It was Estevez who spoke next. “Things are moving quickly here. As you know, we’re mobilising to set up a blockade around the disputed colony of Piatra. This is an extremely sensitive subject - we have no idea how the Yakutians might react. The information we’re receiving suggests that they’re pulling out but we very much doubt that. We think this is a ruse. We’re pretty sure that they intend to leave behind several detachments of ground forces who’ll be tasked with targeting our troops if we should decide to make landfall. That way, if we choose to engage with them we can do so without it escalating into a full-blown conflict.”

  “That way,” Davies said. “Both sides will be able to deny that any such conflict ever took place.”

  “A trap of sorts, then,” Faulkner said. “What about their ships? No doubt they’re in the process of pulling back from the planet just enough that they don’t pose an immediate threat to our ships, yet close enough to monitor our operations. Then they can just sit tight, happy to tie us up there for weeks. Months even.”

  Estevez turned to Davies. “Perhaps we should have invited the captain to our earlier meeting.”

  Davies sat back in his chair and narrowed his eyes.

  “We’re well aware of your service history, Captain Faulkner. Your dealings with the Yakutians.”

  “And yet you’ve not chosen to include my ship in the deployment sent to Piatra.”

  “No, that’s right,” Davies sat up. “At this current time, we’re of the mind that your particular talents will be best served out at Tigris.”

  Faulkner looked pointedly from one to the other, looking for further clarification as to what that meant but nothing was forthcoming.

  “You want me to take my ship halfway across the galaxy just to check out some research station? Is that right?”

  “There’s a space station at Allegra: Blackthorn. You might want to call in there first, get their take on what’s been going on.”

  “If they haven’t become targets themselves.”

  “I very much doubt that,” Davies said. “They’ve got their own defensive fortifications. Besides, if they’d have been attacked, we’d have heard about it by now.”

  “Seems there’s a lot more to this than you’re letting on.”

  Neither of the two senior officers said anything.

  “Okay, I understand,” Faulkner continued. “I get it. You want me to form my own conclusions and then report back. But do I at least get to see the footage of the attack? I assume you’ve got something solid to go on.”

  An emergency drone would have been launched automatically as soon as the colony came under attack. It would contain all the data available at the time.

  “You’ll get a chance to review what we’ve got once you’re underway,” Davies said. “It’ll be transmitted direct to your quarters. On a tight beam. We’ll leave it up to your discretion as to who you share it with.”

  “Thanks for that at least. Anything else I ought to know? I’d hate to miss something vital.”

  That had the desired effect as Estevez shot Davies a questioning look.

  Davies let out a long sigh. “This is politically very sensitive.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  Faulkner held back, allowing the tension in the room to build.

  Davies said, “There are a number of graduate students working out on Tigris. PhDs, stuff like that.”

  “Go on.”

  “One of them is Emilia Baxter. She’s studying for a Master’s degree in Geology. Tigris has a lot of interesting rock formations apparently.”

  “Emilia Baxter? Should I have heard of her?”

  “No. That’s sort of the point. She operates under the name Baxter for security reasons. Baxter is her mother’s maiden name. Her real name is Emilia Samuels.”

  “Samuels?” Faulkner reflected on that for a moment. “As in: the president’s daughter?”

  They didn’t say anything further. They didn’t have to.

  “I see,” Faulkner’s head dropped as a thousand questions came to mind. “What if she’s among the casualties? What then?”

  Estevez made a non-committal gesture.

  “I’m sure it’s not quite as grim as all that,” Davies said.

  “That would all depend on whether their habitat’s been compromised. Do we have any idea of the temperature out there?” he looked pointedly at Davies. “Approximately.”

  “Minus sixty degrees C.”

  “And at nightime?”

  Estevez cut in, “I think you’ve made your point, captain. But that still doesn’t change anything. We need you to find the girl and bring her back, whatever state she’s in. Here are the rest of your orders.”

  She produced a folder and slid it across the desk. Faulkner opened it and quickly scanned the contents until he found what he was looking for.

  The orders had been signed by Admiral Paige.

  Faulkner pushed himself back from the desk. The whole thing was a set-up. Paige wanted him out of the way for the foreseeable future. And what better way to achieve that than to send him on a wild goose chase on the other side of the galaxy?

  “One other thing,” Estevez said. “We’ve been keeping tabs on the Yakutian fleet’s manoeuvres of late. Very close tabs. Two days ago we picked up readings from one of their battleships, the Serrayu. It was heading towards the Hermia Gate.”

  “The Hermia Gate provides direct access into the Fermata system,” Davies said. “You’ll need to pass through there before arriving at the Henrietta Gate. It’s a short hop from there to Tigris.”

  Faulkner’s back pain suddenly disappeared. “Any idea what they might be looking for?”

  “There are any number of possibilities. You’ll find a report on our findings along with the rest of your orders.”

  “I understand that, sir, but what happens if we come up against them at close quarters? How are we to proceed?”

  Davies stood up and began gathering his things. “You’ve had numerous dealings with the Yakutians in the past, captain. We’ll leave that up to you for the time being.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Davitz stormed down the corridor, crewmen edging to one side in order to let him pass. He’d served on the ship longer than anyone else, having spent the last few years over-seeing her re-fit. For a long time now, he had been the senior officer in charge and had grown used to having his orders carried out without question.

  So he didn’t appreciate being called away from his work for something as trivial as a meeting. He’d been down in the cargo bay supervising the loading of the fuel cells. Each cell was highly volatile, consisting of a long cartridge which needed to be handled with extreme care. The heavy lifting equipment that they were using wasn’t known for its finesse and, since he couldn’t countenance an accident at this late stage, he was forced to suspend the operation until his return.

  He was in a lousy mood, having had virtually no sleep over the past two days. They’d had to work around the clock to remove one of the fusion drives after it had shut down during one of their power tests. It was the second time this had happened and what was most worrying was that according to diagnostics there was no clear reason for the failure. Looking at the readouts, everything was fine. It just wasn’t generating any power.

  He had hoped that there might be something they could do to get it up and running but they’d tried everything and nothing appeared to be working. Added to that, Davitz was acutely aware that there were other equally pressing issues demanding his attention.

  Now, not only was he being dragged away at a vital moment, but he had also had to go and get washed and changed. He had been summoned to the bridge to meet with the rest of the senior team and he couldn’t afford to turn up there looking like some glorified grease monkey. He was anxious about meeting with the other officers at the best of times. Most came from fairly privileged backgrounds whereas he had faced an uphill struggle just to get a place at the Academy. He’d spent the eight years prior to his acceptance working on various deep space mining concerns. The money was good and Davitz didn’t mind the long hours but it was a high-risk occupation and after one particularly close call where he was trapped for three days underground he decided to look for something more rewarding.

  He felt he’d found that in the Navy but despite the fact that he had quickly found promotion as an engineer, he was acutely aware that some of the characteristics which he’d developed during his mining days - his bluntness and unfailing confidence in his own ability – didn’t earn him many friends. And while his superiors might have valued his skills they found that things ran much more smoothly when Davitz was given his own projects to manage as he saw fit.

  That was, indeed, how his posting to the Mantis had come about. As senior officer in charge, the only people Davitz was likely to offend were his subordinates, and the navy could handle that.

  No one was more aware of this than Davitz himself. He might be gruff and belligerent but that didn’t mean he was stupid. When his IQ had been tested at the Academy he had been found to be in the top five percent of the population. He reflected now that if the captain had any sense at all he would have allowed Davitz to ‘attend’ the meeting via comms link. That way, at least, they’d have been able to keep on with the repairs. Now, he had a team of engineers sitting around doing nothing.

  As he stepped out onto the bridge, Davitz re-checked his hands and fingernails. An engineer’s hands were never completely clean and he felt suddenly self-conscious, wishing he’d spent more time scrubbing them.

  He needn’t have worried. The bridge was in near darkness when he arrived, the sunken lights around the walls providing the only illumination. He wondered briefly if there’d been some kind of power failure but relaxed a little as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom. All the other senior officers were present, seated informally around a group of workstations.

  “Glad that you could join us, chief,” Faulkner said, as though he meant it. “I’ve been asking the other officers to give me their opinion of our tactical readiness.”

  Lieutenant Shinji Yamada currently had the floor. He waited until Davitz was seated before continuing.

  “We’ve been putting in some crazy hours trying to get our staffing levels filled ever since the news came through of our possible deployment. We’ve done well by normal standards, despite having to contend with stiff competition from the main battle fleet. Having said that, we’re still approximately thirty crewmen short. Some of them in vital roles.”

  Faulkner’s face clouded over but he kept his tone even. “Alright. Lieutenant Silva, what about you? Surely, you’ve got some good news for me.”

  Jessica Silva, currently the senior navigator on-board, was in her early thirties and of Argentinian extraction. Davitz found her whole demeanour extremely intimidating. She was confident and out-going and clearly enjoyed a lot of attention from the other officers. Silva came from a family of high achievers, her mother was a senator somewhere and he couldn’t help wondering if she viewed her time in the military as a steppingstone to her own career in politics. But it was her mathematical prowess which really surprised him. Normally, someone like her would have found a role in something like Strategic Command but here she was working on the Mantis, albeit as lead navigator.

  “I’m not sure about good news, sir,” she said. “But all the co-ordinates for the Florentine Gate have finally been entered into the main frame. The big question still is: when are we due to leave? Fleet high command have been block booking all the normal flight routes. They’ve been prioritising their own pre-flight tests. It’s imperative that we have advance warning about our departure so that we can put everything into place. The sooner we have a firm date the sooner we can come up with a definite flight-plan.”

  Faulkner nodded. “More on that later. How are we doing with ordnance?”

  Lieutenant Commander Philippe Bertran consulted his tablet. Although in his forties, he had the energy and vigour of someone on their first posting. Bertran was the ship’s tactical officer. “We’ve just finished loading the ordnance and, while we’re a long way from optimum capacity, we’re in a much better shape than we were a week ago. I wish I could say the same for the weapons systems. Of thirteen lasers, five are suffering from intermittent faults. We’ve also been having problems with the power feeds.”

  He turned slowly in his chair to regard Davitz’s massive form.

  “If I might respond to that?” Davitz said. “The problem isn’t with the power feeds, they’re working just fine. The problem lies with the lasers themselves. They’re just not compatible with some of the antiquated avionics we have on-board. These lasers can consume a ridiculous amount of power in a very short space of time and this ship’s not set up for that.”

  “Understood,” Faulkner said. He turned to Bertran. “Is there any way that you can stagger the order by which the lasers power up?”

  Bertran shook his head. “You mean, make them less effective?”

  “In the short term, yes. We can’t afford to go over-loading the systems at this point. We just need them functional for now.”

  This delighted Davitz. He’d taken an instant dislike to the Frenchman as soon as he’d come aboard only a few weeks ago. He got the impression that Bertran would have been happier loading his weapons onto a brand new battlecruiser. He might be good at his job but he had yet to learn the realities of working on such an antiquated vessel: if they wanted to get things done, they were going to have to learn to improvise.

  As Davitz’ grandmother had been fond of saying: make do and mend.

  Bertran quickly laid out some of the other problems he was experiencing.

  “The new rail guns arrived this morning, sir.”

  “Both of them? Good, it’s about time.”

  “Only they’re still dockside.”

  “There’s not another problem, is there?”

  “Yes and no. They’re still in bits.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Normally, they arrive fully assembled so it’s fairly straightforward process to check them over. With these two, it looks as though someone’s taken them apart and then dumped them in different containers.”

  Faulkner nodded grimly. “I see. Let me guess: there are parts missing?”

  Bertran looked suddenly uncomfortable. “I’m afraid so, sir. A couple of fairly major parts, to be exact.”

  “I understand. Is there any chance you can cannibalise enough parts to piece together one working rail gun?”

  Bertran looked across at Davitz.

  “I’ll send someone over to take a look,” Davitz said.

  “Thank you, chief,” Faulkner said. “Ladies and gentlemen, I know that preparations for our departure have been less than ideal but we must press ahead. You have full autonomy as far as operations in your areas are concerned, and I suggest you use it.”

  He turned to Davitz. “I appreciate you coming up to see us, chief. How are things working out with that fusion drive? Any luck?”

  Davitz was immediately suspicious of his captain’s level of operational awareness but he didn’t let it stop him.

  “Unfortunately, no. We’ve tried everything but it looks as though we’re going to have to strip it all down again. I’ve been looking for a possible replacement but so far without success.”

  That clearly wasn’t what his c.o. wanted to hear.

  “How long?”

  Davitz was starting to get frustrated. He didn’t want to set a deadline for himself on something which might prove impossible to fix.

  He was just about to tell the captain this when the door to the bridge opened and a tall figure entered.

  “Permission to come aboard, sir?”

  It wasn’t just Davitz who was taken aback. Everyone was straining forward in their seats attempting to identify the stranger.

  Faulkner levered himself out of his chair.

  “Permission granted,” he said as the stranger saluted.

  Faulkner strode over and took the newcomer’s hand. “A pleasure to have you aboard.”

  Then he turned to the assembled officers. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to our new XO, Commander Alex Webster.”

  It was Bertran who spoke first.

  “Webster. But weren’t you the c.o. aboard the Syracuse?”

  Webster gave him a tight smile. “Former c.o.”

  Bertran persisted, “But I thought you were …”

  “Detained,” Faulkner stepped in between them, clapping Webster on the shoulder. “As part of an unfortunate misunderstanding. The Yakutians were keen to get their hands on him but I thought we might be able to find a better use for his skills.”

  Davitz levelled a finger at Webster. “But you were up on charges though, weren’t you? There was some talk about charging you with piracy.”

  “All charges were eventually dismissed,” Faulkner shot the engineer a warning look but Davitz wasn’t so easily discouraged.

  “If all the charges were dismissed, then why not re-join your old ship?”

  Webster’s gaze fixed on Davitz and he moved to confront him. Even sitting down, Davitz was almost on eye level.

  Faulkner stepped around and laid a hand on his XOs chest but Webster’s eyes glittered intently.

  “The Syracuse has been called away on another mission. It could be months before she passes this way again and, since I was eager to get back to active duty, I was open to offers. I hope you don’t have a problem.”

  “Well,” Bertran said. “At least now we might be able to make some headway with these equipment issues.”

  He gave Davitz a sharp look but Davitz ignored the jibe. He had enough to be getting on with without having to do Bertran’s work as well.

  “I’m not sure there’s going to be time for all that.”

  All eyes turned to Faulkner.

  He quickly told them all about his visit to the Admiralty the previous. All that is apart from the details regarding Emilia Baxter.

  “And this Yakutian ship? It’s already underway?” Davitz asked.

  Faulkner nodded. “The Serrayu, yes, that’s right.”

  “Then they have us at an advantage,” Davitz said looking to Jessica Silva for support. “Whatever their intentions might be.”