding them targeting data, or slaved directly to the displays.

It was 1037 hours ship time when the laser-comm call finally reached them. The message was garbled, mostly a distress call, but also some combat logs. Steran was galvanised into action.

“Mr Ussan,” he addressed one of the blue uniformed sensor techs. “Give me active sensors, I want to know everything in this system.”

“Mr Ferion,” Steran continued. “Plot a course, we need to look for any survivors.” –He opened a channel to the rest of the ship– “All hands, prepare for micro-jump and search and rescue operations.”

“Sir, all local contacts have friendly IFF codes, three unknowns on the system fringe, only getting mass readings at this distance.” Ryan Ussan, the long range sensor tech, informed Captain Steran.

“Course laid in,” announced Dan Ferion, the pilot. “Lagrange points set, duration good, waiting for your command.”

Steran considered everything carefully for a few seconds, then made his decision. “Jump when ready.”

The Judgement hung serenely in space, just outside the gravity well of Chygrin IV. The powdery white haze of meteor fields dissipated as a blue-white sphere rapidly swallowed the heavy cruiser. The sphere collapsed into itself, a dazzling rainbow of sparks, and the Judgement was gone.

Three and a half Light-Hours away, at the Lagrange point between Chygrin VII and its primary satellite, C7Alpha, the Judgement suddenly flashed into existence. Within microseconds automated systems had re-engaged the meteor fields and a white haze once again surrounded the ship. Four cargo shuttles blasted from the heavy cruiser’s hangar bay and began searching for escape pods.

It was a scene of utter carnage. As soon as he saw the drifting chunks of steel and composite, some still glowing dull red, Steran knew that there would be no survivors. Whatever had been attacked had only been the size of a frigate, but the littered remains now massed less than that of a corvette. Something incredibly powerful had hit that frigate and managed to destroy most of its mass. Steran didn’t want to be around when it came back.

Seconds later the Judgement was rocked to the side by a huge impact. In microseconds the ship’s computer core had raised full shields and pre-charged all the weapons on the heavy cruiser. A fractional second later the scanners tagged a vessel moving from behind C7Alpha as a priority target.

“All Hands, Battlestations!” bellowed Captain Steran. “This is a not a drill.”

Everyone in the bridge secured their harnesses while Dan Ferion, in the pilot’s station, donned a special support frame. Steran himself locked his chair mount and tightened his crash webbing, preparing for a pitched battle. The Judgement began a hard turn to starboard, throwing everyone into their harnesses, and tracked the hostile ship. Secondary readouts flashed to life in front of Steran, showing him all the information that could be ascertained about the contact. It was roughly cruiser mass, had massive power readings, and enhanced shielding capacity, as well as a full squadron of fighter escorts.

The Judgement herself carried two squadrons of fighters, but they had yet to be launched for the attack had come too swiftly. Now each fighter had to wait to be ‘hot-launched’ from special combat catapults, so that they could by-pass the enemy fighters and attack the enemy ship directly.

The second salvo impacted before the Judgement had fired, obviously fired shortly after the first salvo, intending to destroy its target. Because the heavy cruiser had moved, the fusion beams only grazed the shields, and were deflected away from the ship. The Judgement’s first salvo was impressively aimed and incredibly damaging, all forward-firing weapons being triggered at the same instant. Twenty anti-ship missiles spiralled away from launchers on the heavy cruisers flank, slower than the rail gun projectiles, but conceivably just as damaging.

Then the Railcannon fired. The reactor’s remaining charge was funnelled into the charge capacitors before being unleashed in one mighty surge of current. The multi-finned aluminium-silver sabot flashed up the rails at over seventy percent of light speed. Upon clearing the rails the sabot shattered, as it was designed to do, thus freeing the adamantium tipped explosive core ‘dart’.

The ‘dart’ was almost three metres long, weighed over two hundred kilos and, when accelerated to such great speeds, was capable of punching through even the heaviest armour and smashing out the other side of the target with ease. The explosive core actually did no damage to the enemy, it was a safety measure, to destroy the dart after a pre-set distance, so that it would not endanger shipping or other traffic in the future, as each dart would technically travel until it hit something solid enough to stop it.

The first mass-fired salvo slammed into the enemy ship, ignoring its reinforced shields due to the solid nature and relativistic velocities of the projectiles it was comprised of. Each reinforced, hardened steel spike crumpled armour and tore at subsystems, turning the hostile cruiser’s upper hull into a crater riddled ruin of armour and exposed wiring.

The Railcannon round hit. A six and a half metre diameter section of the cruiser’s forward hull simply ceased to exist. The force of the impact knocked the cruiser back and set in a slow end-to-end tumble. Miniature lightning storms danced and skittered across the stricken ship’s hull, leaping from the white hot edges of the damaged fore section to anything that would conduct charge.

Despite the horrendous damage it had taken, the enemy ship continued to fight. The tumble stabilised and the maw of a nova cannon lined up with the Judgement. A crackling, jagged white stream of pure energy lanced from the muzzle of the fearsome weapon, seeking the heart of the heavy cruiser. The stream continued for a terrifying three seconds before suddenly cutting off as the smaller ship’s reactor ran out of power.

Down range the effects were even more spectacular. The stream first splintered from the Judgement’s forward shields, before shearing through and overloading the generators in a flashback spiral. After that the stream smashed into the heavy cruiser’s fields, ripping them apart in a burst of rainbow sparks. As each of the passive defenses was brought down the beam lost power, a lot of power, but not enough to significantly reduce the damage it could cause.

The starboard fore-quarter of the Judgement became a tangled mess of slag and superheated composite materials where the beam struck. Her starboard launch rack spiralled lazily into space as the beam melted the structural supports like a laser cutting paper. Every last attack craft in the starboard hangar was vapourised, along with every person and all the service equipment in that area. Bulkheads slammed down all over the injured side of the ship. Some buckled inward or melted under the onslaught, forcing yet more bulkheads to seal off each area. By the time the beam reached the engineering section, almost half a kilometre further down the ship, it had lost all of its power, simply creating a minor radiation spike insufficient to bypass the reactor wall.

Both ships had begun hard manoeuvring before any more salvos could be fired. Each ship was now forced to fire blind, at sensor ‘ghosts’ until lag-time became an insignificant factor. The Judgement had the advantage at range, with its missiles and rail weapons, but was still a capable in-fighter, mounting several Devus class plasma cannon turrets. As the ships closed the range, Judgement’s first missile salvo made its presence felt.

On the enemy cruiser, now tagged with an Outworlds Alliance IFF code and name – the Fury, point defense systems spat round after round of tracer shells at the incoming missiles. The missiles followed automated programming, their tails splitting into four sections, freeing high-g drive units, and rocketing forward. Now each point defense unit had five targets to choose from, and as such, less chance of destroying the actual missile.

Still, the point defense units were fast, and had destroyed half of the targets in their arcs before the missiles hit. Twelve high explosive warheads plowed into the Fury’s forward armour, shattering plates and crumpling hull sections. One missile, by sheer luck, detonated inside the nova cannon’s barrel. It was that single missile that would turn the fate of the battle.

The Judgement had finally managed to launch a single squadron of fighters, catapulting them to behind the Fury where they could do the most damage. Each fighter was armed with both a heavy gatling laser and a pair of anti-ship missiles. The salvos were locked and fired as soon as the fighters entered effective range, the small ships only capable of making a single pass at such speeds. The Fury’s more conventional fighter screen had little time to react, and only disabled two fighters.

The missiles peppered the cruisers hull, cratering armour and damaging external systems. Some missiles succeeded in tearing a hole through the Fury’s comm array. Her counter-punch was mass firing her laser turrets at the Judgement, ripping into the heavy cruiser’s already damaged flank. Steaming, melting armour plates whirled off into space as lasers found an undamaged section of hull at the larger ship’s bow.

Each ship had reached visible range and begun to angle off, seeking the best aspect for their broadside weaponry. Judgement turned hard to starboard, bringing her undamaged port weapons to bear as the Fury executed a lazy turn to port, matching speed with larger vessel.

The Railgun turrets of the Judgement unleashed a hail of hardened steel spikes, ripping into the Fury’s starboard gunwale. Each shot was aimed for a shield node, although, due to the relative velocity of each vessel, few shots found their mark. The heavy cruiser followed the initial salvo with a devastating volley of blue-white plasma bolts as the lighter Fury unleashed her entire remaining armament of lasers and fusion cannons at the heavier ship.

Most of the plasma bolts hit the shields of the Fury and dissipated as harmless ion clouds, but those few that made it through more than made up for their ill aimed brethren. Each bolt that hit melted through a two metre diameter chunk of armour before breaching into the ship proper and incinerating everything even vaguely flammable inside a four metre radius. After the bolts dissipated, milliseconds later, every last fire went out as the atmosphere, along with everything that wasn’t nailed down, whistled past into the vacuum of space.

Against the Judgement, the smaller ship’s salvo had a similar, though less drastic, effect. Armour melted under laser blasts as fusion beams cored into the heart of the ship. Ugly weals tracked across heavy armour plates as the lasers burned into them. Fifty metres into the ship the fusion beams ran out of power, their absence creating a vacuum tunnel effect. One beam even managed to touch off the magazine for the port missile rack, rendering the weapon useless as well as causing massive internal damage.

Thelonius Steran’s eyes slowly regained focus as he realised that the lights dancing in front of him were actually status and warning readouts. As his vision cleared from the severe shaking he had taken he read the status report. Port fields down, port shields offline, port weapons heavily damaged, magazine two completely gone. It was an unmitigated disaster, but he could fix it with a single action.

“Ferion!” he shouted over the din of alarm and warning klaxons. “Hard to port, align the railcannon.”

“Guns!” he called into the intercom. “Charge the pulse capacitors, and load a splinter round, this ends now.”

“All hands,” Steran said as he switched to the shipwide frequency. “Brace for impact.”

The Judgement turned ponderously to port, slowly aligning the maw of her primary weapon with the smaller ship’s centre of mass. In a last ditch effort the Fury unleashed every weapon available to her, even the low powered point defense cannons adding their tracer rounds to the fray. For a miracle the heavy cruiser’s shields held under the onslaught, only a few fusion blasts getting through to sear off heavy armour plating.

All the lights on the heavier ship dimmed as every joule of non-essential reactor power was fed into the pulse capacitors. An aluminium-silver sabot tore up the rails at nearly seventy percent of light-speed. As it exited the rails it disintegrated, freeing a storm of adamantium darts, each a metre and a half long and weighing around fifty kilograms. The salvo flashed across the distance between the ships in microseconds.

Adamantium darts punched through the Fury’s rear quarter in half a dozen different locations. They hit with enough force to break the cruiser’s back. Literally. Sparks from severed relay cables cascaded into space as the two sections of what had once been an effective combat vessel slowly spun away from the impact point. The stern moved faster, colliding with debris from earlier in the battle, ripping a gaping hole along its upper hull. Atmosphere and bodies haemorrhaged from the gash. The forward hull had just enough residual velocity to bounce off the Judgement as it sped past.

The bridge of the heavy cruiser was a scene of somewhat organised chaos. Steran was being treated for minor cuts and whiplash as he rattled off orders to begin what repairs could be made and to search for survivors. Personally he harboured little hope of finding anyone alive in the now drifting hulk, but he wished that someone still had life in them such that the mess he was in could be explained. But, given the power of space navy weaponry, it seemed to be a vain hope, and he would be haunted by the battle for some time to come.

It was some time later, at roughly seventeen hundred hours ship time, that Thelonius Steran received the first bit of good news he had heard that day. Apparently some of the Fury’s fighter pilots had survived, along with an engineering detail that had been trapped between bulkheads as the ship fell apart.

The bad news was that they didn’t know the reason for, or the purpose of, the strike they had been sent on. All of them were placed in the brig, Steran having no use for them, and would be transported to a planetary penal facility when the Judgement returned to Chygrin IV.

As it was, the heavy cruiser still needed to spend at least three hours more gathering charge for her jump drive. While she could have charged the drive in less time, it was not recommended.

Jump Drives build up incredible amounts of what is dubbed ‘shimmer heat’ each time they jump, this due to the nature of hyperspace and faster than light travel. Tachyon deposits build up inside the drive core, and if not removed or decoupled properly from normal matter can cause a drive to malfunction.

Shimmer heat builds up proportionate to distance travelled, so a longer jump builds up more shimmer heat. Most ships carry special tachyon vanes, to vent shimmer heat from long jumps, the process often taking days, but shorter jumps simply require a jump-purge, which can take between one and five hours, depending on the jump drive and distance moved.

The other reason for recharging slowly was that courses had to be plotted to the nearest ten-thosuandth of a degree, and between lagrange points. Steran also had a third reason. He wanted to gather as much information about the attack as possible, by trying to salvage the Fury’s stern command computer before the hull section burned up in the atmosphere of Chygrin VII. He hoped that the computer might be able to provide information that the uninformed combat personnel had no access to.

Even as he thought about it a crew was working in the hulk, ripping out the core of the system.

Ray Marshal turned his space-suited head and activated his mic.

“Sure did a number on this one,” his voice sounded tinny over the short-range radio. “Dunno if I’ll be able to pull up more than a ship’s manifest at this rate.”
“You’ll find what we need, soldier,” said the CO of the group, his gruff voice intact over the intercom. “Just have a little faith.”

The third member emerged from under the console, wires trailing from each hand, and pulled himself upright.

“Try it now,” he said.

Ray waved his hand past the motion sensor. A holo-console sprang to jittery life, screen laced with static. Ray’s hands were a blur, searching directories and files for relevant information. Words and images flashed across the screen at an almost unidentifiable pace. He froze the screen and back tracked a few images. Thelonius Steran’s file holo stared back at him. Appended to the file were several notes. The next image set was the Chygrin system, and the next Derius, outlying systems of the CGC. Everyone stifled a gasp at the next picture. It was Lanni Draxis, head of the CGC’s ruling council.

The team opened a channel to the Judgement and began the information transfer when a sub-routine in the console detected illegal activity and took counter-measures. Finding the drive already damaged and the data copied besides, it sought to sever the comm-link. That proved to be impossible, the link being laser-comm rather than HLCS. Automated defenses were too damaged to be serviceable, so the program sought out more creative solutions. Venting atmosphere wouldn’t work, the intruders were wearing EV suits. Neither would alerting security. Powering down would not help, the system was linked to a portable back-up device.

The system found its final option, and it suited all criteria, the Fury’s self-destruct protocol. It would have worked too, had Ray Marshal not been thorough in his work. In the real world Ray chuckled as lights danced across the screen. It was fun fooling A.I., it was his job to do so, and he loved it.

Ray’s fingers danced across the console, finishing his assigned task, transferring all data to holo-lithic data plates. He snatched up the now full plates, slid them into a slot on the wrist of his suit and closed a protective cover over them. He set a timer on the containment program and left quickly with the rest of his team. The Fury would self-destruct and no one else would know what had happened.

Chygrin IV

Confederation of the Galactic Core

20 June 2562 (Sunday)

It was shortly after ten hundred hours ship time on the Judgement, captain Steran had just finished recording a data-burst for MIC, the Military Intelligence Committee for the CGC. He ran a hand through his greying hair and tried to relax. It was, of course, impossible. War loomed on the horizon. He brooded on the events of Thursday, trying to make sense of them.

The attack had come against a, mostly, civilian target, and then an unprovoked attack on a Confederation war ship. The Outworlds Alliance had made their intentions clearer than force-glass with this brazen attack. Steran knew that the MIC would also draw the same conclusion as he had. An act such as the one by the Fury constituted an open declaration of war.

War had not been heard of for almost three hundred years. Sure, there had been insurrections, riots, guerrillas, terrorists, dissenters, fringe pirates and other scuffles and skirmishes, but nothing on this scale. The consequence of this one act would change the fate of two inter-stellar nations. War had once again reared its ugly head, humanity seemed unable to live without it for long periods.

But what humanity couldn’t possibly know was who had instigated the war, or why they had started it.

-1-

Shadows and Starships

Delalt II

Outworlds Alliance

25 June 2562 (Friday)

Tracer shells tore into the concrete paving stones next to Dan Tiern. Round after round smashed into the low concrete road barrier he was using for cover. The pair of thugs firing at him with semi-auto rifles were joined by a bear of a man holding a solid looking shotgun. The heavy with the shotgun rested it on a piece of overturned machinery and fired at Dan’s position.

A six inch chunk of concrete exploded next to Dan’s head, showering him with high velocity chips and shards of concrete. Wiping blood from a fresh cut in his cheek Dan rested his bulky looking plasma pistol on the edge of the hole. With a sound like a whip crack the pistol disgorged a glowing orb of high density plasma. The ground in the bolt’s path was turned to glass by the heat. The leg of the thug it grazed was turned to vapour, accompanied by an agonised scream.

Dan saw one of the thugs fall, clutching the stump of his leg, before a hail of bullets forced him to duck back into cover. One of the bullets grazed his arm, tearing through the thin jacket he had been wearing to keep the light rain off. Little beads of blood rolled down his arm, only to be hidden by the rest of the jacket’s sleeve. Strangely the wound didn’t seem to pain Dan, for the next few seconds at any rate.

Setting his pistol to overcharge he broke cover once more. As he pulled the trigger magnetic field caught the energy released by the magazine and force fed it to the ioniser array. The array shunted what it couldn’t handle to the laser impeller. The impeller superheated the ion cloud and shot the newly formed plasma bolt from the muzzle of the pistol.

The heat from the shot was enough to draw sweat out along Dan’s brow and to blacken his clothes with soot. Down range, around fifty metres away, the bolt vapourised and fused together about eight cubic metres of slag, machinery and construction materials, leaving only a three metre wide glassed over crater, and one man blasted in half, the wound instantly cauterised. The shotgun wielder keeled over, undeniably dead. The uninjured thug sank to his knees and vomited at the sight and smell.

Dan clutched his arm, dropping his pistol, trying to stop the pain. The bullet had hit him good, taking out chunk of his bicep as it passed. He had enough presence of mind to finish off the last thug with his small, back-up auto-pistol before he tried any medical procedure. His plasma pistol lay smoking and sizzling in the drizzle, a few feet to his left, just out of reach.

Reaching into one of the many pockets on his dark cargo pants Dan withdrew a small medical kit. Rummaging around he grabbed an anti-septic alcohol wipe and winced as he cleansed the wound with it. Throwing away the alcohol wipe he picked up a pressure bandage and wrapped it around the wound. That done he replaced the med-kit and took his commlink from another pocket.

Staggering over to a pile of girders he sank down and made a call. The call was short, and consisted mostly of reprimands and biting remarks. A few minutes later an atmospheric skimmer hovered overhead, all four jet thrusters angled for maximum lift. A cable descended from the side of the vehicle, a rope harness dangling from it.

Muttering something darkly about self-service Dan slipped into the cradle. The skimmer started to move off before he was even half way to the side hatch. A pair of burly hands reached for Dan, drawing him inside as the hatch slid closed. He cursed as the strain on his right arm reopened the wound.

“What’d I do?” rumbled Lance, confused at Dan’s anger.

“Nothing, nothing,” Dan assured him. “Just got hit in a firefight.”

“So we get the ‘azard pay then?”

“Nope, that’s only when we get shot at.”

“Huh?” Lance’s face revealed his confusion.

“We get the Combat pay ‘cos I got Hit,” Dan explained quickly.

Lance’s eyes lit up and he rubbed his hands together, already planning how to spend his extra cash. Dan elbowed past him to the cockpit. Taking the co-pilot seat Dan strapped himself securely in and looked around. A petite brunette in a rather fetching uniform sat at the controls.

“Hello Dan,” she said, not looking over. “Did you get it?”

“Hello Evelyn,” he replied. “I’m uploading it now.”

As he said that he plugged a small drive into the skimmer’s command console. A holographic map flared to life. Trails in varying colours and directions were marked on the map. A legend flashed up, matching each colour to a particular, person and time.

“Doesn’t look like much, does it,” Evelyn commented, glancing at the display.

“It isn’t,” Dan said dejectedly. “But enough for our buyers at any rate.”

“Oh yes,” he continued casually. “We get combat pay for this op.”

“Really?” asked Eve, interested in spite of herself.

“I got shot,” Dan said, voice deadpan.

“We’ll have to make it better later then, won’t we?” she teased.

Dan chuckled, his spirits lifted momentarily. A silence settled over the cockpit, only broken when Lance arrived to strap himself in. Daniel chased his thoughts as the skimmer docked inside the cargo bay of a lightly armed corvette. So this us, he thought. Mercenaries, on the ragged edge of society. The skimmer settled to the deck of the bay with a resounding clang, shaking the fixtures inside and outside the little craft.

Lance swore as his head bounced off the low ceiling.

“Damnit boss,” he grumbled. “We gotta get a higher roof.”

“It comes out of your pay,” Dan retorted.

Everyone complained about the skimmer, a Peregrine class surface to orbit cargo shuttle, or ‘Pigeon’ class as it had become known on the frigate Eagle’s Razor. The main problem however was that the Razor’s Cross merc’ band simply couldn’t afford anything better.

Disembarking from the much maligned but rugged skimmer Daniel Teirn, Lance Watson and Evelyn Frost walked across the cargo bay and dumped their combat gear in their lockers. Once that was done they assembled in the small HLCS suite, preparing to speak to their current employers.

Eve sat at the head of the comm table, ankles resting on the table, legs crossed over. Lance leaned against the wall, dark glasses resting atop his short hair. Dan sat opposite Eve, arms crossed, leaning back in his seat. Lucas Dravi attended virtually, still piloting the Eagle’s Razor out to a lagrange point. His virtual image stood opposite Lance, his hands gliding like a concert master’s to control the ship. Starship piloting was more an art than a skill or science, and either you had it, or you didn’t. Lucas had it, and more.

Dan plugged the data chip into the recorded as Lucas gave him the cue.

“As you know,” Dan said. “We went to great risk getting this data for you. While the fleet movements and ship rosters in this manifest barely scratch the surface of the Outworlds Alliance’s fleets and trade routes they give a fair indication of their intentions towards the Confederation of Unaligned Planets. Your loyal trouble makers, the Razor’s Cross Band.”

Dan stopped the recording. “As long as the pay stays good anyway.”

Everyone at the table laughed, even though they were merc’s, they had a strange code of ethics and would always prefer working for the CUP, regardless of the pay.

There was little left to do aside from clear the system once the message was sent, and the corvette did that with practised ease. Stars rippled and pulsed and the little ship materialised in deep space, within a gulf between star systems. Inside the ship Dan pulled himself off the treacherous wall that had just smacked him on the side of the head. Eve laughed from the other side of the room.

“You’d think,” Dan griped. “That at least once in a while we’d get a smooth transition.”

“He’s just keeping you on your toes,” she replied, still laughing softly. “Lets get you patched up.”

Eve left the small meeting room and Dan followed her to the med-bay of the corvette. The walls were spartan and grey, corroded in some places, with conduits and ducting running overhead. The lighting was dim, but still effective. There were actually plates to cover the workings, and better lights, but ten years of mercenary fighting and spit-and-string jury-rigging meant spares were in short supply and ease of access was a necessity.

The med-bay, along with the cockpit, HLCS suite and crew quarters was one of the few decent areas on the ship. The door to the small blue-white walled room hissed sideways and Eve and Dan walked in. Evelyn was the de facto doctor on the Eagle’s Razor, being the only person aboard with proper medical training. She had been first employed, and still was, as a pilot, but upon learning of her medical training her role had gravitated from battlefield air support to personnel medical support.

Eve didn’t regret the change in role, her pay stayed the same, and under her careful gaze no-one had died. One time she had personally managed to save a life, that of Willard Chong, the chief engineer on the Eagle’s Cross. Her medical training and quick thinking had saved his life where the rest of the Razor’s Cross band would have been powerless to help him. It was that event that showed her where she really needed to be.

She took a pair of scissors from the locker and cut away Dan’s hastily applied bandage from his right arm. The wound looked painful, it was a deep gouge and had taken a fair chunk of muscle with it. It didn’t look infected, and none of the major blood vessels had been struck. Still, it never hurt to be careful. Taking a swab and some sterilising agent she started talking.

“You’re a lucky man Daniel.”

“Lucky?” he asked, somewhat incredulous. “If I was lucky I wouldn’t have been hit in the first place.”

“And if you were unlucky,” Eve countered. “You would have bled to death long before now, that shot just missed your brachial artery.”

Daniel winced as the sterilising agent touched the wound, cutting off his retort. He braced himself for the next part. Evelyn grabbed a canister of Graft and sprayed some over the exposed muscle. To Dan it felt like the wound had been dipped in ice and then flash burned as the strange goo began its work.

Graft was slang, taken from the old term ‘skin graft’ from the mid twentieth century. It was a semi-organic compound that resembled marshmallow in texture and appearance. The science behind it was pioneered from accelerated growth genes and stem-cell research. Basically it was a substance that could be moulded by the body for anything from sealing wounds to regenerating muscle mass and blood vessels. In extreme cases it could replace limbs, provided a skeletal framework still existed for it to use.

Forgetting his witty comment Dan began talking again.

“So Eve, what was your day like?”

“Nothing interesting,” she replied evenly. “Speeding, evading authorities, rescuing trouble makers. You?”

“The usual,” he replied, following an ages old formula. “Sneaking around, stealing things, shooting at bad people, generally making trouble.”

Eve chuckled at Dan’s description of his day, as ambiguous as hers. He reached up with his left arm, drawing her closer to him and whispered meaningfully in her ear.

“Something big is coming,” he said, a hint of fear shading his voice. “All these runs on the Outworlds Alliance and its political allies. A storm is coming, the likes of which he haven’t seen in almost three hundred years.”

“What?” she asked fearfully.

“War,” he whispered softly, letting the implications sink in.

She broke free and looked hard at Dan’s face, now schooled into a rock like mask of determination. She knew he was telling the truth, even she had felt it in her gut for some time, but unlike him, she had ignored it, wished that it was not true. Her face hardened as she asked the next question.

“Why,” she said softly. “What are they fighting about?”

“I don’t know,” Dan replied, his voice normal again. “But it’s something to do with an unprovoked attack on a civilian vessel in the Chygrin system.”

He continued: “Apparently some big wigs got an anonynmous tip off that something bad was going down in that sector, and so sent a Heavy Cruiser off to patrol. More of a deterrent, but it actually got in combat, proper ship to ship combat. Scuttlebutt has it that damage was so severe that she’s had to return to drydock. And as scuttlebutt is the intelligence we mercenary types have in the navy, that’s the best we can do for now.”

“Attacking a Civilian ship,” Eve said, already afraid of the next answer. “Were there any survivors?”

“No one says the heavy cruiser picked up anyone,” Dan replied. “So going from that I’d have to say no. Of course we may pick up an HLCS burst packet later with news, but that’s all I know.”

“And when did you get this information,” she asked, dubious.

“During the ‘sneaking around’ part of my day,” he replied nonchalantly.

Eve eyed him up. He seemed to be telling the truth, so perhaps he had discovered this information legitimately. Or at least in that morally grey area known as espionage. They had been doing a lot of espionage recently, and that unsettled her. Espionage meant preparations, planning, readying for some kind of strike. And when a high up politician in one government asked for information on another, somewhat opposing government, well, nothing good ever happened after that.

They left the med-bay together, heading for their individual quarters. The lights in the corridors had been dimmed, it was night by ship-board time. Dan still felt fired up, not two hours ago for him it had been early afternoon. He had also been on planet for some time beforehand, adjusting to the local time-zones. His internal clock had shifted by about six hours due to that.

Eve might not have looked tired, but she certainly felt it. Upon reaching her room, she and Dan embraced warmly before parting company. Dan wandered further up the hall, into the small galley of the Razor’s Cross, and prepared himself a sandwich. Munching on the sandwich, he made his way back to his quarters, and feeling bored but not overly energetic, decided to do some simple callisthenic exercises.

Halfway through the fourth series of stretches he was doing, Dan was interrupted by a holographic display springing to life in the wall. Lucas Dravi’s face appeared, brow creased in frustration or worry, and, ominously, he wore his combat harness.

“Bad news, boss,” he said without preamble.

“Just how bad?” asked Dan coolly.

“Very, very bad. In fact, we may already be dead bad.”

“Shit,” swore Dan. “Give me all the info you have.”

“Night Hunter Search Group, two cruisers, four gun cutters.”

“Not a chance in hell,” Dan cursed, almost whispering.

“They haven’t got visual on us yet, so we can still run safely.”

“Do it.” Dan said, his voice getting an edge. “Do it now.”

“But we still have a shimmer heat build up, we could mis-jump,” Dravi protested.

“That might kill us,” Dan said calmly. “They will kill us. Jump, and tell the others to brace for impact, this could get bumpy.”

“Right boss,” said Dravi resignedly, then opened a channel to the rest of the ship while simultaneously enabling the alert klaxon and drive systems. He began his warning with an age old phrase: “This is your captain speaking. Please strap yourselves in and prepare for some turbulence.”

All over the ship the crew found the nearest stanchion, grip, or seat, and securely attached him- or herself to it. Everyone chorused a ready over the comm and Lucas Dravi began the jump sequence.

The Razor’s Cross, a sleek, rounded ship with down-curved wings began to change appearance. The wings drew inwards, their arc slowly enclosing the forward section of the ship while at the rear many new wings slid out vertically, from both ventral and dorsal ridges. The new wings were actually tachyons vanes, deployed in an attempt to bleed as much shimmer heat as possible before making the jump.

The blue-white haze of combat shields faded to nothingness as a silvery bubble expanded from the ship’s core. The bubble grew larger and larger until it encompassed the entire ship within its radius. Then it was gone, flashing into rainbow sparks as the frigate jumped through hyperspace.

Unkown Location, Deep Space

Territorial Control Not Known

27 June 2562 (Sunday)

“Well this is a fine situation we’re in,” commented Eve drily.

“Better than being dead isn’t it?” asked Dan, but without rancor.

“Yes, it is,” Eve had to agree, regardless of much she disliked the situation.

They had mis-jumped, but thankfully for them, it had only been minor, enough to send them into an uncharted area rather than the middle of a star or planet. The ship was also undamaged, although for some reason one of the tachyon vanes in the ventral array had been bent at an almost forty-five degree angle, preventing it from closing.

For the better part of the previous day they had waited fearfully for the search group, afraid a tracker might have somehow been planted. Their fears had proved unfounded, and now they had relaxed somewhat they decided that someone had to take the fall for getting them lost. As usual it was Dan, the nominal leader of the group, and, as usual, he bore it stoically. Perhaps it was unfair that blame normally fell on his shoulders, but he was used to dealing with it by now, mercenary life hardened you that way. Either you did your fair share, or you got booted, and that also applied when bad things happened. Dan returned his mind to the discussion at hand.

“What we need to do is find out exactly where we are.”

“And how do you suggest we do that?” asked Lucas, for once not at the helm.

“Triangulation. The old fashioned way,” replied Dan.

“That’ll take ages.”

“Hours, not ages. Move the ship around a bit to get some parallax readings on the stars then give it to the computer. Simple.”

“Sure, but it’s still ages.”

“Well out here we have nothing but time,” put in Eve.

“Fine, fine,” said Lucas, getting up from the armchair he had been in. At the meeting table his was the only truly comfortable chair, and he deserved it, having to stand, or float in zero-G, for longer shifts than anyone else on board. He walked to the door, palmed the switch and went up to the helm.

Dan, Eve, Lance and Will still sat at the table, being the only crew awake, and with enough seniority to make decisions, at the time. Conversation around the table resumed shortly after Lucas left. Everyone wanted to know why the Night Hunter Alliance would go to the trouble of tracking them down, and whether it was deliberate.

Lance and Dan argued that it was only by chance they had stumbled upon them, more than likely on some sort of sector wide search. Eve argued that they had been set up by the Commonwealth, while Will thought that there was a security leak somewhere. The current lack of aggression seemed to favour Lance and Dan’s theory, but as their jump had gone wrong, and sent them probably hundreds of light-years off course, they couldn’t be certain they hadn’t been tracked at the start of their course or ratted out by someone.

Tempers rose, but conversation remained civil–almost. With a final heated exchange, Dan and Lucas left the room, unable to argue happenstance against twisted logic. As the door hissed shut once again they could hear Eve and Will elaborating on various conspiracy theories.