Standing on the command observation deck of the Esprit's bridge, High Admiral Gaunis looked down on the activity in the control room. His hands clutched the dark, brushed metal of the railing before him as he willed his body to recover from the shock of the corridor jump that had delivered the ship to such a precise position above the Terran battle. An arrangement of readouts to his right and the multi-level array of screens on the bridge's forward bulkhead showed just how accurate that jump had been.

Far ahead of the Esprit and slightly to starboard was one of the Confederacy's infamous black ships; Stingray Two, according to the information on one of the screens. The kilometer-long vessel was already engaged in a running firefight with Admiral Genen's Hampton. Thousands of kilometers to aft starboard, Estura's Avanti faced a black-hulled heavy freighter, and although the physical form of Terra blocked a chance for firsthand visual contact, relayed images and vocal communication assured the presence of Admiral Reiger, his flagship and fleet having appeared punctually and on target against the heavy cruiser Cheops and the Confederacy's second black freighter. The other Stingray had already been dealt with at Mars.

Gaunis's lips curled in a tight smile. Despite the late arrival of the Patrol's main force of ships—a necessity dictated by the intricacies of the equipment they were using—the battle was nearly won.

On the screens that showed the primary Confederate vessels, the hyperspatial tracks of Gaunis's new missiles began to materialize. Guided by coordinates relayed to the dreadnoughts by positions on and around Terra—the same coordinates that had allowed the dreadnoughts to arrive with such precision—the missiles were being ushered in from hyperspace. The weapons' individual drive systems had been designed to hold the missiles on just the far side of normal space until they caught up to and surrounded their target. They would detonate automatically when their hyperdrive fields collapsed completely.

The technology behind the missiles' delivery systems was an extension of the th'Maran corridor drive, something Gaunis's engineers had been working on for months. Initially they had been designed to deliver different payloads than those they now carried, but Gaunis had altered that aspect of their design immediately after the battle at Calton.

The devices' only shortcoming was the necessity that they be individually controlled by human pilots from on board a nearby vessel. Given more time, the weapons could have been perfected to the point that they would be completely automatic, at which point the dreadnoughts could have remained safely out of the battle, sending in only cruisers and other warships to tackle whatever the missiles did not destroy. But the Confederacy's attack on Terra had been too great of an opportunity to bypass, and whether the plans for that attack had been purposefully leaked or had slipped out accidentally, Gaunis had decided he could not afford to wait to use the missiles.

A commotion on the bridge below and the sound of angry orders being issued drew the High Admiral's attention.

Pascal Soto, the Esprit's battle commander, stood near the cluster of newly installed stations that controlled the Esprit's allotment of hyperspace missiles.

"No!" Soto barked at the men and women before him. "Bring them all in now, wherever they are. We can't afford to lose them!"

Worry flared at Soto's unusually biting tone.

"What is happening, Commander?" Gaunis demanded.

"We're losing our links with the missiles, sir." The battle commander's voice was terse, as if he did not want to take the time to describe the problem. He returned his attention to the control stations and the soldiers manning them. "Switch off the automatic detonation circuits. We'll bring them to their targets on manual, and then detonate them from here."

Gaunis frowned. One of the advantages gained by bringing the missiles in from hyperspace was that the weapons would not be in normal space long enough to be destroyed by their targets. Bringing them in at too great a distance from the enemy vessels would give the Confederate ships a chance to fire on them as they approached. What was happening to the relays?

He switched his comm to the battle command channel, hoping to hear reports that might tell him how the others fared with control of their missiles, and eager to get word from one of the dreadnoughts he sent to Mars. It had been far too long since their last report.

Watching the screens on the Esprit's bridge and listening to the broadcasts, the High Admiral formed a picture of the satisfactory defense of Terra. Either the Confederates had brought too few ships for a successful takeover, or they simply weren't as determined as they might have been. What he learned from the other dreadnoughts, however, was far from promising. The hyperspace relays were being destroyed almost as quickly as they could be rerouted.

Fortunately, most of the missiles were being retrieved safely from hyperspace and directed manually toward their targets. Confederate anti-missile fire destroyed a number of them, but it wouldn't take many to do the job. Three similar but smaller devices had done extensive damage to Westlex's ship at Calton. Gaunis could only imagine what the same number of these more powerful models would do to a battlecruiser or freighter.

He looked down at the bridge to see how the Esprit was handling her assignment to assist the Hampton against Stingray Two. On the screen, the image of the black ship was beginning to waver as missiles eased out of hyperspace mere kilometers from their target. Apparently, the Hampton had retained a firmer hold on her missile relays than had the Esprit; not surprising, since the Hampton had entered the battle much closer to Terra, where the relays were based. But the Esprit's distance from Terra was not an error.

Unwilling to risk the chance of having another dreadnought shot out from under him, Gaunis had ordered the Esprit's captain to keep the ship farther back than the others, purportedly to act as overall battle coordinator and backup to any vessel that might require assistance. Now, he continued to watch the battle from that position, confident in his safety, and confident in the personal escape plan he had arranged with Renee Andren should that safety evaporate.

But he could see that there had been no need to make those plans with Renee. As he studied the wavering, distorted image of Stingray Two, he realized the overwhelming success of his attack.

"Stand by to detonate." Commander Soto's words drew the High Admiral's attention again, and he looked down to find the man coordinating his timing with the image of the Hampton's battle commander on one of the communication screens.

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Gaunis returned his gaze to the main screen to watch the destruction of the Confederacy's second—and, he was now sure, final—black ship.

* * *

Darkness. Disorientation. And a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

The nausea told Jonathan he was alive—and weightless.

Weightless?

Something hit him hard on the back of his left shoulder, and he knew the gravity generators had come back on. Lights began to wink on around him, and the hum of backup systems coming on line filled his ears.

He thought about standing up, but his protesting stomach rapidly dispelled the notion.

After a brief argument with his innards, he thought about standing up again. And did so. Carefully.

The sudden return of gravity had released him from a height of about half a meter and dropped him—left shoulder first—against the back of his command chair.

Gently flexing his injured shoulder, he looked around in the dim emergency lighting.

Stingray One had survived. The EMP reflectors must have worked… somewhat. But where had the reflected pulses been aimed? Or had they been aimed at all?

Around him, members of the bridge crew rose cautiously to their feet and then settled in their chairs. Jonathan eased into his own chair and looked at the console before him. Only about half of the instruments showed any sign of life, but there wasn't any smoke or char marks to indicate fried circuits. That was something, and it could have been worse. Much worse.

"Captain?" The low voice came from the back of the bridge.

He turned slowly, careful not to strain his throbbing shoulder. Lieutenant Dakk sat at his communications board, trying to call over the comm system, but the device was not working.

"What is it, Lieutenant?" he asked, needing to raise his voice only slightly in the eerie quiet of the bridge.

"Uh—communications are out, sir."

The poor man must have landed on his head when the gravity returned.

"Why don't you see about getting them reestablished?" Jonathan said.

"Right, sir."

He scanned the bridge again. Commander Aerhom stood at the navigation console, studying the readouts. At the weapons station, Aidan Terling was helping Commander Danuk to her feet. Others were still recovering or studying their boards to determine how much remained of their control of the ship. No one on the bridge appeared to have been badly injured, but Jonathan feared for the rest of his crew.

"Dakk, get me an intra-ship channel, first priority. Sensors, can you get anything from outside?"

To his surprise, the officer gave an affirmative answer. "We've got short-range sensors, sir. The signal's muddy, but it's there. Long-range is dead. I'll have a report for you in a moment." He returned to manipulating the controls at his station.

"ITD," Jonathan called, "what shape is the hull in?"

"The attack didn't breach us, sir, but the nelux was destroyed."

Another hull blown to hell. Well, this was supposed to be a one-shot deal anyway.

"Aerhom, how did the drives hold up?"

"Maneuver drive took some damage, but it shouldn't affect the ship's handling too much. Hyperdrive reports normal function."

"Captain, sensors here." Even without the comm system, communication protocol remained intact. "Short-range shows two dreadnoughts nearby, and several smaller vessels closer to the planet's surface. The signal's too weak to detect what shape they're in."

"Keep on it. Rojsa, did you get a chance to target anything before the EMP hit?"

"Yes, sir," the weapons commander replied. "I had the reflectors set for a double pulse, one aimed at each of the dreadnoughts."

Jonathan smiled. "Let's hope they did their job. Satra, do you think you can get us anything on the screens? Even the battle schematic would be helpful. Anything to give us some idea of what's happening outside."

"I'll get on it right away, sir," the tech officer answered. She moved toward the sensor station, presumably to discover just how much input she had to work with.

"Captain?"

The call from Lieutenant Dakk came from immediately beside Jonathan, and he flinched hard enough to aggravate his injured shoulder.

"The comm system's back online," the communications officer reported needlessly. "Injuries are being reported from various sections, most of them minor. Some internal damage to the ship, but all online backups are functioning normally."

Jonathan nodded. Apparently things weren't as bad as they first appeared. Except for her transfer drive, One seemed to have held together pretty well. But how had her opponents fared? And what was happening at Terra?

"Sensors, have you got anything from those dreadnoughts?"

"They're just drifting, sir. No sign of purposeful movement from the other vessels either, although I've picked up a few weak contacts that could be escape craft from the dreadnoughts."

"Anything from the planet's surface?"

"I can't get any readings, sir. Either the EMP set up some kind of interference in the atmosphere, or there just aren't enough sensors left to penetrate it."

Jonathan nodded. He had to assume the reflected pulses had done their jobs and nullified the dreadnoughts and other Patrol vessels. But there was still the battle at Terra to consider.

"Dakk, have we got outside communications yet?"

"No, sir, and I doubt we'll have any for some time. We've blasted most of the external transceivers—if not all of them. Even the hyperwave system's dead."

"Try to route the comm through one of the shuttle's systems," he suggested. "The EMP shouldn't have affected them. Satra, how's it coming?"

"I should have something on the main viewer soon, Captain. The picture won't be too clear, but at least we won't be blind."

And they still had the maneuver and hyperdrive systems, Jonathan thought, which meant they'd be able to get back to Terra to see what was going on. Maybe they could even lend a hand.

"Rojsa, what shape are the weapons in?"

"Our biggest problem is turrets and weapons doors welded in place by the current that passed through the hull," the weapons officer reported, "but we have full firing capacity on most of the weapons. We can use the maneuver drive to aim the batteries, and we can always let the missiles blow their way through the doors."

"I don't think we'll risk that," Jonathan said. "But we may want to use the guns. See what you can do about working some of them loose."

"Aye, sir."

"Got you a picture, Captain." Lieutenant Satra's announcement came as the main screen flickered to life.

Jonathan looked up to find a weak, artifact-ridden image of the scene above Mars. The view showed the dreadnoughts and several of the other Patrol vessels lying dead in space. It was all he needed to see to make his next decision.

"Aerhom, compute a hyperspace jump to Terra."

Commander Aerhom looked up unsurely from his station. "An intra-system jump, sir? That seems somewhat—suicidal."

"If these dreadnoughts just pulled off what I think they did, then we can do this. And I don't want anyone to see us coming. Besides, it can't be worse than the last two transfers."

"Yes, sir. Computing jump. Any particular place you'd like to appear?"

Jonathan pondered the question. Of all the ships at Terra, Stingray Two had the best ability to defend herself, but she was also the most likely target for a heavy attack. And if Gaunis had used his hyperspace missiles against her…

Jonathan glanced to where Terling sat at the weapons station, silently studying the image on the main screen.

After a moment, he looked at Jonathan.

"Would you suggest we appear near Stingray Two?" Jonathan asked.

Terling nodded. "That is where the High Admiral will concentrate his forces," he repeated Jonathan's thoughts.

Jonathan looked back to Aerhom. "Try to put us as close to Stingray Two's last known position as possible."

Commander Aerhom gave a curt nod and turned back to his station. An instant later, Stingray One started to accelerate, angling away from Mars, thrusting out above the system plane to put as much distance between herself and the gravity well surrounding the planet, adding a few percentage points of possibility that the hyperspace jump would be successful.

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