Tarnished Glory

Morningstar III

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

Christopher G. Nuttall

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

http://www.chrishanger.net
http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/
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All Comments Welcome!

Contents
Cover Blurb
Prologue I
Prologue II
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Afterword
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.

Daybreak has never faced a peer power, but as the rebels along the Rim start to get organised –backed by shadowy figures who may lurk far closer to the core worlds – it is only a matter of time before the Yangtze Sector, perhaps the entire Daybreak Republic, is plunged back into war, a war that will leave the sector in ruins and spark further conflict elsewhere. In a desperate bid to prevent an explosion, Commander Leo Morningstar sets off to infiltrate the rebels and locate their bases before all hell can break loose, unaware that it may already be too late …

And that the greatest danger is the one that lurks in plain sight.

Prologue I

From: Leo Morningstar: A Critical Analysis. Baen Historical Press. Daybreak. Year 307.

Given his importance to the events of the critical period that reshaped the Daybreak Republic/Empire  beyond all hope of repair, it is perhaps not surprising that generations of historians, psychologists, and revisionists have visited and revisited the early years of a man who was both a catalyst for change and, at the same time, an earnest fighter for a conservative system that had not always been very kind to him. There is no shortage of commentary and analysis on his early career, ranging from detailed military histories to personality assessments that veer from the reasonable to the outrageous. Leo Morningstar has been branded a hero, a villain, and everything in between. Indeed, it is a curious take on his life and career that he was both a great hero and a villain.

There is little doubt about the outline of his early life. His father was a war hero who died in action, leaving him under the care of his mother and the patronage of Captain – later Grand Senator – Grand Senator (Admiral) Sullivan. Although of common birth, at least as far as Daybreak was concerned, the combination of parentage and patronage ensured that Leo Morningstar would not only attend the Naval Academy, but also survive a fight with then-Senior Cadet Francis Blackthrone that would otherwise have seen him expelled. The relationship between Leo and Francis Blackthrone would not end there, and their rivalry would cast a long shadow over the events of the following decade.

Seemingly having learned his lessons, Leo threw himself into training and graduated at the top of his class three years out of four, barely missing the chance to claim the Mary Sue Prize For Extreme Cleverness by a percentage point. A bright future beckoned for the young man, only to be swept away when it was discovered that he was having an affair with Fleur O’Hara, the wife of Commandant O’Hara. Unwilling to allow Leo to take part in the graduation ceremony, unable to find a way to demote him for bringing the Academy into disrepute, Deputy Commandant Horace Valerian engineered an early promotion for Leo that came with a sting in the tail. On one hand, he would be put in effective command of RSS Waterhen, an outdated destroyer whose captain had effectively abandoned his post shortly after his assignment. On the other, he would be expected to take his new ship to the Yangtze Sector – hundreds of light-years from Daybreak – and go into de facto exile. 

It was not the first time that Leo’s libido had gotten him into trouble. It would not be the last.

His enemies thought they had engineered his destruction. They severely underestimated their target. Leo threw himself into doing his duty, escorting convoys, hunting down pirates, and eventually uncovering a plot to separate the sector from Daybreak and either demand better treatment or outright independence. Despite some missteps, including allowing himself to start a relationship with a young woman who later turned out to be one of the masterminds of the rebel plot, Leo successfully defended Daybreak’s presence in the sector and convinced his superiors to send reinforcements.

This may not have worked in his favour. The reinforcement squadron was commanded by Commodore Alexander Blackthrone, an uncle to Lieutenant-Commander Francis Blackthrone, and he wasted no time putting Leo in his place. His nephew was put in command of RSS Waterhen, and Leo himself was expected to serve as his rival’s XO. The deployment did not go smoothly. Francis Blackthrone was ill-prepared for command, and made a handful of mistakes that eventually resulted in the near-destruction of the ship. Waterhen was only saved by Leo’s quick thinking.

One might expect this to win some plaudits and respect from a commanding officer. Instead, Francis Blackthrone assigned Leo to serve as naval liaison officer on Boulogne, a planet on the verge of civil war. Leo rapidly found himself on the front lines of a war when one side took advantage of Daybreak’s distraction to try to renegotiate the peace agreement that had been forced on them at gunpoint. Facing the near-total destruction of Daybreak’s allies, Leo devised a plan to turn the war around and decapitate the enemy forces. This plan was successful … but, in the meantime, Waterhen had been hijacked by rebel forces. Leo was forced to gamble everything on returning to his former ship, defeating the rebels, and returning to report to his superiors.

This victory did bring him some respect from Commodore Blackthrone. Leo’s command of Waterhen was confirmed (Francis, severely injured, was transferred to medical facilities on Yangtze). However, the ship was damaged by the final engagement and her crew – including Leo himself – were allowed a few weeks of leave before returning to their vessel. It should have been a time to relax. For Leo, a man of action, it was deeply boring. He was champing at the bit within a week.

Thankfully, unknown to him, he was about to meet a man who would be of singular importance in his future career… and embark on a mission that would change his life forever.

Prologue II

Gayle burned.

It was hard, very hard, to keep the rage and frustration from showing on her face as the shuttle neared her destination. She’d spent nearly a decade, since her father had brought her into the fold, working to undermine Daybreak’s control of the Yangtze Sector and ensure a better deal for locals who would otherwise be ruthlessly exploited by the most expansionist empire in human history, only to see the whole edifice come crashing down through the determination of a lone starship captain. Not even a real captain, to add insult to injury. Gayle didn’t pretend to understand the politics that had put a young man, barely out of his teens, in command of a warship, but she had to admit Daybreak had made a good call. Leo Morningstar had exposed the plot, destroyed several rebel warships, killed her father and forced Gayle herself to flee. And to think …

She ground her teeth, feeling the anger gnawing at her. She’d worked hard to present herself in a manner that would appeal to his prejudices, to make him want to like her and try to save her, and it had all come crashing down. She had known it was a gamble, when the rebels had taken Leo Morningstar into custody, but she’d thought she had it all under control. He hadn’t realised she was more than just a pretty face, not until it was too late, and she’d hoped their relationship would convince him to join her. The plot had always been risky – they’d known they could easily lose right from the start – and the open support of the ranking officer in the sector could have made the difference between success and failure. And she'd failed. Her world remained in Daybreak’s clutches, her father was dead and the family corporation under new management … and she was on the run. She didn’t know if Daybreak knew she’d survived, but they hadn’t found a body. They’d be wise to assume she was still alive.

Not that there’d be much to recover from an exploding starship, she thought, the anger giving way to bitterness. Her father had died on the outdated heavy cruiser, his body vaporised. They’d done what they could to convince investigators every named figure in the plot had been on that ship, but the story was just a little too convenient. And they know there’s a growing rebellion even if they don’t know everyone involved.

It would be easy to give up, she reflected. She was a young woman with plenty of useful skills … skills she’d been careful to hide from Leo Morningstar, at least until the masks were off and they saw each other clearly for the first time. Her papers marked her out as a qualified technician and starship engineer, ensuring she could make a living almost anywhere. She could even find a homestead on a stage-one colony world, running a farm and raising a small army of children and stepping out of history once and for all. She wasn’t tempted. She knew how much her father, and the rest of his allies, had sacrificed in a desperate bid to save the sector from the empire. If they had been able to secure their position, and ask for membership as an autonomous world …

Bad rolls of the dice are inevitable, she thought, sourly. Leo had said that once, when he’d talked about his exile from Daybreak. An exile to glory, more like. If Leo wasn’t the most famous young man of his generation, it was a reflection on the enemy’s media rather than the young man himself. You just have to pick yourself up, learn from the experience, and move on.

She let out a breath as the shuttle docked, the gravity field shivering slightly. She wasn’t one to give up. Daybreak knew the rebellion existed now, true, but they wouldn’t change their approach to the sector just because some locals objected to being annexed. There was even a theory going round the underground arguing that Daybreak had deliberately baited the rebels into striking, in order to expose and destroy them. It might well be true. Leo hadn’t known anything of it, Gayle was sure, but he was hardly the most subtle thinker. His superiors might have had more in mind when they sent him into exile than just getting rid of him. Even if they hadn’t … it had paid off for them.

The hatch hissed open. A masked figure appeared, beckoning for her to stand and follow him. Gayle unbuckled herself and stood, feeling the deck shifting slightly below her feet … a slightly lower than normal gravity field, unusual beyond the edge of civilised space. It frustrated her, sometimes, that she had no idea who their backers truly were, but she understood the importance of secrecy. Daybreak wouldn’t hesitate to drop the hammer – or a flurry of kinetic projectiles – on any world that backed the rebels, and very few autonomous worlds could stand up to the Daybreak Navy for long. Their backers had to remain unknown, even to her. What she didn’t know she couldn’t be made to tell.

Her escort led her through two airlocks and into a space station. The bulkheads were bare, scoured of anything that might identify the station’s designers. It was probably pointless – most ships and stations in the region had passed through several pairs of hands before reaching their final destination – but it was better to be careful. Daybreak’s investigators had uncovered a handful of assets Gayle, and her father, had thought well-hidden. If they got a solid ID on a ship or a station, they might just be able to trace it back to the buyer.

The conference room was as bare as the rest of the station, a simple metal table flanked by two metal chairs. A tray sat on the table, holding a jug of water and a pair of simple plastic glasses, but there were no other comforts. There wasn’t even a holographic projector. Gayle’s lips twitched as she took her seat. The Cognoscenti – it was the only name she’d ever been given – were taking paranoia a little too far. If the space station was discovered, and the crew failed to destroy it, the barren compartment would be the least of their worries. 

She took a moment to calm herself, then looked up as the other hatch hissed open. A figure stepped into the chamber, wearing a mask and robes that hid everything from their gender to their figure. They could be a heavy-worlder with a genetically-engineered body, making the outfit very tight, or they could be a tiny space-dweller wearing garb that looked and felt like a tent. There were no markings on the outfit, nothing to suggest their homeworld. It crossed her mind to wonder if she was dealing with aliens. There were no intelligent races in the known universe – save for humanity, and humanity’s intelligence was often in question – but it wasn’t impossible. Dozens of worlds had given birth to higher-order animal life forms. Why not an intelligent race?

Not impossible, she told herself. Just very unlikely.

“Greetings,” the representative said. She’d expected a toneless voice, but the figure spoke with a definite Daybreak accent. That little detail would put the cat amongst the pigeons, if she were captured and forced to talk. The accent was probably designed to taunt the investigators. It was a little too stereotypical to be wholly real. “I am Cognoscenti.”

“Greetings,” Gayle said, as the figure glided over and sat facing her. The voice was masculine, suggesting she was dealing with a man. Or a woman with altered vocal cords or a simple voice changer. Either was possible. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“We have supplied ships and repair services to your forces,” Cognoscenti said, without any further pleasantries. “You have lost several vessels in engagements with Daybreak. Worse, Daybreak is now aware that someone is funding your operations. Why should we continue to support you?”

Gayle took a moment to calm herself before answering. The tone was flat, rather than accusatory, but somehow that made it worse. She hated the thought of being dependent on anyone, let alone a mysterious group hiding behind a strange name, yet there was little choice. Yangtze had barely started to rebuild her space-based industry when Daybreak arrived, and she’d been one of the most advanced planets in the sector. There was an entire underground economy, true, but there were limits to how much it could provide. Gayle wouldn’t care to trust a vessel produced in a secret yard, even assuming the yard managed to put a starship together in the first place. They needed their supporters, despite the risks.

“We lost a battle,” she conceded, without allowing a hint of her anger and frustration into her voice. “There’s no point in denying it. However, the war is not lost, and the ultimate cause of the war remains unaddressed. If we do not fight, this sector will be annexed completely and you, whoever you are, will remain under their thumb. Forever.”

She waited, studying Cognoscenti. His mask hid his reaction and yet … he had to be worried. No autonomous world truly believed they would be allowed to remain autonomous forever, no matter the terms of their annexation into the empire. Daybreak had spent decades pushing its military and economic power into every last incorporated sector, ensuring its corporations had the edge over their local counterparts, and it was just a matter of time before they started doing the same to the autonomous worlds. They had to be tempting targets. Planets like New Washington and Edo were extremely wealthy, by interstellar standards. And they didn’t have the military power to defend themselves if Daybreak wanted the wealth for themselves.

“We still have a large reserve of manpower,” she added. “The United Front has been recruiting aggressively. We have thousands of motivated starship crewmen and soldiers, ready and willing to fight for the cause; they just need to be trained, armed, and supplied with ships they can use to take the fight to the enemy. If you support us, we can liberate ourselves.”

Or ensure a constant running sore that’ll keep Daybreak from bullying you while they’re dealing with us, she added, in the privacy of her own mind. She wasn’t blind to the simple reality the Cognoscenti wouldn’t be funding the United Front if they didn’t stand to gain from their victory. Or even a prolonged and ultimately inconclusive conflict. If we buy time for you, you can make best use of it while our mutual enemy is distracted.

“Every ship we send does raise the spectre of the vessel being tracked back to its point of origin,” Cognoscenti pointed out. “Can you ensure it doesn’t happen?”

“The ships have passed through so many hands that tracing them is a difficult and ultimately impossible task,” Gayle pointed out. “Quite frankly, if that were a concern, you wouldn’t have supplied us with any ships.”

She winced, inwardly. Her father and his allies had created a network of shell corporations and other measures to obtain some ships, passing the vessels through several hands to obscure their origins as much as possible. It wasn’t clear how well they’d covered their tracks. It was clear that many of those vessels had been outdated, dangerously vulnerable to modern warships. They’d refitted the starships as best they could, but still … Daybreak had the edge. That had to change.

Cognoscenti spoke with a quiet intensity. “It is vitally important that you move to destabilise the sector as much as possible, and for that we will increase our efforts to supply you. Daybreak must be distracted.”

Gayle allowed herself a tight smile. “If you continue your support, Daybreak will be more than just distracted,” she promised. The plan was risky, but what wasn’t? And if it allowed her to get a little personal revenge into the bargain … “I have a plan.”

“Very good,” Cognoscenti said. “Do not fail us.”

Chapter One

Leo hated to admit it, but he was bored.

Two weeks of shore leave felt like agony, and he was only halfway through. There was little to do on Yangtze that didn’t bring back memories of Gayle, and just how much of a fool he’d made of himself when he’d thought her a sweet young lady unfairly held back by her society. In truth he would sooner be throwing himself into Waterhen’s refit than sitting in the bar nursing a glass of beer feeling sorry for himself. He had no idea if Commodore Blackthrone was trying to punish Leo by insisting he took leave, or if he was genuinely trying to help, but it didn’t matter. He was bored and lonely and just plain desperate for something – anything – to happen.

He sighed as he sat back in his seat, allowing his eyes to wander the bar. It was a spacer’s bar: the air heavy with tobacco smoke, the drinks high in price and low in quality, spacer rotgut competing with local beer and a handful of dubious-looking bottles of wine. Leo had never heard of any of the brands, particularly the bottles marked Caballus Eniru, but none looked worth half the price. The barmaids didn’t look worth it either. Spacers going on leave after weeks in interstellar space developed new standards of beauty, but there were limits. Not that it would matter to a merchant spacer, he supposed. The spaceport strip was meant to separate the spacer from his money as quickly and pleasantly as possible, and it did it very well. It just wasn’t suitable for him.

You’re being an ass, he told himself, curtly. Stop it.

His mood darkened. There was little to do. He didn’t fancy the brothel, or the entertainment complex, or even going for a wander around Yangtze City. It had expanded rapidly in the last six months, so quickly that Leo had wondered if he’d landed in the wrong place when he disembarked from the shuttle, but it still served largely as a transhipment point rather than a settlement in its own right. The new colonists were being farmed out as quickly as possible, rather than being allowed to remain in the city. It would be decades, at best, before the planet started developing real cities. Some planets never did.

Two men started shouting, loudly. Leo looked up, half-expecting a fight. He’d been in enough bar fights during his misspent youth and … he shook his head, cursing under his breath. He really was too bored. The days in which he could trade blows with a merchant spacer, spend the night in the clink and be released the following day to face a stern lecture from his instructors were over. He was Commander Morningstar now. He had to set a good example for everyone else.

Sure, his thoughts mocked. You can set an example of what not to do.

The brief conflict died away as the barmaids hurried over, breaking up the fighters before they could do more than shout at each other. Leo was mildly impressed. The barmaids back home generally hid behind the bar and called the Shore Patrol, who could be relied upon to stun first and ask questions later. But then, Yangtze was nowhere near as developed as Daybreak, and there were still relatively few spacers passing through. It would change in the next few decades, he was sure. The sector had a great deal of potential. A little investment and technological help and it would be well on the way to success.

“Leo Morningstar?”

Leo flinched, one hand dropping to the pistol at his belt. The newcomer had snuck up on him while he was watching the fight … Boothroyd would make fun of him, respectfully of course, if he ever heard about it. The Sergeant Major was on a forced march with the new recruits, drilling them ruthlessly; Leo wished, suddenly, that he’d asked to accompany them. The march would be many things, but it wouldn’t be boring.

“Yes,” he said, looking up. “What can I do for you?”

The newcomer smiled and sat facing Leo. He was a middle-aged man, appearing to be in his late forties. The streak of grey in his brown hair lent him an air of simple dignity, as well as marking him as a Daybreaker. It was possible to use cosmetic surgery to turn yourself into the most breathtakingly attractive person in the world, but such vanity was frowned upon on Daybreak. His tunic was Daybreaker too, so plain Leo knew it was part of a deliberate attempt to present himself in a certain way. The only adornment was a service pin, attached to his collar, that proved he’d done his service and earned citizenship. That service could be anything from front-line combat to cleaning the sewers, Leo reflected, but it deserved respect all the same.

“I am Senator Tiberius Quinton,” the newcomer said. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Leo blinked, then straightened automatically. He’d never been that keen on memorising the names and faces of citizens who ran for elected office, particularly the ones who’d done their service and retired rather than keeping their skin in the game, but even he had heard of Tiberius Quinton. He was not just a ‘new man,’ a man whose family had never entered politics before him, he was one of the very few senators who’d campaigned without support from the long-established families and patronage networks. His victory had been one hell of an impressive achievement. It had to have rankled some of the older families the wrong way.

“Likewise,” he managed. Quinton would have had military experience, then. His opponent would not have failed to make a song and dance about Quinton lacking moral fibre, if he hadn’t put his own ass in the line of fire once or twice. “I had no idea you were coming.”

“I’m travelling incognito,” Quinton said. “You’d better check my ID before we go any further.”

Leo felt himself flush as he took the badge of office and pressed it against his wristcom. It had been months since he’d seen a news report with Quinton’s face, and it was just possible he was dealing with an imposter … the answer came back a moment later, the military datanet confirming Quinton’s true identity. Leo returned the badge and sat back in his chair, feeling oddly unsure of himself. Normally, there would be a ceremony for a senatorial visitor. The fact Quinton had apparently refused one was … interesting.

“You appear to be you,” he said. It wasn’t that uncommon for senators to brush shoulders with their constituents on Daybreak, but that was hundreds of light-years away. “Why didn’t you announce your arrival?”

“I’m on a fact-finding mission, and it’s sometimes easier to learn what’s really going on if you don’t arrive as dramatically as possible,” Quinton said. He had a personable air that made Leo want to like him. “It’s very easy to find someone willing to tell me what they think I want to hear, harder to get the truth.”

“And many people can’t handle the truth,” Leo said. Commodore Blackthrone had not been pleased by Leo’s report covering his nephew’s many failings, although he’d been man enough not to punish Leo for impudence. Unless the shore leave was punishment … “What sort of truth do you want to hear?”

Quinton reached into his pocket, produced a privacy generator, and placed it on the table. Leo felt a faintly uncomfortable sensation brushing against his eardrums as the generator activated, creating a faint haze of visual and electromagnetic distortion that should make it impossible for anyone to overhear them. Even lip-reading was supposed to be impossible. Leo reminded himself not to place too much faith in the device. The security and intelligence services of a dozen planets would be trying to find ways to beat the field, if they hadn’t already succeeded. They wouldn’t gloat about it if they had. They’d keep it to themselves as long as possible.

“Tell me,” Quinton said. “What do you think of this sector? Politically speaking?”

Leo kept his face under tight control. Daybreakers were taught to be direct … and Quinton had clearly taken those lessons to heart. And he’d opened with a tricky subject … Leo could easily get in trouble for answering honestly, although he had an excellent defence. It was a major crime to refuse to answer questions from a senator, if he posed them. He’d be fined heavily at the very least, and given he had enemies back home, the consequences would likely be a great deal more severe.

“It’s hard to say,” Leo said, after a moment. “Some locals have accepted the annexation and are trying to work with us, to ensure the process is beneficial to both sides. Others resent the loss of their independence, fear what we might do to them, or … simply don’t like us. Most governments, from what I’ve seen, aren’t very pleased even if they benefit from our presence. Their people rarely support us.”

Quinton cocked his head. “How many demands do we make of them?”

“Obedience,” Leo said. “The sector doesn’t have that much to offer, not yet, but we demand they follow our rules and … I imagine it rankles, even if there are good reasons behind the rules. We push them around a lot, imposing our laws and demanding that they grant our people and corporations extraterritorial rights.”

“I don’t think you need to imagine at all,” Quinton said.

Leo sucked in his breath. Quinton was perceptive.

“No,” he said. “I know it for a fact.”

He sighed, inwardly. It was easy to understand what had driven Gayle and her father to take such desperate measures, gambling everything on a plot to force a better deal from the all-powerful empire pushing its way into their sector. He was a loyal Daybreaker, and he understood the reasoning behind the creation of a de facto empire, but he couldn’t help feeling they were storing up trouble for themselves. Daybreak had brought some benefits to the sector, from saving failing colonies to hunting down pirates, yet it had also brought severe disadvantages. And the benefits and disadvantages had not been spread evenly.

“No,” Quinton agreed. “Do you think there’s anything we can do about it?”

“No,” Leo said. He shook his head. “I mean … we could stop being us, but …”

He shrugged, helplessly. The Great Interstellar War had taught the human race a very important lesson. Political disunity could not be allowed, and while many worlds could handle their own internal affairs without interference, they couldn’t be permitted to do things that would cause interstellar incidents, perhaps even a second war that would bring humanity to the brink of extinction once again. Sure, there were small changes that could be made, but … it would be difficult to convince Daybreak to change course. Too much money and political power was tied up in keeping matters just the way they were.

“We could keep from giving our corporations protection as they force their way into local markets,” he mused. “But will they go along with it?”

“They may have to,” Quinton said. “The current situation is unsustainable.”

Leo blinked. He’d heard it before, from rebels and dissidents, but to hear it from a Daybreaker was shocking. Quinton wouldn’t have completed his service, let alone run for office and won, if he hadn’t been deeply committed to making the system work. And yet, he was calling the existence of the entire system into question?

“The autonomous worlds are increasingly resentful,” Quinton said, quietly. “We tax them, we supervise them, we ensure they labour under the burden of unequal treaties … and yet, they have no say in our government. We strip them of their best and brightest, leaving them with the dregs as our society benefits from skilled, capable and determined immigrants. And when they dare complain about it, we send the military to give them a spanking. Why should they not hate and resent us?”

He paused, letting his words hang in the air. “And those worlds have at least some degree of freedom. What about the colonies and settlements that have no freedom at all?”

Leo felt disorientated, as if the discussion had taken a turn in a very unexpected direction. It was … part of him wanted to stand up and leave, fearing that Quinton was leading him into very dangerous waters, and part of him knew he had to listen. The whole affair was so strange he felt as though he’d walked through the looking glass into a world where up was down, white was black, and two plus two equalled banana. The Navy was comparatively understandable, if only because he’d been in uniform for the last five years. This …

He sucked in his breath. “Should you be talking to me about this?”

“Interesting question,” Quinton said. “You were the ranking officer in this sector. You’re a loyalist, and no one can suggest otherwise, but you’re also young enough not to be wedded to the way things are. And you’re clear-eyed enough to see the trouble we’re storing up for ourselves.”

Leo shivered. He’d had the exact same thought.

Quinton smiled, a brief, sharp expression that crossed his face before fading again. “And I am a senator, with the right to ask questions of whomever I please,” he added. “Who can argue otherwise?”

“True,” Leo conceded. “But I am only one man.”

“And a hero, back home,” Quinton said. “Your word could influence the debates, when they take place.”

“If they do,” Leo said.

“I’m going to put my hat in the ring for Consul, in the next few years,” Quinton said. “It will be an interesting election season, to be sure. If I win, or one of the few who agree with me wins in my place, the matter will be raised. I suspect the vast majority of Daybreakers don’t understand how bad things are getting, even a mere few light-years from home, and the debates will make the problem clear to them. Your voice will help influence matters, when the final vote is taken.”

My patron may have something to say about that, Leo thought. Where does he stand on the matter?

It wasn’t a question he could ask. Not openly.

“If you do, I’ll be happy to testify,” he said, instead. The Senate could compel testimony. There was no point in trying to resist. “However …”

“We will be going up against some very vested interests,” Quinton said, interrupting. “I won’t deny it. There are a great many politicians and military officers who benefit greatly from the current situation. But the constitution is not a suicide pact. We work to unite the human race to prevent another catastrophic war, and laying the seeds for future conflict will eventually undermine our project beyond the point of no return. We dare not fight a civil war. Even if we win, we lose.”

Leo nodded, slowly. The Daybreak Navy was powerful enough to take on every other navy in the known galaxy and win, but the cost would be high and there’d be little left of humanity’s former unity when the dust settled. He couldn’t even begin to work out how such a war would progress, or what would happen when – if – the combatants started using planet-killing weapons. Again. There were worlds that had been destroyed during the last war, their populations slaughtered ruthlessly, and few had recovered to the point they could be resettled. And planet-killing weapons were a hell of a lot more destructive now.

“Someone is already playing games,” he mused. “We still don’t know who’s backing the rebels.”

“I could give you a list of suspects,” Quinton said. “If Intelligence has narrowed it down any, they haven’t told me.”

Leo made a face. Intelligence would have told Quinton, if they had a solid idea of just who had sold warships and weapons to the rebels. They would have been relieved to prove their worth after successive failures, too. But if they didn’t know … whoever was behind the operation had covered their tracks very well. There would be a breakthrough eventually, Leo was sure, but when? He had no idea.

“That has to be stopped,” Quinton added. “Our hard-liners are already using it as an excuse to avoid granting more latitude to incorporated worlds, and if we don’t hunt the rebels down and identify their backers, they’re only going to get worse. The citizens won’t listen to pleas for mercy and understanding if they’re mourning their dead and counting the cost. Why should they?”

He leaned back in his chair. “I don’t mean to place all this on you,” he added. “And I don’t expect you to take a stand against your patron, if he chooses a side. But if there is anything you can do to help defuse this ticking time bomb before it’s too late, please do. We have no idea when the bomb is going to explode, but it will.”

Leo nodded, his insides churning. “I understand.”

“Glad you do.” Quinton picked up the generator and pocketed it, then stood. “It was nice to meet you, Commander, and I hope I can count on your vote when the time comes.”

He strode away before Leo could answer, walking out of the bar. Leo stared after him, unsure what had just happened. He’d missed something, he was sure, but what? The whole conversation had left him on edge, as if he knew he was in trouble without being entirely sure for what. It was just … strange, and yet … he finished his drink and stood, brushing down his tunic. He’d go back to Naval HQ, read the news reports, and then wait for the call to duty.

But he couldn’t help feeling unsure, as he made his way into the open air, if he’d dodged a bullet …

Or stepped right into the line of fire.

Chapter Two

“Did you have a nice break?”

Leo snorted as he clambered into the shuttle, joining Flower and Boothroyd. He wasn’t sure what Flower had been doing for the last two weeks, and he’d wished for a chance to discuss the matter with her, but she’d been nowhere to be found. Boothroyd had been too busy with the new recruits to have time for him, even if he was still technically under Leo’s command. Leo himself had spent the time reading up on politics, even if everything in the local library was several months out of date. It made him wish Ruth Benedictine had stuck around, although he knew that might have proven tricky. Their relationship had always been a little too mercenary for his peace of mind. Hers too, probably.

And the commodore saw fit to invite them both to the meeting, he thought, grimly. Why them? Why not my XO?

“It was interesting,” he said. They’d have to discuss it later. The shuttle was supposed to be secure, but Leo knew from personal experience just how easy it was for the pilot to eavesdrop on his passengers … and he wouldn’t have put it past Commodore Blackthrone to order the pilot to do just that. The sector’s commanding officer was hardly Leo’s biggest fan, even though Leo had saved his family from an embarrassing mistake of their own making. “Did you?”

Boothroyd looked up from his datapad. “Standards have slipped, of course,” he said, in a mock-gruff tone. “Some good material in the new recruits, but they’ll need months of training before they’re ready to take the field.”

Flower shot him a sidelong glance. “Do you have the full support of the Commodore and his people?”

“Sort of.” Boothroyd shrugged, expressively. “But not as much as I’d like.”

Leo scowled, inwardly. The planetary militia had been small in number even before it had been brutally compromised by the dissidents, then purged of senior officers by Commodore Blackthrone. They practically had to rebuild from scratch, all too aware they were under close scrutiny by the sector commander … a scrutiny that couldn’t fail to breed resentment and eventual rebellion. They’d have to work long and hard to earn trust, and they’d never be trusted completely, no matter how hard they worked. Leo couldn’t blame the militiamen for being resentful. In their place, he’d be resentful too.

The shuttle’s gravity field shivered as the craft took off, arcing into the bright blue sky. Leo felt a thrill as the shuttle climbed higher, telling himself he was going back to space even though his starship wasn’t ready to return to duty. He had no idea why he’d been summoned, but … he was fairly certain it wasn’t for a chewing out. He hadn’t done anything that might have been brought to the Commodore’s attention. Not since his return to the system after his adventures on Boulogne, at least. He’d been on leave.

He tapped the control, bringing up the near-space display. The orbital facilities seemed to be breeding; a new cluster of defence platforms and automated weapons systems kept watch over a growing number of fabrication nodes, asteroid habitats and transhipment stations, linked to mining camps and cloudscoops right across the system. Yangtze’s new governor appeared to be pushing economic development as fast as possible, taking advantage of loans and access to the interstellar shipping network to boost his system’s profile before the really big interstellar corporations arrived. Leo suspected the man was moving too fast, that he was pumping in vast sums of money that wouldn’t be repaid for decades, but he couldn’t really blame him. If he didn’t secure his world’s place before it was too late, Yangtze would become just another subcomponent in a corporate empire. And that would be the end.

“There are more colonist ships out there,” Flower said, quietly. “Something must have happened.”

“Guess so,” Leo agreed. The sector was too far from the core to be a priority destination for colonisation, while Yangtze herself was too heavily settled for a refugee population to be resettled in hopes of quelling yet another bout of ethnic conflict. “I guess we’ll hear about it shortly.”

“Keep an eye on the non-classified shit,” Boothroyd advised, without looking up. “You’ll find it does give hints, even if it rarely discusses what’s really going on.”

Leo shrugged as the shuttle altered course, rising out of low orbit and flying straight towards the observation squadron. A battlecruiser, RSS Pompey, was flanked by three light cruisers, a destroyer and a troop transport so small and slow it would normally stay close to its home system. The navy had to be feeling the pinch, Leo mused, if that was the only transport available. It was a grim reminder the navy was stretched over a region of the galaxy hundreds of light-years across, with neither the manpower nor the starships to provide absolute security everywhere. A chill ran down his spine. It felt foreboding in a manner he couldn’t put into words.

He who would be strong everywhere is strong nowhere, he reminded himself. A navy that counted itself in the thousands, yet spread itself over hundreds of star systems, was a navy that could be picked off ship by ship. There were no serious threats to Daybreak’s supremacy, certainly not anything that would require the navy to muster more than a dozen ships, but it still struck him as wrong. We could be storing up trouble for ourselves in more ways than one.

RSS Pompey grew rapidly in the display, a long, flattened cylinder with drive nodes that gave the battlecruiser a hint of wings, almost of elegance. She was no civilian design and she certainly hadn’t been crafted for aesthetics rather than efficiency, but there was something about her that made envy grow in his breast. Her commander was a lucky man, even if he did have Commodore Blackthrone looking over his shoulder. Leo wanted to take command himself and put her to the test, thrusting her drives to the max and engaging targets that only existed in the most paranoid of automated combat exercises. He would have taken the command chair even if the Commodore remained on board.

“Here goes nothing,” Flower muttered. A low thump echoed through the shuttle as she docked with the battlecruiser, the gravity field flickering slightly. “Just remember not to lose your cool.”

Leo had to smile as Flower unstrapped herself and stood, her uniform somehow drawing attention to her curves even though it wasn’t particularly tight in all the right places. Flower had a presence that made men and women stare, something that concealed the sharp brain that hid behind her smile. Her training made her an expert in so many fields … he was glad she was on his side, that he hadn’t let himself be fooled by her appearance. She was so much more than just a pretty face.

He stood too, then stepped through the airlock and into Pompey. A young midshipwoman he faintly recognised from his last visit waited outside, saluting him and then stepping backwards to allow him to salute the flag. He felt an odd little niggle at the back of his mind as she nodded politely to Flower and Boothroyd, a sense he’d seen her before – and not just during the last visit to Pompey. Perhaps she’d been in the year above or below him, back at the Academy. It was a reminder his career hadn’t followed a remotely conventional path. If he hadn’t been caught in bed with Fleur O’Hara, he might have been busted back to midshipman by now – never mind that he’d earned the right to graduate as a lieutenant – or simply have remained in the same rank, long enough for his superiors to be sure he deserved further promotion. Graduating as a lieutenant was a career-maker, but it could also make senior officers wonder if you truly deserved it.

And technically, I left as a Lieutenant-Commander, he reminded himself. What does that say about me?

The thought made him smile, although he knew it really shouldn’t. Any early promotion would be regarded with a jaundiced eye, both the promoter and the promoted coming under harsh scrutiny no matter the circumstances of the promotion. The Deputy Commandant had gone out on one hell of a limb, he reflected wryly, in his desperate bid to get rid of Leo before the scandal hit the Academy. People would wonder if they had a relationship that was not only flatly against regulations, but grossly immoral into the bargain. Leo’s lips quirked in droll amusement. The idea of the Deputy Commandant having any sort of relationship, legal or no, was just unthinkable. The man was boring and unattractive and …

You’re being silly, he told himself, sharply. And you need to keep your wits around you.

They paused outside the conference room while a pair of armed marines ran scanners over their bodies before opening the hatch to allow them to proceed. Leo tried not to roll his eyes at the precautions, knowing they had passed through several security checks before they’d been allowed to enter the spaceport, let alone the shuttle. It would take carelessness – or malice – on a galactic scale for an intruder to get onto the battlecruiser, but he supposed it underlined the seriousness of the affair. Whatever they’d been called to discuss, it wasn’t something as simple as the refit schedule.

“Commander Morningstar,” Commodore Blackthrone said, as he rose from his seat. His voice was calm and intensely focused, his eyes studying Leo thoughtfully. “Thank you for coming.”

He nodded to a young officer sitting at the far end of the table. “Let me introduce you to Commander Sun Li, Naval Intelligence,” he added, as he returned to his seat. “She’ll be giving the briefing, then we’ll discuss the mission.”

Leo glanced at Sun Li, thoughtfully. She looked around the same age as himself, although she was short and slight in a manner that made it easy to overlook her, neither too pretty nor too unattractive. Her dark hair framed a tinted face with almond eyes and a faint expression that looked like nervousness. Given her name, an anglicised version of what was probably something very different, he guessed she was a first or second-generation immigrant. Daybreak didn’t insist immigrants changed their names to fit in, but it was customary. Probably second-generation, if she was in Naval Intelligence. There were some roles that were never open to immigrants, and intelligence, particularly the counter-espionage sections, was one of them.

“Please, take a seat,” Commodore Blackthrone said. An orderly appeared with a tray of tea and biscuits, placed it on the table, and retreated through the hatch as silently as he’d appeared. “We have much to discuss.”

I’m sure you do, Leo thought, as Commander Li poured the tea and handed it out. You wouldn’t have called us here to talk about the football results.

“This is a matter of the highest priority,” Commodore Blackthrone continued. “It is also highly classified, for reasons that will shortly become obvious. If you breathe a word of this to anyone outside the working group before it is declassified, which may be quite some time in the future, you’ll be spending the rest of your lives on a penal colony. Do I make myself clear?”

Leo nodded, keeping his face blank. He had a bad feeling about the whole affair. The Commodore had no reason to like him, or to offer him a chance to earn promotion, which suggested the whole affair was a poisoned chalice. He took a sip of his tea, savouring the taste, and forced himself to relax. He’d deal with the bad news when it came.

“Commander,” Commodore Blackthrone said. There was a hint of warmth in his tone as he looked at Sun Li. “You have the floor.”

“Thank you, Commodore,” Sun said. Her voice was faintly accented, soft enough to make Leo want to tell her to speak up. She came across as nervous, a dangerous mistake in a cutthroat environment. “Give me a moment to bring up the main display, then I’ll begin.”

She tapped the terminal in front of her, then stood, clasping her hands behind her back. “Over the last year, Naval Intelligence has been mounting a major investigation into rebel movements within the sector, trying to answer questions about just where the enemy warships came from, where they’re recruiting their personnel, and just what their ultimate objective happens to be. It has not proved an easy task. The senior leadership of the rebels here, on Yangtze, were either killed or have managed to hide themselves, not a difficult task in a sector that has barely started the process of incorporation, while their junior counterparts were told little they didn’t have to know. What we did manage to get from them was rather unreliable and mostly useless. A few even believed the rebels were in contact with aliens.”

Leo had to smile. The human race believed itself to be alone in the universe. Centuries of exploration had revealed nothing more intelligent than a dog, although there were vague reports of strange starships and alien contacts that veered between being misidentifications and outright hoaxes. There was a small market for alien artefacts, but they were all forged. The idea of a powerful alien empire being close enough to meddle in human affairs was just absurd.

“So far, it has proved impossible to identify the backers,” Sun continued. “The ships were carefully stripped of all identifying marks before they were refitted, with sensors and weapons systems that were impossible to trace back to their point of origin. We have a list of suspects, true, but we have little actual proof, certainly not enough to make a solid case. It is possible we’ll have a breakthrough, yet …”

She shrugged, expressively. “The backers know what’ll happen if they’re exposed. They’ll take every precaution to ensure it doesn’t happen. Frankly, we don’t expect a breakthrough anytime soon.”

Leo nodded, curtly. If it had been easy to identify the mystery backers, it would have been done by now.

“We’ve had more luck tracing their recruitment networks,” Sun said, tapping the console to bring up a starchart. “They appear to be concentrating on young and idealistic spacers, the type to think resistance is actually possible, and independent starship owners, the ones who have good reason to resent us. We’ve traced a number of spacers going into the network, being taken off their homeworlds, and then vanishing.”

Flower leaned forward, her tone seemingly untroubled by being invited into a high-level meeting. “Haven’t you tried to infiltrate someone into their networks?”

“It has been tried,” Sun confirmed. “So far, we haven’t heard anything from our agents. Hopefully … they’ve simply been unable to get in touch with us. Hopefully.”

Ouch, Leo thought. If someone had been taken to a secret base, light-years from anywhere known to Daybreak, it would be impossible for them to get a message out. Not in a hurry, anyway. And if they were uncovered, their captors would have no trouble feeding the body into a recycler, ensuring the spooks never learnt what had happened to their agent. We might not get any word back, even if they remain in deep cover.

“We have been holding off on arrests, in hopes of working our way up the chain,” Sun said, nodding to the display. “I suspect they spend some time vetting their possible recruits before sending them onwards; we have records of recruits leaving one world, appearing on another, then seemingly going onwards from there. Some of us think the enemy is careful not to recruit too many wandering spacers, others think we may be seeing a pattern that isn’t actually there.”

She paused. “And there is a very real risk that someone is tipping them off.”

Leo let out a breath. “I see.”

Sun met his eyes, shooting him a faint smile. “It isn’t clear just how many spacers have passed through the recruiting process, but we’re looking at thousands. At least. It could be a lot more. The records out here are patchy, as you know, but quite a few young and untrained men and women have vanished too. Our general feeling is that they’re getting their training on a rebel base. There’s no reason they can’t provide the training, even if they can’t offer the paperwork.”

Leo snorted. Daybreak had some fairly strict guidelines for training spacers, and – on paper – all spacers had to have the right paperwork if they wanted a job, but so far from the core worlds, the guidelines were advisory at best. The local traders cared more for competence than paperwork, often placing their faith in recommendations from their peers, rather than the shipping office. It wasn’t easy to put a stop to it, no matter how many times the spacers were offered the chance to take the tests for free. The locals didn’t want to waste their time with bureaucratic requirements, particularly ones imposed by an outside power. He didn’t really blame them.

“I see your problem,” he said, after a moment. “I take it you recovered little of value from the captured ships?”

“Not enough,” Sun confirmed. “The main datacores were wiped and then destroyed. We were able to get some data from the navigational and engineering systems, but not enough to track down their bases. There are just too many possible locations within the right volume. We did carry out a handful of fly-through missions, but they turned up nothing.”

They wouldn’t have had the time to carry out a proper search, Leo thought. And even if they did, an enemy base would be tiny on an interplanetary scale.

He studied the display for a long moment. “If you don’t mind me asking, what does this have to do with us?”

“They’re not just recruiting starship crews, but actual starships,” Sun said. “And that gives us an opportunity.”

“Yes …?”

“We need to offer them something they can’t refuse,” Commodore Blackthrone said. There was a hint of dark amusement in his tone, as if he took a certain degree of pleasure in saying the words. “A piece of bait they can’t resist, a gift horse they won’t look in the mouth.”

His voice hardened. “We’re going to offer them Waterhen. And you.”

Chapter Three

“Me?” Leo had been surprised before, but this …? “You’re going to offer them me?”

“And your ship,” Commodore Blackthrone said. “They’ll be unable to refuse you.”

Leo felt a giggle trying to force its way out of his throat. He clamped down on it hard. The idea was a joke, right? If there was one person in the sector the rebels had reason to hate, for all sorts of reasons, it was him. They would have him marked for death, he was sure, even if his gut feelings were wrong and Gayle, who had the strongest reasons of all, hadn’t survived the Battle of Yangtze. If she had … he was mildly surprised the rebels hadn’t tried to kill him. The sector commander wouldn’t bother to look into his death any more than strictly necessary, and if it looked like an accident to cursory inspection, he wouldn’t look any further. If he walked into a rebel base, he wouldn’t walk out again.

“Me?” He glanced at his companions, who looked as surprised as he felt. “I don’t understand.”

Sun leaned forward. “Perhaps I could explain.”

“Please.” Leo took another sip of his tea. “Because it makes little sense.”

“The rebels have been recruiting starships as well as starship crews, as I said,” Sun explained, calmly. “We have evidence they’ve been trying to recruit privateers if not outright pirates, including a number of ships and crews that fled beyond explored space rather than surrender to us. A handful of mercenary forces do appear to have been recruited too, but hard data on their activities is hard to come by. From what we have been able to determine, they recruit starship crews who have a reason to hate and resent us, and put them to work.”

“Right.” Leo was starting to see where she was going. “And you want us to pose as one of those crews.”

Sun keyed the display, bringing up an image of a blue-green planet. “Five months ago, the navy carried out a punitive mission against Farnham, after the local government refused to surrender a Daybreak citizen who had been arrested and charged with a very serious crime. The planet had a history of refusing to follow the law on such matters, and this was the very last straw. The navy moved in and gave them a spanking” – there was a sudden flicker of ice in her words – “and a new government was appointed. Their navy was largely destroyed, or forced to surrender, but a number of starships remain unaccounted for. You’ll be posing as one of those ships.”

Leo frowned. “And what’s to stop them discovering the deception, if there are other vessels out there?”

“There are few accurate records of just how many ships Farnham had,” Sun said. “The planet was carefully skirting the law in such matters too, which should give you a certain degree of cover. You’ll have all the right IFF codes and suchlike. It’ll help that the rebels will want to believe you. As far as they’re concerned, you’re in command of a rogue starship trying to find employment that doesn’t involve piracy.”

“Chancy,” Boothroyd commented.

“Yes,” Sun said. “We’ll do everything in our power to make sure the cover story holds up to close inspection, but yes. It is chancy.”

You might accidentally give them Waterhen, Leo thought, torn between a certainty they could pull the mission off and a sudden desire to refuse the orders even if it cost him his career. If they play along until we’re alone and isolated …

“Once your ship and crew are prepared for the mission,” Sun continued, “you’ll make your way to Winterhome and look for work there. Your vessel’s true nature will attract attention from recruiters, including ones we know to have ties to the rebels. Once they make contact, you’ll pose as willing recruits until you obtain the location of the enemy base and glean an idea of what they’re actually planning to do, then break contact and report back here.”

Flower smiled. “And what happens if the recruiting officers miss their cue?”

“They won’t,” Sun said. “A light cruiser, even an outdated ship that has been refitted several times, is one hell of a prize. They’ll want her.”

“We will, of course, alter the hull to ensure they don’t realise her true name,” Commodore Blackthrone said. “She’ll look like she’s been through the wars.”

“She has,” Leo said, quietly.

Commodore Blackthrone shot him a sharp look. “Yes. She has. And that actually works in our favour.”

“You’ll undergo limited cosmetic surgery to disguise yourselves,” Sun added. “If anyone knows you personally, they won’t recognise you.”

Gayle would, if she saw me, Leo thought. Gayle had been smart, smart enough to pull the wool over his eyes. He hadn’t suspected a thing. She and I were intimate. She knows me very well.

“Perhaps,” he said, slowly. “Do you think this will work?”

Commodore Blackthrone leaned forward. “The rebels made an attempt to toss us out of the sector, which came very close to success. They’ve also been meddling in conflicts on a dozen worlds, sapping our resources and making it harder for us to seek them out. I don’t know what they have in mind, beyond trying to claim their independence, but we need to bring matters to a head as soon as possible. The squadron will not be deployed out here forever.”

Leo frowned, inwardly. Commodore Blackthrone was ambitious and, if he wanted to rise higher, he needed a military victory or two. Antipiracy patrols were important, but they were hardly the sort of thing to impress the public back home. They certainly lacked the drama of the Battle of Yangtze. A man as ambitious as Commodore Blackthrone would certainly look for a battle he could win decisively. Hell, it would be strange if he didn’t. The plan was win-win, as far as he was concerned. At best, he’d have a chance to crush the rebels in open battle; at worst, Leo would be exposed, ridding Commodore Blackthrone of a problematic subordinate. Leo didn’t think the man would actively plot his death, but putting him in an immensely dangerous position would be a very different story. Francis had already put Leo in one very dangerous place.

And I left that affair with a new medal and promotion, Leo reminded himself. They might think twice before trying it again.

“Get the location of their base. Get their trust. Get an idea of what they’re planning. Get back here and report.” Commodore Blackthrone met his eyes. “I don’t have to tell you, I’m sure, of just what’s riding on this affair. The rebels might well be waiting until the squadron is withdrawn, giving them clear space to make their move. We have to get ahead of them and strike before it’s too late.”

Leo took a breath. “Do we have a deadline, sir?”

“Nothing formal, but the Admiralty will want the squadron somewhere else shortly,” Commodore Blackthrone said. “And the rebels know it too.”

“Understood.” Leo exchanged a look with Flower, then glanced back at Sun. “What about my crew?”

“Your crew will be stripped to the bare minimum,” Sun told him. “You can run Waterhen with a dozen crew …”

Leo laughed, humourlessly. That was true, technically, but the moment they took any combat damage – or simply needed to make repairs – they’d be in deep shit. An experienced officer would want at least twenty crewmen, and even that would be pushing it. Waterhen lacked the extensive automation built into the more modern vessels … not, he supposed, that all the remote drones and automated repair systems could match a human crew. He guessed that explained Commodore Blackthrone’s willingness to risk giving Waterhen to the enemy. She was Leo’s pride and joy, but to the rest of the navy she was a vessel that should have been scrapped years ago.

“I need at least thirty crewmen,” he said, just in case she wanted to try to bargain him down. “The ship can’t be run effectively without them.”

“Then make sure they’re primed to keep the cover story,” Sun said. “You will not be able to keep the enemy from interrogating them.”

“Of course not,” Leo agreed. “We’ll prime them as best as possible.”

“Yes,” Commodore Blackthrone agreed.

“I’ll be coming too,” Sun added. “You’ll need me.”

Leo frowned, inwardly. Sun was smart – that much was clear – but he didn’t think she had starship experience. She might come up with ideas that sounded great, yet turned out to be completely impractical in the real world. Hell, this idea sounded impractical. Leo could envisage a hundred things that could go wrong, from the rebels simply missing the bait to their forces boarding and storming his vessel if he made a single mistake. Waterhen had already been boarded and captured once, thanks to Francis’s incompetence. Leo dared not assume they’d be able to recover the ship if she was seized a second time.

“She knows what she’s doing,” Commodore Blackthrone said. “She’ll be accompanying you.”

“I’ll be in command,” Leo said, firmly. He met Sun’s eyes. “And you will not be in the chain of command.”

Sun nodded, simply. Leo silently gave her a point or two. Most spooks, from what he’d heard, had a chip on their shoulder about not being in the chain of command, about not being able to win glory for themselves. No matter their rank, they weren’t line officers and were unable to issue orders to officers who were, even if they had the higher rank. Leo could understand their feelings, but when they lacked the experience to tell a smart order from a bad one … there were horror stories, shared in whispers, about just how badly things could go wrong. Sun, at least, seemed to have a good head on her shoulders. He hoped his impression was not misplaced.

“Waterhen will finish her refit tomorrow,” Commodore Blackthrone said. “Outwardly, she’ll look as though she made a narrow escape into FTL. Inwardly, she’ll be in perfect working order. A number of covert intelligence-gathering systems will be installed on a datastore, carefully isolated from the internal datanet. They’ll have to take the ship apart to find them.”

“And if they do,” Leo said, “the game will be up anyway.”

“Quite.” Commodore Blackthrone met his eyes. “Under the circumstances, your formal orders will have nothing in common with the real mission. As far as the outside universe is concerned, you’re being sent to escort a handful of freighters heading back to Daybreak. You’ll break off from the convoy and make your way to Winterhome from there. Any crew who refuse to volunteer for the mission will be offloaded before you depart, then reassigned to other ships … after being warned to keep their mouths firmly shut. The only record of the mission will exist in secure databases, and our heads.”

His lips twisted. “Try not to get caught.”

“We’ll do our best, sir,” Leo promised.

“So you should.” Commodore Blackthrone stood. “Commander Sun will work through the details with you. If you have any questions, ask her; if you have any requests for supplies, send them to my staff and they’ll make sure you get everything you need. There’ll be little hope of resupply, so put together a list and get everything. I’ll see you when you return.”

He turned and strode out of the compartment, the hatch hissing closed behind him. Leo watched him go, unsure if he should laugh or cry. The mission would be one hell of a challenge, but he wouldn’t be free to talk about it and there were too many things that could go wrong. Any plan that depended on the enemy doing exactly as he wanted was doomed to fail, and probably get him killed in the process, and yet that was exactly what he was doing. Once they got into the rebel network, they would be hopelessly exposed if their cover story was ripped apart. Leo had gotten out of tight scrapes before, but this might be pushing his luck to the breaking point.

Boothroyd cleared his throat. “How far do you want us to go?”

Sun blinked. “In what sense?”

“You want us to pose as rebels,” Boothroyd said. “They’ll test us, put us in positions where we must hurt or kill our own people. Do you want us to fire on friendly starships? Because that is what they’ll want us to do.”

“They won’t,” Sun said, with a confidence Leo couldn’t help thinking was undeserved. “They’ll know Waterhen will be no match for a modern ship.”

Leo felt a twinge of irritation, although she had a point. Waterhen was less capable than her modern counterparts, and if she encountered a bigger vessel, her only choice would be to run before she was blown away. He certainly didn’t want to fight a friendly ship, even if they didn’t know they should be friendly. It shouldn’t happen. The rebels would be foolish to send her to fight a starship ten times her size, unless it was a cunning plot to create a bunch of martyrs. Or simply get them all killed. And yet, if Sun was wrong …

“There’s no guarantee they’ll know it,” he said, finally. “And if they give the order anyway?”

Sun grimaced. “We’d prefer you didn’t fire on a friendly vessel,” she said. “But you have orders to do everything within your power to maintain the cover story as long as possible.”

“That’ll lead to a very interesting court martial,” Boothroyd pointed out. “No one will be pleased about us firing on another Daybreak starship.”

“No,” Sun agreed. “So try to avoid it.”

Leo winced, inwardly. It wasn’t going to be easy. And if he did kill fellow Daybreakers …

Boothroyd is right, he reflected. The court martial is going to be one hell of a mess.

His eyes narrowed. “I won’t fire on friendly vessels,” he said, firmly. “Even if they’re trying to kill us.”

Sun met his eyes, evenly. “And if they’re going to destroy us?”

“I won’t cross that line,” Leo said. Perhaps the spooks could convince themselves that killing their own people served a greater good, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to kill friendlies. “The price is too high.”

“Understood.” Sun’s voice was flat. It was hard to tell if she was impressed or annoyed or anything in between. Her face betrayed nothing. “I won’t ask you to make that choice.”

She tapped the terminal. “As you can see, Farnham has a long history of challenging our authority …”

Leo nodded, curtly, as he scanned the reports. Farnham should have been able to claim a certain degree of autonomy from Daybreak, as long as they followed the rules. He understood why they might want to hold foreign citizens who’d committed crimes on their soil, but Daybreak handled such matters to prevent clashes between worlds that could easily lead to a second major war. It wasn’t as if the criminal would have gotten off lightly. Given the nature of his crime, he would have been given a hasty trial and then dumped on a penal world. It was unlikely, to say the least, that he would have lasted a week. The guards might well tell the other prisoners what he’d done and let them handle the matter. No one would have bothered to investigate if the bastard got knifed before he even made it to the penal hellhole.

And the idiots just had to make a stand, Leo thought. Why didn’t they just hand the prisoner over and let us deal with him?

He sighed, inwardly. No one enjoyed being pushed around, even if it was for the greater good of the human race. God knew, he’d loathed Francis for pushing him around … although Francis had shut up a little after Leo had beaten the tar out of him. Farnham had clearly been building up her navy too … had she thought she had enough ships to stand up to Daybreak? Or had she figured the demand for the prisoner was just the first in a series of demands that’d culminate in the complete termination of her independence? It wasn’t unprecedented. Tiberius Quinton had a point. Daybreak really was storing up trouble for herself.

“It should be easy to pretend to be their spacers, as long as copies of their records didn’t make it here,” Boothroyd said. “If they have …”

Leo nodded. It wasn’t that hard to pretend to be a native of a world he’d never visited … as long as he didn’t encounter someone who’d actually been there, or lived there. They could memorise all the facts they liked, but it would be harder to maintain a cover story in the face of an interrogation that asked for details that wouldn’t be known to anyone who wasn’t a native. And they couldn’t be too vague either. That would be a dead giveaway.

“You’ll be drilled endlessly,” Sun informed him. “By the time you get there, you’ll have your cover story battered into your heads.”

“Just make sure the odds of meeting someone who was born there are as low as possible,” Leo said. “If they start asking us about which street is which, or pop stars that never became famous offworld, we’ll be in some trouble.”

“Some,” Sun said. She sounded confident … Leo made a mental note to get her file and read it very carefully. She didn’t look like a covert agent, certainly nothing like the glamorous James and Janet Bond, but that would be an advantage to a real covert agent. Someone who looked dangerous, physically or mentally, would be watched at all times. “We’ll cover our bases as much as possible.”

Leo let out a breath. “We’ll see,” he said. “When’ll you be joining us?”

“Soon,” Sun said. “I’ll get the last updates shortly before departure, then join you. And then we’ll be on our way.”

“Yeah.” Leo felt his stomach twist. He knew himself to be a brave man, but he’d never trained for this sort of mission. “We’ll see you shortly, then.”

Chapter Four

Leo kept his thoughts to himself as the shuttle returned them to Waterhen, a blunt, flattened arrowhead holding position in high orbit, surrounded by a cloud of repair crews and their worker drones. The light cruiser had been patched up – again – but the crews had left some of the scars alone, or concealed others behind disposable plating that could easily be removed, once the mission began in earnest. Some embedded sensor nodes had been taken out and replaced with more primitive sensors, others appeared to have been left in place. He frowned as he saw workmen on the hull, feeling a twinge of unease. The refit should have been carried out somewhere else. There was just too great a chance of the rebels getting a good look at the hull before the work was finished and Waterhen set out on her way.

He sighed, inwardly. He’d hoped to be assigned to … truthfully, he’d expected another convoy escort mission. Waterhen was ideally suited for the role, and Commodore Blackthrone had every reason to put Leo somewhere he couldn’t embarrass him any further, but … his thoughts spun in circles, wondering quite why they’d been chosen for the mission. There would be no fame if they completed the mission successfully, and if they didn’t come back … he told himself the Commodore wouldn’t take the risk, yet it was hard to be sure. The man’s family had one hell of a grudge.

You’d think I didn’t save Francis from the consequences of his own stupidity, Leo mused, with a flicker of dark humour. But then, I probably didn’t do the Navy any favours by getting him home.

The thought mocked him as the shuttle docked, the hatch hissing open a moment later. A gust of wind brushed against Leo’s nostrils, the scent of his ship clashing oddly with the smell of a refit thoroughly underway. A handful of workers were clearly visible, heads buried in repair hatches that hadn’t been opened for months. Leo couldn’t help thinking the refit was going to take longer than he’d thought. If the estimate was wrong …

He looked up and saw Chief Engineer Bryon Harris hurrying towards him, his face grim. Harris had his issues, but he was a good engineer and he knew Waterhen intimately. If he had reason to be grim, it wasn’t going to be anything minor. Leo hoped it was something that could be fixed. The idea of going back to the Commodore and explaining the mission couldn’t be carried out didn’t sit well with him, not least because it would make him look bad. It wouldn’t be his fault, not in any real sense, but he was the commanding officer. The buck stopped with him.

“Captain,” Harris said. “The refit is almost completed, but there are issues that need to be addressed. What exactly do they want us to do? Some of their modifications …”

Leo held up a hand. “We’ll discuss the mission later,” he said. “For the moment, do any of their modifications put the ship at risk?”

“Not now, but they may if we have to go to maximum power,” Harris said. “They’re asking us to put the sensors dangerously close to our drive fields.”

“Do what you can to minimise the risks,” Leo told him. “And give me a full report this afternoon.”

Harris gave him an odd look, then nodded. “I’ll be in Engineering if you need me.”

Leo watched him go, then dismissed Boothroyd and led Flower back to the Captain’s cabin. It had been stripped of Captain Archibald’s remaining possessions, as well as the décor Francis had installed during his brief period of command: Leo intended to put his own stamp on it, now he was formally in command of his ship, but he hadn’t had the time. He made a mental note to go through his private possessions, just to make sure there was nothing that identified him as a Daybreaker. He had no idea where Farnham trained her naval officers, but it sure as hell wasn’t the Daybreak Naval Academy. The only people who learned their trade there were Daybreakers.

“It looks a lot nicer,” Flower said, as the hatch hissed closed behind them. “I like the bare bulkheads.”

“Hah.” Leo looked around. The bulkheads were so bare it looked as if no one had ever lived in the cabin. Captain Archibald had decorated his living space with paintings of sexual acts Leo had only ever considered theoretically possible, unless one happened to be a contortionist with genetically-engineered muscles and bones. Leo was no prude, but there were limits. A handful of the paintings had looked decidedly non-consensual. “It is an improvement, isn’t it?”

He laughed, then sat at his desk. “Is this crazy plan going to work?”

Flower considered it. “It should work, assuming we keep our cover story firmly in place,” she said. “But if that gets torn away …”

“We’ll be for the high jump,” Leo finished. He ran his hand through his hair. “And to think a few days ago I was moaning I was bored.”

Flower stuck out her tongue. “Careful what you wish for.”

Leo nodded, conceding the point. “What do you make of Commander Li?”

“She seems to know her stuff, but she clearly hasn’t served on a starship,” Flower said. “Unless that’s what she wants us to think, of course.”

“Yeah.” Leo looked up. “Was she trained like you?”

Flower said nothing for a long moment. She had rarely talked about her training and, when she had, it was as little as possible. Leo couldn’t imagine just what sort of program had produced a woman like her, an expert in many skills who could pass as little more than a captain’s woman. If there was something she couldn’t do for herself, she knew who to ask for help … it said much about Captain Archibald, Leo reflected coldly, that he’d seen her as little more than a pretty face and fantastic body. Perhaps not even that. It was worrying in a manner he found hard to put into words.

“I don’t think so,” Flower said, finally. “We’re trained to be good at hiding what we are, but … there are signs. If you know what to look for. If … she wasn’t showing them to me, so … I think she’s just what she seems. An intelligence analyst who came up with a plan and is now charged with putting it into action.”

Leo snorted, studying his hands thoughtfully. It was a long-standing tradition that the planner was supposed to play a major role in implementing the plan, or at least sit on the bridge or CIC if they lacked the command experience to make the plan work, but Commander Sun Li could easily have avoided it. There was little she knew that couldn’t be passed down to Leo and his crew, little she could do that Flower couldn’t do better. Unless they were completely underestimating her …

“She does make an act of being vulnerable,” Flower added, after a moment. “I suspect the Commodore is quite protective of her.”

“He’s old enough to be her father,” Leo protested. “They can’t be …”

“I doubt it.” Flower cut him off. “I think he sees her as a young and vulnerable woman, someone who needs to be protected, rather than a sex object. If that’s deliberate manipulation on her part … she might have more up her sleeve.”

Leo nodded, slowly. Sun had looked vulnerable, making him want to take care of her … it said good things about him that he hadn’t wanted to take advantage of her, but still … it was a puzzle they’d need to solve. He made a mental note to request her file as quickly as possible. If nothing else, it would fill in some of the details.

He sat back in his chair. “If we can pull it off …”

“The Commodore isn’t wrong,” Flower said. “It’s just a matter of time until he’s told to take the squadron somewhere else, or remain behind when his ships are sent elsewhere. If he can break the rebels, there’ll be no reason to worry about the sector when he goes.”

“If,” Leo mused.

He didn’t need to bring up the starchart to visualise the sector. Dozens of inhabited star systems, from newly-settled stage-one colonies to developed stage-three and four worlds like Yangtze; hundreds, perhaps thousands, of asteroid settlements, including a number that weren’t shown on any chart. And the Rim, the edge of formally-explored space … he knew, for a fact, there were worlds settled on the far side of the border that hadn’t been charted either. The navy was doing its best to survey the region, map the fastest routes from star to star, and get an idea of just what was out there, but it was a long, slow process. There could be anything waiting in the darkness.

The sector will be relatively safe if we can destroy the rebel fleet, he told himself. Pirates were a pain in the ass, but they rarely troubled defended worlds. The convoy system would force them to engage warships at point-blank range or find richer pickings elsewhere … eventually. No wonder Commodore Blackthrone wanted a real victory. If he can claim the credit for saving the sector, he’ll be very popular with the folks back home.

Flower cocked her head. “Is there something else you wanted to talk about?”

“Yes.” Leo leaned back in his chair. “I had a very interesting meeting last week.”

He ran through the whole story of his meeting with Senator Tiberius Quinton, watching her face carefully. It was hard to tell what she was thinking, if only because she was skilled at projecting an impression that might be misleading, even if it wasn't outrightly deceptive. She seemed surprised and yet, he wasn’t sure. If there was anyone who knew Quinton was visiting the sector – there hadn’t been any formal ceremony, something odd even if Commodore Blackthrone loathed Quinton – it was her.

“Interesting,” Flower said, neutrally.

“Interesting?” Leo had to smile, despite everything. “Why did he seek me out?”

“You’re famous,” Flower said, simply. “You graduated as a Lieutenant-Commander. You assumed de facto command of a starship assigned to a distant sector, whereupon you bashed a bunch of pirates, captured a pirate base, liberated a large number of kidnapped colonists and last, but very far from least, you uncovered a plot to take the sector out of Daybreak’s orbit and defeated the plotters in ship-to-ship combat. And then you were assigned to a planet you saved from civil war, then you saved your former ship from being hijacked …”

Her lips twisted. “I’m sure Ruth’s dispatches are fanning your legend even as we speak.”

Leo flushed. “Is it wrong that I miss her?”

“You were thrown together by the press of events, with little between you that would have sustained a relationship after the passion faded away,” Flower said. “Add into that the simple fact that Ruth didn’t want to rise on your coattails and …”

She shrugged. “Your support could mean a great deal, when Quinton makes his bid for the consulship.”

“He asked a lot of questions,” Leo mused. “Was he truly interested in my opinion and observations?”

“I imagine so.” Flower leaned back in her chair. “No one who reaches the Senate is stupid, Leo, and Quinton is more than smart enough to understand his own limitations. He hasn’t spent more than a month out here, hardly long enough to really get to grips with the sector. You’ve been out here for over a year, so you should know better than him. Asking you for your thoughts is sheer common sense.”

“Thanks.” Leo felt a twinge of pride, then sobered. “What are his odds of actually winning?”

Flower said nothing for a long moment. “It’s difficult to say,” she said, finally. “He’s a New Man, which works in his favour. The electorate tends to disapprove of candidates who rely too much on their family ties or patronage networks, even though just about everyone makes use of them anyway. He’ll be seen as fresh blood, which is always welcome. But on the other hand, a policy that benefits the autonomous worlds and protects them from exploitation, however defined, isn’t going to go down very well with the Old Guard. The attack ads practically write themselves. Quinton will be painted as someone who wants to restart the war, or turn Daybreak into the first among equals rather than the first, and the electorate may turn against him.”

She shrugged, again. “It’s a mistake to think the electorate cares that much about what happens outside Daybreak itself,” she added. “There are limits to their willingness to make concessions to the autonomous worlds. And yes, that may wind up costing us. But so too might taking the boot off their necks. What’ll happen if New Washington, or Britannia, or Edo, or even Heinlein builds up a navy that can and will give us pause?”

Leo grimaced. Daybreak wrote the rules and enforced them ruthlessly, and everyone knew it. They were simple, easy to understand; it was easy to explain, to the public, how the rules had been broken and why the navy needed to teach the rule-breakers a lesson. There was no room for negotiation when the rules were broken, no room for manoeuvring … no way anyone could deter Daybreak from pounding the rule-breakers into the ground. They weren’t just enforced with naked violence, he’d been taught at the academy; the rules might be harsh in places, and sometimes they reduced planetary autonomy to almost nothing, but most civilised worlds understood their importance even if they didn’t like Daybreak. And yet, how would that change if they gained the power to act independently?

They may not set out to commit genocide or start a war, he thought coldly, but if they have freedom to manoeuvre as they see fit, they might start falling down the slippery slope to yet another war.

“Nothing good,” he said. It had been over two centuries since the Great War. Time enough, even with modern lifespans, for the generation that had found itself driven to the brink of extinction to die out, replaced by people who didn’t remember the war and resented the steps Daybreak took to prevent a second war. “They’ll demand freedom of action and then …”

His imagination filled in the blanks. There were hundreds of grudges between the various settled worlds: some fresh and new, others so old they dated back to the pre-space era on Old Earth. Daybreak kept the grudges under control, banning open warfare and preventing anything that might reasonably cause conflict between two worlds, but if the restraining bolt were taken away … he shuddered. The Great War had been so savage because everyone had thought they were about to be attacked and the only way to defend themselves was to attack first, regardless of the cost. In hindsight, historians were still unsure just what had actually triggered the war. There had been so many flashpoints that outright disaster had been pretty much inevitable.

“Quite,” Flower agreed. “It’s an unexploded bomb that needs to be defused carefully. Very carefully. Quinton may mean well, but I’m not convinced his actions will cause anything other than disaster. Too many resentments, too many people too angry to care about the risks of provoking a second war …”

Leo shook his head, slowly. “And if the rebels get their way, what next?”

“It depends on just who is behind them,” Flower said. “And what they have in mind.”

“Independence?” Leo wasn’t so sure. Anyone with the resources to support the rebels had enough independence to suit anyone, as long as they followed the rules. It certainly wasn’t worth the risk of being caught, of being given a spanking with kinetic strikes and kill-squads … he scowled, annoyed with himself. Calling it a spanking was deliberately minimising the sheer brutal horror of punitive strikes. “They’re taking a hell of a risk.”

“They also think it’s just a matter of time before we get very nasty,” Flower pointed out. “How much of the old settled sphere remains to be incorporated?”

Leo didn’t have to think about it. “Very little,” he said. “We’re past pre-war space now.”

“Yes,” Flower agreed. “There may be something impressive in the Beyond, something that we can incorporate into our growing territory even if they don’t want to be incorporated, but it’s unlikely. We’re too far from Old Earth. What does that mean? It means we’re running out of systems we can annex and exploit, draining them of personnel and resources to feed our empire and navy. And when that becomes clear, what will our government, which isn’t known for restraint, do? Start drumming up a pretext to annex the autonomous worlds?”

“We wouldn’t,” Leo protested. Daybreak kept its word. It was part of his core beliefs. If you gave your word, you honoured it even if it cost you. “We gave them autonomy in exchange for incorporating themselves. We wouldn’t break it.”

Flower gave him a droll look. “You’re a young man and a naval officer besides,” she pointed out. “You’re not responsible for maintaining a corporation, or balancing its books: you’re not a politician dealing with an economic crisis, all too aware that if you fuck up you’ll be out of office in a heartbeat. Given time, you can justify anything to yourself. Anything at all.”

“I hope you’re wrong,” Leo said. The whole idea was wrong. He’d been raised to be honourable, to be a just man fighting for a just cause. He wasn’t doing it for his own sake, but for the sake of interstellar peace. “It’s just …”

“So do I,” Flower said. “But like it or not, we’re running out of space that can be easily incorporated into our empire. And that is going to cause problems even with the best will in the world.”

Chapter Five

The thought of a second war haunted Leo over the next few days, as he frantically prepared Waterhen for departure. He knew Daybreak did harsh things … harsh but necessary things. The idea his superiors might forget their ideals and be pushed into a smash-and-grab, or worse, was nightmarish. He didn’t want to believe it could happen, but he knew how desperately senior officers yearned for military glory. A glorious victory could carry the commanding officer right to the top, even if he’d been attacking a planet that couldn’t possibly stand a battle squadron off for more than a few minutes. It wasn’t as if the citizens would look too closely into the details as long as the battle was won. Leo liked to think he would never do such a thing, but he knew he would be tempted. He wanted glory too.

He worked his way through the endless series of reports, then inspected every last inch of his ship for anything that might reveal her true origin. Waterhen was hardly the first ship of her class to be sold to an autonomous world and refitted with more modern weapons, but even something as minor as a news broadsheet or a pornographic datachip would be dangerously revealing if it fell into the wrong hands. He dared not assume the ship wouldn’t be searched. The Commodore might insist the rebels wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and Leo understood his logic, but the Commodore wasn’t the one in the hot seat. Too many rebels had good reason to be wary of Waterhen.

“The engineering was always a patchwork,” Harris told him, when Leo raised questions about modern tech being inserted into old systems. “They won’t see anything strange about it.”

Leo scowled. Waterhen hadn’t been in good shape before he’d taken command, not least because Captain Archibald hadn’t given a shit. Leo had had to use the captain’s authorisation codes to order components that were technically outdated, only held in storage because the navy disliked the concept of not having any on hand. It would have been a great deal easier if Waterhen had been a more modern ship, but then … he supposed she’d have been given a more conventional captain, while he’d have followed a more conventional career path. Or been shipped to an asteroid mining station, after nearly drowning his superiors in scandal. He’d been lucky. Very lucky.

“I’ve switched out a number of parts, then messed with the serial numbers and suchlike,” Harris added. “They shouldn’t be able to trace them.”

“Let us hope,” Leo agreed. The system was designed to keep a record of the life of every last spare part, from birth to death, but he was painfully aware there were hundreds of gaping holes in the recording network. Military-grade components were always welcome on the black market, and quite a few planets, hotbeds of corruption, had no qualms about selling them to anyone with the cash to buy them. No one would be particularly surprised if Waterhen had components from all over the known galaxy, but still … he worried. “Make sure the intelligence network is carefully disconnected from the rest of the ship.”

“Yes, sir,” Harris said, in a tone that added teach your grandmother to suck eggs. “The datacore is the only real headache, but we think we have it under control. It helps that it came out of Daybreak, rather than somewhere else.”

Leo nodded, curtly. Naval datacores were designed to make it impossible for anyone to alter the records to conceal their mistakes, although he’d heard plenty of stories of experienced officers inserting CYA codes into the system to ensure they could rewrite history if they wound up with egg on their face. Leo wasn’t sure the trick would actually work, if someone delved deep into the system to determine just when the record was filed, but … he supposed incompetent hackwork would actually work in their favour. Farnham might have purchased Waterhen from Daybreak, yet … they wouldn’t trust the original datacore until they worked their way through every last piece of code. He certainly wouldn’t. There were limits to how much code could be inserted into the system, and it would be difficult to covertly program a core to shut the ship down upon receiving the right code, but a spy program quietly monitoring the ship’s career would be a great deal easier. The rebels would be wary of it too,

Their ships are too old to have any sort of Daybreak program installed, he mused. But this ship came out of Daybreak.

“Make sure it passes inspection,” Leo said, turning away. “If we get caught, we’re fucked.”

His wristcom bleeped. “Captain,” Lieutenant Stuart Halloran said. “It’s time for the muster.”

Leo nodded to himself, feeling a pang of guilt. Halloran should have been transferred to another ship – and promoted. He deserved a chance to serve on a more modern warship, perhaps impressing his superiors once he was out of Leo’s shadow. But there had been no time to find another XO. Sun Li didn’t have any spacer qualifications, even if she did have the rank, and putting her in the slot would be asking for trouble. Leo silently promised himself he’d arrange for Halloran to be promoted, once the mission was over. If the mission succeeded …

“Assemble the crew on the muster list,” Leo ordered. Some officers already knew what was going down, quietly briefed into the secret and warned to keep their mouths shut. Others had been left in the dark. There were going to be bad feelings about that, Leo was sure, but it couldn’t be helped. One crewman getting drunk in the wrong place could blow the whole secret wide open, shattering the plan before it could even get off the ground. “I’ll be there shortly.”

He schooled his face into a blank mask as he made his way to the mess. Traditionally, the crew would muster in the shuttlebay, but Waterhen was too small to have a proper compartment for small craft. One of the shuttles had already been removed and replaced with an outdated craft that had passed through several pairs of hands before reaching Yangtze, the other would be left behind when the mission got underway. His lips tried to twist in droll amusement. In hindsight, perhaps they should have kept the original shuttles. They’d been so dinged up no one would believe they were operated by a competent navy. The IG would have a great many unpleasant things to say to any commander who let his shuttles get into such a state.

And Captain Archibald is still in the pleasure dens, drunk as a lord, Leo thought, with a sudden burst of cold fury. There’s no fucking justice.

He stepped into the mess, allowing his eyes to wander around the compartment. There were seventeen crewmen waiting for him, no longer quite the dregs of the service but still under the cloud of whatever they’d done to be sent to Waterhen. He knew, without false modesty, that their successes had done wonders for morale, despite Francis’s best efforts, yet … some would never see another starship posting, no matter how well they did. Others had already moved on or resigned. Leo didn’t really blame them. Waterhen had been a dead end for their careers, and she still might be, given how little the Commodore liked him. The more he thought about it, the more he realised the Commodore had crafted a perfect win-win. No matter the outcome, he came out ahead. Bastard.

“I won’t waste your time,” Leo said. The crew looked back at him with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Some had mocked him as Captain Kid when they’d realised just how young and inexperienced he was, others had been sure he was related to some high-ranking officer who had pulled strings to get him a de facto command … a subset of that theory insisted that Leo’s non-existent relative hated his guts. Waterhen had never been a stepping stone to more advanced warships. “We have been ordered to embark on a very dangerous mission.”

He paused, then ran through the entire story. There was less risk now. The crew who chose not to volunteer, or were going to be put off the ship anyway, would be held in lockdown on Yangtze and then reassigned to other ships and stations, with strict orders to keep their mouths firmly shut. If they talked … Leo was fairly certain they wouldn’t. They knew the risks in a manner no groundpounder could possibly match … and besides, it would be the end of their careers. If they were lucky.

“Some of you will be reassigned anyway,” he finished. “The rest of you …”

He paused, just for a moment. “We’re going to have to pose as Farnham natives. Our cover stories will be a little vague in places, to ensure the safety of our families back home, but it may not work. They may look too carefully and discover the lies. If that happens … we may not be able to get out. This isn’t what you signed up for, and I won’t judge you for declining to join the mission. If you want to volunteer, inform Mr. Halloran of your decision by the end of next shift., If not, you’ll be reassigned once the refit is completed.”

The words hung in the air for a long moment. Leo wanted to say something – anything – else, but … there was nothing to say. He’d taken the crew into combat before, and then lost command to Francis, and then recovered the ship from rebel hijackers … he wouldn’t blame anyone who wanted to leave. It might be their only chance of promotion. And the risk of being caught was dangerously high.

“Make your choice,” he said, finally. “And whatever you decide, do not say a word about this to anyone until the mission is completed.”

Or we’re declared lost to causes unknown, he added silently as he turned and walked away. If the plan went wrong, beyond the Rim, Commodore Blackthrone might never know what had happened to Waterhen. He’d suspect, of course, but he’d never know. I wonder how he’ll explain the whole affair to his superiors.

He kept walking, his thoughts running in circles. He’d already composed a final message for his family and passed it on to the naval HQ, a message that conveyed his love without quite going into details about the mission. There had been no way to be any more specific. The message would be read by several pairs of eyes, if Waterhen was declared missing, before it was passed on to his family … and it wouldn’t be passed on at all if it included confidential information. He wondered, idly, what his patron would make of it … or Ruth, if she heard he’d vanished without trace. Perhaps she’d start to investigate, ensuring some embarrassment for the Commodore. Or perhaps she’d be cautioned not to get too involved.

His wristcom bleeped. “Yes?”

“Sir, you asked to be notified when Commander Li’s shuttle arrives,” Midshipwoman Abigail Landor said. “She’ll be docking in two minutes.”

“I’ll be there to greet her,” Leo said. Technically, the duty belonged to the XO, but Halloran had more important matters to handle. He was supposed to be the first port of call for any spacer with a problem, and Leo was morbidly sure there would be problems, as news of the mission sank in. “Inform me if anything else changes.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo kept his eyes open as he walked to the shuttle hatch, shaking his head at the scuffed flooring and worn-down bulkheads. Waterhen was older than himself, true, but the first refit had done wonders for her condition. The air no longer smelled vaguely unpleasant, the damaged bulkheads had been repaired or replaced … it felt wrong to be deliberately damaging his own ship, even though the damage was mainly cosmetic. The IG would have a field day if they conducted an inspection. Leo would hate to be the inspector who had to write a report on the starship’s condition.

The hatch hissed open as he approached, and Commander Sun Li stepped onto his ship. She hesitated when she saw him, then saluted the flag before saluting Leo … it was meant to be the other way around. Leo made a mental note to point it out later as he returned the salute, looking her up and down. She wore a simple black spacer’s tunic devoid of any markings, a mask and a set of tools tucked into her belt and a leather folder held under her arm. Leo couldn’t help noticing that her tunic outlined her body very nicely, even though everything below the neckline was covered. He hoped she didn’t think the tunic was perfect, that it would protect her from sudden depressurisation. It was better than nothing, let alone civilian clothes, but there were limits. She’d be looking at frostbite and cellular damage at the very least.

“Welcome aboard,” he said, holding out a hand for her to shake. “Did you have a good flight?”

“Mainly reading briefing papers,” Sun said, shaking his hand firmly. “We’ll be undergoing hypno-training to be sure we speak with the right accent, sir, and it’s going to be tricky.”

Leo nodded. Most spacers spoke Standard English – it was a legal requirement – but any trace of a Daybreak accent would raise red flags. There were plenty of possible cover stories, Leo supposed, yet … the rebels would be unwise to believe them. Sure, plenty of spacers learnt the language from Daybreak’s media, and often mimicked the accent, yet …

“I suppose it will be,” he said, turning away. “I’m afraid the only cabins are very small. You won’t have room to swing a cat.”

He heard a hint of amusement in her tone. “That’s lucky,” she said. “I forgot to bring a cat.”

“There’s always some oversight,” Leo said, as they passed through two airlocks and stepped into Officer Country. It was tiny, nowhere near as isolated as Officer Country on Pompey … it occurred to him to ask where she’d been staying, before dismissing the thought. She hadn’t complained about the cabin, which was a point in her favour, although that might change when she saw her living space. Leo had seen larger jail cells. “Did you complete the mandatory spacer’s training?”

Sun hesitated. “I did the first two levels, but …”

“We’re going to have to work on it,” Leo said. Pompey could soak up a great deal of damage and keep fighting. A warhead that would vaporise Waterhen would barely scratch the battlecruiser. Sun might think she was safe, that she didn’t need any sort of training, without quite realising she was no longer on a capital ship. “What’ll you do if the hull is breached?”

“Grab my mask,” Sun said. “Right?”

“If you have one,” Leo said. Most training exercises were based on the assumption there would be emergency gear within reach. His instructors had always pointed out that if you couldn’t get your hands on a mask and oxygen supply very quickly, the only thing you could do was bend over and kiss your ass goodbye before it was too late. “We’ll be drilling you in emergency procedures until you can do them in your sleep.”

Sun snorted. “Do I need them?”

Leo turned to face her. “We’re going into danger,” he said. “Waterhen has taken damage before, and she’ll take damage again, damage that could easily get you killed if you don’t know what to do. You need that training before it’s too late. Or get off the ship.”

“Yes, sir,” Sun said. Her voice was so hard Leo knew she was embarrassed. He would have felt sorrier for her if she hadn’t been in the navy, if she’d had no reason to know she needed the bloody training. An intelligence officer could easily find herself in the middle of a shooting war if she happened to be on the wrong ship at the wrong time. “I’ll do it as quickly as possible.”

“Please,” Leo said. Removing Sun from his ship would mean a … difficult … conversation with the Commodore, but better that than a dead intelligence officer. “It might save your life.”

He turned and led the way to the cabin, keying the access panel to open the hatch. There was almost nothing inside, beyond a tiny bed – Sun was lucky she wasn’t any taller – and a washroom that barely had room for a grown adult. It was more of a water closet than a proper washroom … he felt, more than heard, a gulp as Sun surveyed her living space. He hoped she wasn’t claustrophobic. Spacers rarely were, but she was an intelligence officer. It was quite possible she’d never slept in such a tiny place before.

“You can stick your gear under the bed, or cram it into a locker,” Leo explained. “No one will come in if you’re not here, but feel free to reset the lock if you wish.”

Sun gave him a rather wan smile. “Room service?”

Leo had to laugh. “This is a very cheap hotel,” he said, deadpan. “It actually pays you to sleep here.”

He sobered, just a little. “The mess is just outside Officer Country. You can get food and drink there. If you want to bring it back here, you can. Just make sure you take the plates back afterwards. We don’t have any stewards on this ship.”

“I’m totally giving you a one-star review,” Sun said, in a mock-teenage accent. “The conditions are just disgraceful.”

“They could be worse,” Leo pointed out, mischievously. He felt a twinge of sympathy, despite everything. Sun’s record had been vague in all the right places, but he was fairly sure she’d never been on anything smaller than a heavy cruiser. “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to them. I did.”

Chapter Six

“You definitely sound different, Commander,” Commodore Blackthrone said. His holographic face twisted. “Do you feel different?”

Leo hesitated, unsure what to say. The hypno-training was disconcerting. One moment, he would be chatting away like a Farnhamer; the next, he’d suddenly be very aware his accent was completely wrong and his brain would miss a beat or two. It was like suddenly realising he needed to breathe and then finding himself breathing manually. He was unable to leave his body to breathe automatically as long as he kept thinking about it. The briefing notes had gone into great detail about the limitations of the training – it was impossible, apparently, to implant a post-hypnotic command unless the victim wanted to be commanded – and he had doubts about just how well it would hold up under pressure. They’d have to keep practicing before the shit hit the fan.

“A little,” he said. “Did you take care of the crew?”

“Of course.” Commodore Blackthrone smiled. It was probably meant to be reassuring, but Leo couldn’t help finding it ominous. “They’ll be assigned to a single posting, with strict orders to keep their mouths shut for a few months. After that … we’ll see.”

“They’re good people,” Leo said. “They served Francis well too.”

Commodore Blackthrone looked irked. “Francis hopes to return to service shortly,” he said. “By the time you return …”

He shrugged, expressively. Leo felt a twinge of pity. The Commodore was supposed to look after his clients, which included his nephew, and there was little he could offer Francis that would match the expectations he’d raised. Francis had held command, however briefly, and even a short stint as an XO would be a climb down. Leo wondered just how he would handle the matter, if telling Francis to put up or get out wasn’t an option. He was silently relieved it wasn’t his problem. Even if his siblings joined the navy, he wouldn’t be able to offer them such patronage.

Not yet, anyway, he told himself.

“I look forward to it,” Leo said, although that wasn’t true. “Do you have any final instructions?”

“Get in, get the info, get out again,” Commodore Blackthrone said. “You know the drill.”

Leo nodded. No matter what they did, it was going to be a stunt. “Yes, sir.”

“Good luck, Commander,” Commodore Blackthrone added. “I’ll see you when you return.”

Or not at all, Leo thought, as the Commodore’s holographic image vanished. If they catch us …

He took one last look at his terminal, carefully scrubbed of anything incriminating, then stood and headed for the hatch. The entire ship had been searched from top to bottom, everything that could possibly suggest the crew came from Daybreak stripped out and transferred to the Naval HQ for safekeeping. Letters from home, photographs of family and friends … even datachips and holonovels that had been purchased anywhere outside the sector. The crew weren’t happy – Leo couldn’t blame them – but there was no choice. He’d had to have a polite yet firm chat with a crewman who’d been keeping a personal diary, of all things. Leo kept a log, of course, and so did most officers, but a paper book would draw attention, and the owner had written too much into the volume for Leo’s peace of mind. He could have the book back when they returned, and if they didn’t, it could be passed on to his family. If it got through the censors.

The hatch hissed open, allowing him to step onto the bridge. It was weirdly disconcerting, half the consoles pulled out and replaced with gear from several different production nodes. Waterhen and her sisters had been designed for easy refit, but there were limits and getting all the components to work together was one hell of a challenge. It would provide a useful cover story for any damage to the datacore, Leo was sure, as well as proving his engineering crew’s skill. He just hoped the rebels didn’t want to reassign them. That would put the cat amongst the pigeons.

Don’t get ahead of yourself yet, he mused, as he took his command chair. The crews had stripped it out and replaced it with a chair from a bulk freighter. You’re nowhere near the enemy HQ.

He took a breath. “Mr. XO, report.”

“All stations report ready, Captain,” Halloran said. “All supplies have been loaded, the surplus crewmen have disembarked and the convoy is cleared to depart. Captain Hastings has acknowledged our orders and confirmed he’ll do his part.”

Leo nodded, curtly. Captain Hastings would order Waterhen to leave the convoy after the first two jumps, then take the rest of the freighters and their escorts all the way to Daybreak. By the time they realised Waterhen had stayed in the sector, rather than being allowed to go home too, it would be too late to inform the rebels. The cover story would remain firmly in place.

“Signal System Command,” he ordered, quietly. “Inform them we’re ready to depart.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo leaned back in his chair, feeling the old sensation of hurry up and wait creeping up on him. A military convoy would be ready to depart by now, but the civilian spacers were taking their time even though they had departure clearance. They’d be in some trouble if that happened back home, or in another heavily populated star system; here, it was just another minor nuisance, one he could shrug off without hesitation. It was Captain Hastings’s problem. As far as anyone else was concerned, Waterhen was on her way home, and that was all that mattered. The real mission was about to begin.

He keyed his console, checking the record again. Eighteen crew … too small a number for his peace of mind, particularly when four were marines rather than naval crewmen, but just enough to lend verisimilitude to their cover story. He’d drunk in the details of his imaginary life in the Farnham System – he’d been born on an asteroid settlement, which explained his lack of knowledge of the planet itself – yet he was painfully aware the story was dangerously thin. If they ran into the wrong person, they would be in real trouble. The whole plan had seemed a better idea before they’d started working out the details.

“Signal from Catherine,” Midshipwoman Abigail Landor said. Leo would have preferred to leave her behind, but she had volunteered and she was very good at her job. The rebels weren’t pirates, thankfully. If they’d been as brutal, Leo would have left the young woman behind and to hell with her feelings on the matter. Better she hated him for denying her a chance to prove herself than being gang-raped to death. Leo had seen the aftermath of pirate attacks. They deserved no mercy. “The convoy is ready to depart.”

Finally, Leo thought.

“Receiving coordinates now,” Abigail continued. “Forwarding them to the helm.”

“Gee, thanks,” Lieutenant Clovis Alexander said. He was a relative newcomer, an ambitious young officer who’d asked to be reassigned to Waterhen after Leo had reassumed command. Leo hoped to hell the younger man didn’t come to regret it, though … it wasn’t as if the age difference between them was that great. “Just what I always wanted.”

“Quite,” Leo said. He ignored the younger man’s tone. They were all nervous. “Time to jump?”

“Five minutes,” Alexander said.

“All decks report ready,” Halloran said.

Leo took a breath, watching the timer as it ticked towards zero. The freighters were fanning out in a loose formation, although a civilian would have been hard pressed to see any pattern in their movements. Their three escorts – Waterhen was bringing up the rear – fanned out around the civilian craft, carefully positioning themselves to intercept any potential threat before it got into firing range. It looked excessive, but Leo knew better. The risk of interception couldn’t be dismissed. There were hundreds of starships, spacecraft and asteroid settlements in the system, and it was almost certain one or more was feeding intelligence to pirates or the rebels. Hell, Leo was fairly sure they hadn’t wiped out the rebel network on the ground. If he’d been in charge, he would have set up observation units that remained underground, just in case. 

The timer reached zero. Leo braced himself as the universe seemed to darken, as if a cosmic entity was preparing to take a sneeze, then snapped back into place. The display blanked and hastily rebooted, the starship’s sensors picking out the freighters as they flickered back into existence. Some had jumped too late, the formation growing ragged as they rejoined their comrades. Captain Hastings would have to have a few words with their commanders. The merchants couldn’t be expected to follow military protocol perfectly, but they were in a sector that was still infested with pirates and rebels. A freighter that lost the rest of the convoy would be a sitting duck if a pirate ship caught up with her. 

“Jump completed,” Alexander reported. He ran his hands over his console. “The drives are recharging now.”

“No enemy contacts,” Halloran added. “We appear to be in the clear.”

“No pirate would risk tangling with a proper warship, let alone four,” Leo reminded him, curtly. Pirates were often cowardly, when facing someone who could actually fight back, and even when they weren’t they wanted to loot their targets at leisure, rather than just blow them away from a safe distance. The rebels might have different ideas. A handful of lone freighters had gone missing in the last few weeks, perhaps simply overdue or perhaps taken by pirates, and the rebels had good reason to harass shipping. “But that doesn’t mean we’re alone.”

He let his eyes linger on the display as the freighters recycled their drives. They had jumped right out of the system, pushing the drives as far as they could without accidentally scattering the convoy across the local sector. The navy hadn’t had time to properly update the charts, raising the spectre of a starship being blown off course or simply flying into a gravity well and vanishing without a trace. Leo wondered, grimly, if that had happened to any of the missing starships. The freighter crews should know better than to risk such a jump, but there were bonuses for any starship that reached its destination ahead of schedule. 

They should be banned, he thought tiredly, as he watched the communications between the warships and their merchant counterparts. A spacer wouldn’t make such a mistake, but someone who had never left their homeworld couldn’t be expected to understand the dangers of jumping too far in a single transit. The further one tried to jump, the greater the risk. The navy should be insisting on it.

Abigail looked up. “Sir, signal from Catherine. The convoy is to jump again on their mark.”

Leo’s lips twitched. Captain Hastings had been remarkably restrained. Herding merchant skippers was like herding cats, the freighter crews trying to assert their independence even though everyone knew they needed the military escort for their own safety. It was supposed to be worse near the core worlds, where piracy was almost unknown and the only real risk was having your ship seized for smuggling. Leo had dealt with a number of captains who knew how dangerous the sector could be, and treated the navy with proper respect, and yet it had still been a difficult experience. They hadn’t enjoyed the reminder they had to listen to an officer barely old enough to shave.

“Helm, jump us with the rest of the convoy,” he ordered, taking one last look at the display. It was still clear. He knew that was meaningless. A cloaked ship – or even a powered down starship pretending to be a hole in space – would be effectively undetectable, as long as it didn’t get too close. “And then hold position.”

“Aye, sir.”

The universe sneezed again. Leo felt his stomach twist as the display blanked and hastily rebooted, the freighter formation snapping into position … a little neater this time. The lecture Captain Hastings had given their commanders had clearly been taken to heart. Leo allowed himself a tight smile as the display updated rapidly, active sensors sweeping space for potential threats. They appeared to be alone.

And if there is someone watching the jump coordinates, he reminded himself, we just told them exactly where to find us.

“All clear, sir,” Halloran said. “There’s no sign of any watching starships.”

“Check everything,” Leo ordered. Jump coordinates were supposed to be random, the ships appearing within a volume of space too large to be effectively watched, but it wasn’t that hard to work out the most likely arrival coordinates. Spacers tended to carefully plot their routes to make as few jumps as possible, leaving only a handful of prospective arrival points. “We don’t want anyone watching us.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Signal from Catherine, sir,” Abigail said.

Leo took a breath. Showtime. “Put it through.”

Captain Hastings’s face appeared in front of him. “Waterhen,” he said. His tone dripped disapproval. Leo suspected it wasn’t wholly feigned. The one time they’d met in person, Captain Hastings hadn’t bothered to hide his disapproval of such a young officer in command of a starship. He was a decade or so older than Leo, and yet he’d only just been given a command of his own. “You are to break off and head directly to High Haven, taking the attached messages with you, then rejoin the convoy at Point Theta.”

“Understood,” Leo said, playing his role. High Haven was three jumps away, minimum. By the time anyone realised they hadn’t gone anywhere near the system it would be too late. “We’ll see you at Point Theta.”

He took a breath, then closed the channel. “Helm, jump us out as planned.”

“Aye, sir,” Alexander said. “Jump in five … four … three …”

Leo braced himself. One jump was going to be bad, two were going to be worse. If there were any watching eyes, they’d have no time to zero down the first set of coordinates and give chase before Waterhen jumped a second time. The universe darkened again – he was sure he heard the hull creek – before snapping in and out of existence, the disorientation making his stomach churn as they completed the jump. He swallowed hard to keep from throwing up, silently relieved no one had vomited on the decks. It wasn’t uncommon, but it was a hell of a mess.

“Jumps completed, sir,” Alexander said.

“Status reports, all decks,” Leo ordered. If someone hadn’t thrown up, it would be a minor miracle. The display was clearing rapidly, showing nothing. He wasn’t surprised. The second set of coordinates had been effectively random. The odds of them being followed were so low the possibility could be safely discounted. “Anything?”

“No damage reported, beyond minor wear and tear on the drive nodes,” Halloran said. “The damage control teams are checking them now and” – he paused – “Commander Li has been taken to sickbay. Apparently, she threw up in the mess.”

Someone snickered. Leo resisted the temptation to roll his eyes. An experienced spacer would know better than to be eating in the middle of a jump sequence. Sun would be embarrassed as well as hurt, her stomach feeling as if she’d been punched in the chest several times. She’d be fine, probably, but her pride would take a blow. The doctor would have called him already if the situation was more serious than he’d thought.

“As you were,” he said, sternly.

He took a breath. “Check and recheck the drive nodes, then lay in a course for Winterhome and change our IFF,” he added. “We don’t want to tip them off before it’s too late.”

“Aye, sir,” Halloran said.

Leo stood. “Mr. XO, you have the bridge,” he said. “I’ll be in sickbay.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo left the bridge and walked down to sickbay, his stomach churning. The two jumps had taken a toll on him too, and for all he knew Sun wasn’t the only person who’d thrown up. It was nothing to be ashamed of, but it wasn’t unknown for crewmen to clean up the mess and pretend it never happened instead of reporting it. Normally, it was fairly safe, yet sometimes it was a hint of a far more serious problem.

Flower nodded to him as he stepped into the compartment, her face flat. Doctor Yin had been reassigned before the mission had even been explained to him, unsurprising when the sector was dangerously short of trained medical personnel. They were bending regulations out of shape by relying on Flower, but … he sighed inwardly. It couldn’t be helped. They dared not bring anyone they couldn’t afford to lose.

“She’ll be fine, I think,” Flower said. Sun was lying on a pallet, looking pale. Her tunic had been removed, a blanket covering everything below the neckline. “I’ve given her some medicine for jump-shock and inserted a nutrient tube, which should keep her stomach empty long enough for the treatment to work. It could have been worse.”

“Sorry,” Sun managed. Her voice was weak. “I didn’t mean to …”

“I know.” Leo had thrown up himself, when he’d been in his third year of naval training. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience, although the instructors had taken it in their stride. “Just rest for a while, please. We’ll be at Winterhome in a couple of days.”

Sun nodded. “Don’t forget to change the IFF.”

“It’s done,” Leo assured her. “You start thinking about how we’re going to make the approach.”

“But stay where you are for a few hours,” Flower put in. She glanced at Leo. “When are we going to make the next jump?”

“After the nodes are checked,” Leo said. He wasn’t sure how long it would take. The refit crews had made the nodes look older than they were, which was difficult to fake without actually damaging the components. “It may take some time.”

“Let us know when we’re about to jump,” Flower said. She gave him a look that suggested she wanted to talk later. “But I think she’ll be fine.”

“I hope so,” Leo said. “The mission has only just begun.”

Chapter Seven

“Jump completed, Captain,” Alexander reported.

Leo let out a breath as Winterhome appeared on the display. The planet had never managed to put together a proper united government, from what he’d heard, and the various city-states rarely cooperated at the best of times, even when it had become clear Daybreak was steadily annexing the entire system. The system they did have was weak to the point of uselessness, and Leo had a private suspicion it would only be a matter of time before Daybreak put in a governor and took direct control of the system. It was brimming with potential – the sensors were picking up dozens of starships, industrial nodes and mining centres – and there was no reason to leave it alone, not when it could become a profitable enterprise.

“Keep us distant,” he ordered. Their IFF claimed they were a warship that had been demilitarised and converted into a freighter, but a close inspection would reveal the truth. The planet didn’t have a united customs policy either, or the whole mission would likely fail before it even fairly began. The ships coming in and out probably included a great many smugglers and fences, the latter selling goods stolen by pirates. They might be selling slaves too. It was illegal, but it was unlikely the planet would give much of a damn as long as the right people were paid off. “Have they raised any eyebrows?”

“Not as far as I can tell,” Abigail reported. She sounded as if she were having second thoughts about volunteering. “They don’t seem to have questioned the IFF code at all.”

Leo wondered if that was true. The IFF code had been designed to look convincing, but not too convincing. Anyone who took a careful look at the code would know it was intended to cover something, something it might be in their interests to know about. If someone did … Leo’s eyes narrowed as he noted a pair of warships in orbit, both almost certainly mercenary starships that were not supposed to exist. They’d note the oddity, he was sure, and start asking questions. He just hoped the answers were slipped to the right people.

“Hold us here,” he ordered. They were close enough to the planet to send a shuttlecraft down to the surface, far enough to ensure they could run without needing to get away from the gravity well first. “Inform Commander Sun the time has come to begin.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Mr. XO, you have the bridge,” Leo added. He stood, feeling his heart begin to race. “If the balloon goes up, get the ship out and report back to Yangtze. Worry about us later.”

“Aye, sir,” Halloran said. “Good luck.”

Leo nodded, then turned and left the bridge. Their uniforms had been fed into the recycler, replaced by standard shipboard tunics. He’d considered using Farnham uniforms, but they were technically illegal, too dangerous to wear in public. Commander Sun had pointed out that few on Winterhome would know what they were, and the ones who did would see it as a good sign, yet … it wasn’t worth the risk. They were pretending to be a refugee ship, the crew desperately seeking gainful employment. They had to look the part.

Commander Sun nodded as Leo reached the shuttlecraft hatch. Flower stood beside her, both women wearing tunics of their own. Leo had his doubts about the wisdom of allowing Sun to take the lead – her inexperience as a spacer was painfully obvious – but there were few better options. He opened the hatch and led the way inside, his heart twisting as he made his way to the cockpit. The shuttle was so old he half-expected it to come apart at any moment. The techs swore blind the craft was fully-operational, if dated, but they didn’t have to fly it.

Last chance to back out, he thought, although he knew that chance had been and gone weeks ago. He could have said no, when the mission had been discussed with him. He’d committed himself instead. This could go very wrong.

He checked the shuttle automatically, then powered up the drive as Sun and Flower took their seats. The shuttle vibrated – a faint whine echoing through the compartment suggesting the stabilisers were slightly out of alignment – as he disconnected them from the ship and took the craft into open space. Winterhome was surrounded by starships, spacecraft and orbital stations, but there was no rhyme or reason to how they were positioned. He supposed it made a certain kind of sense. The city states were reluctant to let their rivals get ahead of them, or cooperate to establish a shared orbital industry. The only upside, from a reasonable point of view, was that the system was layered in orbital defences. If they ever got their act together, Winterhome would be a hard nut to crack.

There are more defences than I recall seeing last time, he mused. He’d been nervous about taking Waterhen – now Thunderbird – to Winterhome because she had visited the system a few months ago, although it was unlikely anyone would manage to realise the two ships were one and the same. They must be aware of the risk, even if they’re unwilling to put their differences aside and work together.

Flower cleared her throat. “Anything from System Command?”

Leo snorted. “Which one?”

He shook his head in disbelief. The chatter suggested there were at least nine different traffic control systems in orbit, a recipe for disaster if ever there was one. The odds of one starship accidentally colliding with another were very low, under normal circumstances, but with so many starships and orbital facilities crammed into the high orbitals, the chances of a collision were disturbingly high. Did the different systems even share data? He hoped to hell the controllers did, even if it was officially forbidden. It was only a matter of time until there was a serious accident.

“Athens,” Sun said. “Our contact is there.”

“Really,” Flower said. “Are you sure you can make contact?”

“We know he’s had dealings with the rebels,” Sun said, a hint of irritation in her voice. “He’ll likely pass us on to them, once we make contact. And that won’t be hard.”

Leo suspected she was right. The contact was, officially, a shipping agent. There was nothing covert about his business, nothing to draw attention from law enforcement … assuming there was any on Winterhome. Any spacers who wanted a new post, or captains looking for a new cargo, could find his name in the directory and put in an enquiry. If the agent checked the records and discovered the skewed IFF, he’d get very interested indeed.

Or so we have been told, Leo thought. There are too many moving parts to this plan.

He gritted his teeth as he logged into the Athens Traffic Control. The network was patchy, orders coming in seemingly at random … some so contradictory he suspected the network was being hacked by his competitors. There was no way he could risk slaving the shuttle to the network, not when he wasn’t sure who was giving the orders, and so he flew the flight path towards Athens and hoped to hell they weren’t about to run afoul of the local defences. The planet needed someone in charge, he reflected sourly. The sooner Daybreak imposed order, the better.

You’d think they could do it for themselves, he thought, as the city came into view. It isn’t brain surgery.

“Impressive,” Flower said. “But crude.”

Leo nodded in agreement. Winterhome had been barely habitable when she’d been discovered, and a century of terraforming hadn’t improved matters, which partly explained why the planet was politically divided. Athens was a giant domed city, surrounded by apartment blocks and factories that had been constructed after the atmosphere had thickened to the point humans could live on the planet without rebreathers. The spaceport was larger than he’d expected, surrounded by warehouses and what was very clearly a red light district. He felt a pang of regret he’d probably never be able to see the city itself. They simply didn’t have time.

“They accepted our IFF without question,” he muttered, as the traffic control network gave them a landing slot. “What is wrong with these people?”

“It’s a race to the bottom,” Sun said, quietly. “The cities cannot work together to impose a single set of rules, so anyone who tries to put any sort of limitations on offworld contacts will lose business to their competitors. The planet is a paradise for smugglers because there’s no inspection regime, a haven for undocumented spacers because no one bothers to check their credentials … officially, at least.”

“And what happens,” Leo muttered, “if they get caught fiddling their qualifications?”

“They get dumped, if they’re lucky,” Sun said. “No one fucks around with it twice.”

Leo nodded, then put the thought aside as he steered the shuttle in to land. The landing pad was crude, but functional. He was mildly surprised there was no attempt to take control of the shuttle before landing. A skilled pilot would have no trouble landing in the right square, probably, but if someone came down in the wrong place they might land on top of someone. There were no protections for passengers, he noticed as they disembarked and made their way to the terminal. Leo couldn’t help thinking it was an accident waiting to happen.

“I’ll be buttoning up the shuttle while we’re gone,” he said, as he checked his knapsack before throwing it over his back. “Make sure you have everything you need.”

“Got it.” Flower had a knapsack of her own. “I checked everything personally.”

“Check again, to be sure,” Leo said. “The slightest mistake could get us killed.”

He opened the hatch, and a gust of cold wind blew into his face. The air was freezing … he blinked in surprise as a wave of heat washed against him, the temperature rising sharply and then falling again. He took a long breath, tasting something unpleasant in the air, then stepped onto the tarmac, pausing to close the hatch and seal it. The route to the terminal was dangerously exposed, the sound of shuttles coming in to land or taking off making his ears hurt. The distant buildings looked thoroughly soulless, little more than prefabricated apartment blocks normally intended to serve as temporary accommodation for colonists. A nasty thought crossed his mind as they reached the terminal, an equally barren building. The prefabs could have been stolen by pirates and sold to the locals. If it was true …

The thought mocked him as they made their way through the terminal. Planets normally made certain they knew who was landing on their surface, even if they were just staying in the spaceport district, but there were no checkpoints, not even a police station. Instead, there were long lines of booths offering everything from food and drink to drugs, sexual services, and enough alcohol to drown a battleship. Some were manned by young women, bare breasts bobbling in front as they waved to the newcomers; others had shifty-looking men, hinting at pleasures that couldn’t be found anywhere else. The sound was deafening. Leo remembered all the warnings he’d been given about the dangers of trusting the wrong person when he went on shore leave. It wasn’t unknown for a spacer to meet a young woman, drink the wrong thing, and wake up in the gutter, wearing nothing but their socks. It was rare for a spacer to be actually murdered, he’d been assured, yet the victim might wind up wishing they were dead.

Particularly if they get blackmailed, he thought, grimly. It does happen.

The racket grew louder, somehow, as they crossed out of the terminal and into the red light district. It made absolutely no attempt to hide what it was, relatively tasteful establishments sharing space with establishments that were anything but. Leo bit his lip as they passed a line of young women, their perfect bodies gleaming in the sunlight. They were wearing so little they were practically naked, something that would get them in hot water back home. Here … his body was suddenly reminding him just how long it had been since he’d slept with a woman.

Flower elbowed him. “Down, boy.”

Leo snorted, although he took her point. The prostitutes didn’t appear to work in reputable establishments. They were probably debt slaves or immigrants who had reached the planet in search of a better life, only to fall into the hands of pimps and slave traders. There was no such thing as informed consent, where such women were concerned, and the whole scene was a grim reminder the planet needed a firm hand. The sooner one was appointed, the better.

The sound faded, slightly, as they reached a long line of hotels. Sun picked one at random and led the way inside. There was no relief from the hawkers in the lobby, Leo noted with a flicker of dark amusement. Touts were everywhere, offering dirty postcards, datachips loaded with porn and appointments with qualified sex professionals. The datachips made him grimace as he waved the touts away. He’d been warned they tended to include viruses and hacking software. Your personal data wasn’t safe if you trusted a datachip from a tout.

“I’ll get the room,” Sun said. “You keep an eye open for trouble.”

Leo and Flower exchanged glances, then drifted into a position that allowed them to peer into the dining hall. It was bigger than he’d thought, crammed with spacers being separated from their hard-earned cash. The food didn’t look very appealing, but that wasn’t uncommon in spaceport hotels. You had to go out to look for fine dining, and most spacers didn’t bother. They wanted sex and alcohol, not roast beef and lamb.

He kept his eyes open as Flower rejoined them and led the way upstairs. The upper levels were soundproofed, the racket outside dropping to nothing. Leo breathed a sigh of relief as they found their room and stepped inside, careful to keep their mouths shut before they swept the chamber for bugs. Leo was mildly surprised to find none. There was a disturbingly high demand for voyeuristic porn, from what he’d heard. The viewers wanted the thrill of spying on people in their most private moments.

Disgusting, Leo thought.

“It’s clear,” Flower said. Her eyes sharpened. “Unless they have some tech I’ve never heard of, we should be able to talk freely.”

“I doubt it,” Sun said. She took a terminal from her belt and opened it up, accessing the planetary datanet. “This planet is behind the times.”

Leo wasn’t so sure. Daybreak wasn’t the only innovator in the known universe. It was true that most brilliant scientists and researchers chose to move to Daybreak, accepting vast rewards in exchange for helping to uphold the hegemony, but it wasn’t unknown for an innovation to come out of a different world. He’d be surprised if the autonomous worlds weren’t looking for a silver bullet, a weapon so powerful it would turn the navy into scrap metal. And there were always rumours about something new, everything from starfighters to force shields …

Sure, he told himself. They may be theoretically possible. But I’ll believe they exist when I see them.

“I’m making a number of searches,” Sun said. Her lips thinned for a long moment. “Got to make it look convincing. If we don’t approach the right people …”

Leo nodded, keying the hotel terminal to see what it offered. There was a list of services … all expensive. His stomach churned as he realised they weren’t bothering to conceal the true nature of some of those services. A massage advert insisted there would be a happy ending or the customer would get his money back. He shook his head and glanced through the other menus, one by one. Nearly everything was paywalled, even the local news services. He’d never seen that anywhere else.

“All right,” Sun said. She glanced up from her terminal, clearly nervous. “You want to do this?”

“We’re not going into battle,” Leo pointed out. “All we’re doing is uploading our request for a contract, right?”

“Yeah,” Sun said. “And if they don’t see through our cover …”

She let the words hang in the air. Leo understood. It would be the height of irony if they received a legitimate contract. There was no way they could complete it, not when Waterhen wasn’t actually a converted freighter. He wasn’t sure what they’d have to do to be rid of the pointless obligation … perhaps they could claim the cargo was too dangerous to transport safely. It was rare for a merchant skipper to turn down a contract. People would talk. They’d ask why, and there would be few, if any, good answers.

“Do it,” he said. “If they take a good look at us, they’ll see through the guise.”

And hopefully not the inner layer, he added, as Sun tapped her terminal. The ship didn’t have a sensible paper trail, a red flag for any shipping agent who wasn’t hopelessly crooked. They’d take a closer look and realise Thunderbird was a real warship. As long as they don’t realise who we truly are.

He half-expected an immediate answer, but there was none. The shipping agent wasn’t as efficient as he’d thought … or, more likely, was checking them out first. Leo wondered what they’d think, if they’d take the risk of opening contact. The plan had seemed clever and reasonable in the Commodore’s office, but it felt much less assured now. Even the certain knowledge the shipping agent had been involved with the rebels …

Or so we think, Leo reminded himself. Intelligence work was tricky, everything hidden in the shadows. They thought they were setting a trap, but they might be trapped instead. We’re committed now.

“They replied,” Sun said. She looked up, her eyes wide. “They’re inviting us to a meeting.”

“Well,” Leo said. He fought down an urge to return to the shuttle and run. “We’d better not disappoint them, then.”