“Our hull is still hot, and that’s making us easier to spot, sir,” said Lopez. “But that destroyer has no need to play it cagey. It outguns us and it can outrun us.”

  Grisham shook his head. “I’ve got a feeling our first Ghost attack did more damage than it should have done.”

  “Captain “Lucky” Grisham does it again, huh?” said Deneuve.

  “Lucky, my ass,” said Grisham.

  “Thirty seconds and we’re out of here.”

  As the countdown approached its end, Grisham could no longer take his eyes off the digits on his screen.

  “Ten seconds,” he muttered.

  For a fleeting moment, Grisham thought that he and his crew were about to escape this wretched planet with their skins intact. At five seconds on the timer, a status light appeared on his console, informing him that the topside and starboard Gatlers were firing at something.

  Two red circles appeared on the tactical, travelling at enormous velocity. One of the enemy missiles vanished, but the second hit the Castigate on its stern plating. The blast was enormous – many times the magnitude of an Apiar missile.

  Before Grisham could open his mouth to speak, he felt the wrenching dislocation of a transition into lightspeed. Shaking off the giddiness and the lethargy, he yelled for status updates. The distressed note of the engines was enough to tell Grisham up front that his warship wasn’t in a good way, and his monitoring panel was more red than amber and green.

  “We were hit by a missile, sir, as you’ve already guessed,” said Adler. “It blew out about sixty million tons of our stern and disabled four of our aft propulsion modules. Luckily, it didn’t breach the interior, though it came within twenty metres of the underside bay.”

  “Lieutenant Bishop, make sure Sergeant Maxwell is aware there’s going to be some heat seepage.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bishop.

  “Is there anything we can do to isolate the affected area?” asked Grisham.

  “Going by the internal monitors, there are no members of Maxwell’s squad anywhere near the underside bay, sir,” said Lopez. “I can close and lock a couple of the internal doors to seal off the area.”

  “Do it,” said Grisham. The reality of what had just happened suddenly struck home. “Sixty million tons,” he said in disbelief. “That’s nearly half of the damn ship.”

  “Yes, sir, it is,” said Adler.

  Grisham swore at the blindness of the sensors. For all of humanity’s advancements, nobody had yet figured out how to make a sensor array gather a feed while travelling at lightspeed. Right now, Grisham wanted to view the damage with his own eyes.

  “That was no damned Apiar warhead,” said Grisham. “The destroyer was fitted with Olin missiles.” He clenched his fist and crashed it onto the edge of his console. “If that’s an example of the Kijol’s newest destroyer design, I sure as hell don’t want to run into whatever’s higher up the food chain.”

  He fell silent for a moment as he absorbed what he’d just said. Most everyone admitted that one-on-one, a Kijol warship had an advantage over its HF equivalent, but the difference was something which could be overcome through skill or other factors at play during an engagement.

  The encounter on Tambus was proof enough that the alien military wasn’t standing still, and Grisham dreaded to think what the newest Eternus battleships would be capable of, assuming those warships had undergone the same level of propulsion and weapons enhancements as the destroyer.

  “Do we have enough output to hold the lightspeed tunnel open?” he asked, suddenly worried about the Castigate’s ability to complete its journey home.

  “I’m not sure, sir. Certainly our lightspeed multiplier is way down,” said Adler. “I’m monitoring the outputs from the other modules and they’re all sky-high. If they start failing, we’ll be thrown back into local space.” A grudging sort-of-smile appeared on his lined face. “We got lucky, sir. Half of the damage from an Olin missile comes from the plasma burn. When we entered lightspeed, I guess all that crap got ripped off our hull and left far behind.”

  “We ended up with a half-wrecked warship and our lives,” said Grisham. “Under the circumstances, we’ve got to call that a win.”

  “Damn right,” said Deneuve.

  “So how much additional time will we need to reach Loxor?” asked Grisham.

  “Weeks, sir,” said Adler. “Our lightspeed multiplier is based off more than engine mass alone. To put it in layman’s terms, we’ve lost a lot of the push-pull between our modules.”

  Grisham’s optimism from moments before faded, though he clung tenaciously to its last traces. “If we exit lightspeed and send out a distress call, an HF warship could make the trip to wherever the hell we are, pick us up and return us home in a quarter of the time it would take to complete the journey under our own steam.”

  In the end, the decision wasn’t Grisham’s to make. While he was considering his options, the Castigate’s propulsion gave out a peculiar, grinding shriek that made him think of two thick slabs of metal being twisted and torn apart. The engine power readout on his console dropped like a stone and he braced himself for re-entry to local space.

  Retching and coughing from the transition, Grisham watched the sensor feeds. When they came online, Lieutenants Lopez and Bishop completed the local area scans, and soon confirmed that the Castigate was nowhere in particular.

  Lopez sent out the distress call, and when that was done, Grisham settled himself for a long, frustrating and tedious wait for pickup. All the while, his mind kept going back to the Kijol destroyer. It was just one vessel in the aliens’ extensive fleet, and yet he couldn’t get it out of his head that it was a harbinger for much worse things to come.

  Chapter Three

  Rescue was longer in coming than Grisham had expected. Five days after sending out the distress call, the recovery vessel EF Rosenthal exited lightspeed a quarter of a million kilometres from the stricken Castigate.

  When Grisham left the bridge to board the rescue shuttle coupled to one of the Castigate’s exit hatches, several of the warship’s critical systems were offline and the propulsion output was down to five percent. The life support was online, though Grisham suspected its failure was inevitable, and everyone had been wearing full spacesuits around the clock for the entirety of the wait, in case the air went bad or the Castigate suffered an unexpected depressurisation.

  Once the transfer to the shuttle was completed, the transport decoupled and accelerated towards the Rosenthal. Grisham sat with his eyes closed and his head tipped back. The shuttle’s interior was all greys, hard edges and discomfort, with a scent of suit polymers and machine-cut metal. A rumble of agricultural propulsion made off-comms conversation difficult, though Grisham didn’t mind the noise.

  Soon, his crew, and the Castigate’s two squads of soldiers, would be onboard the Rosenthal and on their way to Loxor. What would come after, he didn’t know and at this moment, didn’t much care.

  “That Olin missile really did a number on us,” said Kinsey, sitting on the bench seat opposite Grisham. “I’m glad we’re on our way.”

  Grisham didn’t want to think too hard about it, and he remembered Adler’s remark that the Castigate’s transition to lightspeed immediately after the enemy missile’s detonation had cleansed the hull of plasma. If the lightspeed entry had been only a few seconds later, the aftereffects of the initial explosion would have certainly wrecked the Castigate and it would likely have broken up during the transition.

  It was humbling to think that a single enemy missile could do such damage, though Grisham and his crew had speculated that the payload of the destroyer’s Olin was greater than other missiles of the same type. An Olin Mk 2. Lieutenant Adler also believed – albeit it with limited data – that the propulsion section of the missile was a new design and likely capable of carrying the warhead to a far greater velocity than previous-generation Olins – once freed from the limits of atmospheric friction, at least.

  It was the kind of new tech the Human Federation wasn’t ready to deal with and Grisham couldn’t stop thinking about what kind of influence even a couple of dozen new-design Kijol warships would have on the wider conflict.

  Shortly after, the shuttle docked with the Rosenthal. At four thousand metres in length, the Rosenthal was round-sided and high flanked, with an interior that was mostly bays. The vessel was thickly armoured, but possessed only modest offensive capabilities.

  The moment Grisham stepped off the shuttle and into the sub-zero air of the docking bay, he received a comm from Captain Arlene Cramer, who commanded the Rosenthal. Leaving his crew and the soldiers to find quarters for themselves, Grisham headed through the recovery vessel’s interior to the bridge.

  Having borrowed one of the Rosenthal’s gravity cars to speed his journey along the portside arterial passage that linked the main operational areas of the vessel, Grisham arrived at the bridge. In stark contrast to what he was accustomed to, the Rosenthal’s command area was huge, with stations for almost forty officers, and almost every seat was occupied.

  Captain Cramer was medium height, in her fifties and with an air of competence. Grisham didn’t recall any past encounters. She greeted him cordially and treated him to a sensor view of the Castigate.

  “I’m surprised it got you this far,” said Cramer. She tapped a finger on the feed screen. “This section is ready to break off and that would expose the inner bay here, and the maintenance passages here. Any acceleration at all, and that spaceship would split right apart.”

  Up until now, Grisham had only seen the Castigate from the perspective of its remaining hull sensors. The feed from the Rosenthal drove home what a miracle it had been to escape the Kijol destroyer. Almost a third of the Castigate was gone, all the way into the midsection, and the vessel’s armour plating was splayed outward, its edges razor-sharp and jagged.

  “Is it worth repairing?”

  Cramer snorted. “Hell no. I’ve been trying to decide whether I should just abandon what’s left. The Rosenthal has another two pickups in Golor.” She sighed. “We’re plenty busy and that’s not a good state for the Human Federation.”

  “I’ve got no emotional ties to the Castigate,” Grisham lied. “Don’t let it keep you here.”

  “Your Lieutenant Adler sent over the audit files,” said Cramer. She pursed her lips in thought. “We can salvage a handful of the Chareum modules, but everything else – from weapons to sensors and onboard systems – will have to be extracted, taken to a factory, stripped down and remade.” She shook her head slowly, evidently coming to a conclusion. “It’ll be quicker and cheaper to build something new. Did you lock down the Castigate’s consoles, Captain Grisham?”

  “Yes, I did,” said Grisham.

  “In which case, we’re leaving that spaceship behind. Maybe I’ll come back for it when things settle down. If they settle down.”

  “I need to get to Loxor or somewhere I can pick up a new warship,” said Grisham.

  “Haven’t you heard?” asked Cramer, raising an eyebrow in surprise. “You and your crew are going to Bastion.”

  “Whose orders?” asked Grisham, suspecting he knew.

  “Admiral Danner’s.” Cramer turned away to face her console. “Make yourself at home here on the Rosenthal, Captain Grisham. Those orders specify I’m to take you to Bastion station at best speed once I’m done with the Castigate. It must be something important.”

  “Don’t ask me,” said Grisham. “This is the first I’ve heard about it.”

  Grisham left the Rosenthal’s bridge and went looking for the other members of his crew. Unlike a fleet warship, the recovery vessel had adequate space for thousands of personnel, and that meant plenty of spare rooms. Grisham wasn’t fussy. As long as the sheets were clean, he was happy to sleep anywhere and he located himself a bunk in the same room as Lieutenant Adler. The mattress was made from foam so thin it was like a normal mattress cut lengthways four times, and doubtless sold to the military for six times its worth. Still, it felt comfortable enough to Grisham.

  After three days at lightspeed, during which he killed time with his crew in one of the Rosenthal’s expansive mess areas, or ran kilometres in one of the gyms, a voice on the internal comms announced the vessel’s imminent arrival at Bastion.

  An hour later, Grisham was in the cockpit of one of the Rosenthal’s shuttles and piloting it towards the space station. To his left, Lieutenant Lopez was doing her best to improve the long-range feed gathered by the transport’s basic sensor arrays. To Grisham’s right, Commander Deneuve was doing not much.

  “There goes the Rosenthal,” said Lopez.

  The recovery vessel disappeared from the rear sensor feeds, gone to wherever it was that Cramer had been instructed to head next. Having seven other shuttles meant the Rosenthal didn’t need to wait for the return of this one.

  “Five thousand klicks to Bastion,” said Lopez. “That’s going to take us all year in this heap of shit.”

  It was an exaggeration and Grisham made no effort to correct the statement. The shuttle was easy to pilot and gave his full attention to the feed targeted on Bastion. The space station was an immense feat of engineering, beyond almost any other within the Human Federation.

  Work on the space station had commenced at least a hundred years ago. Back then – before anyone had heard of the Kijol and when the human species was collectively enthralled by its gradual conquering of space - the initial ambitions for Bastion had been modest.

  As the scope of the project was expanded and new purposes were included, construction work continued. Now, Bastion Station was eighteen thousand metres from one end to the other. It was mostly cylindrical, and with a diameter of three thousand metres at its widest point. The station’s two main bays could each hold a Nexus-class heavy cruiser, or many smaller warships.

  Those main bays wouldn’t open for an insignificant vessel like the shuttle, and Grisham had received instruction to dock in one of the smaller bays, of which Bastion had dozens.

  “Have you heard anything from Admiral Danner, sir?” asked Deneuve.

  “No,” said Grisham.

  He’d tried not to spend much time guessing why the Admiral wanted him at Bastion so urgently. From experience, Grisham had an idea he wouldn’t enjoy the revelation when it finally came.

  “I’m sure we’ll hear all about it in good time,” said Adler.

  “When I know, you’ll know,” said Grisham, his tone indicating he didn’t want to engage in a discussion.

  Ten minutes later, the shuttle was close enough to Bastion that the forward feeds were of little else than grey alloy, elaborate transmitters and defensive emplacements. An overlay on one of the transport’s console screens gave Grisham course details, along with a suggested velocity. He didn’t need either – the opening for the shuttle bay was visible on the sensors and he aimed for it.

  Since the space station had no rotation, it was easy enough for Grisham to match velocity and, when the Bastion docking controller indicated he should turn on the autopilot, he ignored the request.

  “Someone’s going to have words with you about that, sir,” said Deneuve.

  “If I thought for a moment I was going to crash, I’d activate the autopilot in an instant, Commander.”

  Grisham cursed. There was a time and place for being an ass, and it wasn’t now. He switched on the autopilot and sat back while the computers took over.

  Shortly after, the transport entered the docking tunnel at such a low velocity, it had Grisham scraping his teeth together in frustration. The regulations for take-off and landing on a planetary base allowed for a much greater degree of pilot discretion, though he supposed the consequences of error at a military base weren’t so drastic as they would be for Bastion.

  At the end of the docking tunnel, the shuttle stopped next to an alloy platform. A slab-like door slid across behind, sealing the bay from the vacuum. Red lights – one outside and one on Grisham’s console - indicated pressurisation was taking place. The process didn’t take long and when the light on his console went green, Grisham gave the order to depart.

  He unclipped his harness and stood, just as a link was made to the comms unit in his suit. One of the station comms teams offered a perfunctory greeting and then provided Grisham with instructions. The comms link went dead.

  “I’ve been ordered to Admiral Danner’s office,” said Grisham.

  “No rest for the wicked, huh?” said Deneuve.

  “If he asks for a contribution towards the Castigate’s replacement, tell him I have mouths to feed back on Earth,” said Bishop.

  “I’ll be sure to let him know,” said Grisham dryly.

  He led his crew from the shuttle. They passed through the bay airlock and then parted ways. Already, Grisham had a feeling his meeting with Admiral Danner was the herald of something significant.

  Not one to shy away from danger, Grisham nevertheless felt a twinge of nervous anticipation at what he might soon learn. Forcing a thin smile to his face, he set off to learn his fate.

  Chapter Four

  “We’ve lost contact with Xaros.”

  Having delivered this news, Admiral Russ Danner leaned back in his faded leather chair and placed his thick-fingered hands palms-down on his desk.

  Sitting in a chair that was surely rather less comfortable, and on the opposite side of the imposing dark-wood desk, Grisham racked his brains, trying to remember what he knew about Xaros.

  To buy himself some thinking time, he asked the obvious question. “Kijol?”

  “That’s one possibility, but Xaros isn’t anywhere close to Kijol territory. Tell me what you know about the planet.”

  A distant memory came to Grisham. “It’s an outpost somewhere on the fringes,” he said after a moment. He pursed his lips. “A world claimed for the Holy Church of Something-Or-Other.”

  Danner smiled thinly. “The Holy Church of Everlasting Serenity. Founded by a person you won’t have heard of - Ivey Metz - with the sole aim being to bring humans and Kijol together in a union of peace, love and eternal happiness.”