The Burning World

(A Learning Experience – Book VIII)

Book One: A Learning Experience
Book Two: Hard Lessons
Book Three: The Black Sheep
Book Four: The Long Road Home
Book Five: The Long-Range War
Book Six: Their Last Full Measure
Book Seven: The Firelighters
Book Eight: The Burning World

Christopher G. Nuttall

Cover By Tan Ho Sim
https://www.artstation.com/alientan

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All Comments Welcome!

Contents
Cover Blurb
Prologue I
Prologue II
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Afterword
How To Follow
If You Enjoyed The Burning World, You Might Like …

Cover Blurb

The Belosi saved the human race. Now, we’re going to return the favour.

Fifty years ago, a human covert operations team – The Firelighters – raided Belosi, a world held in bondage by the alien Tichck, and rescued thousands of Belosi from slavery, taking them into space to form the core of a future liberation force. Since then, a cloud of secrecy has descended over Belos, with no word of the fate of the trapped Belosi allowed to escape the system. Now, with the Tokomak War over and the Galactics in disarray, the Solar Union intends to honour its promises to the exiled Belosi, by supporting their fleet in a bid to reclaim their stolen homeworld.

But the Tichck have plans of their own, and with the former masters of the universe no longer a threat, they can finally make their own play for supreme power.

The first war is over. The second is about to begin.

Prologue I

From: Covert Operations of the Solar Union, Baen Historical Press, 101SY.

The founders of the Solar Union faced very real problems balancing the need for operational security against their deeply held beliefs that secrecy was the beginning of tyranny and the creation of any sort of covert intelligence and/or operations service was asking for trouble in the not-too-distant future. The founders, as former citizens of the United States,  were uneasily aware that bodies like the Central Intelligence Agency or the Federal Bureau Of Investigation had expanded rapidly since their foundation, to the point they became a threat to American democracy while simultaneously losing the ability to carry out their original functions, leading to a series of scandals that did nothing to bolster their reputation and eventually played a major role in the collapse of the United States.

And yet, some degree of covert operations, shrouded in secrecy, were unavoidable.

It is difficult to exaggerate just how puny Earth was a mere seventy years ago. The raw numbers do not convey the gap between human and galactic military power, nor how easy it would have been for even a low-rank galactic power (the equivalent of a third world state on Earth) to conquer Sol. The Solar Union needed to remain hidden from the galactic mainstream, while developing the technology needed to challenge the Tokomak - unquestioned masters of the known universe - and ensure humanity’s physical safety. This required a number of covert operations, ranging from the deployment of mercenary troops to earn galactic currency to intelligence gathering operations carried out hundreds of light-years from Earth. Many of those operations remain classified to this day, for fear of retribution. Only a handful have been declassified, and many more will remain classified until the current crisis is over.

The basic details of the covert operation on Belos, fifteen years after First Contact, have remained secret until now. The inhabitants of Belos – the Belosi – had the extreme ill luck to inhabit a system with no less than three gravity points, practically ensuring that they would be conquered by someone more powerful well before they developed technology of their own. This bad luck was magnified by the fact their conquerors were the Tichck, a race known for a cutthroat attitude to business and a willingness to do whatever it took to build and keep their power. They crushed the Belosi, then enslaved them on a scale beyond anything ever seen on Earth and exploited their homeworld ruthlessly. This tragedy was far from unique, in those days, but what made it interesting to humanity was the establishment of a top-secret research consortium on Belos. This consortium’s installations played host to seven GalCores, the keys to hacking and subverting the vast majority of GalTech. If humanity could obtain the GalCores, by foul means as fair means were simply impossible, it would give the human race a chance to catch up before their existence was discovered by the galaxy at large.

A covert operations team, The Firelighters, was dispatched to Belos, with orders to secure the GalCores without revealing humanity’s involvement in the affair. Their first attempt to steal the enemy technology failed, forcing them to flee into the countryside. There, they made contact with rebel Belosi and discovered, to their horror, that the planet was on the verge of becoming uninhabitable. The Belosi were likely to become extinct. Using a combination of galactic technology and human ingenuity, the Firelighters set out to give the Belosi a fighting chance.

The operation, aided and abetted by a persistent Tichck refusal to admit the Belosi could be dangerous, was a major success. The uprising secured control of one of the three big megacities, giving the team a chance to obtain the GalCores and cover their tracks so completely human involvement was never suspected. (The Tichck blamed the incident on one of their rivals, and war threatened until the Tokomak poured water on the blaze.) More importantly for the Belosi, the team captured hundreds of starships capable of carrying vast numbers of refugees and evacuated as many Belosi as possible into interstellar space before the Tichck, now aware of the seriousness of the threat, could launch a counterattack. By the time the Tichck regained control of the high orbitals, nearly two hundred thousand Belosi had been evacuated.

The team returned to their home base, where it was decided that the Solar Union would continue to provide a degree of support to the Belosi, who had lost their homeworld, but that support would remain firmly at arm’s length. Many people who were in the know about the operation regarded the decision as dishonourable, even if they realised the importance of maintaining Earth’s security. Had the Tichck proven humanity’s involvement, or even suspected it to their own satisfaction, the results would have been disastrous. The Solar Navy of 15-40SY was simply incapable of defending Sol against a major galactic power, and there was no reason to believe the Tichck would show mercy. Quite the opposite. The truth remained concealed until after the Tokomak War, which ended forever the belief that the Tokomak were the masters of the universe. Humanity had beaten them, and nothing would be the same again.

And then, with the galaxy in flux, everything changed.

Prologue II

The servants were Tokomak. Of course.

Chairperson Harpeth watched them bustle about, bringing the directors of the Tichck Consortium food and drink, and allowed himself a sharp-edged cold smile. Hiring servants from the galaxy’s hyperpower – former hyperpower – was a display of wealth and power on a scale few could match, conspicuous consumption taken to an extreme even most Galactics found distasteful. The Tichck did not. It wasn’t sufficient to have enormous wealth, enough to purchase hundreds of star systems or corrupt the most virtuous minds of the galaxy; they wanted – needed – to show the universe they’d arrived. The servants were expensive, but that was the point. They needed to show off their power in a manner none could deny.

His smile sharpened briefly, revealing sharp predator teeth, as the holographic display flickered to life. Other races might look at stars and planets, gauging the balance of military power, but the Tichck looked at economics, silently assessing their possessions, clients, debtors and the many – many – galactic influencers who owed them favours. Harpeth knew – he had no illusions – that his race was hated throughout the known galaxy, yet it hardly mattered. The Tichck had never heard of Caligula, but they would have agreed wholeheartedly that the entire galaxy could hate, as long as it feared. And they were feared.

He leaned back in his chair and studied the display. The consortium was so rich, even in the galactic downturn that had followed the war, that it couldn’t be described in a manner that didn’t involve incredible superlatives. There were entire accounting corporations devoted to keeping track of their possessions, from planets and interstellar trade alliances they owned outright to stocks and shares held in companies that didn’t know – or care – who had an interest in them; there were hundreds of thousands of powerful figures who had taken out loans, then discovered – too late – that they were expected to repay their benefactors in something other than money. And there were alien institutions that would have been very surprised, if they’d discovered who was patronising them. It wasn’t so easy to push them in the right direction, but Harpeth had always enjoyed a challenge. In his experience, academics were the easiest to corrupt of all.

The servants finished their tasks and retired, bowing as they left the compartment. Harpeth wondered, idly, if their immense salaries made up for the indignity of serving a lesser race, then asked himself if their salaries could be cut in the wake of the war. It would make the point that the Tokomak were no longer what they were, that their people could be abused with impunity. They had lost most of their power in a single catastrophic war and now they were vulnerable. Perhaps it was time for the other powers to take their long-awaited revenge. Or just teach the galaxy’s former masters what it felt like to have your fate decided on a world hundreds of light-years away, by people who knew nothing about you and cared less. 

There was no small-talk. Each and every one of the directors had clawed his way to his post, each and every one of them knew their peers were plotting against them, planning to bring them down by any means necessary. They were not friends and never would be, nor did they even admire each other’s skill at decades-long political manoeuvres that ended with one party dead or disgraced, a fate most of the directors would agree was worse than death. Harpeth had wondered, sometimes, if the endless competition was bad for the race, forcing them to dominate each other as much as the surrounding galaxy, but there was no point in trying to calm the competition. The Tichck had evolved on a very harsh world, their ultimate survival in doubt until they’d managed to climb into orbit, and their instincts hadn’t changed at all. How could they? The galaxy was a very dangerous place. And competition meant the strongest would always rise to the top.

“The galactic situation has changed beyond imagination,” he said, calmly. The shift had shocked him, even though he and his ancestors had been working patiently for the day the Tichck could displace the Tokomak and take control of the known galaxy. The idea of a relatively new and primitive race from thousands of light-years away being able to fight its way to Tokomak Prime, destroying hundreds of thousands of starships in the process, was just absurd. And yet it had happened. “We have a window of opportunity to take control.”

There was a long pause. The Tichck were not a particularly cautious race – their evolution had taught them that some opportunities only came once – but they were aware of the risks. The balance of power had been slipping in their favour for centuries, leaving them positioned to take over … and now, everything they wanted was right in front of them, inviting them to reach out and take it. The prize was absolute domination of the known galaxy, the destruction of their foes and profit on a scale beyond even their dreams. But the risk was incredibly high.

“We will never be a popular race,” Harpeth said. They didn’t care about the opinion of most other races, save perhaps the Tokomak, and yet they were wise enough to know they were hated. “If we do not take power, someone else will. And that will be bad for us.”

“We have power and influence even over our enemies,” Chairperson Tomah said. “We could continue to build our power from afar.”

Harpeth dismissed the caution with a wave of his hand. The interstellar economy was in ruins. Their control over the interstellar banking system had never been complete and now it was worse than useless. It was just a matter of time until their enemies started repudiating their debts, or simply refusing to pay. The Tichck had a powerful fleet, true, but they couldn’t fight a war with the entire galaxy. Once the chain of debt repudiations began, they would be unstoppable. It could not be tolerated. They had to act fast.

“Our enemies are already moving to secure the gravity point nexuses,” Harpeth said. “They will splinter our lines of control, intentionally or not, and make it difficult to retain what we already hold, let alone expand it. It is just a matter of time before they unite against us, or even merely form coalitions that will lock us out of hundreds of interstellar marketplaces. And that will be the end.”

He let his words hang in the air. The Tichck really were unpopular. He could understand it, intellectually, even though the idea that there was something morally wrong in expanding their control in any way they could was beyond him. The galaxy was red in tooth and claw, an uncivilised nightmare where the strong did as they pleased and the weak suffered what they must. He knew what his people had inflicted on others, in their quest to dominate the known universe, and knew it would be inflicted on them if the worm ever turned. They were powerful, true, but if the other Galactics united against them the war could have only one ending. The Tokomak had thought themselves untouchable. The humans had proved them wrong.

“We must act now,” he said. “This is our chance.”

There was no debate. The directors knew the situation as well as he did. The lure of absolute power was irresistible. The Tokomak had been fools not to exploit their hegemony mercilessly, but the Tichck would not make the same mistake. They would take control of the core worlds before anyone could rise against them, then secure the rest of the galaxy and beyond. Their ships would carry their goods from world to world, their military would blast open the doors protectionists tried to slam in their face, their economic might would turn every other race into their servants, better yet, their slaves. It would be an empire that would last forever, led by a race that competed amongst itself to ensure only the strongest took the helm.

“This is our day,” Harpeth said. “And we will seize the opportunity without delay.”

Chapter One

There was little overt difference between the darkness of interplanetary space and the darkness of interstellar space, but spacers often felt the latter was far darker and more dangerous than the former. The sheer vastness of the vacuum between the stars was just too big to grasp, while the sense of being utterly alone – even on a crewed starship – was almost impossible to overcome. Intelligent life pretended to believe there was nothing outside, with starships battening down their hatches and remaining in FTL from the moment they left one star system until they reached another. There were rumours of things in the darkness, strange voices whispering from the shadows, none of which had ever been even remotely substantiated. And yet, nearly all intelligent spacefaring races had similar stories.

Colonel Riley Richardson felt alone as the handful of gunboats hung in interstellar space, even though he was surrounded by a dozen Belosi. They were good friends and allies, allies who deserved better than to be kept at a distance from the Solar Union, but … he still felt alone. The Belosi seemed unique, in that the vastness of the interstellar wasteland didn’t disturb them … and yet, he admitted, the monsters they’d left behind were far worse than anything they might find between the stars. It was hard for their elders to recall, sometimes, the homeworld they’d been forced to flee, and their children – of course – didn’t remember it at all. Riley wondered, at times, if the Belosi would eventually evolve into a migrating race; he was fairly sure their elders feared they would, if they didn’t fall further down the galactic scale. There was no shortage of scavengers roaming the rim, somehow keeping themselves going by picking over the leavings of more advanced and dangerous races. The Belosi could easily go the same way if they weren’t careful. They weren’t the only race that had been effectively kicked off their own homeworld.

The sensor operator looked up. “I have two ships inbound,” she said. “Five minutes to contact.”

Riley nodded, feeling a twinge of disquiet. The Belosi were alien – no one could mistake them for human – but they had picked up a lot of human culture, something that bothered their elders even though they knew little of their own culture and distrusted what few records they had been able to salvage. The Tichck had not just invaded Belos, hundreds of years ago; they’d destroyed the indigenous culture – cultures - so completely no one had any idea what it had been like before the invasion. Riley had friends who were Native American, friends who had tried to rebuild their pre-Columbus societies on the Outer Cantons, and they’d had problems recreating authentic tribal societies. But they’d known nearly everything, compared to the Belosi. There was no way to be sure what their world had been like, and it was unlikely that would ever change.

And so they act like us, he thought. Poor bastards.

He studied the sensor display as the seconds ticked down. The Galactics had developed FTL sensors capable of providing warning, if an enemy fleet was nearing one’s system, but it hadn’t occurred to them – until too late – that someone might improve on the concept, to the point of being able to yank a starship out of FTL without warning. The human race had made it work, and the Belosi had taken the original concept and run with it. Riley felt a hot flash of almost parental pride as the gravity net deployed ahead of him, silently cursing the fates that had crushed the Belosi before they could take flight. The Exiles – as they called themselves – had had only fifty years of access to modern technology, but they’d mastered it with terrifying speed. The Solar Union could not ask for a better ally.

“One minute,” the sensor operator said. “Fifty seconds …”

“Prepare to engage,” Riley ordered. “Or to run.”

He felt, more than heard, the rustle of discontent running through the cockpit. The thought of breaking off was unthinkable, even to spacers who knew it was just a matter of time until they ran into a genuine warship. The FTL sensors insisted their quarries were freighters, but there was no way to be sure. The Tokomak had fooled humanity’s sensors by having freighters tow warships through FTL, and there was no reason the Tichck couldn’t steal the idea for themselves. They certainly didn’t suffer from the not-invented-here syndrome. 

Something flashed, in the darkness of interstellar space. Riley glanced at the display and breathed a sigh of relief as he spotted the two freighters, skidding through space in a manner that defied logic and reason. Their FTL fields had collapsed, but not quickly enough to keep from giving the ships a shove in the wrong direction … a shove that, if the ship was unlucky, could easily snap the vessel in half. He hoped their FTL drive systems had been fused by the sudden disaster, trapping the ships in realspace. The gravity nets were very effective, but they only worked once. A crew with a working FTL drive and time to react would be able to overcome the gravity net and drop back into FTL, outrunning their tormentors in seconds …

The gunboat shivered, slightly, as the helmsman brought the drives online, driving right towards the freighters. Riley grimaced, inwardly, as the demand for surrender was broadcast, in a manner that would make surrender very unlikely. The Belosi had good reason to hate the Tichck, and refuse to take prisoners, but he’d told them time and time again that that was dangerously counterproductive. There was nothing to be gained by forcing the enemy to fight to the death. He gritted his teeth as the range closed, the enemy crews fighting desperately to bring their shields up before it was too late. They really hadn’t been expecting to be ambushed. His lips twisted in grim amusement. Statistically, they’d be right.

“Enemy teleport denial nets active,” the sensor operator said. The gunboat shuddered as it crashed through the enemy shields, such as they were. “I’m bringing the matter stream projector online now …”

Riley braced himself as the gunboat crashed into the freighter with an audible thud. The enemy crew would know they’d landed, would be scrambling their defenders – if they had any – to seal off the outer compartments, expecting the pirates to burn through their hulls and storm into the ship itself. The Belosi had a different idea. It was incredibly risky, even by humanity’s standards, but it had caught the enemy by surprise time and time again. No one had survived to report home.

He snapped his helmet into place, an instant before the teleport field caught him and the rest of the assault team and dematerialised them. There was a hint of a ghostly presence – the techs swore blind he was imagining it – a suggestion that he was trapped in a submolecular realm, and then the real world rematerialised around him. A Tichck stared at him in horror, and astonishment, then reached for a sidearm with surprising speed. Riley shot him with his stunner, feeling a flicker of relief as the alien collapsed. The Belosi would have killed him without hesitation, if he’d tried to fight. And yet, they needed prisoners …

The rest of the bridge crew were Subdo, but they grabbed for weapons anyway. The assault party blasted them with capture goo, leaving them helpless until they could be freed and taken prisoner. It was riskier than stun weapons, but a charge that could stun a Tichck might easily kill a Subdo … they were lucky, Riley told himself, that they were Subdo. They were, in their own way, just as much the victims of the Tichck as the Belosi themselves. They were more favoured slaves, true, but slaves nonetheless.

He turned and plugged his hacker datachip into the captain’s access port. It should have granted the boarding party complete control of the datacores instantly, but – not entirely to his surprise – access was denied. The Tichck seemed to have rejected galactic standards on the freighter, something that struck him as odd. Most races tended to modify their military datacores to make it impossible for the Tokomak to hack them easily, but they rarely bothered to do the same for freighters. The hacking crew went to work trying to crack the protections. Riley turned and surveyed the bridge. It felt… small.

Charming, he reflected. The Tichck would have no trouble, but they were amongst the shorter races. The Belosi and their human allies felt uncomfortable, and he was fairly sure the Subdo felt worse. Did they make the interior deliberately smaller to cut costs?

“We’ve sealed the airlocks,” the hacker reported. “But the cargo holds are completely isolated.”

“Get the tow cables attached,” Riley ordered. In theory, they had enough time to search the ship from top to bottom; in practice, there was no point in taking risks. Better to tow the freighters through FTL, then loot the cargo holds once they were completely safe. “I’ll see to the holds.”

He passed command to the lead Belosi, then made his way through the hatch and down a long corridor. The freighter was mostly cargo space, with a handful of living quarters … he glanced into one chamber and winced, remembering the very first night he’d spent in barracks. The Navy hadn’t wanted SEAL candidates to grow soft; they certainly hadn’t put them in five-star hotels but compared to the chamber in front of him the navy had treated him like a king. The Tichck hadn’t bothered to do more than install life support gear and a handful of blankets, yet another cost-cutting measure that would come back to bite them sooner or later. He hoped the Subdo were discontented enough to switch sides when given the chance. If not, they’d be dropped on a stage-one world and given enough resources to survive until the end of the war.

His eyes narrowed as he passed through a pair of sealed hatches, both strong enough to give an enhanced human a very hard time. The Tichck hated spending money and yet they’d gone to great lengths to secure the cargo holds, something that really was odd. He triggered his implants, bringing up his enhanced sensors, as he stepped through the final hatch. The cargo bay reminded him of a colonist-carrier ship, lined with row upon row of stasis tubes, all opaque to prevent him from seeing the contents. He frowned as he keyed the computer screen, trying to bring up the biological life readings, but access was denied. Again. The entire system was completely isolated from the rest of the ship, he noted; it had been designed to remain functional even if the freighter lost power. Whatever was inside the tubes, and his imagination provided a number of very disturbing answers, the Tichck were intent on it not getting out.

He raised his head and allowed his eyes to wander around the giant hold. There were hundreds of stasis tubes within eyeshot, and if the other holds carried the same cargo there could be over five thousand or more. It depended on how tightly they’d been packed into the hull …

His communicator buzzed. “Sir, we have an incoming warship.”

Riley cursed under his breath. It could be a coincidence, and it might well be, but they couldn’t count on it. A skilled naval crew could shadow a freighter from a safe distance, remaining outside detection range, while dropping in and out of hyperspace long enough to take sensor readings and then resume the chase. They weren’t that far off the shipping lanes, and there was only one least-time course between the two nearest settlements, but …

“Get the freighters into FTL as quickly as possible,” he ordered. The warship might not realise, at least at first, that the gunboats were towing the freighters. Even if it did, it would be leery about following them into the unknown. They'd have to assume they were flying straight into another ambush. “We’ll deal with the cargo later.”

Something moved, behind him. Riley ducked on instinct, barely enough to save himself as an enhanced arm swept through the air above his head and smashed into the nearest tube hard enough to shatter the protective sleeve and disable the stasis field. Riley swung around and cursed as he saw the two cyborgs, one advancing towards him and the other staggering out of the tube. They were human, pale skin warped and twisted with implants that had been put together by sadists and inserted in a manner that would make Mengele blanch. Riley had known the Tichck made use of human cyborgs, descendants of humans kidnapped from Earth centuries ago, but this … he ducked another swing, trying to put enough distance between him and his opponents to draw his pistol or unsling his rifle. It wouldn’t be easy. The cyborgs might not be as advanced as their Solar Union counterparts, unless the Tichck had made advancements in the last few decades, but they were incredibly dangerous and cared nothing for their own lives. It wasn’t clear if the cyborgs were being guided by a central processor, or if they were being allowed to operate on their own, yet it didn’t matter. Up close and personal, they were almost unstoppable.

And there could be five thousand of them on this ship, Riley thought. The first cyborg kept coming; the second looked dazed, his body lurching as if he was being dragged to his feet by an invisible force. Snapping out of a stasis field shouldn’t produce that much confusion, but who knew? That’s an invasion force …

He darted backwards again, then ducked as the first cyborg boosted and threw himself at Riley with incredible speed. The force of the impact sent him tumbling backwards, the cyborg landing on top of him and drawing back a fist for the final blow. Riley measured the cyborg’s strength – the Tichck had definitely improved their implants – and then yanked his knife from his belt and stabbed upwards with his enhanced strength. The cyborg shuddered violently as the knife went into his chest, then tried to strike Riley anyway. He barely managed to shift his head before the blow hit the deck. Hard.

Riley yanked the knife out – the wound was already closing, another improvement on the early cyborgs – and threw it up, straight under the jaw and right into the brain, The cyborg let out a rattling sound, then fell to one side. Riley shoved him away, watching in horror as the implants fought to keep the body alive long enough to continue the fight. It was hard not to feel sorry for the cyborg. He had been grown in a tube, conditioned to obey from birth, implanted with tech that made disobedience pretty much impossible … Riley had no idea if the Tichck had worked out there’d been a cyborg with the mission on Belos, but they were clearly not taking any more chances. He bent down, recovered his knife, and made certain the poor bastard was dead. It was difficult to be sure. The implants really had been improved.

The second cyborg fell out of the tube and stood up, moving in a jerky manner that suggested he was drunk.  Riley drew his pistol, making sure to conceal the movement, and put a plasma pulse through the cyborg’s head. He couldn’t help feeling guilty as he keyed his communicator to report in, then checked the rest of the tubes to make sure the stasis fields remained firmly in place. The cyborg hadn’t deserved the death penalty – if he’d ever had an original thought in his entire life, it had been against the will of his creators – but there’d been no choice. He’d been too dangerous to leave alive and, without the control codes, there had been no way to put him back in stasis. Riley had no idea why they’d let one of the cyborgs out of his tube …

They knew we were going to board them, he thought, numbly. And the cyborgs might have been their only hope.

He tapped his communicator. “Leave the rest of the holds sealed,” he ordered. “We won’t try to open them until we get the ships somewhere safe, then see what they conceal.”

His mood darkened as he turned away. The Tichck were incredibly wealthy. Cloning five thousand humans and turning them into brain-dead cyborgs would cost nothing more than pocket change, as far as they were concerned; Riley would be surprised, very surprised, if there were only five thousand. They could easily churn out millions of cyborgs, crafting an unstoppable army that would not, that could not, turn on its masters. The Tokomak had forbidden it, but the Tokomak were gone.

“I checked the navcomp,” the sensor operator said, when he returned to the bridge. “The ship passed through Belos.”

“Interesting,” Riley said. He felt uneasy. He wouldn’t feel any better until they got the ship somewhere safe and made sure the cyborgs were firmly in stasis. “What was it doing there?”

“I don’t know,” the operator said. “But the crew will.”

“We’ll find out,” Riley said. It wasn’t unusual. Belos had been an interstellar nexus for centuries. The events on the planet’s surface hadn’t made the gravity points vanish, ensuring that interstellar shipping would keep passing through the system for centuries to come. “And then we can decide what to do next.”

He sighed, inwardly. The Belosi had advanced in leaps and bounds, since the refugees had been evacuated from their homeworld fifty years ago, but they had a long way to go before they could challenge the Tichck openly. The Solar Union had been reluctant to make any open commitment to them, even after the Tokomak had been given a bloody nose. Riley understood the logic, but he couldn’t help finding it dishonourable. The Solar Union wouldn’t have survived without the Belosi. They owed them. And yet the risk of helping them openly was too high.

But he knew, as he forced himself to sit and wait, that times were changing …

… And that which had once been considered unthinkable was now very plausible indeed.

Chapter Two

“It’s a busy system,” the pilot cracked, as the shuttle dropped out of FTL. “You think we’ll hit something?”

Ambassador Sarah Wilde resisted the urge to hit him with an effort. Pilot humour had never been a particular favourite of hers, even after spending decades with the exile fleet and their sense of humour. The Belosi had adapted surprisingly well to most elements of human culture, but some elements – practical jokes, for example – should probably have been left out until the Belosi matured to the point they could handle them. The xenospecialists asserted the pranks were a reflection of just how deeply the Belosi had been enslaved over the centuries, along with their desire to indulge their freedom in every way they could, but Sarah still found them irritating. They had fewer restraints than most human pranksters, and a society that had more tolerance for them.

She calmed herself with an effort and studied the display. Sol had never been so busy. Hundreds of thousands of drive signatures were clearly visible, from warships and diplomatic vessels to colony and exploration ships heading into the great unknown. The Solar Union had never been completely confined to its home system, but the need to remain unknown to the galaxy at large – and then the great war – had limited the number of ships that could explore the unknown regions. Now, with the war over, the dam had burst. The human race was expanding as never before, plunging into systems unexplored even by the Galactics. Who knew what they would find, out there?

Her eyes lingered on a single icon, representing Earth. Humanity’s homeworld had never recovered from the political and economic collapse that had swept over the planet, driving the most capable and innovative of the population into space. Sarah knew there were factions within the Solar Union who wanted to do something about it, to crush the madmen ruling the globe and thereby bring the benefits of civilisation to the entire human race, but it wasn’t a desire she shared. There was no point in trying to help people who didn’t want to be helped, people who didn’t even have the determination to leave the homeworld and make their way to the Solar Union. If they wanted to wallow in their own shit, and put up with leaders who had little conception of reality and cared less, that was their problem. She still believed that most of the chaos that had swept over the United States, or what was left of it, had flowed from people believing they had a right to poke their nose into other people’s private business.

She shook her head as the covert intelligence base came into view, a seemingly-deserted asteroid complex that had been mined out years ago and then converted – according to the official paperwork – into an outer canton that remained isolated, even from the rest of the outer cantons. Solar Intelligence probably went to a great deal of trouble to keep inspectors from visiting the canton, or simply bamboozled them with a cover story backed by holographic and VR images. It wasn’t that difficult, she supposed. The official population was very low, with no prospect of it ever rising. The inspectors had far too many other cantons to visit, from the relatively normal to cantons based on social concepts that had been impossible to test, back on Earth. This canton simply wasn’t very important.

The pilot docked the shuttle, then smiled as the hatch hissed open. “Good luck.”

Sarah nodded, curtly, as she unbuckled her seatbelt and stood, grabbing her knapsack with one hand as she headed for the hatch. A lifetime in the covert operations service had left her with a habit of bringing only what she needed, although – she had to admit – it had been decades since she’d taken part in a proper operation. She wasn’t even sure she was still on the register, after being seconded to the exile fleet. Her superiors would probably insist she ran through the training modules again, if she wished to remain qualified. Her augmentations were still first-rate, but her mindset had changed. And that meant she might not be prepared to go into danger again.

The air shifted as she stepped through the second hatch, her implants flashing up alerts as her body – and augmentations – were probed by invisible sensors. Sarah felt a tickle running over her body, a grim reminder that every last atom of her body was being scrutinized by unseen eyes and uncaring AIs. The sensation was imaginary, she knew, but she could still feel something crawling over and through her body. More alerts flashed up as hacking programs attacked her internal firewalls, only to be deflected. That was a relief. Her implants had been top of the line, decades ago, but science marched on. If the hackers had been able to gain access to her central processor, they might have been able to take control of her.

Or prove someone else might have been able to do it, Sarah thought, as the third hatch hissed open. If our enemies got control of me, they could watch through my eyes – or worse – as I returned home.

She put the thought aside as she stepped into a small compartment. A young man stood there, wearing a dark tunic that was surprisingly close to being a uniform. His face was bland, utterly forgettable, but his eyes were disturbingly old. Sarah guessed he was as old as herself, perhaps older. The great advantage of rejuvenation technology was that one didn’t have to retire one’s best operatives – there were quite a few officers and crewmen who were over a century old – and yet, it made it harder for the younger recruits to climb the ladder. She suspected that was one of the factors driving the mass emigration, the desire to find room for ambitious youngsters before they started plotting. The Tokomak had managed to make their gerontocracy work, at least until they’d been given a bloody nose in the first skirmish with the human race, but humans were different. It wouldn’t be long before the young started demanding that the old step aside …

The operative nodded, curtly. “Welcome home,” he said. “The admiral will see you now.”

Sarah nodded back, then allowed him to lead her through a maze of rough-hewn corridors, unmarked and locked doors, and anti-surveillance fields that grew stronger the further she went into the complex. She knew better than to try any of the doors, not without permission. Even when she’d been a resident in a covert base, there had been vast sections permanently off-limits to her and her fellow operatives. What she didn’t know she couldn’t tell … and no one, not even the Galactics, had total faith in anti-interrogation implants. Sarah had heard, through the grapevine, that several captured aliens had been sent to secret labs to see if human technicians could beat the implants and remove them without killing their host. She didn’t know if it was true, but she believed it. They had to find a countermeasure before it was too late.

The admiral’s hatch was as bare as the remainder, his office nothing more than a desk, a pair of chairs, a holographic projector and a food dispenser. Sarah was almost disappointed, although she knew the admiral’s real office was quite some distance away. He only visited when he needed to keep tabs on covert operations, or speak to operatives returning from missions that wouldn’t be officially acknowledged for quite some time. She wondered, suddenly, just how long that would be. These days, the average human could expect to live for at least two hundred years.

“Sarah,” Admiral Mongo Stuart said. He didn’t look to have changed much, since their last meeting, but it was rare for the first generation to really experiment with bio-cosmetic alteration. It had been the second generation of Solarians who had blazed that particular trail. Sarah wasn’t sure how she felt about it, but no one had asked her opinion and besides … it was none of her business. “It’s been a while.”

“A decade,” Sarah said. The original team had been assigned to the exile fleet, along with a handful of xenospecialists, technicians and tech uplifters, after being cautioned they might not be allowed to return home for quite some time, if at all. The risk of being discovered had fallen with every passing year, as Earth grew more and more capable of defending itself, but there was no point in pushing their luck. “The universe has changed a great deal since then.”

Mongo nodded curtly, then indicated a chair. “Please, sit,” he said. “Coffee?”

“Please.” Sarah had been an operative long enough to keep her face blank, when her superior offered coffee. It wasn’t as if any staff were allowed in the office. Her lips quirked at the thought. The intelligence officers had vast powers, but they still had to make their own coffee. “Milk, no sugar.”

Mongo passed her a mug, then sat facing her. “I was surprised to get your message,” he said. “I assume you have a message from the exiles?”

“Yes, sir,” Sarah said. “They want to go home.”

“Many do,” Mongo agreed, tonelessly. “Do they think it can be done?”

“Not on their own,” Sarah said. The exile fleet was surprisingly powerful – the Belosi had proven themselves ingenious, when it came to modifying civilian ships for military use – but she had no illusions about their chances if they faced the Tichck alone. Their enemies had a fleet of modern warships, and augmented humans to fly them. “They’re asking for our help.”

“They’re asking for us to pick a fight with the Tichck,” Mongo said.

“Yes, sir.”

“I see,” Mongo said. “And why would the Solar Union wish to provoke another war?”

Sarah took a breath. “First, we have clear proof the Tichck are moving to replace the Tokomak as masters of the known universe,” she said. “They are securing their control over numerous gravity points, allowing them to move their fleets from place to place with incredible speed and also prevent others from doing the same, while taxing passage through the gravity points in a manner that will boost their economy while weakening their enemies. Second, we have proof they are starting to innovate in a manner their former masters would not have approved, starting with enhanced augmentation for their soldiers and ending … where?”

She paused. “There’s no reason the Galactics cannot innovate, sir,” she said. “The Tokomak kept a lid on research and development programs, trying to ensure nothing was ever developed that could threaten their supremacy. We showed them that innovation was still possible, and it is now just a matter of time before they start duplicating our new weapons and making more of their own. They also have a sizable industrial base, which means they might out-produce us very quickly.”

“Our own industrial base is expanding rapidly,” Mongo said. “But that’s a good point.”

Sarah met his eyes. “And there is a third reason,” she said. “We owe them.”

She went on before he could say a word. “Let us be honest, sir. We could not have unlocked so many secrets of their technology without the GalCores we stole from Belos, and we could not have stolen them without the Belosi. Without those cores, we would never have been able to develop and produce enough advanced weapons to give us a fighting chance. They helped us, sir, and they paid a high price for it. We may never know for sure how many Belosi died in the brief uprising, but even the lower estimates are still appallingly high.

“And now, all that remains of their civilisation is an exile fleet hiding in the darkness between the stars. If things had been a little different, that could have been us.”

Mongo nodded. He’d been one of the original founders. He’d been there when humanity had first discovered the universe, then realised the disparity between Earth and even the smallest of the Galactic powers. The gap had been so wide it had seemed impossible, back then, to believe it could ever be closed. Sarah had heard rumours about humans being sent hundreds of light-years into the unknown regions, in hopes that some aspect of the race would survive if the Galactics found and destroyed Earth. She’d seen enough to know it would be very hard to rebuild, even with modern technology. They’d have to put a whole new civilisation together from scratch.

“We owe them,” Sarah repeated. The exiles had done well, very well, but there were limits to how far they could go. They were already pushing against some of those limits and would hit others, sooner rather than later. “And now they’re calling in their debt.”

She leaned forward. “There are other advantages,” she added. “If we can liberate Belos, we’ll cut the Tichck Association in half. We’ll make them look weak in front of their enemies. If they look weak enough, they might be jumped on by everyone else. They have plenty of enemies who would be delighted if they’d take a tumble, perhaps even help us give them a shove.”

“The navy is badly stretched right now,” Mongo said. “We never expected to have to garrison so many star systems, provide convoy escorts over untold thousands of light-years, or even embark on military operations on an unprecedented scale. We need a few years to refit and rebuild our fleets, to secure our communications lines and reinforce our allies …”

Sarah looked back at him. “And will we have those years, if the Tichck start putting pressure on us?”

She nodded to the holographic starchart. “The Galactics are still shocked that we overthrew the Tokomak, but it won’t be long before they start trying to clip our wings. They’ll never have a better chance to take complete control, or at least secure their own independence, and they know it. And their superiority complex won’t let them leave us alone.”

“No,” Mongo agreed.

Sarah knew he understood. The most arrogant and entitled young man she’d ever met on Earth, a fatuous fool who had believed his father’s money would open the legs of every woman who ever laid eyes on him, had been modesty personified compared to the Galactics. Races that had been travelling the stars when dinosaurs ruled the Earth were unlikely to be impressed by the human upstarts, no matter how many tricks the newcomers had up their sleeves. They were far more likely to dismiss the human victory as a fluke, rather than consider the humans might have earned their victory. And they had more than enough resources that, even without technological innovations of their own, they could give the human race a very hard time. 

Our starships are more advanced, and our weapons better, but there are limits to how many star systems we can garrison before our control is spread so thin it will be easy for them to break it, she thought. And if they mount a concerted attack against us …

Mongo leaned forward. “What is your proposal?”

“The exile council proposes a major attack on Belos, involving all of their warships and as many of ours as can be spared,” Sarah said. The plan was little more than a rough concept – it was an error to make detailed plans without knowing what forces might be available – but it looked workable. “We capture the orbital industrial nodes and gravity points, then liberate the planet’s surface while converting the industrial nodes to serve us. The Tichck will have to mount a counterattack through the gravity points, giving us a chance to hammer their warships piecemeal rather than face them as a united force. If we can hold them off long enough, Belos will become a major base deep within the core regions and a powerful ally.”

“If,” Mongo said. “There are too many unknowns.”

“If,” Sarah agreed. There was no point in denying it. “The gamble involves risk, sir. But it has to be taken.”

Mongo raised an eyebrow. “It does?”

“Yes, sir,” Sarah said. “Quite apart from the risk of the Tichck uniting the Galactics against us, I believe the exile council intends to move with or without us. We are advisors, and we have given them a great deal of help and support over the years, but we are not their masters and they are not our sepoys. Their homeworld has been abandoned to the tender mercies of a monstrous race for over fifty years, sir, and we have no idea what’s happened to the rest of their species. For all we know, the planetary environment might have finally become poisonous to them. It was heading that way when we were there.”

She sighed, inwardly. Earth had never set out to develop a network of client races and fleets, even when the Galactic Alliance had started to take shape and form. The Solar Union hadn’t had the resources to try to dominate its allies, even if it had wished, and that meant their allies had more freedom of action than Tokomak or Tichck clients. Their interests had to be taken into account … and, for the Belosi, their interests lay in recovering their homeworld and liberating the remainder of their people …

If there are any left, she thought. The Tichck hadn’t set out to exterminate the Belosi, but they’d done enough damage to Belos to make it increasingly difficult for them to survive. And that had been before the uprising. What were they doing now? They might have wiped out everyone left behind, or worse …

She shook her head, inwardly. She didn’t want to think about it.

“I shall speak to the council,” Mongo promised. “I cannot authorise any sort of fleet movement on my own, as you know. They’ll have to make the final decision.”

Sarah nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said. “But please ask them to hurry. The Belosi do not have much time.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Mongo said. “But our resources are stretched very thin.”

Chapter Three

Mongo kept his face under tight control as he stepped into the Special Security Council chamber and took his seat at the table, eyes flickering from representative to representative as he noted a few new faces amongst the crowd. The Special Security Council membership rotated regularly, in a bid to balance the need for secrecy with their commitment to open government and accountability. It had never sat well with him to have any sort of secret council, particularly when the combined membership had enough clout to do real damage to the Solar Union if they turned into a renewed Deep State. They didn’t need malice to inflict irreparable harm, merely a lack of accountability and a desire to perpetuate their own existence even at immense cost to their host nation. The American Deep State was clear proof of that.

He sighed inwardly as he studied the table. He’d intended to retire, after the war, and he doubted he’d be allowed to remain in his post much longer even if he chose to stay in it. There was too great a risk of him becoming ossified in his thinking, like the enemy admirals – some older than the United States, let alone the Solar Union – who had refused to admit that the galaxy had changed in the last hundred years. They’d been lucky in their enemies – Mongo sometimes awoke with cold sweats, when he’d dreamt of what a truly competent admiral could have done with the Tokomak’s vast fleet – and he knew that wouldn’t last. Neola had come very close to victory, and if she’d had a few more years to reform her society the war might have gone the other way.

Sarah is right to suggest we owe the Belosi, Mongo reflected. If we had had a little less luck, we might have wound up just like them.

President Sandra Lighthouse tapped the table, calling the meeting to attention and cutting off the grumbles from politicians who resented having to attend in person, rather than via holographic projection. The military and intelligence officials were much less irritated. The Solar Union’s encryption protocols were supposed to be the best in the galaxy, but there was no such thing as an unbreakable code. Given enough time and processing power, any code could be broken. No one was particularly concerned about aliens eavesdropping on civilian communications, or watching human entertainment shows, but top-secret government matters were probably best discussed in person. The super-secrets, secrets that could bring down governments or start wars, didn’t lose their power over time.

“Admiral,” she said. As a permanent member of the Council, Mongo had the right to call for an immediate meeting. “The floor is yours.”

And this had better be important, Mongo added, in the privacy of his own mind. He could hear the words, even though she hadn’t spoken. The Solar Union was dealing with the aftermath of a war, and all the problems of victory, and the President’s attention was being drawn in a dozen different directions at once. If this wasn’t important, I’d be for the high jump.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’m afraid I will have to give you a little context, to underline the current issue.”

He spoke briefly, outlining the mission to Belos and the ultimate outcome. Some Councillors were unsurprised – they’d known or deduced many of the details – but others were clearly astonished. James Bond and Rambo operations were the stuff of bad novels and worse movies, with operatives carrying out missions that required skilled stuntmen and friendly scriptwriters. But then, there’d been quite a few missions carried out in the real world that would have astonished Bond or Rambo. The idea that the Solar Union might have risked war with an all-powerful alien race …

Congressman Yusuf put the sentiment into words. “With all due respect, Admiral, are you insane?”

“No,” Mongo said. “It was a calculated risk. And it paid off.”

“So it would seem,” the President agreed. “What does it have to do with us now?”

“The Belosi exiles have received a certain amount of covert support from us over the last few decades,” Mongo said. “They made good use of it, building up a formidable military force as well as developing a roving industrial base. They have quite a talent for such things, which may be at least partly why the Tichck chose to keep them as low-tech slaves. Regardless … they were unaware of the true identity of their backers until comparatively recently, when the war made it impossible to hide the truth. They know, now, what they have helped us to do.”

He paused. “And they want our help.”

Yusuf raised his eyebrows. “They really didn’t know who we were?”

“Not as far as we know,” Mongo said. “Human involvement didn’t mean that Sol, or Earth, was involved. There’s no shortage of human mercenaries out there, working for various alien powers, and not all of them have any connection to us. We’re not sure how much they know, or suspect, about the real purpose of the mission, but it doesn’t matter. They know who we are now, and they are asking for our help.”

He leaned forward, outlining Sarah’s message. It was difficult to say how he felt about it. He wanted to help – Sarah was right; the Solar Union owed the Belosi – but he was also aware the navy was badly overstretched, and that the last thing they needed was another war. The cold-blooded part of his mind pointed out that supporting a proxy war might buy them time to replace their losses and prepare for the next conflict, while the more humane part reminded him that the Belosi were already few in number and a failed bid to recover their homeworld could easily lead to their extinction. The human race had provided cloning and gene-engineering treatments to the refugees, but if their numbers dropped too far it would be impossible to arrest the decline. If the operation failed …

Yusuf snorted. “Why should we allow them to provoke their enemies?”

“We can’t stop them,” Mongo reminded him. “They will go to war regardless of our decision.”

He was careful not to show his exasperation. It never failed. Politicians hundreds of miles from the combat zone, or in this case thousands of light-years, thought they could direct proxy forces with as much precision as regular combat troops. They were inevitably wrong. Local forces tended to have their own goals and motives, their own grudges and ambitions, and they didn’t always match up with their backer’s. There were ways to use the supply line to keep the proxies from getting too far out of control, but they rarely worked for long. It made the proxies resentful, ready to betray their former patrons. 

“And if we let them fight alone,” Yusuf asked, “will it reflect badly on us?”

“It is a matter of honour,” the President pointed out. “They saved our lives. We should attempt to return the favour.”

“I understand your thinking,” Yusuf said. “But we should not commit suicide for honour.”

The President looked at Mongo. “Admiral, is it suicide?”

“No, it’s not,” Mongo said. “But explaining this requires a bit of background.”

He nodded to the orbiting starchart. “The war is over, at least for the moment,” he said, “and interstellar shipping is in shambles. It will take some time for the Galactics to get organised, let alone develop the shipping they need to launch a major counterattack towards Earth. We have heavy forces in place along the gravity point chain, ready to block them if they try. Our worst-case projections suggest it will still take at least five years for them to get ready to attack us, and that assumes they don’t start fighting each other. The Galactics are not exactly friendly with each other, and they had many disagreements the Tokomak froze in place. They may reignite, now that the Tokomak are gone.”

“Weakened,” Yusuf corrected. “Not gone.”

Mongo conceded the point with a nod. “We cannot afford to spare an entire fleet, not now. But we can spare two or three battle squadrons, as well as some supplies. Given time, we can also channel a great many captured ships from the war to the Belosi. They’re not ships we can use, not without a great deal of refitting, but they’ll make a difference in their war. If they secure a lodgement within their home system, they will be very difficult to evict.

“So no, it isn’t suicide. It is far more risky for them than us.”

“Unless it provokes the Galactics to lay aside their differences and unite against us,” Yusuf pointed out. “What happens then?”

“Like I said, they’ll need time to get organised,” Mongo said. “And that’ll give us time to replenish our losses and prepare for the next conflict.”

He indicated the display. “The Tichck are clearly moving to secure control of a number of vital gravity points. If that can be disrupted, even at a high cost, it’ll buy us time we desperately need. And it is going to happen anyway. The Belosi will move with or without us. We need to decide if we are going to repay the favour they did us, the favour that saved our necks, or if we are going to let them sink or swim on their own.”

There was a long cold pause. Mongo tried to study the representatives, trying to guess who would vote in favour. Solarians tended to be more practical than their counterparts on Earth – living in an environment that would kill you if you made a single mistake tended to encourage realism over flights of fancy – but the newer generations had no real conception of the days in which humanity had been a microstate, facing superpowers on an unimaginable scale. The numbers involved were beyond their conception, ensuring they believed humanity’s rise had been inevitable, rather than the result of luck, careful planning and a certain number of covert operations. And Yusuf wasn’t entirely wrong. The risk of uniting the major powers against humanity was very real …

But it was already there, Mongo told himself. The Galactics would sooner cut their own throats than admit a younger race might be their equal. They already regard us as upstart children who need to be spanked and sent to bed, not equals in our own right.

The President met his eyes. “What is your plan, Admiral?”

“We have several battle squadrons refitting now,” Mongo said. The navy was immense, beyond the dreams of his younger self, yet too many starships were tied down or scattered across the galaxy. They didn’t have many ships on call to handle an emergency even a mere dozen light-years away. “Two or three can be assigned to bolster the refugee fleet, along with what supply vessels we can spare. They can be dispatched shortly, and spearhead the assault into the enemy system. Once the gravity points are secure, we can either pull them back or reinforce depending on the galactic situation.”

“It will take months for a report to reach us,” Yusuf said. “We won’t know what’s happening – what’s happened – until well after it does.”

Mongo nodded, curtly. There was no point in disputing the basic realities of FTL travel and interstellar warfare. News had to be carried by starship or passed through the gravity points, ensuring that it could take weeks – at best – for word to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other. The CO on the spot would have vast authority to act as he saw fit, a freedom the Tokomak had rarely granted their admirals. Mongo’s lips quirked in dark amusement. If they’d given their officers a little more freedom, they might have won the war. 

“That would be true in any case,” he agreed. “The exiles might reach their homeworld, only to discover the defences were too strong to challenge, forcing them to fall back.”

“If they can bring themselves to abandon their homeworld a second time,” Yusuf said. He didn’t sound remotely convinced. “Will they?”

“I don’t know,” Mongo said.

He gritted his teeth. There was a bit of him that wanted to return to the United States of America and the family ranch and reclaim it even though he knew it was a mistake. The old world was gone, killed by political short-sightedness and ethnic conflict and, in the end, the decision to melt the glue holding society together. He could understand the Belosi refusing to retreat, even if they were outnumbered ten-to-one, even though it really would be suicide. The exiles would get one chance to reclaim their homeworld. One only. If they lost their fleet, there would be no second chance.

And most of our second-gen population wouldn’t back any return to Earth, he thought, darkly. They knew nothing but the Solar Union. Life on a planet – even a lunar colony – seemed absurd to them, oddly restrictive compared to the freedom of outer space. It would be true, he’d often thought, if Earth wasn’t dominated by religious nuts and warlords bent on boosting their power by any means necessary. Will the Belosi second-gen have the same problem?

Congresswoman Aisha Coombs leaned forward. “I agree that we have a certain obligation to help them,” she said. Her accent was thinly tinged with Arabia, although she’d been a little girl when her parents had given up and migrated to the Solar Union. “At the same time, we do not wish to be embroiled in a quagmire or an unwinnable war, certainly not one where we will not be calling the shots. There are too many historical examples of such conflicts dragging on and on, draining resources until someone finally cuts the cord, despite accusations of betrayal. I therefore propose a compromise.”

She nodded to the display. “We send the squadrons, as the Admiral suggested. The CO has strict orders to avoid conflict, if the odds are heavily against us. If the Belosi choose to see it as a betrayal, so be it. We do owe them, but whatever treaty agreements we have are not suicide pacts.”

“It is also worth noting that our involvement with the Belosi will not remain secret for long,” Congressman Stapleton pointed out. “If the Galactic Alliance sees us abandoning them, regardless of the legal obligations or lack thereof, they will not be pleased. Or reassured. They’ll start wondering when it is their turn to be betrayed.”

Mongo nodded. One of the old frustrations, before the universe had grown so much bigger, had been his nation’s habit of abandoning its allies to face their enemies alone. There’d been no way to avoid their enemies whispering that, when the going got tough, the US got going … making it harder to make allies, let alone keep them when they thought they saw the first hint of betrayal. The US had been safe back then, protected by two immense oceans; their allies hadn’t been anything like so safe, and when the tide had turned they’d started to sell out for the best terms they could get.

And we are not safe here, Mongo reminded himself. The Solar Union was a long way from the core regions, but they’d sent a fleet there and there was no reason the Galactics couldn’t return the favour. There are no natural barriers between them and us.

“A good point,” Coombs agreed. “I call for a vote.”

“I understand the desire to support our friends,” Yusuf said. “But I have to put the best interests of our race first. And that means not risking everything on a desperate mission to recover a lost homeworld. Where is our homeworld?”

“Earth is a mess,” Mongo said, with considerable understatement. “The last set of reports make it clear that nothing has improved, even with so many people choosing to vote with their feet and head into space. We have had to fly several punitive missions recently, just to remind the various factions that they are not allowed to treat people like shit just because they want to leave. However, the planetary population is in no danger of being exterminated, or worked to death by an alien race. They are relatively safe. The threats outside the atmosphere cannot get to them, not without getting past us first.

“That’s not true of the Belosi on Belos. They are at the mercy of a sadistic alien race that has enslaved them, in a manner that would make Adolf Hitler or Stalin or even Jefferson Davis blanch. Their entire homeworld is being terraformed…that is, Tichck-formed… around them, converted into a nightmare that has no place for them any longer. We do not even know if there are any Belosi left alive on their homeworld. They might all be dead, killed by their masters or simply suffocated due to the poisoned atmosphere. The exiles aren’t trying to recover their homeworld out of ego, or a desire to control the gravity points, but to save their people from a fate worse than death.”

“I understand,” Yusuf said. “But …”

“We should vote,” Coombs said, quietly.

Mongo leaned back, watching as the vote was quickly tallied. The Council needed an absolute majority to act, including six of the nine randomly chosen representatives. Yusuf was the only one willing to say it out loud – not a brave act in the Solar Union, where punishing someone for having an opinion was a serious crime – but there would be others, with their own doubts or priorities. He allowed himself a moment of relief as it became clear the motion had passed, although with fewer in support than he’d hoped. That boded ill. Yusuf and his allies weren’t allowed to discuss the matter openly, but if the entire operation turned into a disaster they’d make political hay out of it. And who knew what would happen then?

“The motion is passed,” the President said. “Admiral, you may proceed.”

Mongo nodded. “Thank you.”

“And make sure you choose the commanding officer very carefully,” Coombs said. “We need someone willing to cut his losses and fall back, if it becomes clear the mission has failed.”

“I understand,” Mongo said. “I already have the perfect candidate in mind.”

Chapter Four

Commodore Elton Yasser straightened to attention as he was shown through the hatch into the Admiral’s office. It was reassuringly functional, with few decorations beyond a painting of the Admiral’s first command and a handful of family photographs that showed the latest members of the Stuart clan. Admiral Mongo Stuart himself looked to be in his late middle age, rather than embracing the trend to appear young – no matter one’s chronological age – or altering his body in a manner that defied logic or common sense. Elton had also allowed himself to age – he appeared in his late forties, brown hair greying around the temples – to project an air of maturity and, more important, reliability. It wasn’t that much of an issue, when dealing with aliens, but it sent a message to his human associates. Elton might not be flashy, unlike so many other naval officers, yet he was dependable. He’d spent much of the war against the Tokomak in diplomacy and logistics and he knew, not without false modesty, that he’d done a good job.

“Sir,” he said. “You wanted to see me?”

“It’s been a long time since the Odyssey Incident,” Mongo said. “How did you find your diplomatic work?”

“Challenging,” Elton said. Diplomacy had been hard enough on Earth, but at least everyone involved had been human. The Tokomak had tried hard to standardise interstellar diplomacy, working out ways for the different races to meet and talk without – much – room for misunderstanding, yet even they had found it impossible to prevent friction between dozens of non-human races. One race’s pleasure was another race’s taboo, one race’s sworn principle was against another’s law. “We really need a Babylon 5.”

Mongo laughed. “You think we could solve a great many problems by building a giant diplomatic space station?”

“We need to get the races talking,” Elton said. “But then, it won’t be easy to insist on any form of interstellar arbitration. Not now.”

The admiral nodded, curtly. The Tokomak had been the one power willing and able to force races to talk, instead of fighting it out; they had arbitrated interstellar disputes, their words backed up with enough firepower to bring any other race to heel. Elton rather suspected they had had high-minded principles, once upon a time, but the demands of ruling the galaxy and maintaining their supremacy had made sure those principles had gone out the airlock. They had backed powerful races that hadn’t had any real case, or turned a blind eye to exploitation by their allies. And now that the Tokomak were effectively powerless, all the conflicts they’d kept under control – and all the resentments they’d created – were threatening to burst into flames, setting the galaxy on fire. Again. 

“You have a good reputation amongst the Galactic Alliance,” Mongo said. “I know most of the actual treaties were written by the diplomatic staff, but you were the one who went from world to world, doing the legwork and reminding potential allies that what happened to Odyssey could easily happen to them.”

“Yes, sir,” Elton said. He knew he wasn’t a warfighter, certainly not to the degree of so many others. But that didn’t mean he was useless, or that he needed to hang his head in shame when others bragged of their military exploits. Diplomacy was important too, bringing allies under humanity’s banner or convincing neutrals to remain that way. Besides, he had gotten the Odyssey out of a very tight spot indeed. “I did what I could.”

“You did very well,” Mongo said. He leaned back in his chair. “I have a new position for you, if you want it. I believe you’re uniquely suited to carry out the mission.”

Elton raised his eyebrows. “Something tells me you’re not sending me on a month of shore leave.”

Mongo snorted. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “Tell me, have you ever heard of the Belosi?”

Elton had to think for a long moment. He’d met with dozens of alien races and heard of dozens more, from the Harmonies who had come so close to destroying his ship to the brutal primitives who served the Galactics as soldier-slaves, but he didn’t recall ever hearing of the Belosi. A minor race then, one with little impact outside its own star system … if that. The Galactics had never heard of the Prime Directive, and they’d certainly never let their principles get in the way if they wanted something. Any primitive race unlucky enough to be discovered by the Galactics would be lucky if it was only treated as third-class citizens on their own homeworld.

“No, sir,” he said, finally. He hazarded a guess. “A servitor race?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Mongo said. “You could say they are allies of ours.”

Elton’s eyes narrowed. “Allies I’ve never heard of?”

“Yes.” Mongo passed him a paper file, a dangerous sign. Paper – real paper – was rare outside the intelligence services. It was crude, compared to computer databases, but it had the great advantage that it couldn’t be remotely hacked. “Needless to say, everything in this file is highly classified and you are not authorised to discuss it with your staff until you’re well clear of the system.”

“I see.” Elton felt ice prickle along his spine as he opened the file. He’d never had much patience with intelligence antics, fearing they tended to alienate potential allies for very little return. The Galactics spied on everyone they could and, like most overbearing powers, resented the thought of anyone doing the same to them. “Is this …”

He blinked as he scanned the file. “Is this for real?”

“Yes.” Mongo’s voice was cold. Hard. “And it is highly classified.”

Elton muttered a curse under his breath. It wasn’t impossible to insert a covert operations team on a multicultural world, one where humans – or anyone else – wouldn’t stand out like a sore thumb, but it was risky. The file suggested things had gotten way out of hand … he shook his head in disbelief as he scanned the text, noting how an information retrieval mission had turned into aiding and abetting a planetary revolution that had given the Tichck a bloody nose, saved large numbers of Belosi from certain death, and covered up the theft of the GalCores in the bargain. It was the kind of operation, he was sure, that would have been utterly unbelievable if it were shown on the big screen.

“Jesus,” Elton breathed. “The Tichck never suspected a thing?”

“They have enemies,” Mongo pointed out. “The whole incident was blamed on their rivals and war threatened, at least until the Tokomak poured water on the fire and convinced everyone to let bygones be bygones. They never connected us with the affair, or the exile fleet harassing their shipping. They would certainly not have let it pass if they had.”

Elton nodded, curtly. The Galactics wouldn’t have hesitated to make a horrible example out of Earth, and the Solar Union, if they’d realised humanity had been behind the uprising. He scanned the file again, noting how the team had covered its tracks … even with their allies. It felt wrong to deceive them, but it was practical. Back then, everyone had known the human race could not survive a conflict with any of the Galactics.

“Your mission, should you choose to accept it” – Mongo’s lips twitched into something a charitable observer might have called a smile, if said observer had been particularly imaginative – “is to take command of Task Force Liberation and assist the Belosi in recovering their homeworld and the gravity points. I don’t need to tell you, I think, that control of the gravity points is far more important to us than any alien homeworld, if only to make it harder for the Tichck to rush reinforcements to the system. If we can force them to send their fleet via FTL, it will take quite some time for them to react.”

“If,” Elton said. He knew from experience how hard it could be to sneak through a gravity point, even one that wasn’t heavily defended or mined. The Tokomak had forced the lesser races – which was everyone, as far as they were concerned – to leave the gravity points undefended, but that had been changing even before the Tokomak had been soundly beaten by the human race. “The gravity point might already be heavily defended.”

“True, although you won’t be attacking through the point,” Mongo said. “Not at first, at least.”

He tapped his terminal, bringing up an order of battle. “There are three combat squadrons assigned to the operation, along with two logistics squadrons and a maintenance unit. We may be able to find you a marine regiment or two, but right now the demands on the corps are pretty high – back-breaking, really. We’re pulling in men with barely any training and expecting them to hold down roles that would test experienced jarheads, scraping the bottom of the barrel to meet our obligations. You should have a Force Recon unit assigned to you, and you will have the remnants of the original Firelighters team, but the main body of any landing force is likely to come from the exiles.”

Elton nodded. “Understood.”

“There are two issues of which you need to be aware,” Mongo continued. “The first is that we cannot supply you with many, if any, modern weapons. There are no LinkShips or slammers that can be held in reserve, let alone assigned to your force and sent a long way from Sol. Hopefully, this will let you conceal just who is helping the Belosi as much as possible, as the Council orders, although no one expects the deception to last for long.”

He paused. “Second, perhaps just as inconvenient, your orders are to preserve your force as much as possible. We cannot afford heavy losses right now. If you find yourself facing a battle that will cost far too many ships, even if you win, I expect you to withdraw.”

“That may cost us our alliance with the Belosi,” Elton pointed out. In his experience, dependency bred resentment. The more the Belosi relied on humanity, the more they would resent it. If they saw the humans pulling out … it wouldn’t end well. “In the long run, the alliance may be more important …”

“It may,” Mongo conceded. “But right now” – he keyed his terminal, displaying a starchart – “the navy is spread over countless light-years. Half our detachments have no contact with others, even when we control the gravity point chains. It looks good in holographic representation, but in the real world we are barely maintaining control over what was once a major power vacuum. It’ll become a vacuum again, if we lose a handful of squadrons. Our position is so fragile that a relatively minor power can do us some real damage.”

Elton couldn’t disagree. The Solar Union would have to redeploy its forces to cope with a threat from one sector, leaving other sectors open for new threats to develop … forcing the navy to keep shuffling units from sector to sector, putting immense wear and tear on the equipment even if the fleet won every battle it faced. Worse, because there would be no way to maintain a permanent presence in each sector, problems would grow out of hand very quickly and require more effort to put them back under control … he wondered, not for the first time, if the Solar Union wouldn’t be better off pulling back and leaving the Galactics to fight it out. But hundreds of innocent worlds and races would be obliterated if the Galactics went to war with each other …

And whoever wins might come after us, Elton thought. He’d spent enough time with ambassadors from a hundred different races to know aliens weren’t stupid, or inherently ossified. The only reason humanity had been able to advance so far so fast was because they’d had access to alien technology and a complete lack of supervision, let alone interference, from more powerful races. The winner will have advanced tech of their own, and experienced officers who’ll be a match for us.

He grimaced. He didn’t like the idea of abandoning his allies. It was the sort of thing that gave races bad reputations, even when the betrayer had no choice. There would be no way to avoid bitterness, no way to convince other races that they wouldn’t be abandoned as well. No matter what the diplomats said or did, his actions would speak louder than their words. He wondered, idly, if the navy intended to pin all the blame on him. It might make a certain kind of sense. But it wouldn’t be enough to save their reputation.

“I understand,” he said. He’d do everything in his power to avoid a betrayal, but if there was no choice … “When do I leave?”

“The squadrons are assembling now,” Mongo said. He nodded at the display. “There are a handful of repairs that need to be completed, and you are going to have to carry out hundreds of drills as none of the ships and crews have ever worked together before, but we imagine you can leave in a week.”

Elton tried not to groan. A properly worked-up squadron could fly and fight in perfect harmony, but a squadron thrown together at short notice would need to spend weeks drilling before he could take it into battle. He hoped his officers and crew were well-trained, although … he cursed under his breath. The manpower shortage was so great that too many experienced officers had been reassigned, leaving skeleton crews to operate the ships as they waited for repairs. There was no way the missing crewmen would be recalled in time, even if it was theoretically possible. He’d have to make do with whatever scraps the personnel department could find for him.

“We’ll be drilling for the entire voyage,” he said, tiredly. It had been nearly two decades since he’d worked as an operational commander within a squadron, and he’d never commanded a squadron himself at all. “And hopefully it will be enough.”

“Hopefully,” Mongo agreed. He took a pair of datachips, one clearly marked as sealed orders, and passed them to Elton. “Your formal orders, all sealed. Officially, you’ll be flying to AlphaCent as part of a shakedown cruise, then being assigned to patrol our supply lines from here to Tokomak Prime. Your captains will have their own copies, which they’ll have strict orders not to open until the fleet is halfway to AlphaCent. I imagine most have already guessed there’s something more in the offing, but they haven’t discussed it openly.”

Elton nodded, curtly. Most naval officers – the warfighters, at least – understood the importance of operational security. You never knew who might be listening, or what tiny piece of information – unimportant in isolation – might give the enemy a complete picture of what the navy was doing. There would be some discussion after the fleet was on its way and the orders could be opened, but by then there’d be no way for anyone to spill the beans. Or for a spy to pass a message to his supervisors. The Galactics had never tried to slip intelligence agents into the Solar Navy, as far as anyone knew, yet … there was no way to be sure. The days in which Earth had been rather less important to the Galactics than Sealand had been to the United States were long gone.

He met the admiral’s eyes. “Do I get to choose my own staff?”

“I’d advise you to pick experienced staffers, but otherwise … yes, as long as they’re not needed elsewhere,” Mongo said. His tone was grim, suggesting it wouldn’t be easy to recruit the right people. “We’re short on everything right now.”

Elton smiled. The situation must be dire. We’re running short of REMFs!

“I won’t let you down, sir,” he said. The mission would be one hell of a challenge. He wasn’t blind to the unspoken implications of his assignment, or the risks to his career if he had to abandon their allies. He’d been chosen, at least in part, because he would fall on his sword for the good of the Solar Union. He wasn’t that wedded to a naval career. Being dishonourably discharged would be unpleasant, but hardly disastrous. “Even if the worst happens …”

“There’ll be a shuttle flight to the yards in thirty minutes,” Mongo said. “The unmarked chip contains our latest intelligence on the various parties and star systems involved, although much of the data is startlingly out of date. We kept our distance from Belos for several years after the mission, discouraging even independent spacers from passing through the system, and by the time we allowed a handful of freighters to return the Tichck had declared the planet itself off-limits to outsiders. We have no solid data on what’s happening on the surface, which could mean anything from an ongoing insurgency to a dead or dying population. I suggest you study it carefully, but that you also take it with a pinch of salt. It may be accidentally misleading.”

“A common problem,” Elton said. Human assessments of alien races were often all too human. Some races were so close to humanity, in many ways, that it was easy to overlook differences until it was too late, others were so alien that the assessments were dangerously misleading. “The Tichck will still be reeling from the sudden shift in power.”

“Or they have a plan to take advantage of the chaos,” Elton said. He’d met a handful of Tichck representatives – they had talked to him as if he were a particularly stupid child – and he’d always had the impression they were incredibly ambitious, determined to gather more and more and more to themselves even though they would never be satisfied. “If anyone does, it’s them.”

“We assume so,” Mongo said. He stood and held out a hand, signalling the interview was over. Elton didn’t take offense. The admiral had hardly any time for anyone. He was mildly surprised the admiral had briefed him in person, rather than passing the buck to a subordinate. “Good luck, Commodore.”

Elton nodded. “I won’t let you down,” he said, again. “And thank you.”

Chapter Five

Sarah wasn’t too surprised, in all honesty, when she boarded the shuttle to MacArthur and discovered that Commodore Yasser had also been assigned to the flight. Admiral Stuart had told her that he’d be assigning Yasser to the mission, and the admiral’s assumption was that Yasser would accept the command without demur, but he hadn’t given her any sort of timeline until she’d been woken by a call and told she would be heading directly to the battlecruiser. She had barely had any time to shower and dress, if she wanted to make the flight; missing it, she was sure, would not have amused her superiors. It would have been incredibly embarrassing, to say the least.

You’d have had to pay for the flight yourself, she thought. And probably wound up in hot water into the bargain.

She smiled at the thought, then nodded politely to Yasser. He was about the same age as herself, from what she’d read in his file, although he’d made himself look a little older than the average naval officer. Sarah had never felt the urge to mutilate her body in line with the dictates of fashion – she found it hard to believe anyone would willingly cripple themselves or insert eyes and ears where they didn’t belong – and the sum total of her cosmetic adjustments was to make herself look pleasant, middle-aged, and forgettable. It was unlikely in the extreme that anyone would pay close attention to her, at least when she wasn’t in uniform or combat armour, but there was a certain safety in being dismissed. Yasser didn’t seem fooled by her appearance. He’d probably read her file too.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, as the shuttle hatch closed. They hastily found their seats as the pilot ran through the final checks, then disengaged from the giant naval station and launched the shuttle into space. “We’ll talk later, onboard MacArthur.”

Sarah nodded in approval. She’d met too many officers and diplomats who talked and talked and talked, often spilling secrets that shouldn’t be discussed in mixed company. Yasser was both an officer and a diplomat, something that might work in his favour … or it might not. She had no idea how the Belosi would react to him, when they met … it hadn’t been easy to explain the concept of diplomacy to them, let alone justify its necessity. But then, they’d never had anyone be diplomatic with them.

She leaned back in her seat, wishing she’d have had a chance to do more than just write a handful of messages to her sister. The older woman had settled in well, once she’d grown used to living on an asteroid, and she’d built a new career for herself … Sarah wondered, not for the first time, which of them had the happier life. She’d never envisaged spending fifty years doing tech uplift, although it was very necessary work; she’d certainly never expected to be so completely isolated from the rest of the human race that she’d hadn’t had any proper leave in years. But then, the tech uplift did have to be done. And she was one of the few who could do it.

Her implants activated, allowing her to access the live feed from the shuttle’s sensors. The system was teeming with drive signatures, from the halo of asteroids orbiting Earth and Luna all the way out to Pluto. Was the planet still a planet or had it been reclassified as an asteroid again? She didn’t know. It seemed to switch every decade or so … she pushed the thought out of her mind as she looked at Earth, wondering if she’d ever have the chance to go back home. If, of course, her home still existed. They’d been cut off from most dirtside news reports, but what little she’d heard hadn’t been encouraging.

The shuttle picked up speed as the giant naval yards came into view. Sarah felt a flicker of awe, mingled with fear. Sol was one of the most heavily industrialised systems in dozens of light-years, but it was tiny compared to some of the Galactic systems. Tokomak Prime had been so heavily industrialised that it was a major miracle humanity had been able to win the war, and victory had only come through better tech and a willingness to gamble everything on the toss of a coin. She knew what would happen if the Galactics matched or exceeded humanity’s technology and put it into mass production. The human race would be crushed under a tidal wave of raw firepower and starship tonnage.

She put the thought aside as the shuttle altered course, heading towards the handful of starships positioned at the edge of the yards. The squadron looked outdated, compared to more modern vessels, although she knew better than to think they were significantly weaker. The Galactics designed their ships as works of art, making it difficult to refit them in anything resembling a reasonable space of time, but humanity knew better. MacArthur and her sisters might be old – some had fought in the Second Battle of Earth – yet they’d been refitted completely to keep up with the times. She studied the flattened arrow designs and smiled inwardly. They might not be as elegant as their counterparts, but they were just as deadly.

A low ripple ran through the shuttle’s gravity field as the craft mated with the far bigger starship. Yasser stood, brushing down his tunic, and made his way to the hatch. Sarah followed, wondering if someone had called ahead to tell the captain – the flag captain – that his superior had arrived. The Solar Navy had surprisingly little ceremony, compared to its wet-navy predecessors, but it was customary to formally welcome a captain or a flag officer to his ship. Sarah could see the value in such ceremonies, even though she preferred to remain unnoticed. It made sure the chain of command was clearly established right from the start.

You can’t run a starship like a spec-ops team, she reminded herself. Riley had been in command of the Firelighters – still was – but they’d had no trouble jointly planning their operations or debating his decisions. There’d only been five of them and they’d known and trusted each other completely. A starship with over a hundred personnel – often more – was a very different kettle of fish. There are people on this ship who probably never lay eyes on their captain, or their flag officer.

The hatch hissed open. Sarah followed Yasser through the hatch, staying well back as the young captain greeted him. She looked surprisingly young … really young, not someone who recalled the days before First Contact. Sarah had heard that the latest genetic engineering techniques retarded aging, but still … she would have been astonished if the captain was more than twenty years old. She looked like a teenager … Sarah made a note to download the officer’s file as quickly as possible. The odds were good she was at least in her thirties, but even so …

“Welcome aboard,” the captain said. She was alone, which boded well. It had always been a worrying sign, to Sarah, when there were a dozen officers in the reception party. “I’m Captain Lana Mendlesohn.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Yasser said. If he had any doubts, he hid them well. “I look forward to working with you.”

Lana nodded, then glanced at Sarah. “And you?”

“Sarah Wilde, Ambassador-At-Large,” Sarah said. It was her official cover story and it would last, she hoped, until they were underway and their sealed orders could be opened. “I’m currently working with Commodore Yasser.”

She allowed her voice to twist a little, just so. Lana’s lips thinned, so briefly Sarah would have missed it if she hadn’t been watching carefully, as she drew the intended conclusion. She hid her amusement behind a mask as Lana turned away, leading the two newcomers through a maze of corridors and into the flag deck. It was empty, the displays blank and consoles powered down. Sarah felt a brief flicker of dislocation, as if she had stumbled onto a movie set rather than a real command centre. She told herself not to be silly as Lana pointed out the cabins, and invited them to dine with her in the evening. The flag deck was simply not in use at the moment.

“Thank you,” Yasser said. “I’ll be in touch when the rest of my staff arrives.”

Sarah peered into her cabin and felt a little reassured. The chamber was big enough to be comfortable, without being too big for her peace of mind. The Solar Navy had never felt the need to give its flag officers endless luxury, certainly not the giant palaces the Tokomak provided for their admirals. She wondered if Yasser cared about such things, then shrugged. A man who’d had to endure alien ideas of what was comfortable, let alone luxurious, was unlikely to object to his cabin on a human ship. Sarah had encountered enough alien multispecies hotels to know diplomats needed to have strong stomachs, as well as a certain willingness to tolerate discomfort. It was sometimes hard to tell if the discomfort was intended or an honest accident. 

She dropped her knapsack on the bunk, then sat down and accessed the starship’s datacores. The captain’s file was easy to find, with her clearance codes; Captain Lana Mendlesohn was a fourth-gen Solarian, who’d gone into the navy only fifteen years ago, and climbed into command rank through a combination of ambition, ability, and a desperate need for more and more officers who could take command. She’d fought in the war, then been recalled to Earth and put in command of the older battlecruiser … probably, reading between the lines, because no one had expected the older ship to go into combat in a hurry. But they’d been wrong. Sarah knew, beyond a doubt, that they'd have to fight their way to Belos …

Yasser knocked on the hatch. Sarah looked up. “Yes?”

“I need to assemble my staff,” Yasser said. “Or at least try to. After that, I need a briefing.”

Sarah nodded. “I’ll make sure we have a secure compartment,” she said. “Be seeing you.”

***

Elton scowled as he read the readiness reports, thinking dark thoughts about precisely what happened when so many trained and experienced personnel were reassigned on short notice. The Solar Navy had always worked to ensure its personnel knew what they were doing, instead of the plug-and-play mentality that infested most alien navies, but it had a downside … one that was causing problems for him now. The battlecruiser was – on paper – ready for combat, yet the personnel shortfall ensured that basic maintenance was a joke and they’d be in deep shit if they ever had to go into combat. He cursed the navy’s personnel department under his breath, although he knew it hadn’t been their fault. They’d assumed the battlecruiser wouldn’t be seeing action for a few months, not considering she needed both repairs and refitting. They had done the logical thing, but it had bitten him on the rear. Hard.

“Right,” he said. “First order of business, find more engineers.”

He reached for a datapad and scribbled out a priority request, then forwarded it to the admiral and returned his attention to the reports. MacArthur was in a pretty good state, compared to some other ships, but she was very short of crewmen, supplies, and even missile loads. He filed a request for those too, then added a request for a mobile manufactory vessel if one could be spared. The file had hinted the Belosi had a surprisingly large industrial base, for a rag-tag fleet of exiles, but he doubted they could produce many modern weapons. Even if they could, it would be hard for them to meet the demands of an operational war front. Elton had been in logistics long enough to know that predicted demand was almost always much less than actual demand, raising the spectre of his fleet shooting itself dry in the first engagement and then having to retreat as the enemy counterattacked. They’d have to do something about that too.

His terminal bleeped. “Commodore,” Lana said. “The yardmaster just rejected our request for additional engineers.”

“I see.” Elton scowled, then keyed his terminal. “I’ll speak to him myself.”

He tapped the call code and waited, his thoughts racing. There were a great many demands on the yardmaster’s time and limited resources, as newer ships were fitted out and older ones repaired and refitted before the next war started. Elton had no illusions about just how badly they were stretched, but there were limits. If …

A face appeared in front of him. “Commodore,” he said. “I’m Yardmaster Rondos and …”

Elton cut him off. “Yardmaster, I requested the bare minimum of supplies my squadron requires,” he said, resisting the urge to raise his voice. The Solar Navy was normally good at rotating officers between the front and the rear, ensuring the supply and logistic officers never forgot what was really important. Rondos had apparently fallen through the cracks in the system. “I also requested the priority engineering teams.”

Rondos looked irked. “Sir, with all due respect, the priority teams are booked solid for the next six months …”

“And I have orders to have my squadron ready to depart a week from now,” Elton said. He could understand the yardmaster’s point, but his ships had priority. “Please reassign the priority teams to my squadron.”

“Sir,” Rondos said. “There are many calls on my team …”

“I know,” Elton said. It was true. The shipyard’s priority repair teams were running around like headless chickens, trying to fix as many ships as possible before a new war broke out. He didn’t want to think about how badly the engineers would be worked to the bone, how many would be making mistakes or collapsing on the job or simply contemplating early retirement. It wasn’t as if they couldn’t find work elsewhere. A skilled engineer with naval experience could write his own ticket. “However, my orders leave no room for ambiguity.”

He allowed his voice to harden. “If you refuse to provide the workers, I will have to go over your head and appeal to the admiralty. They will order you to reassign the workers to my squadron, then examine your tenure here before reassigning you. I understand your position, and I understand how many demands there are on your people, but I have to put my orders first.”

Rondos glowered at him. Elton felt a tinge of sympathy, mingled with irritation. Having to reassign experienced engineers would slow down work elsewhere, causing all sorts of problems further down the line. Most audits were carried out by officers who understood the pressures of the job, and knew they couldn’t expect the impossible from overworked engineers, but if Rondos was unlucky enough to have his work examined by someone who didn’t understand his problems …

“Very well,” Rondos said. “I’ll have the men assigned to you, and the supplies. You can answer for the consequences.”

“I will,” Elton said. He nodded politely, allowing the yardmaster to save as much face as possible. It was probably pointless, but there was nothing to be gained by not trying. The last thing he needed was a resentful subordinate plotting against him, or even simply slow-walking everything. “Thank you.”

He tapped the console. The yardmaster’s face vanished. Elton sighed, out loud. He was a pretty good diplomat, and half of diplomatic training was learning to see things from the other side’s point of view, but there were limits. His instructors had pointed out that he could see the other side’s thoughts as much as he wished, yet he was a Solar Union diplomat and his first loyalty was to the Solar Union, not to whoever was on the other side of the table. He supposed it was a little harder to go native in the interstellar age. It was a great deal more difficult to identify with very alien aliens. 

“You let him off lightly,” Sarah said, from behind him.

Elton tried not to jump. He hadn’t known she was there … he hadn’t even sensed anything that might indicate her presence. Not even a tiny flicker of air brushing against the back of his neck …

“He’s in a bad place,” Elton said, unsure why he felt the need to justify himself to her. “By demanding that he puts us first, we’ve made him slow everything else down … which will look bad, when the admiralty notices. And they will.”

Sarah shrugged. “And what if we’re not ready to depart on time?”

“It would be awkward,” Elton said. His terminal bleeped. Some of his personnel requests had been accepted. Other slots would be filled by whoever the personnel department could find and ship to the squadron before zero hour. If they couldn’t find anyone … he rubbed his forehead, cursing the decision to put the operation together at such short notice. Some crewmen were going to be reassigned at very short notice, others were going to be effectively conscripted … it wasn’t going to end well. “The Admiral would be most upset.”

“So would our friends,” Sarah said. She smiled, rather dryly. “They’ll move with or without us.”

Elton groaned inwardly, although he understood the difficulties of coordinating anything on an interstellar scale. “Did someone at least send a courier boat to tell them we’re on the way?”

“It won’t have reached them yet,” Sarah said. “If we’re lucky, they’ll hold off long enough for some kind of reply.”

“If,” Elton muttered. If the file was accurate, the Belosi had been exiled for over fifty years. They wouldn’t wait forever to recover their homeworld. “And if we’re not lucky …”

He stood. “You’d better give me that briefing now,” he said. “And then we have a few … thousand … drills to carry out, to work out all the kinks in the system before we have to get underway. There’ll be no room for mistakes when the shooting finally starts.”

“Understood,” Sarah said.

Chapter Six

Sarah found it hard to contain her impatience, despite years of training and experience, as they crawled towards the deadline.

It felt as if the squadron was assembling itself slowly, the navy dragging its feet even though she knew matters were progressing as fast as could reasonably be expected. The first squadron was put together very quickly, while the other two were rearranged time and time again as ships dropped in and out of service, hasty tests and drills revealing problems that needed to be fixed before the ships were cleared for departure. Sarah had been tempted to suggest, more than once, that they departed with the repair crews onboard, putting them to work even as the handful of ships made their way to the hidden base near Belos. The urge to move was almost overwhelming. The gulf between Sol and Belos was so wide the other world might as well have been on the far side of the universe. There was no way to know what was happening there, if the offensive had already been launched or if the Tichck were striking back … for all she knew, they might have located the base and launched a pre-emptive strike. 

She scowled at her terminal, trying to write a detailed report that covered everything she’d done in the last few months before returning home. It was frustrating and yet, she knew it had to be done. The Solar Union needed to know what kind of ally it had in the Belosi, and what kind of reward might be expected for supporting them in their hour of need. Sarah had never claimed to be a naval strategist, but even she knew the human race couldn’t hope to dominate such large swathes of the galaxy indefinitely. The Tokomak had had vast numbers, reasonably loyal allies – for a certain value of the word – and control over the majority of the gravity points. Humanity … did not. The Galactic Alliance was expanding rapidly, Sarah had been told, but now that the war against the Tokomak was over the various member races might be going their separate ways. It was hard to be sure what would happen, yet all signs pointed to war. And when the Galactics got their act together …

They’ll try to push us back out, she thought. She had no doubt of it. Each and every member of the elder races was so entitled they made the average rich kid at college look a paragon of modesty. They believed the younger races existed to serve them, that humanity’s victory was a freak accident that would be hastily reversed, then never happen again. If they’re not prepping themselves for renewed war, I will be astonished.

Sarah put the report aside and wrote out a letter to her sister instead. It wasn’t easy to write out a missive that would get through the censors, if it was delivered at all before the squadron completed its mission and returned to Earth. The decision to intervene in the conflict had not been publicised, something that bothered her even though she understood the logic behind it. Public opinion could easily call for a major fleet operation, putting an unbearable strain on the navy, or demand a withdrawal from all involvement with the alien exiles. The Belosi were hardly a run-of-the-mill scavenger race, but it was hard to be sure the public would understand. Humanity’s first encounter with scavengers had been traumatic and matters had never really improved, even though the Galactics would probably consider humanity a scavenger race too. Not that the issue was ever likely to be put to a public vote.

She felt a pang of guilt as she scanned the latest message from her sister. It was hard, almost impossible, to believe how much her sister had changed over the last few decades, how much she had come to embrace the solar lifestyle. But then, she’d always been afraid to take the risk until she’d had no choice. Sarah ground her teeth in disgust, recalling how badly the terrestrial politicians had screwed up their hometown. They could have done so much and yet … she shook her head. It was all in the past now, those cockroaches dead or on the run. The rest of the human race would carry on without them.

Her terminal bleeped. “Ambassador, the troops are boarding now,” the XO said. “Their commander requests a meeting.”

Sarah grimaced. She would have preferred to deal with Solar Marines, but there were only a handful of deployable units that could be committed to the operation. The Solar Union had never put together a major ground force … in hindsight, that had been a mistake. Drawing on mercenary regiments, if regiments that were covertly funded and controlled by the Solar Union, was the only alternative, although she feared they would be a little too deniable.

Or perhaps not deniable enough, she thought, as she closed her terminal and stood. The days in which there could be no connection between Earth and humans living hundreds of light-years away are over.

She stepped through the hatch and made her way down the long corridor. The battlecruiser was humming with life, hundreds of crewmen carrying pallets of supplies through the ship or hastily replacing components with a little too much wear and tear, dozens of others practicing emergency procedures that – in her experience – always left out the emergency. The navy was better than any civilian organisation at pushing its personnel to the limits, even if there was no real danger, but it was difficult to be sure how someone would react before they were thrown into a genuine emergency. The crewmen calmly patching up the hull or carrying wounded to sickbay might panic when the shit hit the fan, or conversely go above and beyond to save the ship. She reminded herself that the crew might have been thrown together at short notice, but there were very few combat virgins onboard. They knew what they were doing. They just had to learn to work as a team.

The thought made her smile as she stepped into the lower hold compartment. The hatches at the far end were open, allowing an endless line of military equipment and supplies to flow onto the ship. The mercenaries were technically operating under interstellar law, when it came to the military gear they were allowed to deploy, but those laws had been falling by the wayside even before the entire galaxy had turned upside down. Humanity wasn’t the only race that deployed deniable mercenary units, or armed them with weapons they – legally – shouldn’t have been allowed. It was rare for anyone to complain, Sarah had been told. The one thing that united mercenaries of all races was a firm refusal to work for anyone who did.

And there isn’t a race that doesn’t need mercenaries from time to time, Sarah thought. The regiments had been an invaluable source of combat experience and intelligence, right from the very first days of interstellar contact. They’ll turn a blind eye to anything as long as it doesn’t threaten them directly.

She stepped aside and watched the armoured units moving into position. Small IFVs, giant brooding tanks capable of shooting targets in orbit, mobile artillery that was both advanced and surprisingly primitive … men and women, all human, wearing combat suits that had been scavenged from interstellar powers and repurposed for human use. Sarah doubted the alien tech was as advanced as humanity’s latest – it certainly wasn’t as advanced as her own implants, designed to link into battlesuits she hadn’t seen for decades – but it would suffice. It would certainly keep the aliens guessing. The human race had modified so much captured tech that it was hard, almost impossible, for the Galactics to have any solid idea what the tech could do.

A man wearing a simple green uniform, with a colonel’s strips, waved her over. “Specialist Wilde? I’m Colonel Roper, Shane Roper.”

Sarah nodded, exchanging salutes. Roper looked to be in his early thirties, but his eyes suggested he was probably around the same age as her, if not older. The original mercenaries had been in their twilight years when they’d been recruited by the Solar Union, men and women who had been rejuvenated by the original Founders and then asked to serve humanity amongst the stars. They had known they would be disowned, if the operation went to shit, and they’d gone anyway. Sarah felt a twinge of fellow-feeling as she let her eyes wander up and down the colonel’s body, noting the lack of absurd muscles or alpha male bullshit. The colonel clearly had no doubts or insecurities, and felt no need to make a show of being in charge. It spoke well of him. Sarah had met too many young men – and women – who insisted on making themselves look like caricatures.

“Sarah, Sarah Wilde,” Sarah said. “Welcome aboard.”

Roper nodded, then led her into a private office. It was little more than a cubicle, barely enough room to swing a cat, but Sarah didn’t get the sense Roper particularly cared. He’d commanded troops from a battlesuit, or a command vehicle half-buried in the trenches, if she was any judge. Interstellar warfare was often surprisingly bloody, particularly when mercenaries were involved. The Galactics had a nasty habit of regarding mercenaries as expendable.

“We should have all four regiments embarked by the deadline,” Roper told her. He didn’t bother with any small talk. “Two companies will remain on this ship, the remainder on the transports. The troops are all volunteers, operating under the standard rules, but … they are very curious.”

“I’m not surprised.” Sarah had had little contact with the mercenary regiments throughout her career, but she’d heard rumours. The mercenaries were told there was a new deployment being planned, without being given any details, and then offered a single chance to back out. After that … they were committed. She wasn’t sure how that worked – she wouldn’t care to go into battle beside someone who didn’t want to be there – but she’d heard it worked for the mercenaries. “The full briefing will be provided once the squadron is underway.”

Roper grinned at her. “No hints?”

“None.” Sarah was reasonably sure an experienced officer like Roper would have a fairly good idea of what was coming, but security regulations could not be broken without dire consequences. “Whatever you were told by your superiors, it’s all you can be told until we’re on our way.”

“Drat,” Roper said. He sounded amused rather than offended. Sarah had met senior officers who considered it a personal affront when they weren’t on the need-to-know list. Some had had a point; others had had an overinflated sense of importance. “And there I was thinking you could help me win the betting pool.”

Sarah shook her head. “You place bets on where you’re going?”

“The smart odds are on Tokomak Prime,” Roper said. “Or so I have been told.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Sarah said, firmly. Tokomak Prime? Where had that particular rumour come from? No one could keep soldiers from gossiping, the tales growing and growing until the nugget of truth was buried under a mountain of bullshit, but … she shook her head. It was probably just another wild story, a piece of speculation that had taken on a life of its own. “More seriously, are your troops ready for a long-term deployment?”

“They knew they were signing up for a long deployment,” Roper said, as if the mercenaries hadn’t been doing long-term deployments since Day One. There were regiments that had been away from home for over a decade, if the rumours were true, their personnel travelling with their families or simply accepting being alone. “They just need to be kept busy, when we’re on the way.”

He met her eyes. “I hope the personnel office made good staff choices, though,” he added. “Not knowing where we’re going makes it harder to pick and choose the best officers.”

“They knew the truth,” Sarah assured him. She suspected the briefing Roper had been given had been very vague, covering a wide range of possible scenarios. There wouldn’t have been any choice. They didn’t know what they’d be facing when they reached Belos. “And there’ll be plenty of time to plan our deployment once we’re on the way.”

“Can’t let the media hear what we’re doing,” Roper said. “Do you know, there are people saying we should let the Tokomak off lightly?”

Sarah wasn’t surprised. The Solar Union was surprisingly safe. The Tokomak had attacked Earth once – they hadn’t realised the Solar Union wasn’t based on Earth – and, since then, all the fighting had been hundreds of light-years away, so distant it seemed to have little real bearing on the lives of the average citizen. They’d gone from quaking in their boots when they scanned the seemingly endless enemy fleet lists to confidence the human race could handle anything, after countless enemy starships had been destroyed or captured. And yet … Sarah knew the human race had been lucky. The Galactics had been overconfident and paid the price. The next engagement wouldn’t be so easy.

“They haven’t seen what we’ve seen,” Sarah said. Belos had been a slave world, to all intents and purposes, before the uprising. Now … she had no idea what awaited them. “But right now, their opinion doesn’t matter.”

Roper nodded, curtly.

***

“The last of the fleet transports has reported in, sir,” Lieutenant Kathrin Richmond said. “She’s ready to depart on schedule.”

“Good.” Commodore Elton Yasser leaned back in his chair, studying the holographic display. The three squadrons were loosely grouped around MacArthur, a formation intended to be more functional than decorative. Elton had rolled his eyes when he’d scanned Galactic tactical manuals, ordaining formations that looked neat and tidy and yet were surprisingly inefficient if the squadron ran into an ambush. A loose formation that allowed his ships to manoeuvre freely and deploy all of their weapons, without running the risk of a serious incident, worked better, no matter how much it looked as if his officers didn’t know how to fly in straight lines. “Is that all ships checked in?”

“Yes, sir,” Kathrin said. “Solar Command has cleared us for departure, sir, and Admiral Stuart has sent us a good luck message.”

Elton nodded, curtly. The admiral had done the best he could, but the navy had kept offering him units and then taking them away. Elton was all too aware of just how many demands there were on the navy’s time and resources, yet it was still difficult to draw up any real tactical plans without knowing for sure what ships and troop formations would be at his disposal. Having to use mercenaries, even knowing they weren’t real mercenaries, was a pain in the ass. There was no way to be sure if they’d follow orders when push came to shove.

They were trained and supplied by the Solar Union, he told himself, firmly. They know how to follow orders.

He put the thought aside. “Signal the squadron,” he ordered. “All ships are to bring their drives online and advance to Point Alpha.”

“Aye, sir.”

A low hum ran through the battlecruiser as her main drives came online. Elton watched the live feed from the tiny squadron, praying silently that no ship would suffer a drive failure that would force her to drop out of the line of battle. There would be no replacements now. The briefing notes had been vague on precisely what the Belosi had to offer, but even if they had a ship capable of filling the gap in his formation it would take time – time he didn’t have – to bring her up to human standards. Sarah had told him the Belosi were good, yet … he shook his head. There were alien races closely allied with humanity, races that had been spacefaring for hundreds of years, that still couldn’t slot their units neatly into his datanets.

“Tactical net online,” Kathrin reported. “No major issues.”

Elton let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. The squadron was picking up speed now, the lighter units fanning out to provide cover to the heavier vessels. The tactical net updated rapidly, linking the squadron together into a single unit … he hoped, prayed, the datanet would hold together when they came under fire. The Galactics understood the importance of knocking the fleet’s datanet down, although the Solar Navy was nowhere near as hierarchical as its alien counterparts. They’d have some problems taking the net down completely when any unit could be a flagship. Hell, his ECM was configured to convince any watching eyes that his network was as top-down as any other.

And they might waste their time trying to take out the wrong flagship, he thought, although he knew better than to rely on it. The concept looked good on paper, but there were hundreds upon hundreds of theoretical concepts that had failed when they’d been tested in the real world. If it buys us a few moments of time, it will be enough.

He leaned back in his chair as the fleet reached Point Alpha, well clear of the shipyard, and studied the tactical display. The squadron was as ready as it would ever be, at least until the sealed orders were opened and his staff could start planning in earnest. He would have sold his soul for a handful of modern ships and weapons – a single LinkShip would have been worth almost anything – but … he shook his head. It wasn’t going to happen. He’d just have to make do with what he had.

“Signal the fleet,” he ordered. “All ships are to jump into FTL on my mark.”

“Aye, sir,” Kathrin said. “The fleet’s standing by.”

Elton took a breath. “Mark!”

A low sensation swept through the ship as she dropped into FTL, racing away from the system at an unimaginable speed. Gravity pulses flickered between the various units, re-establishing the communications datanet … an alien idea the human race had stolen and then improved upon. The Galactics could barely talk in FTL. The Solar Navy could do so much more.

“Sir,” Kathrin said. “We have re-established contact with all units.”

“Good,” Elton said. “We’re on the way at last.”

Chapter Seven

It was hot. Too hot.

Riley gritted his teeth as he kept his head down, lurking in the gully and waiting for the enemy to come into view. The foliage was so thick and unwieldy it reminded him of Afghanistan, although the locals – thankfully – were unlikely to stab him in the back the moment he turned away, or even simply betray his presence to the Taliban out of fear of what they’d do if he didn’t. The road was surprisingly small, abandoned so long the foliage had grown back, providing cover for anyone willing to take the risk of getting into place for an ambush. He kept a wary eye on his sensors, watching carefully for any sign of modern counter-insurgency technology. Last time, the Tichck hadn’t realised how much they needed it until it was far too late. This time, it would be different.

They didn’t want to admit they were losing control of their cash cow, Riley thought, with a hint of bitter sympathy. The Tichck hadn’t been that different, in a way, from the uniformed politicians who’d supervised the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Riley would have given a great deal for five minutes alone with some of them, particularly the ones who’d thought that disbanding the Iraq Army or destroying opium fields was a good idea. But they can’t deny what happened now.

He glanced at the waiting Belosi, eyes flickering over their makeshift body armour. It had been taken from the enemy troops and repurposed, something that betrayed the Belosi genius for making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. The armour wasn’t as good as its human counterpart – and Sarah had spent hours going through the programming, making sure there weren’t any surprises waiting to be discovered – but it would suffice. He just hoped it would keep them concealed, when – if – the enemy swept a drone over the valley. They would, if they had any sense. The Tichck might be the most arrogant and entitled race in the known universe, which put them up against some very stiff competition, but they’d been hurt and humiliated when Belos had risen against them. They had to have learnt some lessons since then.

Sweat trickled down his back and pooled in his pants as time ticked on, the foliage shifting constantly as small animals moved through the undergrowth and insects buzzed through the air. There was no way to know if they’d been disturbed by the ambush team, or by their targets, or a simple gust of wind. The local wildlife knew their environment very well, far better than any human intruders; if they sensed something amiss, it was quite possible they’d accidentally alert any approaching troops. And then …

A trooper caught his eye, holding up a portable passive sensor. Five energy signatures were approaching from the north, so low down they had to be walking. Riley frowned as the ambushers triggered, their activity disturbing insects that rose into the air in search of somewhere safer to rest. He hoped – prayed – the enemy didn’t notice their movements. They weren’t close enough to disturb the insects themselves. The signature grew stronger, a sixth appearing high overhead … a drone. Riley tapped one trooper and gave instructions, using his hands to issue orders without speaking aloud. It was too dangerous to subvocalise. The drone had to be shot down first. It was putting out so much electronic noise that it was almost certainly coordinating microscopic recon bugs, as well as relaying data to its superiors. And it might easily be armed too. It wouldn’t need a modern weapon to do real damage. A simple Hellfire missile could wipe out the entire team.

Not that the Galactics would ever lower themselves to use something so primitive, Riley thought. They’d be offended by the very notion, although … he wondered, sourly, if they’d learnt that lesson too. The redesigned AK-47s the team had fabricated for the Belosi had been primitive, so primitive they had been difficult to detect, but they’d still been lethal. Or did they learn to modify their sensors to watch for pre-contact tech?

He cursed under his breath, all too aware they wouldn’t know until the shit hit the fan. The Galactics weren’t stupid. They could easily figure out what happened and start adjusting their sensors, triggering off an arms race … or they could come up with something new, something unthinkable. Or … maybe not. The Tokomak were broken. The genteel rules of war they’d enforced were broken too. But then, they’d never really applied to insurgencies. The Tichck could’ve done whatever they liked to put down the Belosi, and the galaxy simply wouldn’t have cared.

The ground shook, lightly, as the first of the enemy vehicles came into view. The walkers looked like vehicles right out of Star Wars, but they moved with a nimbleness and unpredictability that sent shivers down his spine. The drivers had to be augmented, he thought, as their cabs lurched back and forth, their weapons sweeping the surrounding landscape, ready to fire. Riley had been on some rough shuttle flights over the years – and he’d once spent a few days at Disneyworld, riding every rollercoaster he could see – but the enemy crews had to be having a worse time. He was mildly surprised they weren’t throwing up inside their cabs.

Perhaps they are, he told himself. It isn’t as if you can see them.

He held up five fingers, counting down the last few seconds. The team opened fire the moment he reached zero, one launching a missile into the sky and the others blasting away at the two targeted walkers, the one in the lead and the one in the rear. Their armour held up surprisingly well, Riley noted as plasma pulses slammed into the vehicles, but not well enough. The armour didn’t have to be completely shattered for the plasma pulses to burn through in places, the heat so intense the crew had no time to bail out before it was too late. They died, their walkers crashing to a halt; the other three turned with astonishing speed, sweeping the foliage with enough plasma pulses to start a forest fire. Riley gritted his teeth as the walkers turned and charged, rushing towards the ambushers in a manner that was either insanely brave or downright suicidal. They didn’t really have a choice, part of his mind noted as the team continued to fire. There was no way to back off without being blasted in the back …

The ground heaved as the walkers trampled across the mines, which – triggered remotely - exploded in unison. The blast sent the walkers flying backwards, crushing one beyond repair and trapping the other two upside down. Hatches crashed open as the crews ran for it, only to be mown down by the ambushers. Riley snapped orders, hoping to prevent a slaughter, but the team’s blood was up and they wanted revenge. The Tichck had no chance to escape before it was too late. Riley gritted his teeth, an instant before he heard the first mortar round. It landed far too close for comfort.

He swung around, too late, as the foliage seemed to explode with plasma pulses. The team wavered, caught between two fires; Riley cursed, barking orders to break contact and run, an instant before a pulse caught him in the chest. His armour locked, sending him tumbling to the ground. The enemy charged forward, a trooper narrowly missing Riley’s head with his boot as they gave chase. Ten seconds later, it was all over.

His earpiece buzzed. “End exercise,” it said. “I say again, end exercise.”

Riley’s armour unlocked. He stumbled upright, feeling every one of his twelve decades. He’d been rejuvenated twice, and his body had both biological and mechanical augmentations, but he still felt old. The tactical exercise had been carefully planned to show the new troopers how quickly everything could go to hell, but … he’d hoped, despite himself, that one of the trainees would have realised they’d put themselves in a trap. There was no reason the Tichck couldn’t travel cross-country, rather than parachuting or teleporting men into the combat zone … they’d been so focused on enemy walkers that they’d ignored a more primitive threat. And it had cost them.

“Check for wounded,” he ordered. The Tichck were robots, designed to be tougher than the real thing … and also able to be put back together, after they were shattered by blows or scorched by flame. “And then follow me.”

He shook his head, then started to walk down the path to the makeshift FOB. The Belosi had designed and built the asteroid habitat, with a little help from their human advisors, decades ago, but they’d never intended to turn it into a proper settlement. There was too much risk of the Tichck stumbling across the hidden base and blowing it away without even bothering to ask questions first. Riley knew the threat was somewhat overblown, but it wasn’t impossible. The Tichck had the technology to hunt the Belosi, and every reason to do it. Their escape from their homeworld was an offense that could not go unpunished.

The terrain changed, slightly, as they neared the base. The habitat had been designed as a training ground, providing examples of the terrain the Belosi could expect if – when – they returned to reclaim their homeworld. Some sections looked like the giant plantations the slaves had worked, unaware of the bigger world outside and convinced the company ruled the entire universe. Others looked like the three megacities, although none of those sections could convey the sheer size of the alien constructions. Riley had visited Tokyo, back when the Japanese city had been the largest on Earth, and yet even that staggering metropolis had been no match for the alien megacity. The idea of having to fight their way through such a nightmarish collection of city blocks, towering skyscrapers, and slums, was terrifying. Riley didn’t want to think about the prospect, but there was no choice. No one expected the Tichck to give up without a fight.

And we only took the last city because we caught them by surprise, he reminded himself. We wouldn’t have been allowed to keep it for so many days if there hadn’t been so many other Galactics on the ground, either.

He sighed, inwardly. There was still almost no intelligence on just what was happening on Belos. The exiles had taken prisoners, as they’d raided enemy shipping, but none had been willing or able to answer any questions about their long-lost homeworld. Riley had seen the projections, including some so grim they hadn’t been shared beyond the exile council. Belos might be effectively uninhabitable, the pollution so extreme it had killed the original population … genocide, by any other name. It was a sickening thought. There was no shortage of worlds that had been terraformed by their discoverers, often worlds owned by races too weak to secure Earth-compatible worlds, but very few had had their own intelligent inhabitants. Belos, on the other hand … he shuddered. The Tichck had sentenced their slaves to death long before the slaves had risen in revolt. It was a crime vile enough to have made Hitler and Stalin blanch.

He pushed the thought out of his mind as the team assembled in the briefing room. Riley let his eyes sweep across them, silently noting who seemed confident – despite the disaster – and who seemed chastened. A little confidence went a long way, but overconfidence could lead to arrogance and disaster. Riley knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that anyone who passed BUD/S was amongst the finest soldiers on the planet, and now the universe, yet he also knew they were far from invincible. The moment they thought otherwise, the universe would teach them they were wrong.

“So,” he said, as the audience filed into the rear seats. “What went wrong?”

There was a long uncomfortable pause. The Belosi were surprisingly human-like in so many ways, with mannerisms they’d picked up from human entertainments in lieu of their lost culture and the slavery culture they’d been given by their overlords, but it would take centuries before they rid themselves of everything they’d been taught and advanced confidently onto the galactic stage. It didn’t help that the older refugees wanted to return to reclaim their homeworld, while the younger exiles weren’t as concerned about returning to a planet they’d never known. Riley didn’t blame them. The Solar Union had the same problem.

But we chose to leave, Riley thought. He’d heard the grumblings about the federal government – and much, much, worse from migrants who’d fled China or the Middle East – but it had never been as bad as Belos. The Belosi were forced to flee.

He sighed inwardly. The elders had been raised to believe they were at the bottom of a divinely ordained hierarchy, that unquestioned obedience was the only way to salvation. They’d known little of the world outside the plantations and slave camps, kept in an ignorance that made it hard – almost impossible – to get a clear picture of what was really going on, let alone what the universe outside was actually like. The handful who had dared to question hadn’t vanished. They’d instead been executed so brutally that any watching slaves had known resistance was futile. The younger generation was doing better, growing up in a very different environment, but ...

“We let them sneak up on us,” a young trooper said. “They hit us in the rear.”

“We did,” Riley agreed. “How did they do it?”

There was another pause. “We thought they couldn’t get troops so close without being detected,” the trooper said. “We were wrong.”

Riley nodded. Vehicles would have been detected. Shuttles would have been detected. Teleport signals would have been detected … and jammed. The enemy troops would have dematerialised and … died, if they were lucky. There were horror stories about things trapped within teleport buffers, nightmares the techs swore blind were nothing more than rumours spread by shuttlecraft companies. But troops on the ground, coming in without anything more advanced than shank’s pony? They were effectively undetectable.

He shot the trooper an encouraging look. “The enemy is capable of innovating too,” he said. “If nothing else, recent events should have reminded them of the dangers of allowing themselves to ossify. They have presumably studied everything that happened, back during the original uprising, and adapted their tactics to match. We must work to determine what tactics they might use, while remaining aware they might think of something we haven’t and turn it against us.”

The words hung in the air. “You did well, at first,” he added. “You blocked the enemy’s line of retreat, forcing them to charge right across the minefield, and took out the drone that could have summoned help. The plan only went to pieces when they attacked from behind, and even then …”

He paused. “I want you to think about what happened, and how to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” he finished. “Dismissed.”

The troopers stood and hurried out of the room, heading down to the camps behind the FOB, the audience right behind them. They’d be returning tomorrow for another round, followed by countless others … Riley hoped they’d be ready, when the fleet arrived or the council ran out of patience and decided to launch the offensive without human support. The training ground was as good as they could make it, but it was no match for the training centres on Mars … or, for that matter, real life. Riley had told his trainees, time and time again, that no battle plan survived contact with the enemy. Too many hadn’t developed the skills they needed to adapt the plan when it inevitably fell apart. Or throw it aside and come up with something new.

“They died,” Councillor Haworth said. The Speaker of the Exile Council looked grim as he made his way down from the audience seats. “Are they ready to land on the homeworld?”

Riley kept his face under tight control. Most aliens couldn’t read human expressions and vice versa, but the Belosi could. “They need more seasoning,” he said, flatly. “There are limits to how much we can teach them, or what we can prepare them to face.”

“The council is becoming impatient,” Councillor Haworth said, echoing Riley’s earlier thoughts. “They want to move now.”

“We have no idea what we would be facing,” Riley said. The exile fleet was surprisingly powerful, punching well above its weight, but it wasn’t a match for the forces the enemy could deploy. “If we move now, we may lose everything.”

“And how many of us are left alive, on the homeworld?” Councillor Haworth spoke quietly, but the urgency in his voice could not be denied. “Are they all dead?”

Riley had no answer. He understood the council’s impatience. They really were running out of time … they might already be out of time. The gulf between the slaves, if there were any left alive, and the spacefarers was already dangerously wide. Could it be closed once the homeworld was liberated? Could they uplift their peers while beating off enemy attempts to reclaim the system? Or was it already a hopeless case? He would be happier if he knew …

His earpiece bleeped. “Sir, long-range sensors detected incoming ships flying along the planned route,” the operator said. “Reinforcements?”

“Let us hope so,” Riley said. They had planned for the reinforcements to fly a specific route, but the fleet would be going on alert anyway, just in case. There was no way to be sure the secret hadn’t fallen into enemy hands. “And if it is …”

“We can finally go on the offensive,” Councillor Haworth said. “It could be the beginning of the end.”

“No,” Riley corrected. He thought Churchill would have approved. The man had been one of the greatest world leaders in history, even though his reputation had been attacked by fools who owed everything to him. “It will be the end of the beginning.”