Desperate Glory

Morningstar III

Book I: Exiled to Glory
Book II: Stolen Glory
Book III: Tarnished Glory
Book IV: Desperate Glory

Christopher G. Nuttall

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

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Contents
Cover Blurb
Author’s Note
Introduction
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: Leo/Admiral Blackthrone
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Leo/Admiral Blackthrone
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five: Leo/Admiral Blackthrone
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Admiral Blackthrone/Gayle
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
How To Follow

Cover Blurb

After a cataclysmic interstellar war that came very close to exterminating humanity, the Daybreak Republic has risen from the ashes and embarked upon a mission to unite hundreds of human colony worlds under its banner, in hopes of preventing a second and final conflict that will complete the destruction of the human race. But not everyone agrees that the empire’s ends justify the means.

In the aftermath of Leo Morningstar’s last mission, war has erupted between the Daybreak Republic and the Secessionist Alliance, stretching the navy’s resources to the breaking point. Admiral Blackthrone’s fleet is pinned down, unable to go on the offensive without leaving key worlds exposed, as rebels raid shipping lines and make Daybreak look weak ahead of a major assault. Desperate to break the stalemate before it is too late, Admiral Blackthrone places Leo Morningstar in command of a ragtag fleet of outdated starships and charges him with harassing the enemy, buying time for the navy to assemble the force they need to strike back. 

But with resentful subordinates within his fleet and enemy plans finally coming into the light, it may be too late to save the sector – or Daybreak itself.

Author’s Note
In the previous three volumes, the entire book (save for the prologues) was written from Leo Morningstar’s point of view. In this book, and probably any successive volumes, I need to write several chapters from the point of view of other characters, notably Admiral Blackthrone and Gayle. These chapters have specific headings, identifying the POV character.

I apologise for any confusion this may cause.

Thank you.

Chris

Introduction
From: Leo Morningstar: Hero Or Villain? Baen Historical Press. Daybreak. Year 307.

The great contradiction of the Daybreak Republic is this: in a desperate attempt to prevent a second great interstellar war, the Republic made such a war inevitable. From forcing every planet into a de facto empire, willing or not, to imposing strict limits on non-Daybreak military power, the Republic was sowing the seeds of what would become the second great conflagration of the interstellar era. It would be difficult to convince the rest of the human sphere that such amalgamation was necessary under any circumstances, but Daybreak made no attempt to treat the planets brought under its banner with anything resembling diplomacy. Indeed, exploitation was often the name of the game. Is it any surprise that this fuelled resentment, hatred, and eventual rebellion?

There were very few political figures of any note in the Republic who were able and willing to do anything about the growing crisis. This seems surprising, until you consider the nature of the Republic. Military success fuelled political success, on one hand, and Daybreak’s senators/admirals were unwilling to give up the prospect of a victory that would catapult them to the very highest level. On the other hand, Daybreak’s massive predominance gave its interplanetary and interstellar corporations an immense advantage over their competitors, and they had no intention whatsoever of allowing any sort of free competition. It should be obvious, therefore, that the corporations used their immense political and economic clout to ensure that any suggestion of reform was firmly quashed before it was too late. The relative handful of officers (de facto proconsuls) who tried to uphold the ideals of Daybreak often found their careers being undermined, even destroyed, by enemies back home. By contrast, those who looked the other way at the right time could expect to go on to long and glittering careers.

The resentment spreading through the colonies and even the so-called allied states, therefore, is difficult to exaggerate. Some packed their bags and fled beyond the Rim, hoping to find a planet they could settle and develop before the swelling wavefront of Daybreak’s expansion washed over them. Others attempted to invest in research and development, hoping to identify a silver technological bullet that would compensate for Daybreak’s overwhelming firepower. Still others tried to accommodate themselves to the new galactic order, immigrating to Daybreak and trying to find a place within its society. And still others plotted a new interstellar war.

As we have seen in the preceding volumes, Leo Morningstar found himself on the front lines of a growing insurgency against Daybreak. His first encounters with rebel starships were clear proof, in his opinion and that of his superiors, that someone – almost certainly a client state – was quietly supporting the rebels from a safe distance. He was tasked with tracking down and infiltrating rebel cells, a mission he carried out with his customary zeal and determination, and discovered – to his horror – that the rebels were a great deal more organised than anyone believed. The supposed ragtag fleet of modified freighters and other commercial starships was, in fact, made up of genuine warships, some surprisingly innovative and others with no clear purpose. He was unable to prevent the rebels from starting their war against Daybreak, at least partly due to the interference of a spy within his command, but he was successful in damaging rebel logistics to the point that their planned strike against military assets within the sector had to be cancelled. It was not his cleanest victory, as he acknowledged in his memoirs, but it was hardly a defeat.

However, the incident and the birth of a new interstellar war created a political crisis on Daybreak. The spy who compromised the mission was a recent immigrant, hardliners argued in the Senate, someone who took advantage of Daybreak’s generosity and used it to put a knife in Daybreak’s back. There had always been a certain reluctance to wholly trust immigrants, for all sorts of reasons, and the incident seemed to confirm all their fears. It was therefore decided that all immigrants, no matter how much they had proved themselves, would be removed from any position in which they could harm their benefactors.

The hardliners told themselves that they were safeguarding the state. In reality, they were pouring fuel on the fire that threatened to bring Daybreak down once and for all …

Prologue I

“Jump completed, Captain.”

Commander Stacy Callahan swallowed the urge to make a sarcastic remark as her stomach churned violently, threatening to expel everything she’d eaten for the last few decades onto the deck. She’d known they’d be jumping at speed, their arrival making one hell of a splash, but there was nothing they could do to prepare for the sensation of being punched in the chest by a ghostly fist. The medicine the crew had taken beforehand was little more than a placebo. She calmed herself with an effort. There was nothing to be gained by snapping at a crewman, even if he was telling her something she already knew.

“Noted,” she said, instead. “Did Haydon and Rupert arrive as planned?”

“Haydon came out right behind us,” Lieutenant Jackson said. “Rupert … isn’t visible on our sensors.”

Which may not be a bad thing, Stacy thought, although she’d had a bad feeling about the mission ever since Commodore Blackthrone had briefed her. Her ship and Haydon were meant to make their arrival as obvious as possible, the gravimetric splash bright enough to hopefully conceal the arrival of a third frigate from watching sensor grids, giving her time to cloak before it was too late. It was a manoeuvre they’d practiced before, time and time again, but never carried out against a real enemy. If we can’t see her, the enemy shouldn’t be able to see her either.

She kept the thought to herself as the display filled with icons. Sanctuary – or so the rebel secessionists had named the system – was a handful of rocky planets and asteroids orbiting a dull red star, perfect for anyone who wanted to remain unnoticed. There was a wealth of raw material in the system, waiting to be mined, but few corporations would invest in local development when there were countless other systems with habitable planets and gas giants to provide fuel. It was unlikely the system would draw any attention, under normal circumstances, which was probably why the rebels had chosen it. Sanctuary was so far into the Beyond, beyond the Rim, that the navy couldn’t afford to regularly patrol the system, even carry out the kind of brief fly-through missions that were so common near the core worlds. If the rebels had been a little more careful, and killed Leo Morningstar and his crew on the spot, they would have remained undetected.

“The energy signature is very low, Captain,” Jackson said. “I’d say they’ve abandoned the system.”

Stacy sucked in her breath. The rebels should be scrambling now they knew two frigates were inbound, trying to trap and destroy her ships before their drives cycled … instead, they were doing nothing. It was possible they were trying to set up an ambush, she supposed, but they’d have to have outright precognition to station warships in position to intercept her without using their realspace drives. The only real option was to jump their ships on top of hers and hope she couldn’t get away in time, but her drives were cycling already. The enemy commander was running out of time … if there was an enemy commander. She’d seen bigger energy signatures from worlds that shunned anything more advanced than clockwork.

“I’m picking up some wreckage orbiting Sanctuary itself,” Jackson added. “But no trace of any active enemy presence. We haven’t even been scanned!”

“They knew we were coming and they bugged out,” Midshipwoman Combs said, her tone hovering between disappointment and relief. “They fled!”

“Perhaps,” Stacy said, neutrally. “A star system is still a pretty big place to hide something.”

Her eyes narrowed as she contemplated the display. The rebels didn’t need elaborate cloaking technology to hide from her sensors. They could simply shut down all active emissions and go dark, trusting their warships and industrial nodes couldn’t be distinguished from random pieces of space junk. The rebels had to know that the navy was coming, from the moment it had become clear that they’d failed to keep Leo Morningstar and his crew from reporting back to Yangtze, and bugging out made a certain kind of sense. They might be more organized than anyone had realised, before Sanctuary had been discovered, but she doubted they could stand up to a battlecruiser squadron. There was nothing to be gained by waiting to be blown up when they could get their ships and resources out before it was too late.

“Helm, take us closer to the planet,” she ordered. “Communications, order Haydon to remain on our planned course.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Stacy leaned back in her chair, bracing herself. The enemy could easily be lurking close to the planet itself, ready to engage her ships or jump out if they felt the odds were against them … not, she noted, that that was particularly likely. Frigates were designed for long-range scouting missions, not tussles with enemy warships at point-blank range. A lone destroyer could give her ships a very hard time, and the enemy had a number of bigger warships under their command, warships that shouldn’t have existed. Some should have been scrapped, others … they appeared new. That was worrying. It suggested the rebels had access to a first-class shipyard. And that meant they had support from a core world.

Unless there is a shipyard out here, far from civilized space, she thought, grimly. It was hardly impossible. The Beyond wasn’t empty. There were countless worlds settled by refugees from the war, and later Daybreak, and some were surprisingly advanced for their relative youth. The prospect of the Beyonders getting organised as a unit had worried Daybreak for years, although so far they hadn’t seemed inclined to try. Our intelligence on this part of space is clearly lacking.

The display continued to update, revealing nothing beyond a cloud of floating debris. Sanctuary had been evacuated in good order, the settlements Waterhen had noted on the surface destroyed … presumably after being stripped of everything that could be moved. They’d used nukes to make sure there was nothing else to recover … she wondered, suddenly, why the rebels hadn’t taken the time to clear the orbital debris and leave the investigators with nothing. Perhaps they’d booby-trapped the wreckage or perhaps they considered it unimportant, now the war was underway. The rebels had struck deep into the Yangtze Sector, and Sanctuary was now even further behind the lines than before.

Or perhaps it’s a taunt, she thought, coldly. A reminder they built all this under our very noses.

Jackson glanced at her. “Captain, we could land search parties …”

“Negative,” Stacy said. She understood the impulse, but the last thing she needed was an away team on the surface when the rebel fleet returned. If it ever did … there was just no way to know what the rebels were planning. “They nuked their bases. There’ll be little to recover.”

Her lips twisted. The rebels knew they couldn’t stand up to the navy in a straight fight. Secrecy and obscurification were the order of the day, with brain implants and mental conditioning used to ensure prisoners couldn’t be made to talk. They’d cut their losses with a kind of ruthlessness that was almost Daybreaker in its intensity, making absolutely certain there was nothing left to lead the navy to the next rebel base. Sure, it was possible they’d made a mistake – it wouldn’t be the first time some piece of seemingly completely innocuous information had proved to be the missing link that let the spooks locate their target – but she dared not count on it. Her orders were clear. Her ships were not to be risked without very good cause.

“Communications, signal Rupert,” Stacy ordered. The protocol was designed to make it look as though she was signalling Haydon, passing orders to the cloaked starship without knowledge of her exact location – or making her presence obvious. It had never been tested against a real enemy, and that worried her. Pirates rarely had the latest sensor gear, which gave the navy an edge, but the rebels were far too advanced for her peace of mind. “She is to remain in the system, as planned, observing events from a safe distance. She is not to reveal herself under any circumstances.”

“Aye, Captain,” Combs said.

Jackson looked up. “Captain, do you think they’ll return?”

Stacy contemplated the display for a long moment. Sanctuary had been surprisingly developed, only a couple of months ago. Evacuating everything that wasn’t nailed down would have been one hell of an accomplishment, if it was what the rebels had actually done. It was quite possible the bastards had concealed vast stockpiles within the asteroid cloud, or left them drifting within the interplanetary void. If so, the rebels would eventually try to recover them … and if they thought themselves unobserved, they might provide the navy with vectors that could be traced to their next base. The odds were against it, but who knew? It was worth a try.

“We’ll see,” she said. “Now, prepare to jump out.”

She leaned back in her chair. The mission hadn’t been completely useless. They knew the rebels had abandoned Sanctuary now, which meant their operations had to have been disrupted beyond easy repair … even if it had also deprived the navy of a viable target. The war was already underway, and any sort of disruption was worth it … she hoped. This wasn’t a punitive strike against a rebellious world, or a pirate base, but a full-scale war. Daybreak was about to be tested once again …

And she was sure, deep inside, that her people would meet the challenge.

Prologue II

“Congratulations on your promotion, Uncle.”

Admiral Alexander Blackthrone kept his thoughts to himself as his nephew, Lieutenant-Commander Francis Blackthrone, entered the war room. Francis wasn’t a complete fool, thankfully, but he lacked the seasoning he needed to serve as a proper commanding officer, winning glory for himself and the Blackthrone family. The humiliating disaster of his first command was a grim reminder that a name, even one as prominent as Blackthrone, couldn’t make up for a certain lack of common sense. If it had been up to him, Francis would have been given more time as a Lieutenant – certainly enough to overcome the stench of stupid greenie lieutenant – before being put in a position of actual responsibility. 

And that came with the benefit of hindsight, Admiral Blackthrone reminded himself. If you’d realised his flaws earlier, he would never have been in a position to let his ship be hijacked and pressed into enemy service.

“Thanks,” he said, instead. His tone dripped sarcasm. The promotion was nice and all, but he would have preferred reinforcements. A lot of reinforcements. “Where do you think the enemy will strike next?”

Francis hesitated, eying the display. There were nearly a hundred planets within the sector, nineteen under enemy control. The five that had been conquered by enemy warships were bad enough, the defeats insignificant on a galactic scale yet looming large in the minds of local secessionists, but the fourteen that had fallen to coups and uprisings were worse. Admiral Blackthrone had few illusions about how little love the locals had for Daybreak, and he’d largely dismissed their feelings  let them hate, as long as they feared – yet losing control of so many worlds so quickly was worrying. It was clear they no longer feared.

“They’ll go for a big target,” Francis said, finally. “But … why can’t we take the offensive?”

“You tell me,” Admiral Blackthrone snapped. “What’ll happen if we uncover Yangtze?”

He let his irritation bleed into his voice. The promotion had come with a note encouraging him to go on the offensive, to hunt down the rebels and teach them a lesson. His superiors were dismissive of the threat, he’d noted; they spoke as though the rebels were misbehaving children in need of correction, rather than a serious threat in their own right. It might make sense when one considered the sheer size of the de facto empire, but here … he couldn’t afford a major defeat. His fleet was the only military formation for hundreds of light-years. If it were lost, or forced to retreat, the rebels would overrun dozens of worlds before Daybreak could assemble a new fleet.

“The local defences are strong,” Francis pointed out. “The system can be held.”

“There’s no guarantee of that,” Admiral Blackthrone reminded him. Yangtze had been attacked once before, by a rebel fleet that shouldn’t have existed. The rebels had come very close to taking the system before his squadron had even arrived. “And if they manage to take out the stockpiles, waging war will become somewhat … problematic.”

He studied the display thoughtfully. He was a Daybreaker. He wanted to go on the offensive. He wanted to find a rebel target and blast it to atoms. His entire command wanted to live up to the ideal of the great naval heroes of the past, to go on the offensive and push the enemy onto the defensive … and keep them on the defensive until they were finally, inevitably, defeated. The note his superiors had sent was polite, yet there’d been an undertone of something he didn’t care to look at too closely. An officer who didn’t live up to the ideal could expect to be relieved of his command and replaced by someone more inclined to go on the offensive …

And yet, what choice did he have?

His squadron was tough, his ships in excellent condition and his crews trained to the peak of physical perfection, but he couldn’t take the risk of uncovering his base. There were rebel spies within the system – that was a given – and if his fleet left, even for a very short period of time, the rebels would have the perfect opportunity to jump in, lay waste to his stockpiles, and jump out again. His ships couldn’t be maintained for long without everything from missiles to spare parts … even something as minor as a proper shore leave facility was vitally important when it came to keeping crew morale in perfect condition. If he lost Yangtze … 

“We can’t risk losing this system,” he said. “And that limits our ability to operate elsewhere.”

Francis hesitated. “How many systems will the rebels take? Or induce to rise against us?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Admiral Blackthrone said. The vast majority of systems within the sector were of little economic or military value, no matter what the locals believed. There was nothing to be gained by trying to defend stage-one colony worlds – and he had no intention of trying, not when he dared not uncover his base. “The red icons may look threatening on a display”- he waved a hand at the holographic star chart – “but they add little to the enemy’s strength.”

“Yes, Uncle,” Francis said. “Do our superiors know it?”

“I’d advise you not to say that anywhere else,” Admiral Blackthrone pointed out, sharply. “I don’t mind hearing you speak your mind, Francis, but very few others will tolerate it.”

Francis flushed. Admiral Blackthrone held his eyes until the younger man finally, and reluctantly, nodded in understanding. It was a shame four years at the academy and then a year on active service hadn’t taught Francis his limits, and a certain discretion, but it was hard to convince tutors and low-ranking officers that Francis’s family wouldn’t come down on them like a ton of bricks if they kicked his ass a time or two. Francis would have to learn the lesson the hard way, if his first command hadn’t taught him already, and … hopefully, the experience wouldn’t get him killed. Or anyone else killed.

“And to answer your question, let us hope they do,” Admiral Blackthrone added. “If they order us to strike the enemy …”

He ground his teeth. There were no targets. The enemy’s one known base had been evacuated. The planets they’d occupied were minor in the grand scheme of things … their occupation forces, he was sure, had orders to bug out and run if the navy arrived in force to teach them a lesson. It was what he’d do, in their place. Both sides were dancing around each other, one reluctant to uncover its base and the other reluctant to risk a decisive battle that could easily end badly. Why should the rebels gamble everything on one stroke? It would be a foolish move, and the rebels weren’t fools.

Except they designed a ship with no apparent military value, he mused. If they are not fools … they must think the ship can actually serve a useful purpose.

He keyed his console, bringing up the design. The engineers had gone through the captured rebel ship with a fine-toothed comb, after the spooks had had their fun, but they hadn’t been able to add much to the original report. The rebels had designed and produced a ship capable of firing truly massive missile salvos at a target, but any warship worthy of the name would see doom approaching at terrifying speed and jump out before it was too late. The missiles would be wasted. It was possible they intended to clear the high orbitals instead, shooting at targets that couldn’t run, but it was still a colossal waste of resources. There were easier and cheaper ways to take a planet that didn’t raise the spectre of accidentally hitting the surface. A missile striking a planet at a respectable fraction of the speed of light would be a disaster beyond compare.

“What are they thinking?” It just made no sense. “Why did they invest so much money in a failed design?”

“They could have built the ship before they realised it was a failure,” Francis offered. “It might have looked good on paper …?”

It hadn’t, or at least it shouldn’t. That was part of the point. Admiral Blackthrone knew there’d been a few starship designs that had looked good on paper, if not in the real world, and their problems had only become apparent when the navy had produced a working model … but such incidents were few and far between. Any shipbuilder would run endless computer models first, in hopes of catching such problems without making a major investment, and it was unlikely the problems had been missed. They were tested extensively beforehand, by naval officers who knew the dangers of wasting credits when there were so many other demands on the navy’s resources.

“It makes no sense,” Admiral Blackthrone said, tiredly. “Unless they really do have something nasty up their sleeve.”

He sighed, inwardly. There was no point in bemoaning his position. All he could do was bide his time, await reinforcements, and …

A thought struck him. It was a risk, true, but one worth taking. If it paid off, great; if it failed, it would be no great loss.

And he knew just who should be placed in charge of making it happen.

Chapter One

All grey. Everywhere.

Lieutenant-Commander Leo Morningstar sucked in his breath as he stared down at the landscape far below. Leavenworth had been a failure from day one of the terraforming program. The biological package that had been supposed to turn the planet into a paradise found itself nearly defeated by the planet’s indigenous ecology, and the terraforming corporation, finally realising they had a disaster on their hands, evacuated what remained of the settlers, discarding any claim to the planet. Daybreak had taken over, renamed the world Leavenworth, and turned it into a penal colony. The criminals – and their families, if they wished to accompany the convicts to their final destination – were given enough supplies to tame a patch of the world for themselves, then left to their own devices. Daybreak didn’t care if they built a new life for themselves or starved to death. Either way, the system worked.

He gritted his teeth. The sheer greyness of the landscape was digging into his mind. It resembled a gravel quarry rather than a liveable world, the patches of green amidst the dull colour seemingly the final insult to its unwilling settlers. The sea they’d flown over earlier was the wrong shade too, although – perversely – the introduction of fish and other oceanic life forms had worked surprisingly well. The settlers could live, if they were prepared to spend their lives fishing. It was better than nothing.

Yeah, he told himself. And it took forever to get permission to come here.

His heart sank. It had taken nearly a month of arguing, pleading, and even outright begging – combined with a threat to go to the media – to convince his superiors to let him keep the deal he’d made with Jacob Abraham, the rebel guard who’d helped them escape. Leo had promised to free his family from a penal world, and he intended to keep his word, even if it cost him his career. He’d had to argue that failing to keep his word would be disastrous, if – when – the news leaked out. A Daybreaker was supposed to keep his word, even if he bled, or else no one would ever trust him again. It was a matter of honour. And yet, it had still been difficult to get the go-ahead. He’d been planning ways to do it without permission before he’d finally been given the authority to proceed.

“We’re coming towards the settlement now,” Flower said. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Leo glanced at her. “It’s a matter of honour,” he said, firmly. “I gave my word.”

He winced, inwardly. Commandant Van Martin had said the same thing, when they’d visited the transit station orbiting the half-tamed world. He’d pointed out the risks of being attacked, of losing the shuttle and being stranded; he’d taken a certain gleeful pleasure in noting that, if the shuttle were captured, the orbital defences would blow it away before she got into orbit … and that if Leo and Flower were left on the surface, no one would come looking for them. Leo suspected the bastard was quite right. His superiors saw him as both a hero and an embarrassment, and they wouldn’t be too concerned if he wound up stranded on a penal world. They’d say it was exactly what he deserved.

The thought mocked him as the settlement came into view, a grey stone town resting by the side of an eerie greyish ocean. The population couldn’t be more than a thousand at most … he swallowed, hard, as it struck him just how hard his self-imposed task was likely to be. Just because it was the closest settlement to the orbital drop didn’t mean that poor Jacob Abraham’s family had found shelter there. They could have been told to fuck off, or simply murdered, by the settlers. Or worse. The orbiting station hadn’t been able to tell him anything about the local political structure. The town could be anything from a democracy to a dictatorship. There was just no way to tell.

Lazy bastards should have been keeping a closer eye on the town, he mused, although he knew it was unfair. No one on Leavenworth was expected to leave the world. Ever. Their ultimate fate was of no concern to the government that had exiled them. We could be walking into anything down here.

He brought the shuttle to a hover, letting it be seen. The locals must have heard them coming … he wondered, suddenly, just what they’d thought when they’d heard the sound. Did they hope for rescue, as unlikely as it seemed, or did they fear they’d be displaced from Leavenworth too? It wasn’t impossible. The social psychologists swore blind that the planet’s society would normalise over a few hundred years, allowing the descendents of the original settlers to rejoin the galactic community without trouble, but Leo had his doubts. It wouldn’t be easy for anyone. But that was a problem for his descendents.

“Here goes nothing,” Flower said.

Leo nodded, then keyed his console. “ATTENTION,” he said, the loudspeaker booming his words over the settlement. It hadn’t been easy to work out how to proceed. There were too many bad eggs in the colony, too many exiles who couldn’t be trusted to cooperate no matter what he promised them. Some penal colonists had murdered the really bad cases from the moment they were dropped, he hoped; others hadn’t realised what sort of monsters were in their midst until it was too late. All it would take was one lunatic in the wrong place at the wrong time to cause utter disaster. “THIS IS LEO MORNINGSTAR, DAYBREAK NAVY.”

He paused. The moment he told the settlers who he’d come for, the really bad apples would have a chance to try to take advantage. If that happened … Leo gritted his teeth. The commandant had made his position clear. If someone tried to take Jacob Abraham’s family hostage to demand his own freedom, or worse, Leo was not allowed to make any sort of concessions at all. Even if the bastard was holding a knife to a child’s throat …

“WE HAVE COME FOR THE FAMILY OF JACOB ABRAHAM,” Leo continued. The dice were flying now. “IF THEY ARE HANDED OVER TO US NOW, WE WILL SUPPLY THE SETTLEMENT WITH ONE YEAR’S WORTH OF SURVIVAL RATIONS. IF YOU MAKE ANY ATTEMPT TO DECEIVE US, OR TO USE THEM AGAINST US, WE WILL WITHDRAW AND LEAVE YOU TO YOUR FATE.”

He turned off the microphone and steered the shuttle towards a clear patch of ground, close enough to the settlement for the locals to reach them and far away enough – he hoped – to make sneaking up and attacking them difficult. The entire settlement would have heard his little speech, he knew, which meant … the family should have heard it too. If they were even here … he’d made sure to collect a DNA sample from Jacob Abraham’s corpse, to test against his relatives when they arrived, but there was just no way to be certain they were here. They could have died a long time ago, their bodies lost without trace.

I have to keep my word, he told himself, firmly. Or at least make a good faith attempt to try.

Sweat prickled down his back. Time was ticking away … how long would it take, he asked himself, to get the family to the shuttle? The records suggested there were at least nine of them … no one had bothered to keep very good records of people sentenced to life on a penal colony, assuming there was no reason Daybreak would ever have to worry about them again … that, Leo reflected, was something that would have to be changed in light of recent events. He’d busted a group of prisoners out for the rebels, proving it was possible …

His lips twitched. The commandant hadn’t been too pleased about that either.

“We’ve got motion.” Flower’s voice was calm, for someone who knew she was dangerously exposed. “A small crowd, marching right towards us.”

“Noted,” Leo said. “Take the helm. Any sign of trouble, hit them with the sleepy gas.”

“Got it.”

Leo stood and reached for his helmet. The survival suit was nowhere near as tough as a military-grade heavy armoured combat suit, but there shouldn’t be anything on the planet capable of punching through the outer layer. He reminded himself not to take anything for granted. The penal service was supposed to make certain the prisoners only took tools from the approved list, but it was far from impossible someone had accepted a bribe in exchange for making sure a prisoner was given modern firearms or power tools. As long as they were careful, no one would notice – or care.

He clicked the helmet into place, then headed for the airlock. The shuttle should be fairly secure – he doubted hand-powered tools could damage her hull – but he still felt nervous as he stepped outside. The helmet HUD came to life, informing him that local temperature was surprisingly low, despite the bright sunlight, and that there were strange contaminants in the air. Nothing really dangerous, according to the files, just part of an ecology that had no intention of losing its war of survival against the human intruders. The air would be safe, but he kept his helmet on anyway. If the settlers took him hostage …

The commandant will probably be glad to blow me away in order to save me, Leo thought. It was odd how opposed the man had been to Leo’s mission, enough to make him wonder if the man had more reasons to be annoyed than the obvious. Leo had been raised to believe that all Daybreak officials were of unquestionable integrity, and corruption was a vice of lesser cultures, but experience had taught him that even Daybreakers could be brought low by their own weaknesses. What does the man have to hide?

He put the thought aside for later contemplation as the crowd came into view. He’d expected a mob of ravening monsters, people who’d committed terrifying crimes, but instead the crowd looked surprisingly … ordinary. Men and women, little boys and girls, wearing simple outfits that looked to have been passed down time and time again. The settlers had been taught how to sew their own clothes, he’d been assured, but it looked as if they’d never quite managed to do it properly. They looked ragged, as if they were castaways stranded on a planet in the middle of nowhere … which they technically were, if one looked at it the right way. He caught sight of a young girl, a few years younger than him, and shuddered inwardly. She looked young and yet she walked like an older woman, her belly bulging with child.

She volunteered to be here, Leo told himself. It was true – there was never any compulsion for a relative to follow a convict to their penal world – and yet it didn’t help. It was an aspect of Daybreak he had known existed, intellectually, without ever quite understanding what it meant for the prisoners and their families. Had the poor girl come here without knowing what it would be like? Or had she been pressured into joining the exiles? Or … it didn’t matter. There was nothing he could do about it. She has to remain here …

The crowd moved towards him, then slowed. Another middle-aged woman came forward.

“Jacob was my brother,” she said, her voice faint. Either there was a big age difference between them or the planet had aged her … or she was lying. “If you are here for me …”

“This is bullshit,” another voice barked. “Why them and not me?”

Leo glanced at the speaker, a man who looked to be in his early thirties. Old enough to be considered responsible for himself, by a very long way. Either he was one of the exiles or he’d chosen to go with them … Leo shook his head. The odds were good the wretched man wasn’t on the list. Whatever he'd done, he’d have to remain on the surface too. It was out of Leo’s hands.

“You will be tested,” Leo said. Flower had already partitioned the shuttle. The rescued prisoners wouldn’t have a chance to seize control, if they were foolish enough to try. They’d been through hell. Their behaviour couldn’t be predicted. “If your genetics match, you’ll be taken onboard the shuttle …”

The woman shuffled forward. Leo pressed the blood scanner against her bare arm and breathed a sigh of relief when it matched. The crowd howled in outrage as she continued through the airlock and onto the shuttle, pressing forward against Leo. He tested the shouting man and allowed himself a moment of relief when it didn’t match … the man aimed a punch at Leo’s helmet and then stopped himself, all too aware that punching the helmet would probably break his fingers on a world with no proper medical care. Leo watched him go, then turned to the next person. Five more were found quickly and ordered onto the shuttle, the rest turned away. Some muttered angrily, others cried. Leo found it hard to look at them. They’d had their hopes raised and then ruthlessly dashed.

“Take me with you,” a young woman pleaded. She was so skinny it was hard to guess her age. Leo would have thought her a child if she hadn’t been so tall. “I’ll do anything …”

“I’ll do more,” another girl said. “I will …”

Leo felt his heart break. Neither of the girls – or any of the others, from the one who tore her shirt open to the one who knelt at his feet – was a match. He couldn’t take them and yet … god, he wanted to. They didn’t deserve to waste away on a penal world, because their parents or husbands or whoever had committed a ghastly crime. He wanted to find a way to save them, but nothing came to mind. There were simply no options for getting them offworld.

“My husband is here too,” another girl said. She was a match – and holding hands with a man who wasn’t. “Can I bring him? Please!”

“It depends,” Leo said. The husband looked decent enough, if thin, but criminals rarely walked around with CRIMINAL tattooed on their foreheads. He looked the man in the eye and gritted his teeth. “What did you do? Bear in mind, I will check against the records, and if you lie I’ll throw you unto space.”

“I was an engineer,” the man said. He sounded honest. Leo reminded himself not to take it for granted. “They caught me swapping out components to sell on the black market and … well, I wound up here.”

“I see.” Leo supposed it made sense. “Get on the shuttle. And if you’re lying …”

A rock struck his helmet, distracting him. A handful of men were holding children, hands wrapped around their throats. Leo gritted his teeth as more rocks fell around him, rattling off the shuttle and tumbling to the ground. The newcomers looked angry. And desperate. He ground his teeth in sheer bloody frustration. The kids were innocent. They shouldn’t be anywhere near the planet at all.

“Take us too,” the leader growled. “Or the kids will be killed …”

Leo winced. And then what? What in the name of God Almighty did they expect to achieve? The commandant would never let them board the starship to parts unknown, and the shuttle had no jump drive … the best they could hope for was being picked up by the marines and returned to the surface. If they flew into interplanetary space, they’d run out of life support and suffocate …

He keyed his throatmike. “Use the sleepy gas.”

Flower hit the switch. The sleepy gas was invisible and odourless, but the hiss was all too audible. Leo darted forward, knocking an armoured fist into the head of one kidnapper and putting another down with extreme force. The rest toppled to the ground, losing their grip on the kids. Leo sucked in his breath, then started to pick the kids up. They were so small.

“I’m bringing them with us,” he said, firmly. “They don’t deserve to remain here.”

“Is that a good idea?” Flower sounded more thoughtful than concerned. “You have no idea where their parents are …?”

“They don’t deserve to remain here,” Leo repeated. There were adoption programs for children orphaned by pirate attacks, he knew, and there was no reason they couldn’t be used for children from penal colonies. It was quite possible their parents were already dead. The would-be hijackers wouldn’t have been able to take them without a fight. “What’ll happen if they stay?”

He loaded the children onto the shuttle, hoping and praying he was doing the right thing, then unloaded the supplies he’d promised. Thirteen relatives … it was enough to keep his word. He’d have to interrogate the former prisoners, see if he could determine what had happened to the rest of them … if they’d survived, perhaps they could be recovered too. Or perhaps he’d pushed his luck to the breaking point.

“Take us back to orbit,” he ordered, once the landing site was clear. “And hope we got them all.”

“Yes,” Flower agreed. The shuttle shivered as she launched it into orbit. “They won’t give you a second chance. If there wasn’t a war on, they would never have agreed to let you come here.”

“If there wasn’t a war on, I would never have given my word in the first place,” Leo said, quietly. Waterhen was gone, her crew scattered to the four winds … he wondered, numbly, if his superiors knew what they intended to do with him. He was both a hero and an embarrassment. “And now there is …”

He shook his head. He’d find out soon enough. Until then …

Wait and see, he told himself. You have other problems right now.

Chapter Two

“What the hell were you thinking?”

Commandant Van Martin was a tall, beefy man, whose uniform struck Leo as poorly tailored even though it was clearly a professional job. It was hard to escape the impression Van Martin had poured himself into the uniform, rather than putting it on properly; it managed to suggest the older man bulged in all the wrong places, something that suggested a certain lack of concern for appearances. Daybreakers generally scorned any sort of cosmetic surgery, regarding it as a sign of moral weakness, but Leo couldn’t help thinking Van Martin would benefit from some kind of procedure to improve his appearance. It made him look incompetent – or worse – and threatened to bring the entire system into disrepute.

He’s in charge here, Leo reminded himself. The orbiting transit station and the cluster of automated weapons platforms protecting the penal colony were Van Martin’s territory. The man had clearly wasted no time decorating his office in a manner that reminded Leo of Captain Reginald, although lacking the sheer perversity of some of Reginald’s works of art. You have to at least pretend to treat him with respect.

“You took a bunch of prisoners from the surface, including children,” Van Martin snapped. “Children! What the hell were you thinking? You didn’t even have clearance to get half of these fucking prisoners into space! They were condemned and sentenced to life on the world below and you …”

Leo kept himself calm with an effort, even as he spoke over the older man. “The adults who weren’t on the list are related to the ones who were, so I made the decision to give them a second chance too,” he said, carefully. He’d checked the prisoners against the records and they were all relatively minor criminals, rather than the monsters they could easily have been. “The children were born on the planet, sir, and there’s no reason they should be forced to grow up there.”

“Except the whole point of the penal colony system is to have the planet grow into a worthwhile settlement in its own right,” Van Martin pointed out. “Those kids were meant to grow up below, to farm the land and fish the sea and marry and produce kids of their own and” – he shook his head – “did you even bother to get permission from their parents to take them?”

“Some begged us to take their kids,” Leo said. He winced. “And who can blame them?”

“They’re criminals,” Van Martin snapped. “Or they chose to follow their criminal relatives to the penal colony. They don’t get to change their minds!”

“The kids never had any choice in the matter,” Leo reminded him. “They were born on the penal colony. What sort of life could they expect if they were left to grow up” – he jabbed a finger at the deck – “down there?”

Van Martin purpled. “I don’t care, and nor should you. Their parents were exiled for a reason and you …”

He caught himself. “I will be filing official protests with the penal service, who will decide what – if anything – to do about the extra prisoners you decided to save. Until then, they are your sole responsibility. If they cause any trouble, they will be loaded into a pod and shot back down to the surface and you, Commander, will be in deep shit. I trust I make myself clear?”

Leo straightened. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Van Martin sat back in his seat and glowered at the terminal. “Your orders have arrived. You and your troupe are to be loaded onto a military transport and dispatched to Yangtze as soon as possible, which will be later this evening. The transport crew will take care of you” – he managed to make it sound like a threat – “until you reach Yangtze. If Admiral Blackthorn wants to send them right back here … well, that’s his decision to make.”

“Blackthrone,” Leo said, mildly.

“What?”

“It’s Blackthrone, not Blackthorn,” Leo said. Francis had pointed it out often enough, during the year they’d shared at the academy. “I’m sure he will understand my point of view.”

That was a blatant lie. Admiral Blackthrone had plenty of reasons to dislike Leo even without Francis dripping poison in his ears, and Leo had no doubt Francis was. Leo had saved his life, his ship, and his career, and a man like Francis would sooner die than admit he owed even one of those things to his enemy. The humiliation would unleash a gust of laughter that would blow Francis all the way to an isolated asteroid station, the kind of final posting reserved for officers who screwed up and yet, for one reason or another, couldn’t be dismissed from the navy without setting off a political catfight. Francis’s uncle was a sharper customer, Leo knew, but he couldn’t be expected to side against his nephew without a very good reason. And losing a starship to rebels clearly wasn’t good enough.

“Noted.” Van Martin glowered. Leo guessed he thought Admiral Blackthrone was Leo’s patron. “The matter will remain in his hands.”

He nodded to the hatch. “Dismissed, Commander. And remember what I said.”

Leo saluted, then turned and marched out of the compartment. He could feel the glare burning a hole in his back until the hatch hissed closed behind him, a reminder the matter was not quite over. He’d kept his word and yet … he grimaced, inwardly, as he passed through the second hatch and out into the passageway. There were no visible decorations, not even directions … unsurprising, he supposed, on a station that handled desperate prisoners who had literally nothing to lose. It would be difficult for the prisoners to rebel against their captors, when they were unarmed and wearing nothing beyond penal uniforms – they certainly weren’t allowed any kind of protection – but it only had to happen once. Leo had escaped from rebel custody. There was no inherent reason why it couldn’t happen here.

The guards are quite sloppy, Leo thought. They seemed as if they were more interested in looking tough than being tough. Leo knew the type very well. Probably frustrated patrolmen, unable to get into the police … let alone the army or the marine corps; prone, like so many others, to taking their anger out on helpless victims. If they get overwhelmed at the worst possible time …

The air grew colder as he made his way down to the lower levels, passing through a pair of heavy airlocks that should – if everything went right – slam closed in the event of a prisoner riot, trapping them in the compartment until sleepy gas knocked them out or the guards had a chance to get organised, armoured, and start breaking heads. A handful of cameras were clearly visible in the upper bulkheads – the designers had made no attempt to hide them, no attempt to pretend the prisoners were not under constant supervision – and there were probably others hidden in the metalwork, sensors so small they couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. Leo thought it was overkill, but the guards would be glad to have the monitors if they really did lose control of the scene. They’d be able to watch the prisoners and plan their counterattack.

Flower looked up as he stepped into the antechamber. “How did it go?”

“About as well as I expected,” Leo said. He’d prepared for a longer argument. “We’re taking all the prisoners to Yangtze.”

“Charming,” Flower said. “And then …?”

“Good question.” Leo had given the matter some thought. “They’ll be going to one of the other colonies in the sector, I suspect. They won’t be able to cause any trouble there.”

Flower shot him a mischievous look. “You mean, they won’t be able to cause any trouble for Daybreak.”

Leo supposed she had a point. The stage-one colony worlds were always desperate for new settlers, and it wasn’t uncommon for minor criminals to be offered the chance to work their asses off – in exchange for land of their own – rather than be shipped to a penal world. The only reason it wasn’t more common was because sending too many criminals to a lightly-settled world was asking for trouble, once a critical mass of criminals arrived. There were horror stories about criminal gangs taking over entire worlds – more accurately, the settlements – and having to be crushed by the navy.

“Yeah,” he said, finally. If the rescued convicts went to a stage-one world, they’d never trouble him again. And they’d have a chance to build a new life for themselves. The kids would be adopted, and hopefully they’d forget their birth parents. Life on a stage-one world would be hard, he reminded himself, but compared to a penal colony it was utter paradise. “They’ll have their second chance.”

He felt a stab of guilt. Jacob Abraham had died helping Leo and his crew to escape. Leo had hoped to reunite him with his family and … no, that would never happen. All he could do was ensure he kept his word and hope for the best …

“How are they?”

Flower raised her eyebrows at the sudden change in subject, but answered the question. “It’s a mixed bag,” she said. “Four of the women have … ah, serious medical issues caused by rape or pregnancy under primitive conditions. One of the little girls also has such issues” – her eyes went very hard for a long, cold moment – “as do two of the boys. The rest have a number of smaller issues, ranging from injuries that weren’t tended properly to malnutrition. They’ve already prescribed a course of nutrients to help them recover.”

She paused. “I had to force the bastards to give them any medicine.”

Leo grimaced. “I hope you gave them hell.”

“I did,” Flower said. “But the medical staff here are not worthy of the title.”

“Shit.” Leo wasn’t too surprised. The penal service got the dregs of the system, from the commanding officer to the guards and medical staff. He wouldn’t be too surprised to discover the doctors were prisoners themselves, offered a chance to work for their captors rather than being dropped on the planet below. “How big a fuss did they make?”

“A big one.” Flower smiled, although there was no humour in the expression. “I copied the records. It’ll be interesting to see if their complaints hold up when our superiors see what the prisoners endured. And the innocent kids.”

“We’ll see.” Leo didn’t want to think about it. He had little sympathy for grown adults who committed serious crimes, or chose to accompany their criminal relatives, but the children were innocent. They should never have been allowed to remain on such a world. “Do we have a final list?”

“Here.” Flower passed him a datapad. “Mostly Abraham’s relatives. The kids are the only real exceptions, Leo, and … well, most of them are better off without their relatives. One little girl was fathered by a paedophile and … she’s the one showing signs of rape.”

Leo felt sick. He’d seen horror before, but raping children … the man should have been executed, not dropped on a penal world. He would happily have volunteered to pull the trigger himself, if asked, or tossed the bastard out the nearest airlock. The horror was all the worse for knowing that most sex criminals rarely survived their first week on a penal world. This one had survived long enough to sire a child, then rape her … his fingers itched, wanting to wrap themselves around the man’s neck and squeeze … Leo hoped, with a surge of vindictive fury, that the man was already dead. It was a better fate than he deserved.

“Take care of her,” he said, bitterly. “Are the rest of the prisoners in the transit lounge?”

“Yes.” Flower met his eyes. “Leo, be careful. They have little reason to love you.”

I got them out of hell, Leo thought, a flicker of anger running through him. They owe me …

He cut that thought off, sharply. The former prisoners had gone through hell. Flower was quite right. They might be grateful that they’d been saved from a hellhole, yet … he hadn’t done it for them so much as he’d done it to keep his word. They’d suffered so much it was hard to blame them for hating Daybreak, and him as a representative of Daybreak, even though he wanted their gratitude. He supposed he wouldn’t be too pleased either, if the boot happened to be on the other foot. Francis had done him a favour, he supposed, by kicking him off Waterhen midway through the cruise, but it hadn’t felt that way at the time.

And I got back into command, just in time to lose the ship, Leo reminded himself, bitterly. Waterhen had been old and outdated, no matter how many modern components were crammed into her hull, but she’d been his. His first command, his first true love … gone now, her hull little more than free-floating atoms orbiting a dull red star. He’d killed her. There had been no choice – he’d told himself so, again and again – but he still felt guilty. What’ll happen to me now?

He put the thought aside as he stepped into the transit lounge, a fancy name for what was little more than a glorified prison. Forty-seven adults and twelve children waited for him, all wearing loose shackles that kept them from moving in a hurry … Leo grimaced as he saw a preteen boy wearing shackles of his own. That was just cruel. There was no way the prisoners could get out of the lounge, let alone take control of the orbital station. It served no purpose beyond reminding the prisoners that they were completely helpless, completely at the mercy of the guards. The fact they could move, as long as they moved slowly and carefully, was just rubbing salt into the wound.

A rustle ran through the chamber as they saw him. Leo fought to keep his face blank. Some looked hostile, others looked dead inside … one young woman tried to shoot him a winning smile, but there was something dull and broken about it. Leo knew he was a horndog, and that it had been months since he’d lain with a woman, but he couldn’t feel any desire for the poor woman in front of him. She was coming on to him because she thought it was the only way to protect herself, not out of any desire for him personally.

Leo spoke with quiet intensity. “I’m Commander Leo Morningstar, Daybreak Navy,” he said. He had no idea if the former prisoners had heard of him, before they were transported to the penal colony, and it hardly mattered if they had. “To sum up a long story, Jacob Abraham saved my life and the lives of others, at the cost of his own. I promised I would retrieve you from the penal world in recompense, and I have kept my word.”

He paused, wondering what they were thinking. Did they think Jacob a traitor? Or were they so grateful to be rescued that they were prepared to look past his treason? Or were they too broken to care? Leo had scanned the files. The former prisoners could have gone far, if they’d worked within the system, but instead they’d chosen to rebel. Or had the misfortune to be related to people who’d rebelled …

“We will be transporting you to Yangtze shortly, where you will receive proper medical care and whatever other treatments you need,” Leo continued. “At that point, you will probably be assigned to a colony world and treated like any other voluntary settler. Your pardons – which you have already been given – are conditional on you causing no further trouble. Should you give us any reason to regret pardoning you, you will either be dealt with by the colonial authorities or returned to the penal colony. This is your second chance. There will not be a third.”

He felt oddly conflicted at the lack of argument. He’d expected resistance, disagreement … instead, there was nothing. Were they too scared to argue? Or were they all too aware that a stage-one colony world would be infinitely better than a penal colony? Or … he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. If Jacob had survived … Leo shook his head, dismissing the thought. There was no point in wondering about what might have happened, if things had been different. He had to take the universe as it was …

“You’ll be moved to the transport shortly. Don’t cause the crew any trouble and I should be able to convince them to remove the shackles,” Leo said. “If you do … don’t. Just don’t.”

He paused. “For what it’s worth, I will do everything in my power to ensure you have the best possible chance for earning your place on your new world,” he added, after a moment. “If you make use of it, you should go far.”

But it won’t be enough, he thought, as he turned and left the chamber. They’ll bear the scars for the rest of their lives.

He shuddered, inwardly. He’d sent pirates to penal colonies and he didn’t feel sorry for them … but everyone else? The ones who had chosen to accompany their relatives? How much blame did he bear for a system that was not only far from perfect, but often purposefully cruel? It was easier, so much easier, not to ask those questions when he didn’t have to look on the results with his own two eyes. Daybreak was right to do everything in its power to prevent a major interstellar war and yet, did the ends justify the means?

In truth, Leo was no longer sure.

And we got the war anyway, Leo reminded himself. He’d been out of the loop for the last few weeks – the penal colonies were always behind the times – but he’d seen the first moves of the rebel campaign. They were hardly going to stop after taking a handful of worlds. They were committed now. Was it all worth it in the end?

Chapter Three

“There seems to be a hell of a lot more activity here,” Captain Janice Leland noted, as Haddock glided towards Yangtze. “Anyone would think there was a war on.”

Leo scowled. The trip had taken two weeks, but it felt like two years. He’d had to argue with the naval crew to convince them to cut the former prisoners some slack, then spend time with the prisoners to bring them up to speed on the modern galaxy and – as they regained a little of their confidence – remind them that they really didn’t have many choices besides heading to a stage-one colony and dropping out of history. There were some precedents for criminals winning full pardons through service to the state, but he doubted many – if any – of his flock of prisoners could do anything the state would consider worthwhile. He was in no mood for the captain’s idea of humour. The sooner the trip was over, the better.

“There is,” he reminded her. “And we have to be ready.”

He leaned forward, studying the holographic display. Haddock’s sensors were decades out of date, at least, but they had no trouble tracking the starships, military installations and commercial facilities that seemed to have sprung out of nowhere, turning a once-minor planet into a thriving economic power. The investment had started before Leo’s arrival in the sector, true, but he’d done everything in his power to encourage it, and now the locals were reaping the rewards. It looked as though interplanetary activity had doubled or tripled in the last few months, with new industrial stations amongst the asteroids and cloudscoops orbiting the gas giants. Given time, Yangtze would become the centre of the sector’s economy, binding the rest of the colonies to its banner … and to Daybreak. A number of other worlds were already trying to develop themselves too … good. The more the merrier …

Unless the war ends it all, he thought. Or puts the industry into enemy hands instead.

It wasn’t a pleasant thought. The rebels had come very close to seizing Yangtze during his first posting to the sector, their plan going undetected until the very last moment. He wasn’t fool enough to believe there were no rebels left on Yangtze, or that Daybreak’s conduct in the months following the incident hadn’t radicalised countless new rebels, and he would be astonished if there wasn’t a brewing conspiracy right under Admiral Blackthrone’s nose. An uprising at the right time would be utterly disastrous, if it wasn’t nipped in the bud right away. The battlecruiser hovering over the planet, surrounded by enough warships to trash most of the sector, wasn't invincible. God knew, Francis Blackthrone had proven it was possible for a warship to fall into enemy hands.

His eyes traced out the light codes, noting just how much firepower was orbiting the colony world. Admiral Blackthrone had done well for himself, setting up a logistics system an order of magnitude – perhaps more – larger than the supply chain Leo had had to put together for himself. It was galling to realise that the admiral was both swimming in supplies and yet also dangerously short of everything he needed, from ammunition to spare parts … a civilian, he suspected, wouldn’t realise that the squadron needed far more support than Waterhen. The shuttles, interplanetary ships and worker bees making their way through the high orbitals were crewed by a mixture of naval and civilian crews … how many of the latter could be trusted? Leo didn’t know. The vetting process was supposed to be perfect, but with the sector on the very edge of explored space, it wasn’t easy to vet anyone. And that meant …

“Signal from the surface, Commander,” Captain Leland said. “You’re to get your prisoners down as quickly as possible, then await further orders.”

“Hurry up and wait, in other words,” Leo said. There might be orders waiting for him in his inbox, when he got down to the surface. The navy wouldn’t let him fly free for much longer … he wondered, idly, if Admiral Blackthrone had found him another suicide mission. “Is there space in a transit barracks?”

“I guess so,” Captain Leland said. “There always is.”

“Not always true,” Leo said, tiredly. Yangtze was drawing in immigrants from all over the galaxy, settlers hoping to get in on the ground floor of what was likely to be yet another colonial success story. The planetary authorities did try to move newcomers on as quickly as possible, but it wasn’t easy. “Can you check while I prepare the shuttle for transit?”

“Of course,” Captain Leland said. “You want to get a drink down there?”

“Sure,” Leo said. They were in different branches of the service. It wasn’t a problem. “What time …”

“Get one for yourself then,” Captain Leland said. “Good luck.”

Leo swallowed several nasty remarks as he turned and made his way through the hatch and down to the shuttle. Captain Leland’s sense of humour had been grating right from the start and now … he shook his head as he passed through a pair of airlocks, the second guarded by a nervous-looking shore patrolman carrying a shockrod in one hand and a nervejam in the other. Leo tried not to roll his eyes at the young man. Right now, he was in more danger from himself than the former prisoners. And the prisoners themselves were no threat.

The airlock thudded closed behind him. Leo did roll his eyes then. The hatch was tough enough to stand off plasma fire. It needed specialised cutters to burn a hole in the material. The prisoners couldn’t hope to take it down with their bare hands, even if they hammered on the metal for years. But then, people on penal colonies had a bad reputation. Captain Leland and her crew weren’t entirely wrong to be paranoid. They were just taking it to excess.

Leo clambered into the shuttle, brought the flight computer online and ran a quick diagnostic. The shuttle hadn’t been touched since they’d departed Leavenworth, but he’d been taught never to take anything for granted. His instructors scolded anyone who did … and now, as a naval officer, the consequences could easily be worse than being torn to pieces, hopefully metaphorically, by senior officers. The check revealed no reason to be concerned and yet … something was nagging at the back of his mind. Something wasn’t quite right, but what?

He keyed his wristcom. “Flower, can you bring the prisoners to the shuttle? I’ll deal with the stasis pods.”

“On it,” Flower said. “No shackles?”

“No.” Leo doubted there was any point. The shuttle wasn’t a regular transport. Her onboard sensors, isolated from the control systems, would livestream everything to the system’s defenders. If the prisoners did try something stupid, like trying to take control of the craft, the orbital defences would blow the shuttle to atoms. “I think we can trust them not to be stupid.”

He locked the flight controls, just in case, and made his way down to the hold. The four stasis pods were waiting, completely isolated from the rest of the transport’s systems. Leo grimaced as he reached for the first pod, activating the antigravity lifter. It looked very much like a coffin, the blue light of the stasis field casting an eerie shade over the young girl within. She looked nothing like Leo’s sister and yet, he couldn’t help feeling as though the two girls were practically identical. They were children … the girl in front of him hadn’t deserved her treatment, nor had she deserved the infection that had nearly killed her. She’d been put in stasis to save her life.

And the assholes were reluctant to treat her, Leo thought, as he steered the stasis pods back to the shuttle. Bastards.

“That’s everyone,” Flower told him. “I counted twice, just to be sure.”

“Yeah.” Leo locked the pods in place, then did a headcount of his own. “I dread to imagine what’ll happen if someone stayed behind.”

He snorted, then led the way into the cockpit and locked the hatch behind them. “No trouble?”

“No trouble,” Flower confirmed. “I don’t think they’ll cause any problems on their new home.”

Leo relaxed slightly as he brought the drives online and requested permission to depart. Flower was a good judge of character, better than him, and if she thought there was no reason to be worried … he would trust her judgement. The whole affair was far from ideal, but it was nearly over … he glanced at her, wondering why she’d even volunteered to accompany him. He wasn’t complaining, far from it, but her duty to him had always been a little vague – she’d been assigned to Waterhen under dubious pretences by Captain Reginald, who hadn’t made any real use of her skills – and now that Waterhen was gone, she should have been reassigned with the rest of the crew. Hell, Leo himself should have been reassigned. He’d been owed some leave, true, but not as much as he’d been allowed to take.

The bureaucracy probably didn’t catch up in time, he mused. Doing anything on an interstellar scale was crude at best, from shipping schedules to personnel reassignments. Daybreak had more practice than most at compensating for such headaches, and naval officers still found themselves battling with all sorts of problems … he’d had to deal with the fallout of a relationship between a pair of officers after one had been promoted to equal rank with the other, unaware that their former superior’s promotion was already on the way. For all I know, I’ve been ordered all the way back to Daybreak.

His console chimed. They were good to go.

The thought made him smile as he disconnected the shuttle from the airlock, then steered her towards the blue-green world below. His skin itched as they passed a handful of orbital weapons platforms, his imagination suggesting their weapons were turning to track the shuttle … ready to open fire without warning if they thought something was wrong. There were a few hundred kilometres between the shuttle and the nearest platform, an immense distance by human standards yet practically point-blank range as far as modern weapons were concerned. He would be lucky to get even a flicker of warning if they opened fire, far too little to get out of the danger zone before it was too late. The shuttle was sluggish for a reason. No one wanted to take chances with prisoner transports.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Leo flushed. He should be used to Flower’s perceptiveness by now. She’d been trained in skills that were disturbingly close to mind-reading, taught how to read people who wore their hearts on their sleeves or pretended to do so, using their false emotions as a mask to hide their real thoughts and feelings. Reginald really had been a fool. He hadn’t been interested in her body – even in a dowdy uniform designed to hide her figure, Flower was a stunning beauty – and even less interested in her skills. One might as well buy the latest datacore and use it for little more than counting.

“I meant to ask,” Leo said. “Why did you stay with me?”

Flower shrugged. “There are worse people to stay with.”

“Really?” Leo had to smile. “You mean I’ll have to give back my Asshole of Assholes Award?”

“The judges were bribed,” Flower teased. “And really, is it my fault someone put me on the naval rolls?”

“Probably,” Leo said. Reginald might have ordered it, but Flower would have organised it. “He doesn’t want you back?”

“Guess not.” Flower shrugged, again. “No one’s said anything about the rest of my contract either.”

Leo felt cold. He wasn’t privy to the details of the agreement between Flower, her trainers and Reginald, but he did know she’d traded her training for service. Had Reginald bought out her contract, which meant she had to work for him until he was repaid, or had he been too lazy to bother? If so, what obligations did she have? He didn’t know. He wasn’t certain she knew either.

“If they do …”

He broke off, unsure how to finish. He had some prize money from the ships he’d captured, although even the rebel arsenal ship hadn’t been worth that much … not compared to a full-fledged warship. The pirate ships he’d taken on his first cruise had either been pressed into service or scrapped … even the former, he’d noted ruefully, hadn’t been worth much of anything. It would have been cheaper to build new ships from scratch, if he’d had the facilities. 

And her contract won’t come cheap, Leo told himself. The sheer breadth of her training was awe-inspiring. Flower was mistress of a dozen different roles, each one complex … hell, she’d been able to pass for a naval officer without going through the academy. Slavery was illegal, with good reason, but if she’d signed a contract … it was legal for her to be forced to work to pay off the debt. It might be impossible to buy her free if whoever owns her wants her back.

“If they do, tell me,” Leo said. “And we’ll do what we can.”

“I will,” Flower assured him. “Don’t worry about it.”

She grinned. “And besides, with you I’m never bored.”

Leo had to laugh. “I can babble about the leather industry on New Oslo if you like,” he said, recalling a teacher who had considered the leather industry to be incredibly interesting for reasons that escaped him. The class had considered it incredibly boring, compared to studying military history or science. “I’m sure you’d change your mind.”

The shuttle rocked, slightly, as she slipped into the atmosphere. Leo steered her down, careful not to do anything that might worry the orbital defences. The ground-based defences were stronger than he recalled too, a handful of Planetary Defence Centres being put together at terrifying speed … he felt a flicker of vindictive glee as he noted the PDC on top of a nearby hill. Gayle had taken him there once, when he’d been young and innocent and blind to the fact she’d been setting him up for the kill. They’d made love under the stars, in a place she’d loved; now, the campsite was gone, overshadowed by a massive military fortification. He wished, savagely, that she could return long enough to see what had happened …

If she’s still alive, he mused. Waterhen had taken the rebel base with her … Gayle might – might – have died in the blast. He couldn’t bring himself to believe it. Gayle had cheated death before, and there was no reason she couldn’t do it again. Their relationship was far from over. One day, we’ll see each other again.

He dropped the shuttle down neatly, landing at the edge of the spaceport. The marines were already waiting to shepherd the former prisoners to the transit barracks, where they’d stay while they received medical treatment and waited for their reassignment to their final destination. Leo made a mental note to ensure they were treated well, perhaps allowed some freedom … maybe even permitted to settle on Yangtze itself. The admiral wouldn’t be too pleased, if anyone asked, but the governor did owe Leo a favour. Perhaps the children could settle. They were innocent of anything beyond being born on the wrong planet …

The hatch opened. The marines came onboard with practiced ease, gently but firmly escorting the former prisoners out of the craft. They’d ordered Leo and Flower to remain in the cockpit; Leo was only too happy to comply, now the mission was finally at an end. He’d kept his word, he’d saved a handful of lives, and … he felt tired, almost depressed. He’d seen something few naval officers saw, the dark side of Daybreak, and it had left him feeling unsure of himself.

“It’s done,” Flower said. “What now?”

“I need a drink.” Leo stood. The spaceport crew would take care of the shuttle. “Coming?”

“Don’t get too drunk,” Flower advised. “You never know what might happen.”

Leo shrugged as they walked through the gatehouse and into the spaceport strip. It had grown in the last few months, as more and more starships and naval personnel were based on Yangtze, until it was little different to the one he remembered on Daybreak itself. The same row of drinking houses, the same collection of shops aimed at spacers with more money than sense, the same line of brothels advertising everything from vanilla sex to activities that hovered along the fine dividing line between legal and illegal. A pair of guardsmen were marching down the street, but Leo knew from experience that they’d turn a blind eye to everything but the most unpleasant outbursts of violence. The strip existed to keep the spacers from spilling out into the surrounding countryside, and no one really cared what they did, as long as it remained confined.

It’s the same everywhere, Leo reminded himself. It was a shame, in a way, that Yangtze was becoming more of a typical world. There aren’t many worlds that have something different …

“There’s less activity than I would have expected,” Flower commented. “Why?”

“The admiral must be keeping everyone busy,” Leo said. A PDC was clearly visible just outside the growing city, ready to defend the population from the rebels. “They have a lot of work to do.”

“Leo!”

Leo blinked, then turned. Francis Blackthrone, of all people, was running towards them, his nicely-tailored dress uniform oddly out of place. His eyes flickered over Flower for a long moment, then came to rest on Leo.

“Francis,” Leo said. They were technically the same rank, although … he wondered, again, just where he stood now Waterhen was gone. A second command so soon was unlikely, to say the least. The best he could hope for was an XO slot. “What can I do for you?”

“My uncle” – Leo winced at Francis’s blatant reminder that Admiral Blackthrone was his uncle – “wants to see you. Now.”

Oh goody, Leo thought.

He schooled his face into a blank mask. “It would be our pleasure,” he said. Francis hadn’t said anything about Flower; he’d bring her along and see if anyone threw her out. “Lead the way.”

Chapter Four

It was something of a relief, as Francis showed Leo and Flower into the planetside war room, that Admiral Blackthrone hadn’t given in to the temptation to make his quarters as luxurious as possible. A handful of comfortable chairs, a pair of holographic projectors, a drinks machine resting against one wall … it could be a great deal worse. But then, Admiral Blackthrone was a fighting officer. He’d prefer to spend as much time on his flagship as possible, rather than pressing the flesh on the planet below. Leo was mildly surprised the admiral was even on the surface. The last time they’d spoken in person, Leo had been summoned to the battlecruiser.

He saluted as the admiral stood to meet them, studying the older man thoughtfully. Admiral Blackthrone had always been handsome, in a way, and he’d been given treatments to slow his aging from birth, but he seemed to have aged several decades over the last few months. It wasn’t so much his appearance as his bearing, a hint of tiredness pervading a man who wanted – needed – to take the offensive and yet had to wait, behind the lines, for the enemy to act. Leo didn’t really blame the admiral, not for that. He wanted to go on the offensive too.

“Commander,” Admiral Blackthrone said. “Please, take a seat.”

Leo frowned inwardly, refusing to relax more than a little. The last time he’d been summoned had been for a mission that seemed difficult, almost suicidal, and the time before that had ended with him being relieved of command and forced to serve under his worst enemy. There was no reason to believe the third significant meeting would be any different, particularly with the loss of Waterhen. The navy always held an inquest when a starship was lost – it was standard procedure in peacetime; the bureaucrats were unlikely to realise it was no longer peacetime – and if someone wanted to fuck up his career, they could easily stretch the process out until it became a punishment in itself. Francis would have been encouraging his uncle to do just that, if Leo was any judge. The wretched pain in the posterior would sooner have died than have Leo save his ass.

He sat, gingerly. Flower sat beside him. Francis hurried over to the drinks machine, poured four mugs of coffee, and handed them round … that was a surprise. Francis was hardly a steward, which meant … either it was a subtle sign he was no longer in his uncle’s favour or the matter Leo had been summoned to discuss was so secret that the admiral’s steward wasn’t allowed anywhere near the compartment. Or the steward was still in orbit … Leo’s lips twitched at the thought. There was no point in breathing in conspiracy theories when the simplest answer was probably the most likely. He took his mug with a nod, then breathed in the aroma. Francis probably wouldn’t have spat in it, but who knew …? The wretched man had gotten away with all kinds of crap in the past.

“The commandant had quite a few things to say about your conduct, Commander,” Admiral Blackthrone said. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I’d need to know what the charges were, sir, before I could respond to them,” Leo said. A failure to articulate the problem was proof there was no problem, not in any real sense. “I acted as I saw fit, in the best traditions of the navy.”

“And took a number of children from a penal colony,” Admiral Blackthrone said. “The commandant was most unhappy.”

Leo felt a flash of anger. “Sir, with all due respect, look at the medical reports and tell me I did the wrong thing.”

The admiral showed no reaction, even though Leo had stepped across a line. “It sets a worrying precedent, Commander, as you know. The point of penal colonies is that the convicts will never be able to menace society again, and now there is a precedent for recovering others from penal worlds.”

“In order to keep my word,” Leo said. “The navy’s word.”

“You have opened an interesting can of worms,” the admiral said. “But right now that’s not our problem.”

He leaned back in his chair. “The Board of Inquiry into the loss of RSS Waterhen completed its deliberations last month. It was agreed that your decisions, while unfortunate, were probably the best ones available to you at the time. Getting back home to report on both the rebel base and Commander Sun Li’s treachery” – his voice soured, just for a second – “took priority. The loss of an outdated starship is a minor price to pay for the warning you brought us.”

Leo winced, inwardly. Sun had been his lover. They’d shared a bunk. They’d shared their experiences. And she’d been a traitor, betraying Daybreak to the rebels for … for what? Leo had no idea how much of the story she’d told him was true, but he didn’t really care. He’d been with her, inside her, and yet she’d set him up for capture, interrogation and certain death. Her actions had been the opening moves in a war that would kill thousands, at best, before it finally came to an end.

“Thank you, sir.” Leo cocked his head. “I was not made aware of the outcome of the inquiry.”

“There was some debate over just what to do with you,” Admiral Blackthrone said. He indicated the holographic star chart. “Tell me, what do you make of our current situation?”

Leo stood and examined the chart, although it was clear from the very first glance that the strategic situation hadn’t changed much in the last few months. A handful of worlds had been invaded and occupied – their red icons surrounded by smaller icons that represented known and suspected rebel deployments, all several days out of date – and several more had suffered uprisings that had overwhelmed local governments and taken the worlds out of Daybreak’s control … for now. There were many more green icons on the display, representing worlds that remained within the interstellar community, but only a dozen were surrounded by icons for naval starships, orbital defences and PDCs. The remainder looked ripe for the plucking, when the rebels chose to reach for them; their local defences were minimal at best, the planetary militias dangerously untrustworthy. Leo was surprised the rebels hadn’t taken them already. It would put more pressure on the admiral to act before he was ready.

He frowned as he studied the handful of stars beyond the Rim. Sanctuary was marked as enemy territory, of course, but the cluster of icons surrounding the dull red star told him the rebel base had been abandoned, everything that couldn’t be stripped out and transported away destroyed before it could fall into Daybreak’s hands. There was no way to locate any other rebel bases without a physical search, or a stroke of dumb luck, and there were no guarantees they’d find anything even if the admiral had the resources to carry out the search in a reasonable time. Leo knew from grim experience just how hard it was to find a pirate base, and the rebels were a great deal smarter. They’d located one base. There was no way to be sure they’d locate another.

“Not great,” he said, finally. On paper, the admiral had far more firepower than any bunch of rebels. In practice, there was no way to use that firepower effectively … unless the rebels did something stupid. Counting on your enemy to do something stupid was poor tactics at best and outright suicide at worst … Leo doubted the rebels would make any blatant errors. “You can drive the rebels back into interstellar space, and retake the worlds they seized, but they can break contact any time they like.”

“It’s worse than that,” Admiral Blackthrone said. “We dare not uncover Yangtze, which limits the amount of firepower we can point at their conquered worlds. Our whole doctrine is based around the three principles of Find, Fix, Strike, Commander, and we have been unable to locate targets worth the risk of uncovering our base of operations. My squadron has grown in power over the last few months, as reinforcements are redeployed out here, but we dare not lose this world. If we do, deploying any fleet out here will become a logistical nightmare.”

Leo nodded. Daybreak’s whole system was based on strategically-located worlds developed to serve as naval bases. Yangtze had been earmarked to become a garrison for quite some time – hence the massive investment – and, if everything went according to plan, she’d be able to support a much larger fleet within a few years. But if she were lost, maintaining a fleet so far from Daybreak itself would be impossible. It had been hard enough to maintain Waterhen and her squadron, and they’d all been smaller ships. A full-sized task force would be impossible.

“Which means Yangtze herself will soon be targeted,” he mused. “She’s the key to the sector.”

“Precisely,” Admiral Blackthrone said. “I believe the rebels hope to lure my fleet out of position, before they come in, and either capture Yangtze or destroy the facilities we have spent the last year building up. It is not, of course, something that can be allowed. The rebels need to be stopped before the rebellion spreads out of control.”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. Easy to say, a little bit harder to do. “Do we have any idea who’s backing them?”

“No.” The admiral’s frustration was all too apparent. “They have to have a major power backing them, but who? We don’t know.”

Leo nodded, curtly. There were plenty of autonomous worlds and systems that wanted to be free of Daybreak’s control, and therefore had an excellent motive to support the rebels, but which one? It was a hellish risk, so the mystery backers would have done everything in their power to ensure there was no way it could be traced back to them. The majority of the rebels probably had no idea who was backing them – he wondered, idly, if Gayle did – and the handful who knew the truth would be careful, very careful, to ensure they never fell into unfriendly hands. Perhaps the spooks would get a lucky break, although after Sun’s treachery, the local intelligence office was in chaos, but … there was no way they could count on it.

The admiral motioned for him to return to his seat. “I am under immense pressure to go on the offensive as quickly as possible,” he said. “Unfortunately, the lack of a suitable target and the dangers of uncovering Yangtze limit my options; there’s little I can do beyond light raiding, and that won’t be enough to satisfy my critics.”

Leo felt a flicker of sympathy. Daybreak trained its officers to be aggressive, to seize every opportunity to take the fight to the enemy. The admiral was risking his career by not going on the offensive – there’d be no shortage of armchair officers loudly insisting he should – and there were limits to how long he could hold back before he was relieved. And yet, going on the offensive was impossible without a valid target. It could easily end in disaster.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“I have a specific job for you,” the admiral continued. He tapped his terminal, bringing up an image of an asteroid base. “You recall, of course, the pirate base you captured?”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said.

Admiral Blackthrone smiled. “You did excellent work, turning the base into a proper naval facility, despite the limitations facing you,” he said. “It is my intention to turn the base into a secret facility” – Leo resisted the urge to point out that was exactly what it had been from the moment it had fallen into his hands – “and use it to support a fleet of older or converted warships. You will assume command of both the base and the ragtag fleet and prepare them for war.”

Leo sucked in his breath. “Sir, with all due respect, converted civilian craft are rarely capable of serving as proper warships.”

“I know.” The admiral’s voice was grim. “Strictly between us” – his eyes held Leo’s until he nodded – “the squadron will not receive any more reinforcements from Daybreak for several months, perhaps a year. The navy is dangerously overstretched, and the admiralty is worried about the impact of removing so many ships from their regular patrols. Too many worlds are already contemplating revolt, according to the spooks, for our superiors to be comfortable about leaving them uncovered. The ships here” – he waved a hand at the local display, showing the starships orbiting the planet – “are all we’ll have for quite some time.”

Shit, Leo thought. It was unlikely, to say the least, that the rebels had managed to produce a fleet equal in size to the navy. Constructing and manning such a formation would be the least of their problems. But a significantly smaller fleet could still come out ahead, if it faced the Daybreak Navy piecemeal, and … oh, the admiral was in a hell of a spot. A defeat could cost more than just his life and his ships. A dozen sectors might fall to the enemy before Daybreak could assemble a second force to block them. This could end very badly indeed.

“We need those ships,” Admiral Blackthrone said. “The more you can get ready to fly and fight, the better.”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. At least he’d have command of the squadron as well as the base. It wouldn’t be perfect, but … better than being reassigned to an asteroid station. Or a staff post. “I won’t let you down.”

Francis cleared his throat. His uncle gave him a sharp look.

“There is another complication,” the admiral said. “Commander Sun Li’s treachery has sent shockwaves through the navy establishment. The spooks don’t know how many of their findings were warped and twisted by that treacherous bitch, let alone how much of the intelligence they gathered was supplied by the enemy themselves. Her … condition … makes it impossible for us to extract any information from her personally, which leads us to assume the worst. Every foreigner in our service could potentially be a spy.”

Leo winced. There were thousands – hundreds of thousands – of foreigners working for Daybreak, from local militiamen to would-be immigrants treating to earn citizenship through service. They couldn’t all be spies – a conspiracy on such a scale would be impossible to hide – and yet, even a relative handful would be enough to cause a great deal of damage. Worse … he swallowed. How many could be trusted? And how many …

“We have removed a number of such officers and crew from their posts,” Admiral Blackthrone said. “Those people have been assigned to you. You will keep an eye on them – we’re assigning a marine detachment too, under the command of your old friend – and if they prove themselves, the cloud of suspicion will fade. If not, I expect you to take action. We cannot take the risk of clutching vipers to our bosom.”

I didn’t enjoy being relieved of command, even though – strictly speaking – I wasn’t the legitimate commanding officer, Leo thought, numbly. It had been easy to wallow in self-pity, to plot Francis’s fall before Francis had managed to blow up his career for himself. And every foreigner who’s been relieved of their post and reassigned to a grotty pirate base in the middle of nowhere is going to be pissed.

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. The admiral had dumped a nightmare into his lap. If he trusted the wrong person, or perhaps refused to trust the right one, it would get him killed. He should have known there would be a nasty sting in the tail, when the admiral started talking. The admiral stood to gain no matter the outcome. “How much discretion do I have?”

“Enough,” Admiral Blackthrone said. He let the word hang in the air for a long, cold moment. “You will have full authority, as laid down in naval regulations, and I encourage you to use it. If you are required to take drastic measures to remain in control, do so.”

“I see,” Leo said. There was no way the affair was going to end well. A small army of resentful naval officers … they might have been loyal once, but after getting slapped for someone else’s crime, they sure as hell weren’t loyal now. He had a feeling a number had already left naval service. The remainder might be planning something. “I’ll do my best.”

“I never doubted it.” Admiral Blackthrone sounded pleased, although he couldn’t possibly have doubted Leo would accept the assignment. “You’ll be shipped to your new command in two days. That’ll give you time to make preparations, while we see how many volunteers we can round up to fill out your crews. Your formal written orders are here” – he took a datachip out of his pocket and held it out – “and don’t hesitate to contact me if you need clarification. If all goes according to plan, you can raid behind enemy lines or start looking for their bases once the squadron is combat-capable.”

Or as combat-capable as it will ever be, Leo mused. There were limits to how many weapons you could cram into a civilian hull, and even if you did, they’d still manoeuvre like wallowing sows. The outdated warships would be better, perhaps, but there were still limits on just how far they could be refitted. This could easily get us all killed, even if we don’t get stabbed in the back.

He nodded, instead. “Yes, sir,” he said. There was nothing else he could say. If he turned down the mission, the best he could hope for was a posting to an asteroid mining colony. It would be one hell of a challenge, despite the risks. “I’ll make it happen.”

If nothing else, his thoughts added, the enemy will be incapacitated by gales of laughter.

“Very good,” Admiral Blackthrone said. “I look forward to reading your first report. Dismissed.”

Chapter Five

“It’s a bad business and no mistake,” Sergeant-Major Ramjet Boothroyd said, as Leo and Flower joined him in the bar. “The stench of suspicion isn’t one that can be easily washed off.”

Leo nodded, curtly. He’d been told, more than once, that everyone wearing the navy’s uniform was to be trusted until they proved otherwise. There was no way the navy could function if everyone distrusted everyone else, from the admirals back home to the lowest-ranking crewman on a garbage scow. It was bad enough when dealing with a proven incompetent like Francis – Leo wouldn’t trust Francis to guess his weight, let alone command a starship – but at least there were good reasons to distrust him. Punishing everyone who happened to be of foreign birth or blood merely for existing, after Sun’s crimes, was just wrong. And yet, he understood all too well. He still felt the sting of her betrayal.

Remove them from their posts, they get bitter and resentful, he thought, grimly. Leave them in place, leave ourselves open to the knife in the dark.

“I know,” he said. The waitress arrived with three beers, her eyes flickering over Leo with undisguised interest. Leo was too focused on the problem facing him to pay any attention to her, despite an outfit that left very little to the imagination. “How do you suggest I handle it?”

“Delicately,” Boothroyd said, bluntly. “Some of the poor bastards will have spent longer in uniform than you’ve been alive. They’ll be … unhappy … to have lost everything they worked for, particularly when it wasn’t their fault. You need to bear that in mind.”

“I will,” Leo said. “But how …”

“Be honest, be firm,” Boothroyd said. “They can smell bullshit a mile off, so be honest. Agree it sucks, because it does; assure them you’re on their side, which you should be, and that this is their chance to prove they can be trusted. And don’t make promises they’ll know you can’t keep.”

Leo stared down at his hands. He’d spent five years in the navy, four of them at the academy. It was his calling, the only thing he’d ever wanted to do with his life, but if he’d been given the boot he could have found something else to do. Someone who had been in the navy for twenty-one years, or even longer? The navy was their life. They’d probably forgotten more than Leo had ever known, and that meant … they would be feeling betrayed, and who could blame them? They had been betrayed.

He groaned. He knew one friend who’d been denied a top-level security clearance because of a relative, a man she’d never known. It had made sense, cold-blooded sense, and yet she’d been furious, ranting and raving about how unfair it was that she should be discriminated against because she had the misfortune to have a relative she’d never met. It hadn’t been her fault and yet … Leo wondered, suddenly, what had happened to her. She’d quit the academy and vanished. 

“Fuck,” he muttered.

“Yes,” Boothroyd agreed. “It is a mess.”

He leaned forward. “I’ve got a company loading onto the transport now,” he added. “You might want to look around and see who else might be interested in the post. It’s not an ideal posting, true, but you do have a reputation now.”

Leo flushed. “You do know I didn’t save my ship with a cutlass in one hand and a pistol in the other?”

“You’ve done enough to earn a reputation,” Boothroyd teased. “And a few minor exaggerations won’t do you any harm.”

“Minor,” Leo repeated. The claim he’d duelled the pirate chief wasn’t exaggerated. It was made up of whole cloth. “Flower, can you put out the word? See who we can find?”

“Of course.” Flower shrugged. “You’d better read all the files too. See who you’ll be dealing with.”

Leo nodded. He’d learnt that lesson the hard way, although he knew better than to think everything was written into the files. His own file didn’t say a word about precisely how he’d found himself in command of Waterhen; he guessed his enemies back home had quietly passed the word to his current superiors, rather than writing anything down. It was unlikely any of the personnel records would contain the line enemy spy. If someone had been under suspicion before Sun revealed herself, they’d be gone by now. The navy wouldn’t take risks.

Boothroyd stood. “You finish your beer,” he said. “I’ll see you both later.”

“Got it.” Leo eyed his pint reluctantly. He’d never been much of a drinker – his mother had flatly refused to let him get into the habit – and he’d never really liked beer, although he’d managed to pretend during post-exam pub crawls. If there was one advantage to being promoted, it was that he didn’t have to go out drinking in dives. Officers attended a far higher class of establishment. “It’s good to be with you again.”

He took a sip of his beer and grimaced at the taste. Boothroyd had picked a pub aimed at marines and militiamen, rather than spacers, and it showed. The beer might be cheap and plentiful, but it tasted foul; the nasty part of his mind wondered if it should be poured back in the horse. Cheap and nasty beer was hardly uncommon, but Boothroyd could afford better … perhaps it was a macho thing. Leo snorted at the thought. If you joined the Marine Corps and went through the dreaded Crucible, you didn’t need to prove yourself by drinking shitty beer.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Flower said. “I …”

She broke off as two people walked up to their table, a young man and woman … the latter clearly pregnant. They were wearing simple tunics, rather than prison outfits and shackles, but Leo had no difficulty in recognising them. He’d taken them off Leavenworth only a few short weeks ago.

“Commander Morningstar?”

“Yes,” Leo said. He wasn’t sure what the former prisoners had in mind. They’d been taken to the barracks and then … what? “What can I do for you?”

“I … I need to ask you a favour,” the young man said. “Can we talk?”

“You can ask anything you like,” Leo said. He resisted the urge to point out that he’d already done them a huge favour. “I don’t make any promises about giving you whatever you want.”

“And you can give us your names,” Flower added, a hint of irritation in her tone. “It would only be polite.”

The man helped his wife to sit, then rested his hands lightly on her shoulders. “I’m Lieutenant Benjamin Xavier, formerly of the Engineering Corps,” he said. “This is Tanya, formerly Tanya Moses … a relative of Jacob Abraham.”

“Pleased to meet you again,” Leo said, dryly. He’d checked the records. Benjamin Xavier had been found guilty of a number of crimes, ranging from selling military supplies to civilians to altering records to outright embezzlement. The combination had been enough to get him on the first transport to Leavenworth; the navy had washed its hands of him as quickly as possible. He was lucky he hadn’t been marched to the nearest airlock and tossed out. “I’m Leo, but then you already knew that.”

“Yes, sir,” Xavier said. “I … I saw a call going out for volunteers to accompany you.”

“That was quick.” Leo checked the time. It had only been two hours since the meeting with the admiral. “What did it say?”

“Just that you were looking for volunteers,” Xavier said. “We would like to volunteer.”

Leo blinked. “Are you mad?”

“No, sir,” Xavier said. “Can I explain?”

“If you must.” Leo shook his head slowly. He’d spent more than enough time trying to explain himself to a suspicious principal as a young man, and later to senior officers, but he’d never quite crossed the line into outright criminal behaviour. “It had better be a very good explanation.”

Xavier hesitated, noticeably. “When I was your age, sir, I fell into bad habits,” he admitted. “I … I fell into debt, with some bookies who threatened to expose me if I didn’t find a way to pay them. One thing led to another and …”

He paused. Leo kept his face blank. There were reasons gambling was strictly regulated on naval facilities, where it wasn’t outrightly forbidden, and preventing blackmail was only one of them. If someone were fool enough to get into debt … it wouldn’t be easy to make a confession to his superiors, knowing it would cost him his career, but better that than becoming a genuine criminal.

“I ended up stealing supplies and selling them,” Xavier admitted. “They made me …”

“You could have confessed at any point,” Leo remarked.

“I was in too deep,” Xavier said. “By the time I knew how badly I’d messed up, it was too late …”

“I hope you’re not expecting sympathy,” Leo said. “You didn’t just steal military-grade spare parts from the supply depots. You altered records to hide what you were doing, messing with dates and times to suggest certain components had been replaced when they’d been left in place or that others needed to be swapped out ahead of time. You were lucky your actions didn’t result in disaster. If something broke at the worst possible time, you could easily have gotten someone killed.”

“I know.” Xavier looked down. “It was the wrong thing to do.”

“Yes.”

Xavier flushed, looking up. “I was caught, as you know, and dropped on the penal colony. I set out to take advantage of the opportunity to rebuild my life and … I got married” – he indicated his wife – “and we’re expecting a child. I don’t want to take our kid to a stage-one colony world …”

“Better that than Leavenworth,” Leo pointed out.

“Yes, but … long story short, I’d like to volunteer my services,” Xavier said. “Will you take me? Us?”

Leo stared at him for a long, cold moment. “Why should I trust you?”

“You shouldn’t,” Xavier said. Leo silently gave him points for honesty. “But you can have my work checked easily, and if you find any mistakes, you don’t have to give me the benefit of the doubt …”

“Believe me, I wouldn’t,” Leo said. His mind spun in circles. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had a crewman who’d crossed the line, let alone a crewman who couldn’t be wholly trusted. An engineering officer was always worth his weight in platinum, even one who had issues … it was possible Xavier had learnt his lesson, after a few years on a hellish world, but also possible he’d sink back into criminality. Or that his former blackmailers would catch up with him again. Had they been caught? Leo didn’t know. “Your knowledge is a few years out of date …”

He let the words trail off, more out of curiosity to hear his response than anything else. The ships Leo had been given, according to the records, were outdated, which meant Xavier’s knowledge wasn’t as useless as it seemed. There was no way in hell he’d be allowed on a modern starship, but … given that half of Leo’s crew already had good reason to be pissed, he’d fit right in on the asteroid base. And … he had been through hell. What was the point of punishment if the criminal was not allowed a chance to redeem himself, after the nightmare was over?

“I can catch up,” Xavier assured him. “I’ve already downloaded the latest civilian manuals.”

“And I do have a medical certificate,” Tanya said, quietly. “I can come in handy.”

“I’m sure you can,” Leo said. He looked Xavier in the eye. “I want two things. First, you are to write out a full account of everything that happened, including a complete confession to each and every one of your crimes. If there’s anything missing, when I compare your report to your criminal records, the deal’s off and you can go to a stage-one world. And to hell.”

Xavier swallowed. “I understand.”

“Second, I want you to understand there will be no second chance,” Leo continued. “If you fall back into bad habits, or fail to report any further contact with the criminal establishment, or anything else I consider prejudicial to the smooth functioning of my command, I will execute you on the spot. I have the legal authority to do so, and given how you returned to space in the first place, I assure you no one will question it. Your wife will be held in custody, along with her child, until she can be transported to a stage-one colony. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Xavier said.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Leo told him. “Go. Write the account. We’re due to leave in two days, so you have one day to write. Dismissed.”

Xavier nodded, then escorted his wife out of the pub. Leo watched him go, wondering if he’d made a mistake. Xavier had every reason to keep his word, if he wanted a second chance, but gambling was addictive. Leo had seen too many people, back in Cold Harbour, gambling their lives away, abandoning their partners or children to chase the dice. They always insisted the next game would be the one that changed their lives … technically, he mused, they were right. It made their lives worse. The more their debts piled up, the more desperate they became. And then they became easy prey for criminals.

“That man is desperate, but determined,” Flower commented. “His wife’s the interesting case.”

Leo glanced at her. “In what way?”

“She doesn’t believe he can do it,” Flower said. “Notice how she never said a word? Not one. Too many promises broken, perhaps, or simply being ground down by the penal colony. I dare say she doesn’t have much hope left, if any. The child might be all she has to live for now.”

“Yeah.” Leo wouldn’t blame Tanya for being a little doubtful of the wisdom of having children on a penal world. The medical reports from the children he’d kidnapped only underlined the dangers facing the kids he’d left behind. “You think she’s going to cause trouble?”

“Not for us, not yet,” Flower assured him. “I don’t think she has the drive to do much of anything.”

Leo winced. He'd never lacked for drive, even when his career had started to go up and down like a whore’s underwear. There was always something you could do to make things better for yourself, he’d learnt, and sitting around feeling sorry for yourself was always a non-starter. Action, even futile action, was better than doing nothing. If nothing else, it kept you sharp.

He scowled, inwardly. But would it be different on a world where there’s literally no hope of escape?

“I take it you approve, then?”

“I think it’s worth trying,” Flower said. “But you are going to have to keep an eye on him as well as everyone else.”

Leo cursed under his breath. “Sun really fucked us, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” Flower agreed. She didn’t make any crude jokes, which almost made it worse. “If we can’t trust each other, who can we trust?”

“No one, it seems.” Leo stared at his hands. “Is there anything we can do about it?”

“Just keep going, and give people a chance to rebuild trust,” Flower said.

“It’s never that easy,” Leo muttered.

He groaned. He’d known an older couple, married with one child, who’d had a massive falling out when the husband had come to believe their child wasn’t his, on the grounds she didn’t look anything like him. Leo had wondered, at the time, why the man wasn’t grateful – he hadn’t been very attractive by any standards and the poor girl would have had a hard time of it if she had looked like him – but it hardly mattered. He’d forced his wife to agree to a paternity test and then wondered, when the results proved she was his daughter, why his wife had been so mad at him. The idea that questioning her integrity might have pissed her off had been beyond him …

And there was no way she could take his concerns seriously after that, Leo thought. Whatever his reasons for doubting her, his conduct destroyed her willingness to understand where he was coming from.

“We’ll see,” he said, standing. “I’ll get on with the files. You see who else you can scrape up.”

“Of course,” Flower agreed. “And try and relax a bit too.”

Leo shook his head. It wasn't as if there was nothing to do – the strip had entertainments from the vanilla to the borderline illegal – but he was too keyed up to make use of any of them. He wanted to find something to do and, at the same time, he was too tired to do much of anything. He needed to sit down and read his orders properly, then get his hands on as much information as possible before he was shipped out for the former pirate base. The admiral hadn’t quite ordered him to hurry, but it sure as hell had been implied.

Guess he doesn’t want me around any longer than necessary, he mused, as he led the way to the door. I’m a reminder of Francis’s failures as much as anything else.

He sighed, inwardly. The first generation, he’d been told, was always composed of hard and determined men. They had to be, if they wanted to succeed. The ones who weren’t didn’t make it long enough to sire a second generation. It was their successors who were softer, the hardness fading with each successive generation as comfortable living and security took its toll. Perhaps that explained Francis. The older officer was far from stupid – Leo made that concession, in the privacy of his mind – but he lacked the experiences that had shaped Leo’s life. Or the lives of Francis’s ancestors. If Leo had had all the advantages his rival had been given, things would have been very different …

But they’re not, he reminded himself. You can’t change the cards you’re dealt. You just have to play them and hope for the best.

Chapter Six

Leo was waiting by the hatch as Benjamin Xavier and his wife stepped through the airlock and onto the transport.

“Welcome onboard,” he said, with heavy sarcasm. “Your report made very interesting reading.”

He pretended not to notice Xavier’s flinch. He’d read the report very carefully and spent several hours matching it up against Xavier’s criminal record, noting several crimes that hadn’t been included in the original filing he’d downloaded from the navy’s records. It looked as though the navy hadn’t bothered to do a detailed investigation, once they’d gathered enough evidence to prove Xavier was the crook. Leo wasn’t too surprised. Daybreak preferred to believe its officials were beyond corruption, and anyone who proved otherwise would be swept under the rug as quickly as possible. It was possible Xavier had had collaborators who’d remained undiscovered, he supposed, but probably not. The report Xavier had written had certainly never mentioned anyone working with him.

“You’ll be coming with us, as per agreement,” Leo continued. He met Xavier’s eyes and held them. “Two points to ponder. If you do anything to imperil my mission, or the people under my command, I’ll kill you. Personally.”

“Yes, sir,” Xavier said. “I …”

Leo spoke over him. “Second, a naval base is not a fit place for a pregnant woman,” he continued. Naval personnel who fell pregnant, for whatever reason, were normally reassigned to safer duty stations, if they didn’t want to go on maternal leave. “There’s a loophole in that … our destination … is not quite an official military post, and she won’t be serving on starships, but that’s something you should bear in mind. I can’t guarantee anything, from transport back here to proper medical care, and you need to understand that.”

He paused. The doctors should be able to cope with a pregnancy, but one glance at the files had told him he’d been given the dregs of the service. Again. He’d knocked one crew into shape with a mixture of carrots and sticks, true, but this was a far bigger group with a far bigger grudge against the navy. Leo knew what he would do if he was reassigned to some asteroid station in the middle of nowhere, because someone from a colony world – not even his homeworld – had done something stupid, and it involved telling his superiors to take the job and stick it up their rear ends. He wouldn’t turn traitor, of course not, but he’d certainly refuse to continue serving in a military that didn’t trust him. Who could blame his new subordinates for feeling they’d been screwed? They had!

“We understand the risk,” Xavier said, quietly. “And we have decided to stay together.”

“Good.” Leo passed him a terminal. “You’ve been assigned a cabin on deck five. You have full access to the recreational facilities on that deck, but do not step off that deck without an escort or the captain’s prior permission. The consequences will not be pleasant, if you do. You have been granted a pardon, as you know, but you will have to work long and hard to earn our trust.”

His lips twitched. “Good luck. Dismissed.”

Xavier glanced at the terminal, showing the route to their cabin, then exchanged glances with his wife before leading the way down the corridor. Leo watched them go, unsure if he was giving someone a chance at redemption or preparing a rod for his own back. He’d kept a quiet watch on Xavier over the last couple of days, with some help from his allies, and the man hadn’t done anything stupid … but he had to know, or at least assume, that he was being watched. They’d been in the middle of a military base, on a planet preparing for war, and only an idiot would assume otherwise. There was never any such thing as privacy on a military base. Xavier had been a naval officer long enough to know it.

He should be smart enough to know better, Leo mused. And if he is approached by his former allies …

Leo sighed inwardly. He’d used that argument – that Xavier might be contacted by the criminals he’d once supplied with stolen military-grade components – to convince the admiral to sign off on the transfer agreement. It had worked, to a point, but the admiral had put in enough weasel words in the document to ensure Leo got the blame if the plan went spectacularly wrong. Leo rather suspected, even as he’d come up with it, that the plan would never even get off the ground. The media had made a big song and dance about Daybreak keeping its word, hopefully encouraging other rebels to switch sides, but it was unlikely anyone would be able to track Xavier down, let alone make contact. And the admiral had to know it too.

Which means he’s either making a rod for my back or he’s too busy to worry about it, Leo reminded himself. Or both.

His wristcom bleeped. “Commander Morningstar, please report to the bridge.”

“On my way,” Leo said.

He turned and walked through the corridors, noting the marines unloading their equipment and checking it carefully, then the spacers girding their loins for the transit to the pirate base. Morningstar Base … the admiral, somewhat to Leo’s surprise, had accepted Leo’s name for the base without hesitation. A number of the spacers looked somewhat worse for wear, after spending their last hours of freedom drinking, dancing and fucking their way through the red light district … Leo hoped they hadn’t been fool enough to bring alcohol, stimulants or anything else along those lines onto the transport. That was a court martial offense, in wartime. And they were at war.

The thought nagged at his mind as he stepped onto the bridge. It was a cramped space, containing two small consoles, a command chair, and a simple holographic display, showing the ever-growing activity around Yangtze. Captain Jordan stood to greet him, nodding curtly at his salute. She was a dark haired, middle aged woman, her career likely hitting the rocks because she’d made no attempt to transfer to a warship before it was too late. Leo felt a twinge of sympathy. For everyone who won honour and glory and went on to a shining political career, there were thousands who never made it past a certain point. It was something he’d resolved never to let happen to him.

“Commander,” Jordan said. “Have you finished loading your people and supplies?”

Leo tried not to wince at the bite in her tone. It was debatable which one of them outranked the other, although – as the starship’s captain – Jordan outranked everyone as long as the ship was in transit. She couldn’t be pleased at being assigned to the mission, still less in having a third of her crew stripped from her to man other vessels. In theory, a military transport could be handled by ten crewmen; in practice, Leo wouldn’t have cared to try. And if they ran into pirates …

We had the pirates whipped, Leo thought, with a flicker of dark frustration. And now the war is underway, the pirates are starting to creep back again.

He took a breath. “Yes, Captain,” he said. Jordan wasn’t Francis. She hadn’t gotten her command through shameless nepotism. “The personnel have been assigned quarters and the supplies have all been stowed away.”

“Good,” Jordan said. “And the criminals?”

“They’re in their cabin,” Leo assured her. “I don’t think they’ll cause trouble.”

Jordan looked unconvinced. “They should be in shackles. Or stasis.”

Leo bit down a sharp comment on the risks of shackling a pregnant woman, particularly one who hadn’t committed any crimes. “They’re not going to be able to cause trouble, as long as they’re restricted to deck five,” he said. There was taking reasonable precautions and then there was outright paranoia, and shackling a pair of harmless people definitely fell into the latter. Xavier had never been a violent man, and his wife had been swept up in an anti-rebel purge, rather than being a rebel herself. “I’ll keep an eye on them.”

“We shall see,” Jordan said. She turned and took her chair. “Mr Singh, commence departure procedures.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Leo stepped back as the transport came to life, the handful of crewmen moving with brisk efficiency as they prepared for departure. He had to admit they knew what they were doing, even if they did look sloppy. They disconnected their ship from the orbital station, after making sure everyone who wasn’t supposed to be on the transport had been ordered to depart, and then powered up the drive, sending a dull vibration running through the ship as she slipped away from her moorings. He hoped to hell no one had missed the final call, when the ship prepared to leave. There were horror stories about shipyard technicians accidentally stowing away … his lips twisted. One naval officer actually had effectively kidnapped the techs to force them to keep working on his ship, something that had been a major sensation and then a topic for hot debate at the academy. Leo had argued both sides of the debate in his second year.

I can understand where he was coming from, he mused. After being a CO himself, he understood the importance of keeping one’s ship in fighting trim. It was easy to think one’s ship was more important than any other ship, even a battleship or battlecruiser, and should therefore have first priority for repairs. But it was a kidnapping, and he deserved to be court martialled.

“Prepare to jump,” Jordan ordered. “Alter the coordinates as discussed.”

“Aye, Captain,” Singh said. “Jump coordinates locked.”

Leo nodded. The rebels had to have eyes on Yangtze. It was quite possible they’d managed to insert a stealthed sensor platform into the high orbitals, relying on passive sensors to ensure there were no emissions that could be detected, or simply subverted a handful of civilian stations to turn them into unwitting spies. A lone transport would be a very tempting target indeed, all the more so if they knew who and what had been loaded onboard. The operation was supposed to be a secret, and the navy had done everything in its power to create a false narrative surrounding the transport and her cargo, but there was no way to be sure the rebels had been fooled. Hell, they might have been fooled completely and yet go after the transport anyway. Anything that harmed Daybreak’s supply lines, even the loss of one starship, would work in their favour.

Which means we need to randomise the target coordinates just enough to ensure anyone who gives chase doesn’t appear right next to us, Leo reminded himself. Waterhen could take care of herself. The transport was a sitting duck. If only the admiral had been able to spare an escort ship …

He ground his teeth as the countdown began. He understood the admiral’s logic – few pirates would willingly tangle with a warship, while the rebels would see the ship as a tempting target – but it still felt risky. He wasn’t afraid of death, but … he couldn’t help feeling naked even though he was fully clothed. The whole plan could end very badly indeed, if the rebels attacked, and no one would ever know what had happened to him. Or the rest of the crew.

“Jump,” Jordan ordered.

Leo braced himself, an instant before an invisible fist struck him in the belly. The transport was too old for a modern jumpdrive, too old to be worth refitting … he grunted in pain as a ghostly pain swept through him, nearly sending him to his knees before it was gone as swiftly as it appeared. It felt as if he’d been hit … no, as if he were imagining being hit. It was never easy to describe the sensation and yet …

“Jump completed, Captain,” Singh said. The holographic display went blank. “No enemy contacts within detection range.”

“Recycle the drive,” Jordan ordered. “We’ll jump again as soon as possible.”

Leo nodded. It was unlikely any watching eyes had managed to calculate their exact jump coordinates, but unlikely wasn’t the same as impossible. The sooner they were on their way the better, moving through a handful of semi-random jumps to ensure there was little or no hope of tracking them all the way to Morningstar Base.

“Take care of your people,” Jordan advised. “I’d invite you to dinner, but …”

She shrugged, expressively. Leo understood. The transport might be huge, easily as large as a battleship, but most of her volume was devoted to cargo. There was no captain’s stateroom, nowhere the captain could host guests … he shrugged, feeling no particular irritation at the dismissal. He’d never liked having guests on his bridge either. The thought cost him a bitter pang. Waterhen was gone, and there was no guarantee he’d ever see another command. There was just no way to be sure.

Sure, promotion comes quick in wartime, his thoughts pointed out. But it comes at a cost.

He left the bridge and made his way back to his cabin, a tiny little cubicle that was barely large enough to swing a cat. The only concession anyone had made to his rank was to give him a private cabin, even if it was very small … perhaps it was intended as a subtle insult, he mused as he sat on the bunk and reached for his datapad, but it didn’t bother him. It hadn’t been that long since he’d been at the academy, sharing a barracks with twenty other cadets. Compared to that, a tiny, private cabin was sheer luxury. His lips twitched. He could name several officers who’d think otherwise.

“But they all spent much longer as midshipmen and lieutenants before rising to command rank,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “They had plenty of time to get used to sleeping alone.”

He sighed, inwardly. He knew he’d been lucky – de facto command at such a young age – and yet, would it have been better for him if he’d followed a more conventional career path? Would he have kept his lieutenant’s pip? Or be busted down to midshipman? Or … it was unlikely he’d have made lieutenant-commander by now, let alone commander. Most of his peers hadn’t made lieutenant … the last time he’d checked, only four had. Did they envy him? Or did they think he was riding for a fall?

The buzzer rang. Leo sat up. “Come!”

“Sir,” Flower said. She wasn’t a big woman, by any sense of the word, and yet she made the cabin feel smaller just by being in it. “I’ve finished going through the reports. There’s little, it seems, for us to be worried about.”

Her tone was grim. Leo understood all too well. “What’s going to go wrong first?”

“Good question,” Flower said. “Have you looked through the personnel files?”

“The files didn’t say anything was wrong, but they wouldn’t.” Leo scowled at his hands. “I’d bet good money there was a shitload of CYA in there.”

“Probably,” Flower said. “One officer got marked down because he didn’t like football.”

“Fuck.” Leo loved football – he’d always been very good at it, although he’d never joined the academy’s team – and yet, even a fanatic like himself could see the injustice of penalising someone for not liking the game. “Someone actually wrote that into the report?”

“I had to read between the lines,” Flower said. “The precise words used were not a team player. No specifics … of course not. I did some research and the report was written by Captain Murray of RSS Dauntless.”

Leo winced. He’d heard the stories. Captain Murray was supposed to be a football fanatic who made other fanatics look tame by comparison, to the point of trading officers and crewmen in hopes of putting together a very good team. Apparently, it worked. Dauntless’s team had been top of the naval league for the last two years. And yet … he shook his head in disbelief. How the hell did Murray get away with it?

“I see,” he said. “So we should take the report with a pinch of salt?”

“Yeah.” Flower leaned against the bulkhead. “There’s a lot of CYA in the reports too. It’s never good news when the writing gets vague to the point of uselessness. No specifics, a lot of allegations that could easily be taken either way.”

“Fuck,” Leo said, again. “When did naval reports start being about politics?”

“You jumped up a bunch of ranks,” Flower pointed out. “Everyone else … learnt they had to be careful what they wrote down, for fear they might be giving their enemies the rope they need to hang them. How much trouble do you think Captain Bosanko is in right now?”

“I don’t know,” Leo said. The name meant nothing to him. “I don’t know him.”

“He gave Sun the security clearance she needed to infiltrate Naval Intelligence,” Flower said. “Or at least he signed off on it. I don’t know how much he overlooked, back then, but he’s likely to be in hot water. Perhaps it was incompetence or … no matter. Everything he wrote will be examined carefully for signs of incompetence or collusion.”

“Ouch.” Leo had been fooled by Sun himself, until it had almost been too late. There had been no signs to suggest she’d been anything but loyal, although he might have been distracted because he’d been sharing a bed with her. No. There was no might about it. He had been distracted. “And now we have to figure out how many officers covered their asses instead of giving us useful data.”

He sighed. “It was so much easier when we were chasing pirates.”

“And our enemies were drawing up their plans against us,” Flower reminded him. “Right now, we know we’re at war. That’s more than we knew a year ago.”

“We’re Daybreak,” Leo mused, more to himself than to her. “Have we ever stopped being at war?”

Chapter Seven

There was little to recommend the star system to anyone, Leo reminded himself as the transport completed her final jump. A dull red star, a handful of asteroids and comets that wobbled on the edge of either plummeting into the star or being tossed into interstellar space … it said something about the sheer uselessness of the system that it had no name, merely a catalogue number that had been filed hundreds of years ago and then forgotten by anyone who wasn’t involved in charting the vastness of interstellar space. The navy had given the system a cursory inspection, when the sector had started the long process of being assimilated into Daybreak, and then proceeded to ignore it. There was simply nothing in the system worth the effort involved in collecting it.

Which is probably why the pirates chose it as a base, Leo mused, as the holographic display began to fill with icons. The system is so far off the beaten track that there was just no reason to inspect the system at all.

“We have arrived,” Jordan said. “Welcome to your new home.”

Leo nodded, frowning as he studied the flowering and multiplying icons. The pirate base had once been a lone asteroid, with zero betraying emissions to suggest it was any more inhabited than the other chunks of rock orbiting the dying star. Now, there were nearly thirty starships floating around the base and several automated weapons platforms deployed in positions that would let them engage any starship that neared the base. Leo scowled, unsure if that was a good idea or not. The flow of pirate ships that had flown into the base, unaware it was in naval hands, had dried up after the pirates realised the base had fallen, but still …

We don’t know if the rebels know about the base, he thought, grimly. The rebels might not care for the pirates, and any alliance between them could easily backfire sharply, but there was a possibility they knew the base’s location. If they do, they won’t have many problems engaging us.

He felt his mood darken as he ran through a handful of scenarios. The base was a stationary object, lacking even the manoeuvring thrusters of orbital battlestations, and it was difficult to defend a stationary target against a mobile force for long. Leo could envisage a dozen possible engagements, and they all ended very badly, from a rebel ship firing missiles into the base to mass drivers hurling projectiles from a safe distance. There were limits to how many defence platforms they could deploy, and even if they did, it would be hard to keep the rebels from overwhelming them through sheer weight of numbers. Secrecy was the base’s main defence, and that no longer existed. There was no way to know how many people knew the base’s location now.

And Sun could probably have gained access to a navigational database, Leo mused. In theory, the information had been ruthlessly compartmentalized. Sun shouldn’t have been able to access anything she didn’t have a legitimate need to know. In practice, there was no way to be sure she hadn’t gone roaming through the databases. She could easily have convinced someone she needed access or … just listened, while someone talked their mouth off. If they know our exact location …

“We’re cleared to approach, Captain,” Singh said. “They’ve cleared a docking tube for us.”

“Then take us in,” Jordan ordered. She glanced at Leo. “You’ll be disembarking first?”

“It’s my duty.” Leo allowed himself a smile. “Are you that desperate to get rid of me?”

Jordan smiled back, although there was little humour in the expression. “They’ll be putting together some kind of welcoming ceremony,” she said. “They do know you’re coming.”

Leo groaned, inwardly. He’d never actually had a formal welcoming ceremony – he hadn’t even played the role of the new commanding officer during academy rehearsals – and personally he thought it was a waste of time. There was just too much to do, from surveying the base – he hadn’t visited since he’d taken the base – to preparing the squadron for war, for them to waste time on anything. And yet, ceremony had its place. His new XO might agree.

He kept the thought to himself as the asteroid base grew until it filled the holographic display. The engineers had been busy, mining out more caverns within the asteroid and shipping in supplies and equipment … the latter often outdated, taken from local sources rather than going to all the trouble of shipping it from Daybreak, yet perfectly capable of doing the job. A handful of worker bees, also outdated, buzzed around, one dragging a missile pod behind it. It looked as though the squadron refit was well underway.

A dull thrum echoed through the transport as she mated with the docking tube. Leo nodded politely to Jordan, then turned and made his way through the corridors to the airlock. The gravity flickered slightly as the starship’s gravity field merged with the base’s, the sensation coming and going too quickly for Leo to do more than note it before it was gone. A handful of spacers joined him as the hatch started to open, revealing a simple airlock. Crude, but probably safe. Leo’s lips twitched. The airlock had to be a new installation. Pirates were not known for taking their safety very seriously. Leo had seen their consoles explode … clearly, they hadn’t heard of something as simple as a circuit-breaker either.

He schooled his face into a blank mask as he stepped through the airlock. The hatch hissed closed behind him, the second opening as soon as the first was firmly closed. The air wafted forward, cleaner than he recalled and yet bearing the unmistakable stench of an air circulation system on the verge of giving up the ghost. The whole system had been overhauled when the base had been pressed into naval service, but there were limits to what even naval engineers could do.

A handful of officers awaited him, wearing regular uniforms. Leo hoped that was a good sign and feared it wasn’t. He disliked wearing dress uniforms himself, under any circumstances, but most officers would dress up properly to welcome their new commanding officer. It was vital to make a good first impression, and these officers weren’t even trying. He reminded himself his first crew had been even less promising, then straightened to salute the flag before stepping forward again.

“I am Commander Leo Morningstar, Daybreak Navy,” he said. The words felt … wrong. He wasn’t sure why. He’d never been welcomed onboard Waterhen … hell, his command had rested on a technicality. “By order of Admiral Blackthrone, I assume command of Morningstar Base.”

A young female officer stepped forward. Her tone was so clipped Leo knew she was angry. “I stand relieved,” she said. “Welcome to Morningstar Base.”

It took Leo a moment to place her. Commander Madeleine Chevallier … the image of the smiling, attractive young woman in the files didn’t look anything like the grim-faced officer in front of him. She was shorter than him, with black hair neatly trimmed close to her scalp and oil on her fingers, suggesting she had come straight from work. Perhaps she had. She was an engineer who had come up the ranks the hard way and … Leo winced, inwardly, as he saw her service pips. She’d been in the service longer than himself, which meant … he cursed under his breath. Someone who had been on the short list for a command of her own, before Sun’s treachery had placed all foreign officers under suspicion, had no reason to be pleased at her career taking a sudden turn into the dumpster. The fact she was being relieved of her new command was merely rubbing salt into the wound.

“Thank you,” he said, keeping his voice under tight control. They would have to talk later, once the ceremony was over and done. “Please introduce me to the rest of the senior officers.”

Madeleine nodded, clearly controlling herself. “This is Engineer Arbroath, sir, and Lieutenant Frazer …”

Leo shook hands, mentally matching the names to the files. Some were like Madeleine – victims of Sun’s treachery – while others would probably have been discharged by now if there wasn’t a war on. The navy needed all the manpower it could get … he hoped they were merely discontented, rather than being criminals or rebel spies. He made a mental note to keep an eye on some of the more discontented ones. They could easily cause trouble if they wanted.

“Thank you,” he said, once the last officer had been introduced. “I’ll be meeting with each and every last one of you over the next few days, in hopes of getting to know you a little better, but for the moment please feel free to resume your duties. We have a great deal of work to do.”

“So no formal dinner,” Lieutenant Frazer said. He looked surprisingly old to be a junior officer, yet lacked the bearing of an enlisted man who’d become a mustang. Leo suspected it meant Frazer had fucked up in some way, yet there hadn’t been anything in the files to suggest so. Perhaps he’d just pissed off his CO instead. “What a shame.”

“There’s little worth eating, beyond recycled slop,” Madeleine said. “And you know it.”

Leo wondered, absently, if he’d missed out on something by not following a normal career path. It would be a very rare midshipman who’d decline an invitation to dine with the CO – it was a chance to be seen by the captain, without screwing up so badly one’s ultimate superior had to take note of it – but he’d never been invited to anyone’s table. Even Admiral Blackthrone had never invited him to dine … he shook his head mentally, dismissing the thought. A command of his own, so early, was worth missing out on a few chances to build connections with senior officers. 

“Dismissed,” he said. “Commander Chevallier, please show me around.”

“Yes, sir,” Madeleine said. Leo had a sudden impression of his youngest sister, small and slight and yet determined not to back down when challenged by her older brothers. “If you’ll come with me …”

Leo nodded, looking around with interest as they passed through a pair of crudely-installed airlocks. The air still smelt funny, although here and there he caught whiffs of odour suppressants and heard the clattering of makeshift air purifiers. The corridors were as strange as the rest of the base, some as crude as the airlocks and others neatened up to the point it was hard to tell he wasn’t on a starship. Dozens of crewmen passed him, carrying spare parts or pushing trolleys along the corridors. They looked tired, Leo noted. There was just so much to do.

They stepped through a pair of airlocks and into a giant observation blister. The space beyond was a hangar bay on an immense scale, with a dozen starships floating on the other side of the blister … Leo sucked in his breath, recalling the first time he’d visited the spacedocks orbiting Daybreak. They’d been bigger, and the starships had looked more modern, but otherwise … it wasn’t that different. The workers were certainly just as industrious as the workers back home.

“There are four hundred starships assigned to this base, on paper,” Madeleine said. Her tone shifted, slightly. “Ninety-seven are beyond all hope of repair, so we have been cannibalising them for spare parts. The remainder are being outfitted as warships, although” – her voice hardened suddenly – “they’ll be little match for a real warship. There’s no way we can upgrade their drives, for example; it would be cheaper to construct a whole new warship from scratch.”

Leo nodded, his eyes resting on the starships floating within the hanger. A handful of outdated patrol boats, a set of civilian vessels being outfitted with weapons pods, a corvette that was older than Waterhen … so old Leo was surprised she was still in service. Three other ships were right at the far end of the massive chamber, a freighter and two light couriers … the latter looked to have already been through the wars. He could see the carbon scoring on the hull with his naked eyes. 

He turned to look at her. “How many are ready to go?”

Madeleine shot him a thoughtful look. “Right now, we have around thirty-seven vessels in usable condition, but don’t make the mistake of thinking they’re ready to go. Their crews are trying to work them up now, yet … they keep running into problems. It may take quite some time before we can work out all the kinks, and because the squadron is composed of so many different types of ships, it’s hard to gain experience we can transfer to another ship. We’re not so much learning the same lessons time and time again as we are learning different lessons …”

“At least we haven’t sprung a leak,” Leo said. It was an old joke. “Or have we?”

“Yes.” Madeleine spoke with quiet intensity. “And a great many other problems too.”

Leo scowled. It was practically expected, these days, for a new warship to spring a leak or develop some other minor problem, easily fixed, that the gutter press would turn into a major disaster. There were always surprises, when the first of a new class of ships made the jump from the designing board to the real world; the later ships in the same class, put together by workers who’d learnt from the first starship, tended to have far fewer problems. But the media always made it sound like a complete disaster.

“Yangtze sent us a lot of spare parts, as well as stripping out a ton of supplies from civilian installations, but not all are useful,” Madeleine continued. “Some ships have outdated sensors, some have older drives … yeah, they’re in working order, but they’re slow. We’ve been looking at ways to improve what we have, yet … there are limits to how far we can push the frameworks before they start to collapse. We cannibalised a modern … modernish … drive from one ship and installed it in another, only to see the ship nearly tear itself apart. And that is just scratching the surface.

“If you came out here expecting to assume command of Home Fleet, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.”

“I expected nothing of the sort,” Leo said. There were no conceivable circumstances in which he would assume command of Home Fleet, unless so many officers above him were killed that Daybreak would be on the verge of total defeat anyway. “You’ve done a grand job here.”

Madeleine eyed him for a long moment, then turned away. “It’ll take at least two months to get the rest of the squadron up and running,” she continued. “Longer, most likely. I’ve got contingency plans for cannibalising more ships, if need be, but we’re still going to run short on a lot of shit we need.”

Leo followed her as she led him through the rest of the asteroid base. There were few traces left of the pirates, even though their stench still hung in the air. Leo noted the locations of the mess halls and other dining facilities, the cabins and barracks for officers and enlisted men, the handful of recreational chambers … the brothel, thankfully, had been replaced with a bunch of VR machines and gaming consoles. It wouldn’t be anything like as good as going on shore leave, but most shore leave had been cancelled anyway. The war took first priority.

We might have to start arranging regular flights to Yangtze just to let people blow off steam, Leo told himself. No matter how disciplined the crew, there were always problems when the combination of confined quarters and endless duty shifts started to take its toll. The recreational facilities onboard ship or asteroid base couldn’t make up for a proper shore leave. But do we have time for it? 

“And finally, the command centre,” Madeleine said. Her voice hardened as she opened the airlock. “I’m afraid it is rather crude.”

She glanced at him. “I hope you’re not expecting a proper battlestation CIC either. That’s beyond us right now.”

Leo said nothing as he surveyed the chamber. There were nine consoles – five outdated, four foreign – with three officers on duty. The status display had a note written under the screen – NOT REALTIME – and the holographic nearspace display was oddly fuzzy. A handful of icons showed the locations of a group of passive sensor platforms, positioned on the edge of the asteroid cluster. They weren’t picking up anything from outside the asteroids. Leo hoped to hell that was a good sign. If he were a rebel commander, and he knew where the base was, he’d wait until the ships were nearly ready and then strike.

Madeleine kept walking, through a hatch into what was very clearly an office. The desk was covered in datapads, a smaller holographic display showed the progress of the ships being refitted … the rocky walls were blank, save for a single picture of an elderly couple. Leo guessed they were her parents. He’d kept a picture of his father, and another of the entire family, in his cabin on Waterhen, before her final mission. They were both still in storage on Yangtze.

“My office,” Madeleine said. She caught herself a moment later, her voice darkening with anger … bitterness and grief. “Sorry. Your office. I’ll move my stuff out shortly. Unless you want to share …”

Leo took a breath. “I think we should talk first, don’t you?”

Madeleine’s temper flared. She looked pretty when she was angry … Leo shut that thought down hard, before it could go anywhere neither of them wanted it to go.

“You think we have anything to talk about?”

“Yes.” Leo took his rank badge from his collar and laid it on the table, granting permission for her to speak freely. “I think we do.”