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  The captain was about to say something else, but a message came across her screen, and she forgot about me as she tended to business.

  “All systems synched,” she said. “Take out us of tunnel, Ystip.”

  The recorded message came on, telling us to prepare to reenter normal space. A few seconds later there was a shudder, a moment of sickening dizziness, and a flash of light inside my mind as I lost all bearings and nothing felt right. Then the discomfort was gone and we were moving through normal space again. The viewscreens switched from showing a logistical illustration of our position to a visual image. There, before us, was an alien sun, glowing as bright as my own.

  The Ganari system had outer gas giants just like Earth’s system, and we zipped past them until we came into orbit around a planet that, at first glance, might have been my own. It was blue, with white clouds and polar caps. Only the unfamiliar shapes of the land masses below revealed that this was not my own world. I supposed this planet, like Earth, had been visited and changed and seeded by Formers. Clearly they had a design they liked.

  I’d seen so much already. I’d met a dozen or more alien species. I’d been on board a spaceship and hung out with the captain and her crew, and now here was an actual planet, a world with its own creatures and history and societies. Not just a single being or a collection of beings, but a world, whose sights and sounds and smells were as varied and infinite as those of the Earth, but entirely and unimaginably different. Down there would be languages and history and traditions and ways of life no one on Earth had even considered. They would have myths and stories all their own.

  The word “awesome” gets overused a lot—I, myself, have on occasion been a serious abuser—but this was awesome in the truest sense. I was filled with awe, and the crazy thing was that this planet, this sphere teeming with unique and unknowable life, was just a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of worlds of the Confederation, and then the thousands of worlds outside the Confederation.

  I hated being a random and being ostracized by the other humans, but even if I was having the worst initiate experience possible, I knew I was lucky to be part of all this.

  I watched as Wimlo informed the captain that the shuttle had launched, and then on the far side of the planet I watched it appear, at first a distant speck slowly growing closer. On board that ship would be four Ganari, one of whom was a random. Maybe I would be friends with him or her or it. Maybe I might have more in common with another random than I did with my own species.

  “Captain!” Urch called out, snapping me from my thoughts. “I’m picking radiation consistent with a tunnel aperture forming, five thousand kilometers dead ahead. It’s coming in between us and the shuttle.”

  The captain rose from her chair and jabbed her trunk at Urch. “Can you identify it?”

  “Too soon to be certain, ma’am, but the distortion is consistent with Phandic signatures.”

  “Activate shielding,” the captain said, her voice icy calm. She looked at my gaming buddy at the helm. “Ystip, get us between that aperture and the shuttle. Best speed.”

  I wanted to ask what was going on, but I knew better. I kept my mouth shut because it was the right thing to do and because the tension on the bridge was unmistakable and terrifying. This was an emergency, and at best I would be in the way. At worst, I’d be ordered off the bridge. Whatever a Phandic was, it was bad news. I wanted to go to my cabin and hide, but even more, I wanted to understand what was going on.

  Captain Qwlessl spun to her navigation officer. “Zehkl, plot a course to send the shuttle back to the surface. Wimlo, as soon as he’s done, override that shuttle’s navigation system with the new course. Inform the Ganari that—”

  She didn’t get a chance to finish speaking because there was a flash of light on the primary viewscreen as an invisible scalpel sliced a jagged line into space. Light and clouds of what looked like mist oozed from the wound in the universe. Then the slash vanished, and a ship was suddenly there, blocking our view of the shuttle. I felt my body turn cold, as if every cell in my body knew that whatever had just shown up was bad news.

  The ship was as black as space itself, almost invisible but for a series of flashing lights that illuminated its form—narrow from top to bottom, but broad across with a slight protrusion toward the top and its middle. It hovered in the void, its lights like the eyes of a wakened predator.

  The alien ship was a flying saucer, but the most diabolical flying saucer imaginable.

  “Get me eyes on the shuttle,” the captain said. “Ystip, replot a course. Get us around that ship. Urch, prepare weapons lock, but do not fire until I give the order. Wimlo, contact the Phandic ship. Tell its captain that this planet has been placed under Confederation protection, and whatever they’re thinking about doing, it’s likely stupid.”

  The communications officer clacked its mandibles and typed out a message and then read the response, which popped up a second later. It was like galactic texting.

  “Ma’am, they say this is neutral territory, that the Ganari have not signed any treaties with the Confederation.”

  “I was hoping they hadn’t realized that,” the captain said, lowering herself back to her chair. “Contact them again. See if they’ll talk to us. We can’t let this escalate.”

  More mandible clacking. Perhaps a nervous gesture. “They’re declining to talk, ma’am.”

  We had now looped around the Phandic ship and were moving toward the shuttle.

  “Ystip, if the Phands are looking for trouble, will the shuttle be safe?”

  She answered without turning her beaked face to the captain. “No, ma’am. It has minimal shielding. If the Phands want it, they’ve got it.”

  “Can we lance it and bring it aboard before they can fire?”

  “Distances are too great,” Urch said. “We can lance, but we can’t bring it in quickly enough, not if they mean to destroy it.”

  “Right.” She considered the matter for a few seconds, twirling her trunk in a tight little circle. Then she turned to Ystip. “Plot a new course for the shuttle. Move it toward the surface for another thirty seconds, then reverse and bring it into the shuttle bay fast, the most erratic flight pattern you can safely implement. They’re in for a rough ride, so have a medical team in the bay to meet them.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Ystip began furiously entering data into the navigation console.

  Then there was a flash of light. Before the shuttle could even alter course, the Phandic ship fired. It wasn’t like in the movies, where you can watch a beam travel from one ship to another. In reality, the beam moved at the speed of light. There was a flash and then another. Where once there had been a transport, now there was a ball of fire as the venting oxygen burned. Then the vacuum snuffed out the flame and there was only a sprinkling of debris that spiraled out of the center in a plume of metal and plastic.

  The four Ganari applicants were dead. In a single instant, they had been brutally murdered. I stared, hardly believing it. I felt terror and sadness and rage and a hundred other things I could hardly name. This place was supposed to be safe. They’d told us the Confederation was peaceful. Clearly, they had not told us everything.

  The captain was standing again, looking grim. For a moment she waggled her trunk wildly, and her eyes became huge. Then she stopped moving and her expression seemed to darken. “Mr. Urch, how do we stand against that ship?”

  “It’s a [stone fist]-class cruiser, ma’am. Our PPBs won’t do much to it, but our shields will hold off its weapons more or less indefinitely.”

  “Tunnel a comm beacon to Confederation Central,” she ordered. “Call for reinforcements. Let’s see if we can keep them busy until help shows up.”

  There was another burst of light, and then a massive rumble as we were hit by enemy fire. Lights now flashed all over the bridge. Alarms were going off—not mind-numbing claxons, but qui
eter beeps and dings and buzzes as consoles begged their operators for attention.

  “Status!” the captain demanded.

  “Damage to the lower decks,” Mr. Urch said. He typed again furiously, and then looked up, alarmed. “They’ve found a way to boost their PPB effectiveness against our defenses. Shield strength is functioning only at forty-seven percent.”

  “So, we’re not going to hold out indefinitely?”

  “I don’t think we’re going to hold out for a quarter hour against what they have.”

  “Ystip, plot a tunnel. Let me know the instant we have aperture. Recommendations, Mr. Urch?”

  Urch was busy tapping data into his console, and did not turn to face her when he spoke. “If we flee, our weapons capacity will be further diminished. To remain a threat, we should stand our ground, or advance up until the moment the aperture forms.”

  I found myself nodding. This was something I’d learned the previous night in the sim room. When a ship is fleeing, the ion wake of its engines disperses its PPB discharges. In other words, once you start running, you can’t return fire with any real force. If we backed off, we would have no ability to fight, and until the tunnel opened, we would have nowhere to run.

  My thoughts were interrupted by three more flashes, and the ship rumbled again. More distressed consoles cried out as they scrolled data and warnings and bad news.

  “Direct hit to rear starboard engine,” Urch said.

  There were more flashes, more rumbles, more alarms. Things were happening quickly. We were being overwhelmed. Every member of the crew was busy at his or her terminal, entering commands rapidly, trying to keep ahead of the attack. Each of them appeared calm, but I felt like I could read panic on their alien faces.

  “Forward port engine is off-line,” Urch announced.

  “We’ve lost tunnel capacity,” Zehkl, the earthwormy tunneling expert, said, “and I don’t think we can get five percent light until we effect repairs.”

  The captain pointed at the screen with her trunk. “Begin repairs at once, and let’s use what we’ve got. Urch, move all shielding to forward sections. Siphon power from anything nonessential if you have to. Plot a course for the Phandic ship, Ystip. Best speed.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said, her voice cool, though she clacked her beak a couple of times. “Ramming vector laid in.”

  The captain must have noticed my terrified expression, and she flashed me a sympathetic look. “Mr. Reynolds, energy shields can’t simultaneously block physical objects and energy weapons. To avoid being destroyed when we ram them, they’ll have to convert their shields, and if they do that, we can fire on them. If they don’t convert shields, the impact will destroy them. It’s a standoff, and they’ll have no choice but to withdraw. We can’t beat them in combat, so we’re making combat a losing proposition.”

  Very nice of her to explain it to me. Even so, I saw there was a safety rail near where I was standing, and I grabbed hold of it. Hanging on was not going to save me, but it made me feel marginally less frightened.

  Wimlo now looked over. “Captain, the Phandic ship is sending audio.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  A calm voice came from over the speaker. “Confederation vessel, we do not wish to destroy you. Surrender, and your crew will not be harmed. Refuse, and you are of no use to us.”

  “Commander Phandic vessel,” the captain replied, “you know we won’t do that. This is pointless.”

  “The point is your surrender,” the Phandic captain said.

  The captain jabbed her trunk at Wimlo, indicating an end to communication.

  “Sublight navigation is now functional, but slow,” Zehkl said. “We can tunnel in seven minutes.”

  “Plot tunnel and be ready to enter the moment we achieve aperture,” the captain said, “but I don’t think they have seven minutes of restraint in them. We’re alone out here, hopelessly outgunned and without enough time to escape. Mr. Urch, give me your tactical read of the situation.”

  “If we are buying time,” Urch said, “we should keep our weapons fire to a minimum. If they think we can’t fight, they will move more slowly.”

  The captain nodded. “I agree. Escalating conflict is not a winning option,” she said. “Hold fire until I say otherwise. But Wimlo, send another beacon. We won’t get reinforcements in time, and I want the registration of that ship noted.”

  If I understood the captain correctly, she was now talking about what was going to happen after we were destroyed.

  It looked like the Phandic flying saucer of death was determined to make that happen. There were more flashes of light, more rumbles. Urch called out damage reports and hull breaches, but the concentrated shielding seemed to be keeping us alive, if just barely. And, for the record, we were still moving to ram the enemy ship. Urch scowled, and his hands twitched, but he did not touch the weapons console. I could see he was itching to fire, but the captain had agreed with his own assessment. Still, if we were going to be destroyed, I knew he would want to get in a few shots first.

  I watched on the screen as the enemy grew larger and more menacing, as they fired on us and we shook like a plane going through turbulence. I understood that there was a good chance we were going to die. Maybe it was a certainty. We were either going to be destroyed by the enemy or destroyed when we crashed into the enemy. The only chance we had was that the ship would realize it had nothing to gain and back off. It showed no sign of doing that.

  Then there were a dozen or more flashes in quick succession. The ship rocked. Lights flickered. I heard the distant rumble of explosions. Unlike on TV shows, no consoles exploded, but I watched as several dimmed and more than half extinguished entirely. All around me the officers of the Dependable tapped furiously at screens and keyboards, trying to bring their stations back to life, but the bridge was now cast in a gloomy twilight.

  “Shielding is fluctuating,” Urch said. “Damage reports from all decks.”

  “Stabilize defenses,” the captain said, her voice steady. “Restraint doesn’t seem to be working. I didn’t want this, but I won’t make it easy on them. See what you can do to dissuade them, Mr. Urch, and if you have a clear shot for a dark-matter missile, take it.”

  Urch bared his teeth as he fired off several PPB bursts. The Phandic ship returned fire, and then things, which were really bad, got a whole lot worse.

  As if someone had pulled a switch, gravity was gone. My stomach dropped out, and the concepts of up and down were distant and fond memories. This didn’t feel like the disorientation of leaving relativistic space. This was something far more physical and unpleasant. I felt like I was falling, plummeting; not vomiting took all my concentration. Whatever means the ship used to generate gravity had been damaged or destroyed, and if I hadn’t been holding on to the railing already, I would have gone flying the instant the gravity failed.

  Then, seconds after I became weightless, we were spinning wildly, as the Dependable lost stabilizers and went cascading through space. Anything not tied down was thrown by the powerful force of the ship’s mad gyration. The captain, in mid-order, was cast out of her chair. Everyone on the bridge was hurled from their stations. Everyone but me, still clinging to my rail. I heard cries of frustration as the officers tried to right themselves, tried to make it back to their consoles, but between the lack of gravity and the spinning of the ship, it was impossible to find a destination. There were cries of pain. Blood floated in thick globs in the weightlessness. Someone’s tooth sailed past me.

  Then the ship came under control, and the gravity returned, but not in that order. The gravity was half a second ahead of the stabilizers, so when the ship suddenly righted, nearly everyone went flying through the air like popcorn in a popper—some hitting the walls, some the floor, some the ceiling, some one another in midair. When everything became still, the bridge officers were cast about like battered toys. I st
ruck the wall hard, and my arm was jerked painfully, but I was not seriously hurt.

  The captain was trying to get up as she clutched a clearly broken arm. Urch had been hurled halfway across the bridge, and now lay terrifyingly still. Ystip seemed to have broken her leg, but she had dragged herself back to her console and reestablished our course to collide with the enemy ship. She was, I realized, the only being on the bridge capable of resuming her station. A few others were moving, slowly, but the crew had been almost entirely neutralized.

  I looked again at Urch, motionless. I looked at his weapons console. I looked at the captain, who was typing into her data-bracelet keyboard using her one good hand.

  “Trying to get backup crew, but there are injuries all over the ship.” She glanced up at me. “Until a replacement arrives, I need you to operate weapons, Mr. Reynolds.”

  I stood still, staring at her, understanding what she had just told me but not believing it. I couldn’t do what she asked. There was no way. I wasn’t a trained weapons officer. I’d noodled around in the sim for a couple of hours, but that was it. She could not seriously want me to do this. I told myself that, but I knew it wasn’t true. She needed me to step up for the simple reason that there was no one else.

  I swallowed and ran for the console.

  I tapped the screen and quickly got an image of the enemy ship, but it was moving fast, engaging in countermeasures that made a lock-on difficult. Identifying the engines or any other specific system was harder, so much harder, than it had been in the simulation. This wasn’t like what I’d practiced, which had been challenging but possible. This was so much more complicated. Our ship was moving. The enemy was moving. There were flashing lights and indicators demanding my attention. Text scrolled endlessly. We were about to be blown up, and I was powerless to do anything about it. The chair might as well have been empty for all the good my sitting in it did us.

  The Phandic captain’s voice came over the speakers again. “Confederation ship, you are severely damaged and significantly outmatched. Surrender and your lives will be spared.”