Her friend’s face was ashen, the man certainly didn’t seem to be a part of whatever action was headed their way. “It’s not us, Zee.”

  “Not us as in not the Space Force?”

  “Maybe, I don’t know. I just know you are in extreme danger. There are elements at play that even I don’t understand.”

  “Why don’t you call your ship back? You’re going to need a ride. In fact, keep her close, she would be useful as another lifeboat for whatever survivors we can bring up from the surface.” She rose from the table, “I have to go, they’ll need me on the bridge.” Her even tone belied the anger and betrayal she was feeling.

  He rose as well and lightly placed a hand on her arm. “Xero, use me. You know I can help.”

  “Help?” she asked incredulously. “For all I know you are behind it. You will stay here until the Marine guards escort you off this ship or kill you, which they will do if you are here to cause us harm.”

  “I’m not, but I may be the only chance you have of holding onto the ship.”

  She knew Valyn was qualified to command a monolith class warship, but he’d been at Fleet Command for too long, and things were anything but ordinary.

  “Guards!”

  The two uniformed sentries appeared in the door. “Please escort my guest to the bridge level holding cell.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” he said in protest before leaning in and embracing Xero.

  “Maybe so. I don’t make many, but it won’t be my first.”

  The guards held position as Xero turned to face her friend.

  “Zee, you know more than you are letting on. I can see it. That means you know whoever is behind this is not the military.”

  “Who do you think it is, then?” She needed to go help on the bridge, but this might be the only time to get honest answers from Valyn.

  His eyes fell to the floor. “I don’t know. Honestly, the military doesn’t have the power most people think. If it did, War Commander Reese would be the one coming up in an attack ship instead of whomever that is.”

  “Don’t call him that.” She spat the words out.

  He nodded. “Fair enough. What I am saying is the military is just a part of this puzzle, has been since the Cold War. We are the result, not the cause.”

  “Not following, Val.”

  “Who makes money from war? The contractors, politicians, consultants. The Alliance didn’t form to protect its nations. They formed to share the profits—profits from making war on anybody or everybody.”

  She moved closer toward the hatch. “No one is profiting now. Did someone overplay their hand?”

  He shook his head. “No, I think this was always the plan. Someone was playing the long-game while everyone else was just set-pieces trying to get rich.”

  He did have her attention now, although she wasn’t totally sure why. “If not profit, then what?”

  Valyn shrugged. “Hubris, fear of losing out to some bigger fish. Maybe because they thought they had found the keys to rebuilding the world. Hell, who knows?”

  “Prowler, it’s heating up.”

  I was racing through the corridors, my brain processing information that my conscious mind hadn’t even come to terms with yet. Ada’s words registered, but I’d already guessed the next move.

  “Incoming missiles,” the weapons officer said, her crisp voice showing shakiness around the edge.

  “Countermeasures active,” I said unnecessarily, the ship’s own defensive system would do that automatically.

  “Identify hostile. Is it Valyn’s people?”

  “Joe, Deb is regaining consciousness,” Ada said again.

  “Shit!” I yelled as I passed the passageway leading to the med bay. I wanted to see her, needed to see her, but priorities. Sadly, she was so much more familiar with the ship’s capabilities than I was, I considered going back. This time, I had to rely on her team and Ada to get us through whatever happened next.

  “Ship had no IFF,” Otero called in response to my last question. “No beacon of any kind, nor does the radar profile match any known vessel.”

  So, not Space Force. Not an official force at least.

  “Prowler, our Space Gate is lowering,” Ada said calmly.

  The outer hangar door, or ‘Space Gate,’ lowers automatically only for other Space Force assets. Normally, they required a verifiable IFF transponder, but suddenly someone seemed to be able to do it without that. I had Belle and my AI working to regain control.

  “Stasis field still in place?” That was what really kept our people safe inside the hangar. Ships could enter through the field, but the atmosphere couldn’t escape. It was a truly ingenious system. Probably another advance that Xero would question as being too advanced for our level of knowledge. “Affirmative,” the AI said.

  I felt the primary batteries open up with what I assumed were the countermeasures. All my years aboard ships like these, and I had never once heard any weaponry being used.

  My comms unit came alive with random voices, “One got through.”

  The ship shook violently. I would have been gone crashing into the side bulkhead, but Ada had increased the magnetic force in my deck boots.

  Moving through the last hatch to the bridge, I barely noticed the Marines standing guard outside the adjacent hatch. “What have we got, people, critical damages first.”

  They filled me in at the same time Ada was re-prioritizing for me based on her own understanding of risks and needs. In less than a minute, I learned a lot of what the crew knew. Unknown ship, first salvo appeared to be ship-killer missiles. Impacts have done minimal damage so far.

  “Incoming energy weapon.”

  “Point defense systems going hot,” the weapons officer said as she keyed in the targeting for the high-energy lasers.

  “Prowler, distance to target is over fifty kilometers, beyond the effective range for our energy beam weapons,” Ada said.

  I nodded, already coming to the same conclusion. “We have to do something. We are in the mightiest surviving warship in the sky. Give me some options.”

  “Xero,” I said, noticing her at the workstation for the first time.

  She looked up and nodded.

  “Our guest,” I bobbed my head to the corridor, now understanding what I had ignored earlier.

  “Yes, he wanted to help, but obviously I couldn’t bring him into the bridge without your okay.”

  Valyn Orric’s flight and command credentials flashed past in my ocular overlay, and I thought I understood.

  “Bring him in,” I yelled to the Master of Arms, who’d been a recent addition to the bridge staff.

  “Our sensors are being jammed.”

  “Which ones?” I said as calmly as possible to the young ensign.

  “All of them, sir,” he responded.

  “Belle, what’s going on?” I yelled for the ship’s AI.

  “Ada, I need help!” I whispered.

  She made no comment but nearly immediately, I felt the ship accelerate hard and rotate into a steep banking maneuver. The man at the helm began fighting to regain control before I told him to stand aside.

  “Captain, I mean, Master Sergeant,” Orric said, walking confidently into the Command Center. The two guards flanking him looked much less calm.

  “You have nothing to do with this attack?”

  “No, sir! But I had anticipated it.”

  That stuck with me. He was more than what he appeared.

  “Xero said you can help. I trust her, even if I don’t trust you… yet.”

  The younger man went to speak, but I cut him off, “Give him what we have.” I looked the man in the eye and made one of the toughest decisions of my life. “He has battle command. Ada has the con… for now.”

  Valyn nodded. “You will soon need to decide if you are ready to be a pirate. There is no going back from that choice.”

  “I’m a patriot, Sir. That you can rely on,” Valyn said, turning to the main display.

  He went right to work and seemed up to speed issuing new orders in under a minute. “If this was a traditional force, I would expect railgun darts next, but looking at their Delta-V, I think we have other things in store.”

  The Delta-V was the enemy ship’s approach in relation to us. I could see there was an intersect at some point in the future.

  “Boarding?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  He nodded.

  “Banshee, battle ready, prepare to repel boarders.”

  I fought the instinct to rush down to the landing bays and join them. Right now, I have more to risk right here.

  “What about the kid, sir?” Halo asked. “Should we get him out of the Warbot, or you know… don’t we like need a note from his mother or something?”

  I shook my head. I’d totally forgotten about Lux, but he was probably in the safest spot on the ship. I told Halo to leave the kid where he was and use the Warbot if he needed. The boy was growing up fast, and this was a lesson he likely wouldn’t forget. Now, I had a big decision to make. Leave the bridge in the hands of a Fleet officer with questionable alliances and go fight or…

  My thought was cut off by an unexpected voice in my ear.

  “Joe.”

  “Riggs?” Her voice was weak and gravelly, but she was indeed conscious again and apparently needed to talk. I just couldn’t spare the time.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTY-NINE

  Chelsea knew this was the moment to act. Even without hearing from her new ally. This was certainly his doing. In the initial conversation he’d laid out steps she could take to make her plan come true. To make that happen, though, she would have to do something for him. She didn’t like it but felt like an outsider on this ship, anyway. Fuck ‘em all.

  She moved the access hatch to one side and retrieved the small pistol she’d taken off the security guard. If knocking the man out raised any suspicions, they hadn’t been directed at her. To most of the crew, she was invisible. Peering around a corner, she spotted the bump of the security camera on the ceiling. She was not invisible to those. Luckily, the deck she was heading to was not well surveilled, that had been one of Rob’s contributions to her plan. The little weasel seemed to know all the blind spots in the ship’s systems. She tucked the gun into her pocket and headed off.

  The corporal was waiting for her right where he said he would be. He still repulsed her, but she gave him a quick kiss. Sure, she’d had to fuck him a few more times, but the man was scared to death of Koog and Banshee. He didn’t want to risk getting caught with her, so he only showed up when it was absolutely safe to do so. A useful idiot, she smiled. That was basically what all guys were.

  “You sure this will work?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah, Tripp has me going through all these things, all the time. I have to clean and service the battle suits, loaders… all kinds of stuff.”

  She didn’t know who Tripp was, but it didn’t matter.

  “I even screwed with the captain’s drop suit. I would have loved to have seen his face when his wings wouldn’t deploy.”

  Why would he have done that? she wondered. Hadn’t the man saved his life when he pulled his unit off the ground? “But he’s still alive.”

  “I know, right? The man’s impossible to kill. You should hear some of the nicknames the other guys have for him. There’s even a rumor that he was dead and came back to life.”

  Yeah, she’d even heard that one.

  “So, look, honey, after this you going to, you know…let me get to know you again?”

  Ugh, the man’s euphemisms were nearly as bad as his breath. “Maybe, depends on how good you are.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry, Babe, I’ll be really damn good. Still don’t know how doing this will get you in with that prisoner, though,” Howell said.

  “This is mainly a distraction,” she cooed while watching him unscrew the composite panel with a portable driver.

  “This system is just a piece of shit…I don’t even really know. It’s not even part of the main network systems, just backup safety and maintenance logs; nothing vital. How do you even know about it?”

  She hadn’t mentioned the odd conversations with the man via the Warbot. That was not anything Corporal Howell needed to know. Despite his stupidity, the man still was a soldier and might have some issues with what was going to happen next. He moved out of the way, and she began entering a long series of command codes from the scrap of paper she’d used to write them down.

  “You must be some kind of hacker genius,” Rob said. “Like that hot, Asian chick.”

  Chelsea ignored him and waited for the prompt to say the patch had been accepted. She felt the gun digging into her abdomen as she leaned into the awkward space. She wondered if she could just kill Rob here, or if she would need him again. Either way, he wasn’t touching her body again.

  Honestly, she didn’t know what the code she just entered would do. The man first wanted her to establish control of the Warbot for him. He kept calling it a Decimator. Nothing she had done had worked, and the man had finally given up.

  “What do I call you?” she had asked the next time they talked. It was hard because she had to be relatively close to the Warbot for the connection to work. It was too far away from her for a signal to be relayed. Those calls being discovered by the ship’s sensors scared her, but the man kept reassuring her it wasn’t possible.

  “Call me Ahdeen, Nomar Ahdeen,” he had said, the deep, baritone voice echoing just a hint of an accent.

  “This will get me access to the witch?”

  “Indeed, my dear Chelsea, and it will eliminate the RDT soldier. The one who embarrassed you. Both of our problems will be gone forever.”

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTY

  I had no time for a visit, so I called the medbay instead. The erratic and brief conversation with Deb rattled me to my core. Surely it was the result of the trauma she’d been through, not based on actual fact.

  “I did my best to bring her up to speed, but she was talking crazy. My adrenaline levels were spiking, and Ada was doing her best to keep my systems from overloading with the anticipation of battle.

  “He…he’s dead Deb. There is no way it was him. You were there.” I hated visualizing what it must have been like for her seeing the face on that call. Computer generated or something, hell I saw Van Gogh on a call a few days ago.

  Carol caught up to me on my way to the hangar deck. In my battle suit and helmet, she could probably just make out I was talking to someone. I stopped and stared at her.

  Carol could see something had shaken me. Something more than just the battle alert.

  “Is everything okay?”I ended the call and raised my visor.

  “Yes… no…shit, I don’t know. You just need to get to the shelters.”

  Carol touched my arm. “Joe, what’s wrong?”

  “We’re being attacked.” It wasn’t a lie, but that wasn’t the main reason I was so conflicted.

  “Look, wait.” I knew I was wrestling my own internal demon, but quickly I came to a decision. “Can you get to the med bay and check on Deb? She’s regaining consciousness. It’s in a protected section of the ship, you’ll both be safe there.”

  “I need to find Lux,” was her anxious response.

  The thought of the kid buttoned up inside an enemy Warbot flashed in my mind, but I kept that to myself. “I know where he is, I’ll get the guys to keep him safe.”

  She touched my arm again and then pulled me close. “Joe, I need you to keep him safe. You…okay? I trust you.”

  She leaned in and kissed me, not a great kiss but maybe just what I needed to calm down. I leaned into her, I wanted to say much more but this wasn’t the time.

  I nodded mutely as I turned, resuming my lumbering gait toward the hangar. The heavy armored boots made a resounding thud with each footfall.

  “Hey, Junior, they locked you up yet?”

  My dad’s timing was always impeccable, always at the worst possible time. “Not yet, Pops, but the day’s still young.”

  Honestly, it seemed like the enemy was more intent on killing me than placing me under arrest. “Dad, I don’t even understand who we are fighting. The coalition is gone, Space Force is being bossed around by a pretender, and my XO just begged me to stand down. Surrender the ship before any more lives are lost.”

  A felt a shudder as something hit the ship. The lights blinked off and on a few times, then stabilized. A massive whirring began filling the corridor. It was a sound I had heard only in simulations.

  “That’s the rail guns warming up?”

  “Yeah, Pop, I think so.”

  “Joe, forget what Deb said. You have to win this. You need to end them today if you can in fact… whatever the threat is. The war for humanity isn’t going to be decided up there, but down here. I’m hearing strange reports that the creatures are massing together.”

  “Why?” I asked, opening a hatch just as the ship lurched sideways from the rail gun’s recoil. Say what you will, but Valyn seemed to be fighting back. “Are they preparing to move on the survivors?”

  “No… not yet at least. No, Joe, I think they may be…building something.”

  My team waited for me, waited… for battle. The outer space doors were open, the stasis field the only thing keeping atmo inside the bay. My men all stood in rigid formation on the far end of the bay, skylined against the black field of stars. “Gotta go, Dad.”

  “Banshee!” I screamed out. “Time to earn our keep, guys!”

  “Sumo, on me.”

  I eyed my team display for Lux. Anticipating what I was looking for, I saw the kid’s icon on my far right. We had to keep him safe, but that Warbot was too valuable a weapon not to use.

  “You can handle that remotely?” I asked Ada. She assured me she could handle most of it, and Lux was more than capable of the rest.

  “Shield what he sees, Ada… he’s just a kid.”

  I turned back to where the team was already taking up defensive positions. “Koog, get us eyes out there.”