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  The great majority of Squall’s crew were excited and worried. With only two exceptions, the crew had no experience with naval missions. For them, this was something new, thrilling, and daunting.

  One of the exceptions was Rob, who wasn’t feeling any thrill but plenty of daunt. The other exception was seated at the operations watch station.

  Danielle Martel had occupied that same station for Scatha when the Squall had belonged to that star. Getting the council to agree to letting her be part of the crew, working for Glenlyon now, had been almost impossible, but Rob had stuck to it because she knew the ship better than anyone else, because she was apparently what she claimed to be, someone trapped into a contract with Scatha who was grateful to be working for Glenlyon now, and, just as importantly, because she was a former junior officer in Earth Fleet. But she had no rank, no official status, and Rob knew from personal experience how that must rankle. “Anything?” Rob asked her.

  “No. I’ve gone through all the records again from when Scatha owned this ship,” Danielle said. “Including all the things I wasn’t allowed to see. There’s nothing about any plan involving those two freighters.”

  “Do you think the former captain knew anything?”

  “I doubt his bosses shared anything with Screamin’ Pete that they didn’t have to,” Danielle said. “As far as I could learn when working for Scatha, everything is organized into stovepipes to keep anyone from finding out what anyone else is doing. Except for Central Security, which looks into every stovepipe. All I can do is guess, and my guess is that if Scatha sent those freighters here, it’s to do something that Glenlyon won’t like.”

  Drake Porter, one of the Glenlyon volunteers who had helped capture the Squall and stayed on to help crew her, shook his head from his post at the comm station. “Nobody’s going to listen to you, though. Except us.”

  “I know,” Danielle said with a sigh. “You’d think I was the first person to ever be tricked by a bogus recruiting pitch.”

  Drake nodded sympathetically. Rob had noticed that he liked Danielle Martel. Maybe more than liked, but so far, Danielle had just been friendly in response.

  A soft tone brought Drake Porter’s attention back to his display. “You’ve got a call, Lieutenant.”

  Rob checked his own display, seeing the link that Drake had already posted. He tapped the accept command and saw Ninja’s face appear before him. “Good afternoon, or evening.”

  “Is it?” She grimaced at him. “You got me another job, huh?”

  “Working for the council,” Rob pointed out. “Not me.”

  “I noticed that. Which means?”

  “Um, that no options are closed off.”

  “No options are closed off?” Ninja gave him an irritated look. “Don’t take anything for granted. You’re going out to meet those guys, aren’t you?”

  “That’s what I’ve been told to do,” Rob said. “They appear to be unarmed.”

  “Sure. Is Danielle Martel all calm and relaxed about that? I didn’t think so. I’ll find out what they’re doing since that seems to be the only way I’ll be able to keep you from flinging yourself into space to force entry on those freighters,” Ninja said.

  She ended the call, leaving him wondering what he’d done wrong.

  “Let’s go,” Rob told the bridge crew. On a larger ship, or a ship with a full crew, he would give helm commands to a watch-stander, which would be repeated back and checked against the commands recommended by the maneuvering systems. But the Squall didn’t have enough people aboard for that kind of redundancy to ensure that the right commands were entered. Instead, Rob took a final look at the commands, repeating them out loud to himself to ensure they matched what he wanted the ship to do. “Turn port zero six zero degrees, up zero three degrees, accelerate to point zero five light speed.”

  He felt an odd sense of history, looking around the bridge at everyone who was looking at him. “Here we go on the first operational mission for the Squall, the first operational warship of the Glenlyon Star System.”

  Rob tapped the execute command, and the automated maneuvering systems took care of the rest.

  Squall would never be the nimblest warship in space, but Rob still felt himself smiling as she swung about smoothly under the push of her thrusters, the main drive lighting off to push her away from orbit about the planet and onto the vector needed to intercept the incoming freighters.

  A small round of applause sounded on the bridge. “You should have given a speech,” Drake Porter said.

  Danielle Martel laughed for the first time since Rob had known her. “I’m part of something new! The first time for something! Do you have any idea how strange that is for someone from Earth?”

  “I guess we should have brought along something to toast the event,” Rob said, grinning.

  “I could get some coffee,” Drake Porter offered.

  “That’s probably the most appropriate beverage we could have,” Rob agreed. As Drake left the bridge, Rob glanced at Danielle. “Do you know how long we’ve used that system for maneuvering in space? The whole port and starboard thing?”

  She paused to think. “I learned that once in a navigation course. When was it? Mid-twenty-first century, I think. Maybe late in that century. We didn’t need it until we had enough ships maneuvering independently between planets. Ships at sea had used port and starboard, and the one fixed reference in a star system is the star, so they decided to use starboard for turning toward the star and port for turning away from it. And then up and down based on the plane the planets orbit in.”

  “That’s not a new something, then.”

  She laughed again. “Not even close.”

  • • •

  There were so few crew aboard the Squall that Rob had to stand watches on the bridge along with the others he thought capable enough for the task. It made for a short night’s sleep, but everyone else aboard was doing the same thing. He had just come off four hours on the bridge, which included the start of the next ship’s day, when Rob finally heard from Ninja again. The time lag between Squall and the planet had grown to nearly half an hour, making a real conversation impossible.

  Ninja looked frustrated and stubborn. “Bad news. Those two ships sent out a single transmission with their registry information when they arrived in this star system, then apparently shut down every transmitter and receiver. I can get in past locked doors. I can’t get in if there aren’t any doors! Before you ask, I’ll tell you what I’m going to tell the council. The freighters aren’t running any links between themselves. No active transmissions of any kind. No receivers active that I can tell. Scatha must have heard how we took the Squall, and since they couldn’t trust their firewalls against me, they pretty much isolated those freighters from any signal traffic. Obviously, with how far away those freighters still are, I’ve only had time to bounce one set of signals off them, looking for ways in and getting the results back. But if they stay locked down like that, I won’t be able to get into their systems no matter how weak their firewalls are. I’ll keep trying, but don’t hold your breath. Sorry.”

  Rob rubbed his lower face, worried. He had expected Ninja to work her usual magic, but Scatha had figured out a way around that.

  He touched the reply command. “Thanks, Ninja. If you can’t get in, nobody can. Is there any way we could plant some kind of physical tap on them when we get close enough, something stuck on their hulls that you could use to break into their systems from outside? It would have to be something we could improvise from components on this ship, which I imagine means the answer is no, but let me know if I’m wrong. Thanks again.” Should he say anything else? This was an official transmission, after all. “Geary, out.”

  The excitement among the crew when they had started out had slowly subsided into the dull routine of traveling millions of kilometers through space lacking much in the way of variety. Rob and D
anielle Martel had both experienced this sort of “adventure” drudgery, but the others in the crew were new to it. And people who were tired and bored, and not used to handling that, made for leadership challenges.

  “Back off, both of you!” Rob ordered, glaring at the two volunteers who were about to come to blows. “Vlad, if you come within a meter of Teri again I will put you in a survival suit and duct-tape you to the outside of this ship.”

  Vlad turned a sullen glower on Rob. “I don’t have to put up with this.”

  “Yes, you do. If you want to quit when we get back to Glenlyon, that’s fine with me. But as long as you’re on this ship, you will listen to orders and treat your shipmates with courtesy and respect!”

  Rob waited until Vlad, grumbling under his breath, had left. “You okay?” he asked Teri.

  “I’m okay,” she said, face still hard with anger. “I could have taken him.”

  “That’s not the point. You’re not supposed to take him. That makes it personal. This is about discipline on the ship. If he violates discipline, then I take him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Rob turned to see Danielle Martel watching. She walked with Rob as he headed back toward his stateroom. “Nice command voice,” Danielle remarked.

  “I have a command voice?” Rob asked, giving her a skeptical look.

  “Yeah. Your voice gets lower in pitch and a bit louder in volume.”

  “Huh,” Rob said, surprised to realize that he had been doing that. “Is that how Earth Fleet would have handled that?”

  “Why do you care how Earth Fleet would have done it?” Danielle Martel asked.

  “Because they’re the model,” Rob said. “The oldest and the best.”

  She laughed though it carried a sharp edge that didn’t sound like amusement. “If only Earth Fleet lived up to its rep! Yeah, that’s what I would’ve done. You were a lieutenant for Alfar, right? What do you care about a former ensign’s opinion?”

  “You’re a pro,” Rob said. “Whether you realize it or not. That’s why I care. I’m still learning this stuff.”

  “You’ll never make admiral with that attitude,” Danielle Martel said.

  • • •

  The Squall had traveled for almost a day and a half, to one and a half light hours from the planet, when the council’s guidance finally came in, delivered by Council President Chisholm herself. Chisholm had sent the message from her new office, a room mostly devoid of decoration, the walls apparently left nearly bare in the expectation of many future plaques and pictures and displays in the centuries to come. “Your instructions, Lieutenant Geary, are to intercept the freighters from Scatha as previously directed. You are to insist on the right to inspect the freighters and ensure they are carefully examined by whoever you send over for that task. Do not send Danielle Martel.”

  Rob slapped his forehead at that last, grateful that the message wasn’t anything like real-time and his reaction couldn’t be seen.

  “If the freighters refuse to allow inspection,” Chisholm continued, “you are to instruct them to reverse course and leave this star system.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief, having feared that the council would balk at such a necessary step.

  “It must be clearly understood,” Chisholm said, “that you are not to fire upon the freighters under any circumstances. No weapons are to be employed, either aimed at the freighters or near them. They are civilian spacecraft, they are unarmed, and therefore cannot be attacked by warships under interstellar space law.”

  Rob’s feeling of relief vanished.

  “Keep the council apprised of your actions, and if you need to do anything not already covered by your instructions, ensure you request and receive approval before acting. Chisholm, out.”

  Rob played the message again, hoping that he had missed something.

  He hadn’t.

  Needing somebody to vent to about the message, he called Danielle Martel into his stateroom. He doubted the council would approve of that, but they hadn’t told him not to share his “instructions” with anyone else.

  She watched it in silence, not reacting except for a wince when Chisholm mentioned her name. “Why did they think they needed to tell you not to send me?” Danielle asked when the message was over. “If you were that dumb, you shouldn’t be commanding this ship.”

  “In all fairness,” Rob said sarcastically, “they haven’t made up their minds yet about my commanding this ship.”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s sort of disappointing that they think I’m dumb enough to want to put myself back into the hands of Scatha. But you can’t shoot. What if the freighters ignore your orders to go back to the jump point?”

  “I guess I’m supposed to use harsh language,” Rob said.

  “Not without requesting and receiving clearance from the council,” Danielle Martel admonished him. “Do you think they realize that by the time we intercept those freighters it will be a multihour process just in terms of the time for light to carry the messages back and forth?”

  “What do you think the freighters will do?”

  “It depends on their orders. They’ll do whatever they were told,” Danielle said. “When I was working for Scatha, I was given a very clear impression that it is a very bad idea to not follow orders. Central Security takes a great deal of interest in that sort of thing.”

  Rob shook his head, gazing at the spot over his desk where Chisholm’s message had been visible. “Why did you leave Old Earth’s fleet to come out here and deal with this kind of thing? We must look like idiots playing the amateur hour.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “No. In Earth Fleet, we’d have a checklist for every possible circumstance, a checklist that itself contained multiple subchecklists, and regulations required following those checklists and subchecklists and subsubchecklists to the letter. Earth Fleet has been doing this stuff far longer than anyone else, and every time anyone made a mistake, it got added to the checklists to make sure no one else did it.”

  “In Alfar’s fleet, we looked up to Earth Fleet,” Rob said, leaning back as he looked at her. “I’ve told you that. You guys are the old pros, the men and women who could outfight anyone and anything.”

  Danielle shook her head again, suddenly looking older. “If you want the truth, Earth Fleet is a zombie. It’s already dead. It’s been dead for a while. But it keeps going because it doesn’t know it’s dead yet. Tradition and denial are keeping the pieces moving and the ships cruising. But not much longer.” She grew somber. “Earth is tired of war, Rob. You may not think humans could ever tire of their favorite destructive pastime, but Earth has seen too much and endured too much. They’re getting out of the game.”

  “So it wasn’t just wanting to do something new? You left because Earth Fleet is on its last legs?” He found the idea that Earth Fleet could someday be gone hard to grasp.

  “Yes.” Danielle Martel’s eyes became haunted with memories. “Everyone followed procedures and carried out their patrols and pretended it wasn’t all coming to an end, but it was. No one was even supposed to talk about everything winding down because that would signal a negative attitude and adversely impact morale. We were all on a death watch but supposed to smile and act like everything was fine. I couldn’t handle that.”

  She sighed, then her gaze on him grew demanding. “I won’t be the only remnant of Earth Fleet heading down. You’re going to meet others. Let me tell you, Rob, when you encounter other Earth Fleet–trained officers, they will be fiends for following procedures and regulations. They’ll be sharp and look sharp and know how to drive their ships, and they’re likely to be brave and fight as well as they can, but in any emergency they’ll look to the book for an answer, and if the answer isn’t there, they’ll be lost.”

  “They won’t innovate?” Rob asked, skeptical.

  “They can’t innovate,” Danielle said.
“It’s been trained out of them. It doesn’t matter if they succeed in an assigned task. If they failed to follow every step on the checklist and every applicable rule for that task, they will be judged as having failed. The process is what matters, not the outcome.”

  “You’re serious?” Rob demanded.

  “Absolutely. Why do you think I was willing to believe that fairy tale the recruiter from Scatha spun? I couldn’t wait to get out.”

  Rob nodded to her. “I’ll remember that. Do you know if Scatha already has any other Earth Fleet vets?”

  “Maybe,” Danielle said. “But I don’t know. One of the first things that tipped me off that Scatha was bad news was when I first reported and asked about that. I was told that who was in the crews of the other warships was none of my business.”

  “That’s weird,” Rob said, startled.

  “More like paranoid. I wanted to work where I could make a difference, not where I had to watch every step I took.”

  “Good luck with that,” Rob said.

  “The people running Scatha are as bad as Reds,” Danielle Martel said. “I bet a lot of them are Reds originally.”

  “Reds?”

  “From Mars. Haven’t you heard about it? The planet is a mess of little klepto-states run by gangs and dictators. Half of Earth Fleet’s missions in the last century involved dealing with Red scams and predations. If you meet a Red, keep one hand on your wallet and use the other hand to call for backup.”

  “Everyone from Mars is like that?” Rob asked, skeptical.

  “Everyone I ever heard of,” Danielle assured him. “Why’d you leave Alfar?”

  “Mostly because everything you did was supposed to be the way it had been done before. You couldn’t breathe differently than they had twenty years ago because the way they breathed back then was the way it should be done. Plus, their fleet was small and getting smaller.” He looked away, remembering how it had felt to know that the future held nothing but less and realizing in that he and Danielle Martel had experienced similar things. “Not dead or dying, but shrinking with no hope that it would ever grow again. Why do you suppose Old Earth and the Old Colonies started drawing inward when humanity started expanding outward?”