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Second part of what was never meant to be a cliffhanger! More action! More coyotes! Yeah!

Tying up loose ends, among other things, it's the second part of the Season 3 finale for the Dark Horse Saga. May gets something she's been after (no, not that). So does Xocoh (that). Thanks to your continued support while I... delay inexcusably in posting this >.> And as always to Spudz for being a great dog.

Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute -- as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.

_Tales of the Dark Horse _by ** Rob Baird** S3E4, "Prophecies, Part II"

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Captain's personal log, stardate 67722.8

To say the last few days have been 'strange' is the understatement of the century. A new, impossible ship, an ancient conspiracy, a growing threat... it's pretty exciting! I want to get underway as soon as possible, but Dave keeps pointing out that we should know where we're going first. Not a bad point, I guess.

Madison May's impatience gnawed at her, to the point that she was almost relieved when the tedium of a watch on the bridge of the stationary_Dark Horse_ found something to break the monotony. In this case, 'something' was an alarm, and a yelp from Mitch Alexander.

"Contact.Fuck, uh--sorry--captain. Boarding ship, headed right for us!"

"Set condition red. Action stations!" Until one of the tactical officers showed up, May took control directly from her chair, bringing the cruiser's shields online and powering the weapons. "Range?"

"Five thousand kilometers. And... wait." Mitch couldn't tell if she was looking at actual signals or a deception of some kind. "Slowing? Captain, we're being hailed. Audio only."

"Put it through."

"Star Patrol. Don't mistake my intentions--I'm alone. I'm requesting asylum."

Maddy kept working on a firing solution. "Who are you?"

"Estar-Ki'im--I was a mechanic for the Prince's navy. He--he must be stopped. He--"

Then, nothing. "CCI?"

Spaceman Alexander looked over her console. "The channel is still open, ma'am, but nothing's transmitting. I think we can reconfigure our sensors to penetrate their hull, with your permission." Such an invasion of privacy was always at best impolite. In battle, that was the least of anyone's worries... but this no longer seemed to be a battle.

"Do it. Estar-Ki'im, are you still there?"

Mitch waited for the computer to piece everything together. "The ship has one occupant, captain. But they're not moving. And if I'm reading this right, they... might be in more than one piece."

"Do you know what happened?"

"No."

Over Dave Bradley's advice, she maneuvered the_Dark Horse_ to bring the boarding pod into their hangar bay. With both of the tactical officers--as well as Sabel Thorsen and Jack Ford--pointing heavy rifles, waiting, they watched as the engineering drone rolled up to the hatch and pried it open.

No such concern was necessary: the ship was empty, and Estar-Ki'im's armor had undergone the same destructive process as the implants their prisoner had worn. With a suit of full armor, though--still_occupied_, at that--the results proved substantially more graphic.

May gave her staff two hours to come up with something useful and summoned them into her ready room, having already written 'DEFECTOR (?)' on the whiteboard in block letters. "Was he being serious?"

"We can't know for sure. Ayenni's initial report, however, says that his bloodstream was full of stress hormones." They had plenty of samples for that; Dave had helped Ayenni collect the most promising chunks from the wall of the ship. The Golden Retriever flinched at the recollection, shaking his head. "Furthermore, his heart rate may have been dramatically elevated before... stopping. That being said--their biology's an unknown."

May added 'stressed' to the whiteboard, figuring she could hold off on doubting Dave and Ayenni until there was_actual_ cause for suspicion. "Is there any kind of motive?"

Barry coughed, warning them that the answer lay with him. "The ship's computer seems to be encrypted, although he was carrying a small crystal chip that_is_ readable."

"Synthetic sapphire?" Dr. Ribeiro asked.

"Yes. It's a Hano method of data storage, captain," the Border Collie explained for the benefit of everyone without a degree in xenoarchaeology.

"And, like... it's wilder than that." TJ Wallace had been asked to assist in making sense of the boarding pod's systems; once the otter got past the untidy mess everywhere the technology had been fascinating as hell. "The dude's armor and the ship systems are clearly, like,kinda related, but at a whole other level. His suit's, like... okay I guess, but the machining on the ship and this sapphire thing is... on par or better than anything the TC can pull off. Pretty neat."

May frowned, stripped out the otter's rambling, and summarized: 'ship v advanced/pilot not.' "What did it say?"

Their science officer picked up again. "It's a new personal log with two entries, and what I think might be a last testament specifying how he wanted his spoils divided. The first entry talks about the Prince's ambitions and how he tested a new engine on the flagship of a pack he thought was disloyal. The ship disintegrated, and a different pack protested. They said they were old allies. The Prince killed them. All of them."

"All of the protesters?" Dave asked.

Barry shook his head. "No, sir. The entire pack. The log is in a strange register, so maybe it's just metaphor, but... he says that they scrapped a hundred and seven ships with the crews still inside them, and adds that morale has been compromised before a big operation."

Dr. Ribeiro shifted in his seat. "I don't think it's a metaphor. There are stories like that from our records on the Hano Empire: collective punishment, sometimes a planet's worth at a time."

"A planet's worth?"

"Paghuk-Hån was designed to destroy planets. They never let that be an idle threat--any time somebody started fighting back or refusing demands, they'd annihilate them. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't a whole lot of resistance. When we found Sjel-Kassar, there was an obelisk made of silver--elemental silver, extracted from the bodies of a client state who defied them. They don't fuck around--pardon the language."

Barry Schatz gave the addendum a moment to sink in before continuing. "The second entry says that he thinks if the Prince is ultimately victorious, it would bring the galaxy together in destroying their people. He accuses the Prince of gambling that he can find some ancient secret before they arouse too much suspicion. If the log is correct, he wanted to reach rebellious Waneshan packs, but maybe he figured he'd need our protection."

May had added 'defector' to the whiteboard. "Do we know where he came from?"

"No, but that tells us something by itself, Maddy. Nobody else came to attack us. I think it's safe to assume that they also weren't able to follow him." It also raised the question of how, exactly, he'd been able to find them--but David had a hunch about that one. Nobody brought it up; that was fine, he didn't want anyone to panic.

Barry Schatz said there was one remaining entry that resisted decryption for the moment. He thought it might have been details on the 'big operation' for which morale had been sabotaged. He vowed not to sleep until he'd figured it out; May dismissed the meeting, and David walked with Miguel Ribeiro back to the jaguar's quarters.

"This must be fascinating for you, right?"

Ribeiro thought carefully before replying. "Partly. I also think it's scary as hell, Mr. Bradley. I haven't decided if they sent us here to help you, or to keep us safe. I'm not sure I'd like the answer either way. Nobody gets into xenoarchaeology figuring government agents are going to wake them up in the middle of the night..."

"Did that happen before? How'd you get put on the trail of that lost city?"

"A coyote. My companion. She ambushed me after class one day with a clue that was too good not to chase up. She has a... a weird kind of insight. Remember, she wasn't as surprised as I was when we showed up and you were looking for information on the Hano."

He remembered, and it unsettled him. "What's her deal? Is she trustworthy?"

"Xoc?" The jaguar hesitated--Dave saw a few reflexive answers being considered and discounted in his expression. "She can be trusted to do the most coyote thing under the circumstances. It's not always beneficial for everybody, but she's bad at having ulterior motives."

"We need to talk to her, then."

Xocoh had perched herself in the middle of the cabin, cross-legged; active holograms glowed in front of her, but she didn't seem to be reading them or paying much attention. Dave couldn't make sense of the information--alien writing; symbols and charts.

"Xoc," Miguel prompted.

Her eyes sharpened into focus and she turned slightly to look at the two newcomers. "Hey Sancho. Hey, Dave. What's up?"

"Dr. Ribeiro says you can be trusted," Dave began.

The coyote laughed, turned the holograms off, and leaned back on her paws. "Can I, then? Did he know you would tell me that, or did he figure it could just stay between you two?"

"Don't make me a liar," the jaguar said.

She stuck out her tongue. "Fine. What's up, guys?"

The retriever had been trying to think of the gentlest, most diplomatic way of opening the conversation. Neither, clearly, would be needed. "Where does your information come from? You had sensitive, classified information about this ship and its mission. Where's it coming from?"

"I don't know."

"But you must have guesses."

"Even if I did, I'd be a very_untrustworthy_ person if I betrayed them to you, wouldn't I?"

"There's no honor among thieves, Xoc." Dave imagined it wasn't the first time the conversation had played out between the two.

The coyote shrugged. "No, Sancho. Just a habit of killing people who figure that out. What are you really asking, Dave?"

"How did you know about the database we got from Qalamixi? What else do you know?"

"I asked around when I heard we were coming out here." Xocoh rolled her eyes and shook her head in exasperation. "Fine. Maybe I did more than 'ask.' Maybe I paid a little. I wanted to be informed--sue me. There's only one ship in this sector, so I educated myself. Here."

She got up, leading them to the desk bolted to one of the cabin walls. The space above the desk turned into a new hologram--starting with deck-by-deck blueprints of the_Dark Horse_ and getting worse from there. Dave's gnawing sense of unease deepened. "These are navigational logs... maintenance reports... diplomatic cables..."

"Those are encrypted. No idea what they say."

"You're not_supposed_ to," Dave growled. "What about tactical information? Do you have our shield profile? Our weapon loadouts? Reactor passwords?"

"No.But, before you jump to any conclusions, I didn't request those kind of specifics, either. So it doesn't mean it's not out there. It also doesn't mean I was gonna act on it, and remember, Sancho said I was trustworthy."

Dave kept reading until he was satisfied that he had a handle on the scope of the problem. "The ship that we picked up a few hours ago knew where to find us. That suggests Star Patrol has a leak somewhere."

He didn't need Xocoh Zonnie to empathize with the Star Patrol's problems, but he certainly didn't expect the way she laughed. "Yeah? Of course it does. Look, no offense, but I've been on the wrong side of you bluecoats a_lot_. And I'm still here, so what does that tell you?"

Arguing was futile, particularly since Dave would've wound up agreeing. The Star Patrol's heart was in the right place, but that place had only a passing acquaintance with effectiveness or competence. There was a different way to approach the problem. "What about on this side of the frontier? Who do you talk to on this side?"

"Me? Nobody."

"Xoc's only toe-deep," Miguel Ribeiro added. "At least, the times we've worked together it's been black-market artifacts or forgeries for museum pieces, things like that. Not saying it's very legitimate, but you don't need many connections to make a living this way."

"The more people you know, the more people you wind up having to cross," Xoc said. She turned the hologram off, and when Dave held out his paw for her to hand the computer over she rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. It's not yours. I won't take anything. You can pat me down if you want."

"Xoc," Miguel warned. "You know the stakes here."

"Sure. What do you think I've been working on? We'll go talk to their science officer in a bit--unless there's something else, Dave?"

Dave thought he could ask Miguel if the coyote had good intentions, and Dr. Ribeiro would eventually say 'yes' and be fairly--though not completely--certain he wasn't lying to himself. But then, the jaguar seemed decent, and had made it through their relationship in one piece; he swallowed his lingering irritation at the foibles of the Star Patrol. "What have you been 'working on,' then?"

"The data crystal Barry picked up off that boarding ship. Been looking at a copy of it."

"That's also restricted information. How do you have access?"

She shrugged. "Simple biometric lock backed up by Mindi-Gray encryption--that's been broken for almost five years, Dave, c'mon." The coyote huffed a quick sigh. "If you didn't know_that_, Star Patrol has bigger problems than one lone coyote bitch. Look, Dave, I didn't want to have this particular waste-of-time conversation until I had something to show for it. It's a map."

"A map?"

She pointed back to where she'd been sitting. "It's Hano tech being used--badly--by folks just trying to figure it out. I took a couple guesses as to how they might be storing information, and, voila."

"I imagine that's not all you took," Miguel muttered, and she reached over to pat the jaguar's shoulder fondly.

"'Course not, dear.But. The map's encoding stars. Nineteen in particular are highlighted, and there's a lot of text around them, but I don't think we're going to get an answer out of it--the entropy suggests it's random, probably linked to a code book."

"Is there anything about the stars themselves? They share anything in common?"

"Didn't get that far. Keep bein' interrupted, apparently."

Dave sighed. "You'll let me know if you find anything, right?" She grinned, and he didn't like having to take that as a 'yes.' But what could he do?

***

Captain's log, stardate 67723.4

Lieutenant Commander Bradley has shown us strong circumstantial evidence that the Star Patrol communications network is compromised. He has also shown us strong circumstantial evidence that the map aboard the captured ship is highlighting strategic installations of the Uxzu Dominion.

We can only really act on one of these at a time.

"Nineteen Dominion star systems. Military bases, shipyards... what do we do now?"

Dave went ahead and stated the obvious--May wouldn't even bother writing it down on the whiteboard. "We need to warn the Uxzu. They have no idea what's coming."

"I agree, but they can be difficult to get hold of on the diplomatic channels. Dr. Beltran, do we have a reliable way of contacting them?"

"I can go," Jack said, before the leopardess could answer. He fumbled for the alien name kicking around in his coyote skull. "Geghek. The Geghek system, it's where the Kolash Pride is from. I can take the_Tempest_."

"You? By yourself?"

"And Lieutenant Munro, of course."

Madison grinned. "I figured you'd get along with the Uxzu, captain. Told you first contact would be a good experience. Dr. Beltran will be pointing out here in a moment that you don't actually have diplomatic training."

In this case, the argument wasn't one worth having; Felicia shook her head. "Where the Dominion is concerned, captain, I am increasingly convinced that formal diplomatic training is a hindrance. Captain Ford knows their culture reasonably well, and he is a military authority."

She wasn't aware of how 'reasonably well' Jack had immersed himself in Uxzu culture. May, who would not have been surprised, didn't know either. She just thought of him as passionate, and a brave volunteer. "Right. Captain Ford, depart at once. Contact them and return here--if we've had to move, we'll signal you over the FTL radio with new coordinates and be monitoring our hypersondes."

With that done, May went to catch up Admiral Mercure on what she'd learned. Spaceman Wallace had been working hard on improving the quality of the transmission, which--for the moment--the akita remained grateful for. This wouldn't necessarily last; since the start of her mission she'd gotten rather used to being so far away from the Star Patrol's oversight that they communicated in short, text-only bursts via the long-range strategic network.

Of course, she was no fool: Star Patrol was happy not to be bothered. And perhaps when everything was done they would find TJ's improvised system unsuitable. But for the moment, the sight of Admiral Mercure's face cheered her up. "Good afternoon, sir--I think it's afternoon in Bremen, isn't it?"

The lion nodded in greeting. "It is. Good afternoon,Dark Horse. I see you've repaired your communications array. The picture is much clearer. At least... I certainly hope it is. What have you learned?"

"Well, it's certainly_getting_ clearer. The resurgent Waneshan faction follows a leader who's claiming a link to the same Hano legend as their lost weapon. They've recreated jumpdrive technology and they're trying to perfect it; right now it only works on small ships. One of them attempted to defect to us. Unfortunately, he didn't survive, but we're pretty certain there's a major attack coming."

"On us?"

"Probably not. The_Dark Horse_ is safe. They want to take us alive: we have information they think might be necessary to recover the superweapon."

Mercure digested that, looking progressively more uneasy. "Do you know when the attack might happen?"

"No, sir. Within days or weeks, I would imagine."

"The Admiralty authorized me to create a small task force, under Commodore Salo. His flotilla can be in the Rewa-Tahi Sector within two weeks--the_Bellerophon_ and six support ships. Salo's a good man."

May knew_of_ him, though no real details; he had not earned her own brand of notoriety. "Permission to speak freely, sir?" The lion, always something of a father figure to her, nodded gently. "How much has been communicated to them? We think there might be a leak somewhere in the Star Patrol. The research team you sent had far more detail about the Dark Horse than they should've--classified information on our cargo manifest--and my first officer believes the defector reached us based on intelligence intercepts gleaned from the Tempest."

Judging by Mercure's startled expression, the lion had obviously been expecting something quite different from 'permission to speak freely': profanity, or sordid personal history between her and Salo. "That's an extremely serious allegation. Commodore Salo doesn't know details, only that the flotilla is supposed to be combat-ready."

"I know you trust your people, sir."

"Not all of them." He shook his head; his mane ruffled and danced. "Do you have a different plan, commander? You're on your own, otherwise, if you can't link up with the_Bellerophon_."

"My plan is to forge an alliance with the Dominion and as many other friendly species as I can draw together. We'll find where the Waneshan leader is marshaling his forces and destroy them before they a chance to act."

"You make it sound so simple," he said. "Anyone but you, and I might have my doubts. Is there anything I_can_ do to help you, Commander May?"

The akita thought things through carefully, or as carefully as she was capable of doing on short notice. "Gadel is a resource-rich system controlled by the Ardzula, and it isn't too far past the border. Would it be possible to order Commodore Salo there and tell him to wait for me?"

"I suppose so. It shouldn't take you more than a week or two..."

May added that the Ardzula were more likely than their other allies to come under attack, and less likely to be able to defend themselves. Admiral Mercure agreed to order Salo to combat alert, and May closed the transmission hoping that it wouldn't come to anything.

Unwarranted optimism was also the order of the day on the flight deck, where Ciara Munro and Jack Ford were preparing for launch. The vixen had the main computer online and was waiting for the final diagnostics to come in. "So far, so good. Do you want to strap in, sir?"

Jack obligingly took the copilot's seat and fastened his harness. The basic layout was familiar, a slightly more primitive version of the sensor displays on a Type 7. Similar enough that he didn't hesitate before turning the power on, watching the screens come to life. "My_God_..."

"Sir?" Lieutenant Munro looked over from the pilot's seat. "Is everything alright?"

"This can't be right, can it? We can get high-res data out to two million kilometers?"

The vixen laughed. "I haven't had the chance to test it out, sir, but the data-integration computer has thirty times the processing power of the one on a Riverjack--if that means anything. Does everything look like it's checked out?"

"Yeah. No errors, anyhow."

"I'm gonna take us out, then, sir." The engines started up with a quiet hum; Munro looked over her own displays to make sure one last time that nothing was likely to explode at an inopportune time. "Launch control, this is_Tempest_. Ready for takeoff, outbound vector seven-zero mark zero, for FTL departure on delta plus six thousand. Data crosscheck, seven."

"Yup, looks good. Have fun." Munro had yet to meet Spaceman Alexander, but the Abyssinian's easygoing voice told the vixen pretty much all she needed to know. Their launch itself was sedate; the_Tempest_ kept its power harnessed until they were well beyond the cruiser.

Jack had noticed this--that, since first detecting the ship, he hadn't seen it pushed to full potential. "So here's a question..."

"Yes, sir?"

"No 'sir' needed. How does it fly?"

Munro turned, catching the coyote's gaze and the boyish enthusiasm in his eyes. "Pretty well. Are you qualled on the 'Vark, too, or just Riverjacks?"

"Just Riverjacks. But c'mon, you can trust me."

Typical fighter jock, she thought. Cocky as all hell. "Can I? Scout pilots have a way of getting in over their head, in my experience."

"'Your experience'? And what's that, lieutenant?"

"Thirteen years at ASPR and four at the Muroc Center, for a start. I was lead test pilot for the 'Vark-S before they scrapped it. Eventually you get to a point where Riverjacks are just too easy--very forgiving."

"Trying to get a rise out of me?"

"Maybe?" Munro locked the controls and unfastened her harness, standing and gesturing to the now-vacant pilot's seat. "Maybe I just want you to prove me wrong."

Jack, who knew that he was being baited, was also far too much of a coyote to care or make any attempt at not rising to it. He settled down in the still-warm chair and waited for it to contour to his body. "So what_should_ I know, anyway?"

Lieutenant Munro hadn't developed a coping mechanism for dealing with tricksters, exactly, but she knew from the tone of his voice that Jack was asking a dangerous question. She leaned over the black-furred canine and pointed to a control switch just above the throttle. "You see this thing here?"

"Docking, Normal, Unlimited?"

"Yes."

She turned the switch clockwise to the last stop. A red light above it started flashing, synchronized to an alert message on all the cockpit displays:HOLD TWO SECONDS TO CONFIRM. "Don't do that until I tell you." Munro set it back to 'Docking' and took the copilot's position. Quickly--not that she didn't trust him, or anything...

In fairness, Jack was already eyeing the control with newfound interest. "Is that just for the thrusters?"

"And the inertial compensators. And the maneuvering limiters. And your life support."

"Huh." The coyote took hold of the control column, pushing it gently to one side to get a feel for the way the_Tempest_ responded. It seemed reasonably nimble: not on the same level as a scout ship, maybe, but the design was slightly older, too. "How does it compare to the Type 10?"

"Take the 'Vark to extremes, and then take_those_ extremes to extremes, and you've got a pretty good idea, sir. It doesn't turn all that well... with the safeties on, you're limited to a hundred degrees per second. Try it, you'll see."

He pulled back on the stick until it was at its limits and, sure enough, the nose lifted... almost_ponderously_, really. "Can you fly it manually?"

"Turn the maneuvering switch past 'override' and hold it there for two seconds until the alarms stop. It's in manual mode now--it has to be. The inertial compensators can't handle it otherwise. Pull back on the stick again."

Jack didn't know what he was expecting to happen; the result was, in any case, disappointing. The stars_were_ moving, perceptibly, but the speed had dropped by at least another factor of ten. "This isn't being limited by the autopilot?"

"Nope. It's literally just restricting available power to the maneuvering thrusters. Now that we've covered that... hit the throttle."

The coyote closed his paw over the smooth, warm throttle lever, and it slid gently forward under his touch. The_Tempest_ was quite a bit less sedate: he could feel the pressure in his chest, and the diagnostic readout on the head-up display said they were accelerating at over twenty Gs. "Bit--more--respectable..."

And as the inertial compensators adjusted, it was even quite bearable. "Now go to full power."

"I'm... at full power already, aren't I?"

"You have to hold in the release switch on the side of the throttle. And then... hang on."

Jack followed instructions to the letter. And then he yelped, because his next thought was that the ship had exploded and he was headed for the afterlife. The readout said the_Tempest_ was accelerating at eighty-seven times the speed of gravity; the dampeners were well beyond the limits of what they could account for.

"The structural integrity field will hold, but if you turned at this speed the inertial compensators would shred you. So... don't," Munro advised. "And you can't keep it going for too long."

"That's what the countdown is for?" Numbers were ticking steadily back from '45' or so. "Overheating?"

"Yeah."

He killed the thrusters before it could get to that point; the warnings went away and the engine temperatures slowly retreated from the peak of their irritation. "Not bad." And, with the maneuvering limiters off, the_Tempest_ was noticeably more responsive. "Wouldn't want to get into a dogfight in it, but..."

"If you're getting into dogfights, you've already made a few mistakes." They traded places again and she began the process of calculating their FTL trajectory. "From what I've been able to tell, you shouldn't really be accelerating like that, either."

"No?"

"Side effect of the main reactor. Can you do me a favor and check the plot, sir?"

Jack did so, awkwardly aware that his knowledge was cursory--Star Patrol didn't expect hyperlight navigation to enter into the daily life of a scout pilot. "Seems okay. What's up with the reactor?"

Ciara confirmed their hyperspace course and switched the FTL drive on--all of half a second later, the stars winked out. "It's a smaller version of the WS50G they use on the_Shield_-class patrol corvettes, so... figure what happens when you install it on a ship that masses ten times less. There's no charge time on the hyperdrive."

"This could've been a hell of a heavy fighter," the coyote mused. He paged through one of the computer screens in front of him until he found a schematic of the ship itself. "Kind of a shame they made us give it up."

"It's more convenient than anything else, sir."

"Just call me 'Jack' or something. It's weird--you're basically in command, anyhow. What do you mean by convenience? You think it was... like, what, just a cover story for something?"

Lieutenant Munro shook her head. "I meant actually convenient. I didn't have time to read up on all the docs--plus, a lot of them are classified--but as a ship, it's not even close to ready for service. You want the full breakdown?"

"Call me curious, sure."

She locked the computer down and got out of her seat, leaning against the bulkhead to look at the blueprint Jack had up. "For a start, Curious, it's built around the drive--they cut corners everywhere else. The deflector shields are mil-spec, corvette-class stuff, but the emitter couplings aren't rated for anything more than a few hundred gigajoules. And no redundancies."

"None at all?"

"Do you see any? I already told you the problems with the inertial compensators. None of the hardware is off the shelf, either, so if it breaks, good luck getting a replacement." The further they were from Confederation territory, the more keenly Ciara was aware of that fact. But it had held together so far, and she decided to trust that her luck would continue. "The tradeoff is a hyperdrive faster than yours by two orders of magnitude."

In other words, it had its uses: the computer said they could reach the Uxzu shipyards in a little under twelve hours. Munro wanted to take some of the time to run a diagnostic on the ship's systems, just in case. All of them hadn't seen extensive use in decades, and many hadn't worked terribly well even at the time.

Going through the most critical of the self-tests took them five and a half hours. As she explained to Jack, she might've been a test pilot... but she also wasn't stupid enough to fly a ship that wasn't in the best condition it could be under the circumstances. Particularly since, as she kept being told, their mission was critical.

But when nothing came up broken, she agreed with the coyote that some rest was in order. The_Tempest_, as a long-range reconnaissance ship, was equipped with diminutive resting quarters. There were two bunks, which Star Patrol designers intended to be shared across the shifts of five or six crew.

It was just the pair of them, though, and Jack felt no awkwardness would be called for. Munro had to dash his hopes as the coyote went aft to the sleeping section: "I wouldn't take that one."

He stopped, paw on the handle to the berth's door. "No?"

"That was the one my, uh, passengers used. And it hasn't been cleaned yet."

Jack frowned and let the handle go. "Should it be?"

"You probably wouldn't benefit from knowing more. Besides, I don't want to insult you by making statements with derogatory implications about coyotes."

"Appreciated," he muttered. "I guess the chair works, then."

"I haven't tried sleeping in it, but if you want, sir, you're welcome to try. We can also share my bunk, if you don't mind the coziness. I'm pretty small."

With no idea what might be waiting for them on the far side of hyperspace, Jack was willing to trade cramped quarters for a proper night's sleep. The rest capsule wasn't even_that_ small--the size of his bed on the Dark Horse, with less headroom. He wedged himself against the far wall and waited for Ciara to finish her checklists.

When that was done, the vixen took a moment to eye the coyote, whose jet-black fur and dark blue jumpsuit made it look like a more respectable dog had escaped, leaving only a shadow behind. As coyotes went, though, she felt comfortable in thinking him easier to deal with than her previous guests.

And, anyway, she wasn't about to condemn him to using their bed. She pulled herself into the bunk and tapped the control panel that killed the cabin lights. Hyperspace, brilliant on the other side of the canopy, lent a faint, strobing glow that kept the_Tempest_ from becoming too dark.

"Did Commander May tell you anything about what we're doing tomorrow?"

"No. She said we were 'sending a message' but, honestly, I got the impression she meant it literally." Munro knew of the commander by reputation--as did everyone in the Star Patrol. Her brief encounters with the akita hadn't conveyed the image of a reckless, headstrong rogue.

She would learn, in time, but neither Jack nor Ciara knew that yet. "It was literal. A group of pirates led by a fanatic bent on reclaiming their former glory are on the track of a planet-destroying supergun, and the scientists you brought have the key to beating them to it."

The vixen had a hard time suspending her disbelief sufficiently to think the jaguar and his insatiable, erratic coyote girlfriend had 'the key' to anything other than colorful medical reports. For that matter, she wasn't certain they were 'scientists.' But--and with the darkness hiding her skeptically furrowed brow--she simply said: "Okay."

"We're going to warn our allies in the Uxzu Dominion of an impending attack so they can be ready for it. Then we catch back up with May, find the weapon, beat the fanatic, and save the galaxy." Munro stayed quiet, and Jack figured it probably wasn't because she'd gone to sleep. "That's the short version, anyway..."

"Is that how it was explained to you?"

"I've had to extrapolate in a few places."

"What happens if we don't warn them in time?"

"The pirates are pretty bad news. Apparently when some tribe pissed off their supreme leader, he scrapped their ships, with all of 'em still inside it. Dr. Ribeiro says that's up their alley. And the Dominion seem to be... alright. Commander May gets along well with them."

"You've met them, too?"

As a coyote, Jack wasn't especially good at feeling embarrassment. But he also appreciated that not all of his activities with the Uxzu would've passed diplomatic muster, and Ciara already had doubts about what she'd gotten herself into. "I've met them," he offered carefully. "Their pilots are brave as hell. And adventurous."

"Sounds like a good match for you and your captain."

With her curiosity settled, the two drifted off. Ciara, because she hadn't had the opportunity for much sleep since leaving Confederation space. Jack, because as a fighter pilot he had practice in forcing himself to grab rest where he could. And they woke to alarms, six hours later. A computerized voice intoned:Good day. The time is: 1530. Your ship is approaching its destination. I hope you have a pleasant journey.

Jack groaned. "Is that also experimental?"

"I haven't figured out how to turn it off. Sometimes it reminds you that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, too."

"Do we have any of that?"

"It's all been in storage just as long as the ship has, sir. I guess we should get started, though." She rolled out of the bunk, alighting gently on the deck. "Even if I have a feeling we're about to be doing something dangerous."

"Normally people say that when they're getting_into_ bed with me." But he followed suit, pulling his boots on, fastening his jacket and taking the copilot's seat again. "Secondary systems are standing by."

"Flight control looks good. We should be coming out of hyperspace in thirty seconds."

"Ready shields?"

Ciara looked over her shoulder, shrugging. "They're your friends, sir, aren't they?"

"I guess it won't be necessary." Or he hoped it wouldn't be necessary. Maybe shields would send the wrong message. The_Tempest_ slid effortlessly back amongst the stars, planets, and: "two hundred different targeting scanners just lit us up. Guess that's a good sign. I'm gonna open a channel, okay?"

"Sure." Lieutenant Munro was more distracted by the wide variety of angry looking signals: they'd come in exactly on target, quite close to the middle of a massive space station. Two dozen ships in varying stages of construction nestled in its spindly scaffolding; a hundred more were powering up their engines to intercept them.

And the scaffolding only looked spindly by comparison--some of the struts were sixty meters thick. The Uxzu didn't do 'delicate' well. Jack turned the radio on. "This is the--"

"Intruder. Disable your engines and prepare to be boarded at once."

"Hold up. This is--"

"Any further approach will be responded to with deadly force and your bones will be forfeit."

"--Captain Jack Ford, of the Star Patrol ship Tempest. We need to talk."

"Star Patrol? Oh!" the voice on the radio said, less gutturally. "You should've said that to begin with! You're cleared to approach. Follow the pilot ship with the flashing blue lights on its wings."

Ciara could only note that they hadn't been given any computer-generated vectors or autopilot synchronization controls, and the 'pilot ship' was nearly the size of the_Dark Horse_. She waited for Jack to acknowledge the instructions and close the channel. "Are they always like this?"

"I think so. They're, uh..."

He couldn't think of a better way to describe it, although once they had touched down it didn't really matter--of the two Uxzu that met them, Subenforcer Akaghen greeted Jack by hugging the coyote up into the air, and her companion's first comment was to note that Ciara's head would have fit neatly between his jaws. It was more or less as subtle as the starbase itself, or the pilot ship.

The Uxzu were nothing if not masters of first impressions.

***

First officer's log, stardate 67731.2

We're back in orbit of Rakili IV, a neutral planet where we hope to find allies for what I think might prove to be a definitive battle with the resurgent Hano. Dr. Beltran will lead the negotiations--alone, with Sabel Thorsen as an escort. Despite my considerable faith in Beltran's capabilities, the fact that she has no support strongly underlines our isolation...

Lieutenant Commander Bradley had asked to go with the pair; May thought his skills would be better put to use aboard the_Dark Horse_. The cruiser was now operating without its diplomat and xenocultural expert, not to mention two of its most skilled tacticians--he could understand the akita's concern.

It didn't do much to allay his own. Captain Ford was still incommunicado. Worryingly, Beltran reported from the surface that, according to rumor, all of the Uxzu had left two days before. It was her final transmission before the_Dark Horse_ broke orbit and jumped back into hyperspace.

They didn't really have a destination; they were headed vaguely in the direction of Geghek, in case Ford needed assistance. Really, though, May wanted them moving, hoping to avoid confrontation with the Hano faction before she was ready for it. Neither of them knew when that would be.

"Tensions," Dave admitted to Ayenni, "are high."

She nodded. They were sitting on her bunk, facing the projected image of twilight on the far wall--the only source of illumination was the dim, fading glow of Earth's sun on the Canadian Rockies. It hadn't calmed the retriever down. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"I'm not sure what there is to talk about, to be honest."

Ayenni took a few quiet, gentle breaths, blanking her mind... mostly. Dave's thoughts still filtered in, unbidden, an inevitable consequence of their close relationship. Sometimes that was a little distracting, depending on what he was thinking about and how long it had been since they'd acted on it.

She rested her paw on his wrist, and the retriever gasped as the border between her consciousness and his own broke down. Warmth settled like a down comforter over his more wayward anxieties. "Ayenni?"

"You'll find a way to get through this," she told him, and let go.

The feeling of relaxation persisted for a few glowing seconds. "I'm glad you think so."

"You think so, too," she told him--though, as a telepath, she was cheating a bit to come to that conclusion. He didn't realize it yet, anyway. Ayenni had long since learned that the retriever cultured his cautious tendencies as a way to balance out his captain's polar opposite ones.

"Sometimes..."

"Sometimes you think that you were meant to be a history professor," she finished for him. "Sometimes I think I was meant to be a village doctor. It's nice to have our eyes opened to the reality of what we_can_ be, dearest."

"'Dearest'?"

Ayenni leaned against the retriever's side. "I used the right word, didn't I? I meant it affectionately."

The retriever sighed, giving the alien a gentle embrace--slowly, so that it didn't take her by surprise. "You used the right word," he confirmed. Though she knew that already; sharing a cabin meant that reading his mind hadn't even been required for that.

***

Elsewhere on the ship, cross-cultural translation was running into greater difficulty. The science lab looked like a holographic snowstorm had been frozen in place--thousands of softly glowing green points, suspended perfectly in midair. Instead of snowflakes, each represented a bit of data: a single glyph, an archival record, a star map...

Barry, slumped against the far wall, could navigate the information flawlessly. On closer examination, many of the points were linked by almost invisible lines, tracing one connection to another. No, the data could be navigated. That was not his problem.

The coyote head in his lap was not the problem, either. Xocoh was lying on her back, using him for a pillow while she stared at the ceiling. "Let's try an experiment," she finally said. Xoc was fond of experiments--they explained why every computer in the lab was running at full speed.

She didn't mind the heat; then again, she'd also been willing to strip down to her shorts and her companion had not. Barry retained_some_ trace of modesty--the temperature and exhaustion wore on him, though, and his ears flicked weakly. "Is it going to be more drugs?"

Xocoh reached up to poke the underside of his muzzle. The Border Collie's ears twitched again; it was easy to get a reaction out of him. She liked that. "It helped, didn't it? You should try microdosing more often, doc--I told ya. But not so soon. I'm thinking: we have three jump signatures, right?"

They really only had two: the pair of Wanesh boarding ships. Paghuk-Hån's jump_had_ been recorded, but only with the aged sensors on a civilian freighter; they hadn't been able to glean much from it. Xocoh helped--she was used to following esoteric, faint trails in search of alien treasure, and following FTL traces came with that territory.

Illicit drugs or no, she could only do so much. Both dogs agreed that, in principle, the sensor data held_some_ clue as to where the ships had come from. Both agreed that, in principle, it could be deciphered in a plausibly short amount of time. And both agreed that, in practice, no model existed to do so.

Of course, no model existed to explain how the jumpdrive functioned. Xocoh's companion, Dr. Miguel Ribeiro, had been the one to send Paghuk-Hån on its random course. The jaguar kept a record of the command he'd used, but according to him he'd provided only three numbers, proceeded by three different symbols that had no match in the database.

Miguel had tried to help them.They could be proper nouns, he suggested. The computer took complete sentences and only let you send a valid command... so maybe the destination is valid? Barry disagreed: three numbers gave you a geocoordinate and an altitude, too, but there was no guarantee that teleporting there wouldn't put you in the middle of a mountain.

And in the end the jaguar couldn't keep up with the two canids--he'd finally crashed, and they hadn't seen him for eighteen hours. He could very well still have been sleeping. "There was that one model you said had promise," Xocoh started talking again. "But you didn't like the uncertainty."

"I didn't like that it gave so many valid solutions," Barry corrected. "Anything that gives you a theoretically infinite number of positions isn't useful, no matter how elegant it is."

Xocoh nodded. "So let's make some assumptions. Let's assume both Hano boarding ships came from the same place--wherever their base is."

The trouble with assumptions, the Border Collie knew, was the very low probability they could do anything to validate them. But he humored the coyote, clearing space in the air before them to display the results. "Still infinitely many." She sat up, stretched, and settled down in his lap. "Um. Hello?"

"So we have the same perspective," she said, reclining into him. He was quite fuzzy, and a lot more comfortable than the floor. "So, think about what we're looking at."

Barry canted his head, and did what he could to assume the coyote's behavior was relatively normal. "What do you mean?"

"Are we seeing the whole picture?"

It was a leading question. Barry permitted himself to be led: "well... I guess, to start with, there's a possible hidden component in this model..."

"Yeah? What hidden component?"

"I'm not... sure."

Xocoh didn't feel like turning around so he could see her rolling her eyes. She shoved back into his chest, giving him an awkward headbutt. "Look harder, doc."

"Was the violence necessary?"

"I'll make up for it later."

"I'm not sure I trust you," the Border Collie said. "But fine. Think about what... what it would take to work out the rest of the uncertainty in this model. Maybe we're missing a variable. Pretty small, in the overall calculation--it would have to be."

The coyote closed an eye, reflecting. As she did so, her paw meandered up the collie's thigh--bringing his thoughts to an abrupt halt. "Agreed. Keep going," she suggested.

And, with her claws gently working his trousers open, Barry tried to manage that. It was an interesting way of motivating the dog--he had to split his attention between the diagrams in front of him and the coyote's paw teasingly pressing against his crotch...

And this proved to be difficult, because he hadn't said anything else. Xocoh gave him a little squeeze. "What were you saying about components? Hidden variables?"

"Uh. Well. The solutions in the model all produce this slight fluctuation."

"Variable_b_," she said. Her fingers worked their way into his underwear, and she brushed his sheath with the lightest, most teasing touch. "Right?"

Technically a sense of decorum, as a Star Patrol officer, should have brought some form of objection to the dog. Particularly now that he could feel himself starting to stiffen, while Xocoh's fingers stayed stroking his velvet fur, safely away from the bare flesh starting to poke forth.

The Border Collie had occasional room for 'decorum' in his overactive brain, but it had been pushed to one side. There was her steady, provocative touch fighting for attention.Focus. Consider... what? The navigational method of the Hadruvalians, one of the earliest spacefarers known to the Terran Confederation.

Their astrogation worked off a six-variable system, rather than the five-component technique taught to Star Patrol cadets. It all came down to a difference in how their hyperdrives worked, because--

He gasped. Xocoh had run the back of her finger up his bare, stiff shaft. She lingered at the tip, letting the bead of precum soak into her fur. Waiting.

"Well?"

What could it represent? "Computer, run a Teller-Korolev analysis on"--the coyote stroked him again, and his voice choked off. "Uh... Miss Zonnie..."

The computer buzzed. "The variable 'amazon' is not defined in your project scope."

"You're making this... um.Difficult."

Xoc grinned. "'Harder than it needs to be,' you mean?" Her paw wrapped around him, and she started to pump slowly. "If you want me to stop..."

He didn't want her to stop. Muzzle clenched against the tense pressure beginning to rise in his shaft, the collie tried again. "Computer, run a Teller-Korolev analysis on variable_b_ in the primary dataset."

"Working."

The computer wasn't the only one. Xocoh's fingers teased him until the Border Collie began to outright tremble. He couldn't keep his thoughts in order--even more than usual. No sooner did an idea hit him than he felt that warm, squeezing pressure, and the sense that he was awfully closer to solving a far different problem than the one he'd been asked to.

"Analysis complete. Variable_b_ is Korolev complete inside expected bounds with a limit of four."

"Huh," Xocoh said. "What do you make of that?"

She'd stopped stroking him. Barry was still panting, though, and his mind lagged behind even that realization. "If it's... uh... if it's orderly..."

"If it's orderly?"

His next, mostly futile effort to organize his thoughts resulted only in a muffled_hngh_. "The TK analysis is a... a basic transform used to s-see how predictable a dataset is. Comes out of quantum cryptography--if the data is K-complete than it must--"

She tightened her paw on his stiff cock, and her thumb circled the tip until both were slick and damp with his pre-seed. She'd intuited--Barry was not in any position to appreciate the intuition--that he would've kept rambling, otherwise.

And with his train of thought derailed, he had to start fresh. "There's_something_ behind it. The hidden variable," he managed, by way of clarification. "Really exists. Computer, show the four factors of the analysis."

Xocoh turned, so that she could look at the results; her paw stayed firmly in place. "That one is almost a constant," she suggested.

And,actually, Barry thought it looked too convenient. "Yeah. There's actually only three," he said. "Or... hm. I think... is it only two?"

"Keep thinking," the coyote ordered. She craned her head forward to nip his nose. And then she straightened up. Barry tried to focus on the numbers floating in front of him. He couldn't ignore the corner of his eye, though. Xocoh's tail was wagging, and the ruddy brush was no longer constrained by any pants.

"It could be... it_looks_ like they're related. I don't..."

The numbers disappeared. He was looking right into Xocoh's sharp, green eyes. And her equally sharp, very pointed grin. She settled into his lap. The collie felt his cock nudging the fur of her belly through her open field jacket. "Don't let me keep you."

What's the missing link? The formula almost looks like the one they use for aiming the collider at--at-- She'd swiveled her hips: the tip of his shaft was so close to her he could feel the heat of her pussy.

He opened his mouth, and Xocoh pushed down and onto him. Barry shuddered and shut his eyes as the sensation hit him: wet, slippery warmth smoothly parting around his cock. Caressing him as she slid down like--

"It's the gravitational constant," he gasped, the words slurred together. But it was--had to be. If you took it as the gravitational constant then everything made sense and three of the four orders in the TK analysis became redundant, one single operation.

That left the other one. And the coyote, snug in his lap with the Border Collie's length hilted inside her. "Good," she growled, without identifying what she was referring to.

She raised herself back up, and her folds were close, clinging satin sliding over every contour and bulge of the dog's prick. Xocoh rode him in a measured, even rhythm that was almost_agonizingly_ slow.

There was nothing he could do to avoid the throbbing, quivering pleasure that jolted through him with every heartbeat. She was exquisitely, thrillingly slick and warm around his shaft.

He was more than academically aware of his need for release, but her tempo was so leisurely that his knot hadn't really started to swell. And when he grunted, and bucked up to drive in faster, she shoved his hips right back down to hold him in place. "No."

Barry kept his needy whine under control only by focusing on other things.The task at hand--right. Not the coyote. That's later. Why would it be a gravitational constant? What could the other factor be? "Adjust the model to account for the TK-- analysis," he groaned, just barely getting the last word out.

The computer did as asked. His coyote partner, her hips still revolving, pumping herself on his cock with the same aching patience, looked over her shoulder. "That's not so bad..."

"Four hundred thousand results."

"But not_infinite_." Sufficiently content, she started to move a little faster. Not much. Just enough that he was aware of it. Just enough that the need started to rise up in him again. Just enough that for a few seconds he was lost in the pleasure she coaxed from him as she filled herself with his cock. "More assumptions?"

His overwhelming thought was not an assumption at all. It was that carnal awareness of being buried deep in warm, squeezing coyote. The feeling of her silky, pulsing walls gliding over him as Xoc took the collie's shaft with more and more eagerness.

"C'mon..." Gratifyingly, her voice was losing its mischievous edge and picking up a new one--huskier and uneven. Xocoh nuzzled his neck and muffled a spell of shallow panting while she bucked swiftly on him a half-dozen strokes to drive the message home.

"Sh-shouldn't be further away than a--a few sectors," he decided, and added that filter to the model, too.Sixteen thousand results.

"It's a jumpdrive," she muttered into his thick pelt. "They could go anywhere."

"Uh--uh-huh," he agreed.Oh, god that feels good--keep moving faster. "But they have--ships with--conventional hyperdrives too and they--"

Xoc nipped at his throat. "Right," she growled. "Good work." A shudder ran through her, pinning her ears, and she started to mate him in earnest. Proper, quick thrusts. Barry's knot thickened, and as soon as the coyote felt it she shuddered again and dropped her hips down hard, shoving against the solid bulk of it to force him deep.

He_had_ to tie with her. Every time he hilted Barry felt the tugging, primal need for it. She was squeezing on him, her folds gripping at his knot. Rocking back and forth, pivoting herself on that buried canine length...

His peak was rising in him, all the energy and inevitability of a lit fuse. Or an avalanche. Or a supernova--a star, could that be it? That's it! A--"cross-reference to known--star--systems," he groaned.

The map flickered. Barry saw it. Processed it, just barely. But he had more important things to do. His arms were around the coyote: grasping her, hugging her tightly as her tempo faltered and she began to quiver in his hold.

She froze, crying out into his neck. Barry's hips moved instinctively, bucking into the coyote with a frantic rhythm. Her cries kicked up an octave--she was howling, back arching so heavily it was all he could do to hold on--

And then the chaos of his thoughts vanished in the single-minded focus of his peak. He knew nothing except the pleasure surging through him, spilling from his length in spurt after thick, warm spurt. He was growling, pushing against her rigid hips--hearing her howl turn to a gratified moan as she took his seed.

Carnal triumph faded into warmth, heavy and sated. Part of that had physical form: the coyote was slumped against his chest, panting hard, her eyes shut. Part of it was the draining effect of their exertion. Part was the quiet relief of having--for once--a clear mind.

In that brief, urgent period he'd known and needed nothing except the desire to claim her. Now that was done--the little aftershocks twitched his cock through a generous helping of his essence--and he could think again.

About the models. About the jumpdrive. About a hundred possible solutions drifting in front of them. "We did it! Xocoh, we did it!"

She stirred, pushing back to look at him skeptically. "Was that your first time? That wasn't your first time."

"The model," he insisted. "Look!"

Xocoh craned her head back, squinting at the results. "What is that--two hundred left?"

"Yes." Adrenaline was starting to take over from the afterglow. His ears were perked; his tail wagged. "But this has to be it. You don't get two hundred random points_in star systems_--space doesn't work like that. Almost there..."

"Still missing something."

"That last value. There has to be something behind it."

"How do we find out?"

This was the question Madison May repeated when, in broad strokes, she had the thought process explained in her ready room. It wasn't the_only_ question--Barry was extra-twitchy, and sleep deprivation didn't explain why his coyote accomplice had nothing on above the waist but an unbuttoned field jacket--but it was the one she started with.

"The difference between the possible locations comes down to one value we're taking as a constant and there doesn't seem to be any way to figure out what the_true_ value is. We think it could be determined, but our sensors don't have a high enough resolution--now it's possible that we could check manually"--

Xocoh tapped the bridge of the Border Collie's muzzle and, as if hypnotized, he shut up. "He said that to me, too. You can't. The Hano obviously want to know the answer, too."

"And they could figure out where we've been and connect the dots," May concluded. The conversation may have been surreal, but at least she felt like she understood what was going on. "We need to find Qalamixi again. It might know."

***

Ciara Munro had been born on Zellen, a verdant agriculture world, to a family of machinists who swore up and down that foxes did not need to go into space. Cape Ryla was seventy percent vulpine, most of them proud descendants of the first settlers, carrying some genetic memory of the colony ship that meant they never looked at the stars without glaring. All of the rest had Terran ancestry, too.

She'd left, of course. There were a few aliens at the Academy, and a few more at the research center where she served as a test pilot. But while stars and starships intrigued her, aliens did not; she did not mind them, but nor did the vixen go out of her way to seek out contact.

Now her head was wet, and rather noisome, and she couldn't help feeling she might've been on to something.

"You made a friend," Jack offered. The vixen's stature had been a source of unending curiosity for the Uxzu through a day's worth of briefings and strategic planning. And at last, when they were getting ready to depart, one of their hosts succumbed to her desire to see if Ciara's head fit in her muzzle.

"I notice they didn't try it with you."

"My ears are too big. Hey: you did well, lieutenant. We did our job. Let's get back to the_Dark Horse_ and get you a shower, okay? This can be our secret."

She told him she appreciated his concern, and kept her thoughts focused on the shower instead of the feeling of Uxzu saliva in her mane while she went through the startup checklists and took the_Tempest_ back out and into space. "Five minutes to lightspeed. Maybe they're coming closer to us. Wouldn't that be nice?"

"Cross your fingers." They didn't know where May had taken the cruiser; once they were in hyperspace Jack would try to raise them on long-range radio. He'd be happy to get back, too--and happy for the shower. Considering the way Lieutenant Munro's hair smelled, the prospect of sharing a bunk with her again was less than appetizing.

"Oh, I am. Can you check the course calculations?"

He was skimming them when the sensors picked up a faint signal off to starboard. "Hold on... Possible contact at medium range. Something's coming out of hyperspace."

"A_lot_ of somethings."

Just over two hundred of them, in total. "They're not friendly." Jack hailed the Uxzu station, whose early-warning equipment wasn't up to Star Patrol standards. "You have incoming. Five_Jenmir_-class battlecruisers, a big one I don't recognize, and a whole goddamn lot of raiders."

Recall orders had been sent to the Kolash fleet, but 'speed' was not high on the list of Uxzu priorities and the ships weren't due back for a full day. Jack tallied up the balance of forces and didn't like what he saw. Neither did Lieutenant Munro, although her thoughts were more narrowly focused: "we can jump to lightspeed at any point, sir."

"And leave them behind?"

"Sir, with all due respect, we're not a combat vessel."

"We're still Star Patrol, and that has to count for something." The attacking ships were approaching from a distance--the better to get into formation before coming within range of Uxzu harassment. It presented an opportunity, although Jack wasn't sure what for. "Rig for combat and take us between the Wanesh formation and the shipyard."

Munro hesitated. "In the line of fire."

"Yes. Do I need to fly this, lieutenant?"

The vixen steadied her nerves, shook her head, and brought the_Tempest_ about. "No, sir. We'll be in position in about four minutes."

So he had four minutes to learn everything he could about the electronics on the ship. Fortunately, Jack had inherited a coyote's sense of innate, unwarranted, exuberant optimism. The user interface was laid out sensibly, anyhow; one whole panel had been conveniently labeled 'stealth profile,' and most of the accompanying information was just as logical. He radioed the Uxzu again. "Who's coordinating your defense over there?"

"I'm Subenforcer Takrragh. Managing the_counterattack_ is my responsibility. But they're... frustrating it."

"I gather that. They're out of range?"

"Their missiles have longer effective range than ours. We can't target them from this distance--the cowards!" And, Jack knew without being told, the Dominion didn't have enough fighters to get closer without being annihilated. Eventually the Wanesh would be able to saturate the Dominion's defenses, wearing them down.

"Takrragh, we're going to see what we can do. You've got beam weapons, right? They should have the range if we can give you targets..."

Ciara concentrated on watching the icons for the attack ships get closer and closer, because 'out of range' was somewhat irrelevant when you were flying_towards_ something. "We should've had this conversation at a less awkward moment, sir, but I don't have any combat experience."

"Nobody does before their first time. Focus on flying."

"What if they shoot at us?"

"Let's avoid that." He was trusting in their luck for that, which, for a coyote, was always a bit of a gamble. But it held: nothing showed any sign of having detected them. "Missile launches, dead ahead. They'll miss us by quite a bit..."

"All of them? All... thousand of them?" They'd all been fired from the same huge ship at the center of the Wanesh formation--the other ships seemed to only be acting as a screen, preventing the Uxzu from approaching.

"Yeah. Let's try this. Adjust course to intercept the group of missiles bearing, ah... seven-five mark two-four."

"To intercept the missiles," she echoed. "Okay."

"Get us there as fast as you can without blowing our cover and get ready to open a hyperspace gateway."

"We need to replot the FTL trajectory, sir," she pointed out. "Otherwise..."

"Just the gateway. When it collapses, it'll knock out those torpedoes--we're going to use that as cover, turn, and head straight for the Wanesh fleet before they can separate our signal from the debris."

The obvious question--'are you insane?'--was rhetorical and pointless; Ciara knew that even considering the short time they'd been acquainted. "Okay. I'm doing that. I'm doing as you asked. We're on course. What... what do we do after that?"

"Figure it out as we go," Jack muttered. He was a pilot first and a systems operator second--the Type 7 was designed so that one person could handle everything--and not being in direct control proved to be a little disconcerting.

'Disconcerting' was also how Munro characterized the coyote's answer, which involved putting a fragile, untested prototype directly in the face of overwhelming numbers_and_ the defenders shooting at said overwhelming numbers. She bit her tongue, and thought: he knows what he's doing. Focus.

Jack hailed the Uxzu shipyard and hoped for one more bit of luck. "This is the_Tempest_. Is your defensive beam operational?"

"First of all, it's not a_defensive beam_--it's a means of projecting our will on prey beyond the range of our missiles. We do not cower behind--"

"Yes, right. Yes. Sorry. Is it working?"

Subenforcer Takrragh, the slight having been corrected, allowed the conversation to continue. "It's online, but the main reactor has been damaged. It takes us fifteen minutes to charge between shots."

"And your scanners don't resolve contacts at this distance, correct?"

"Correct."

The coyote stared at his computer screen so that he didn't need to look at Lieutenant Munro. "Keep a data link open to us and target our position. Can you do that?"

"You want us to fire_on_ you?"

"Yes.Tempest out."

Ciara Munro hoped that she was simply being overwhelmed by the need to focus on several hundred different moving variables. "You want them to fire_on_ us?"

"It'll be fine. I've got a plan. Where are we on the missiles?"

"Thirty seconds, and the FTL field generator is standing by. Can I just make sure I have this right--they're going to shoot at us? On purpose?" She looked over at the coyote, whose unsteady grin turned out to be somewhat less than reassuring.Christ. "Ten seconds. Five."

She pulsed the hyperdrive generator, and a gateway briefly flared to life in front of them, then collapsed. The flash of energy obliterated the nearest dozen missiles, and their self-destruction led another hundred to do the same out of either sympathy or sudden radiation damage.

"Path's clear. I'm turning."

"Oh, cool. That worked! I knew it would," Jack added hastily.

"Coyote!" Lieutenant Munro was having none of it: her jaw had tightened in a snarl, and the vixen silently added the 'goddamnit' that 'coyote' often earned as prefix. "We're approaching the other ships. I need to reduce power to the thrusters to keep us below their detection limits."

"No problem. Take us close to their flagship."

The flagship, a bronze-colored, beetle-shaped monstrosity, did not seem to be the kind of place likely to have out a welcome mat. "How close?"

"Three thousand meters ought to do it."

Munro bit back a yelp. Two Wanesh corvettes in the vanguard rocketed past, only a few dozen kilometers away. Somehow neither of them noticed the Star Patrol spy ship. All the same, the vixen cut back on the throttle even further. "What about fifty?"

"Meters? No. I don't want us caught in the debris."

From a hundred kilometers out the flagship was already a spiky mess of EM signals on her tactical display. Very unfriendly. None of that changed the closer they got. "Sixty kilometers," she called out hopefully. "Fifty. Forty. We just got caught in a sweep of some kind."

"I see it." Jack let the ship's software classify and compensate for the Wanesh sensors. The next, more intense attempt to scan them failed--predicted and precisely countered by the ship's stealth systems. "We're good. Closer."

"Twenty kilometers." The ship was now visible even without magnification--the straight facets of its carapace plainly visible, just like the rapid pulses of light from the missiles pouring from countless batteries around its midsection. "Ten."

"Little closer." Jack plotted a line between the Uxzu not-at-all-defensive laser and the flagship. "Subenforcer Takrragh, do you have firing solution on our ship?"

"Affirmative. We can see you clearly. The weapon is ready to fire at any point."

"Stand by." He licked his muzzle and ran the numbers again. "Okay, LT. Put us four kilometers off their stern, just above the wake from their stationkeeping thrusters."

"Four klicks," she echoed, swallowing hard--she had yet to learn the ability to delay crippling panic until after it was no longer needed. "Yes, sir." She took the_Tempest_ closer. Closer. "Uh, signals. We're being targeted."

"Shit. Take us closer. Inside the range of their--" a lucky shot slammed the ship, and the lights flickered out for a disconcerting half-second. "Defenses. Shields holding."

"Two kilometers. At this range they can look out their_window_ and see us, sir."

"I know, I know--we need to make this quick. Get ready to unlock the thrusters and give 'em everything you have."

The vixen put her finger on the safety and nudged the_Tempest_ half a kilometer closer to the glowing bulk of the Wanesh battleship. Her breathing came in short, hard pants. "Hey--hey we got a problem. They're maneuvering."

"Compensate for it--follow the targeting cue."

"At this range I can't really...fuck," she swore, and the spy ship lunged forward until it was in the plasma wash of the battleship's thrusters and the shields began to protest. "Two hundred meters. We can hold this for maybe thirty seconds."

"Takrragh, you ready?"

"Yes, Terran. Ready."

"On three. Munro, don't worry, if we mess up we won't--"

Know, she guessed the next word, but it didn't matter. At the same instant, the Uxzu beam weapon fired and Munro slammed the throttle forward, leaving both canids pinned to their seat under the crushing, brutal force of gravity.

Jack couldn't turn his head, but the result of a good hit were plain on the ship's display anyway. A clean, surgical hole had been bored right through the battleship, whose missile fire abruptly stopped along with the thrusters and everything else. It was dead in the water.

"Did... we do it?" She cut power and the acceleration came to a blessed, relieving halt. "It's done?"

"Done." The remaining Wanesh were starting to jump away; the line between 'cowardice' and 'discretion is the better part of valor' was a thin one. Jack turned, grinning at the pilot. "Good work."

"Are you going to bite my head?"

He laughed and--the tension snapping like a spring pushed beyond its limits--Ciara was suddenly laughing, too. Sometimes, mere survival was enough for such delirious joy.

Even for non-coyotes.

***

"Admiral Mercure."

"Is your ship safe? What's your status?"

"I dispatched the_Tempest_ and two of my crew to warn the Dominion about a planned attack. Our diplomatic officer is in the process of finding us some allies. The Dark Horse herself is in good shape, sir. Repairs are completed, and we have plenty of torpedoes."

Gill Mercure looked relieved. "That's something. It's as bad as I thought, Commander May. Commodore Salo was ambushed at his destination. The damage was minimal, but I have to assume our communications network is compromised. I don't want to have to do this to you, but you're on your own."

"I understand that, sir."

"You're the Star Patrol in this sector. Make us proud. Lieutenant Munro should've given you a small box, secured with a voiceprint." She held it up for him to see. "That's the one. Lock, release: authorization Mercure seven four gamma."

It buzzed and sprung open. May glanced down, and then back up at the lion's holographic visage. "Sir."

"The Admiralty has been informed. They're also informed of what I'm about to tell you: under the Artemis protocols, I'm giving you broad latitude to accomplish your mission. Ignore the diplomatic codices and the standard protocols and the written guidelines: do what's necessary. Do what's right, May. I trust you."

"I won't let you down, sir."

"I know. Mercure out."

Dave was in the process of reviewing the latest tactical analysis when the akita summoned him into her ready room; he left the bridge in the hands of Léa Smith and found May grinning madly. It wasn't as bad as Captain Ford's grin--the coyote had reported back aboard with stories of a dramatic battle and Lieutenant Munro shaking her head in disbelief--but he'd learned to be careful. "Maddy?"

"C'mon. Say something."

"About?" She rolled her eyes and cocked her head, jerking it sharply towards the collar of her uniform. "Your... tic? Do you have a tic now?"

"Dave!"

The Golden Retriever cracked a smile. "Congratulations, captain."

"You don't look surprised. You knew?"

"Admiral Mercure told me in one of the direct communiqués on the data crystal that fox gave us. I wasn't certain when he would tell you."

Madison May briefly contemplated whether the fact he hadn't told her counted as some betrayal of trust, and immediately dismissed the thought. "Was there any gossip? Did the Admiralty object, is that why?"

"He didn't say. I'm sure they did, though; it wouldn't be you, otherwise."

She laughed, and opened her muzzle to say_it's been a long time coming_. Something else occurred to her, though. "What about you? Did he say anything about you? I couldn't have done anything we've gotten up to without you, Dave."

"He didn't. I wasn't expecting anything."

"We need to talk about your future, then. Your plans."

That conversation, too, had been a long time coming. Dave turned, and locked the door. "You know the agreement was that I would accompany you on the shakedown of the_Rocinante_ and then... a shore posting. Fleet Academy, probably. Or retirement."

"Yeah, but you stayed when they changed her name to the_Dark Horse_ and gave me command. And with everything we've been up to, when our mission's over, you'll be... you can have your pick of assignments. Your own ship."

"It was an incredible opportunity, Maddy. I don't regret it."

The akita sensed a 'but,' somewhere. "Are you resigning, Dave?"

"I'm here for you, captain. I'm just not cut out for command--Mercure told me that, once. I mean... don't get me wrong, I could pull it off, especially in the Star Patrol. It'd be comfy. But I can't be you."

"Me?" This wasn't the revelation May expected, particularly given her reputation and the number of times Dave had needed to rescue her from a catastrophe of her own creation.

"You were born for this. Look at the way the crew follows you, Maddy--the way you inspire them. You get things out of them that shouldn't even be possible."

"Because of people like you."

Although he'd known the akita for years--for nearly all of his professional career--Dave found it harder to talk to her than he did to Ayenni. And he didn't know if it would've been any easier had May been able to read his thoughts. "Maddy. Can I be honest?"

"I hope so. I mean, you didn't tell me about my promotion, but..."

"Honest about something that matters. I was telling the truth when I said this was an opportunity I don't regret, you know? Nobody in my family has ever done anything half as crazy. The new planets we've seen, the new people we've met... all of it's fantastic."

"You don't know if you're ready to save the galaxy, though?"

"Yeah."

Madison May laughed. "Too bad. You think I am? I'm not, Dave. But we're it. Whether you like it or not, we're it. When Admiral Mercure says he can count on me, he doesn't mean_me_. I'm not here on my own, Dave. None of us are--that's the point."

***

Captain's log, stardate 66750.6

Our coalition continues to gain strength, bringing together unlikely allies. General Zehev leads a faction of the rebellious Parixians we first encountered in dealing with the arms merchant Kupin--who was selling to both sides of their civil war. Despite the intensity of that conflict, Zehev says the rebel leadership agreed at once to help us.

Now we need to figure out how to put the coalition to use, and our best scientists are finding themselves frustrated by the enigma of the Hano technology.

"How does it work?"

Shannon Hazelton tapped her foot against the deck plating and tried to decide the best way to reply. "How does your communicator work, Mads?"

"It works like my communicator?"

The raccoon shook her head and gave up on trying to lead the akita to a conclusion against her will. "It works because you press the transmitter and you start talking. You don't think about the electronics, let alone the physics--do you?"

Although this was true, and Madison felt no shame in admitting it, she also thought it wasn't an ironclad argument. "Rumor says I'm not a role model for making informed decisions, Shannon.You know how a communicator works, and if you don't, somebody does. They didn't just spring into existence from nowhere."

"But they might as well have. My point, Mads, is I can get a pretty good idea of how to make this drive work in their boarding ship--I know what buttons to push. But I can't reverse-engineer the principles behind the thing, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if the pirates can't, either."

"And I guess we're no closer to being able to find their base." The akita sighed, and looked over at the big diagnostic panel for the main reactor of the_Dark Horse_. "Dr. Schatz hasn't been able to help? He still thinks we need to find Qalamixi?"

"Yeah. And, to be honest, I can't say he's wrong... I don't know that it would have all the answers, I just know that_I_ have none of them." And it frustrated Shannon to no end, because alien technology had been one of the biggest reasons she'd wanted to travel beyond the frontier.

"Well, keep working at it. I have a feeling we're going to need some answers pretty damn soon."

***

Rika tilted her head at an alert coming up on her console. "Incoming transmission, sir. It's from the Parixian cruiser--General Zehev wants to speak to us."

David straightened in his chair and made himself presentable. "Put it through. General, this is Commander Bradley, on the_Dark Horse_."

"Commander, we've received a distress signal from Vallanax--a sympathetic moon in one of the disputed systems. They say they're under attack and request immediate assistance. My fleet is twenty-eight hours away at maximum speed... but we must help, if we can."

"Understood, general. Can you transmit the coordinates?" He waited for the data to come through, and checked it against their star map. "We'll adjust course to meet you there."

"Thank you, Star Patrol."

Dave closed the channel. Vallanax was not on the way to their next destination, and he thought Madison wouldn't be happy with yet another delay--but they also had no guarantee that they'd find Qalamixi, and preserving the alliance needed to take priority. "Ensign, lay in a course for Vallanax at full speed."

"Aye, sir."

General Zehev led the most powerful fleet in what he identified as the Outland Democratic Front, a Parixian secessionist movement. Star Patrol wasn't supposed to involve itself in such entanglements, but Dr. Beltran provided a good excuse for making an exception: Zehev claimed the Parixian monarchy had been negotiating with the pirates, which made them enemies by default.

Which 'pirates' were left unspecified because the implications were already obvious. The Wanesh didn't form alliances on their own: that was the Laughing Prince, showing his hand. And it confirmed their suspicions about the two Ardzula races, who also now believed they'd been set against each other by Wanesh meddling. General Zehev believed that Vallanax had been attacked by aliens, and so even if they hadn't been part of the coalition May and Bradley agreed that an investigation was called for.

Twenty-five hours later, Bradley was with Captain May on the bridge as they dropped back out of hyperspace. Astrometric charts identified Vallanax as the second moon of a large rocky planet. Something had clearly gone very wrong. "It's in the right place," Spaceman Alexander said, "but the sensor data's coming back strange."

"'Strange'?"

Barry was looking at the numbers, too, and 'strange' was an optimistic way of describing them. "The average atmospheric temperature is four hundred degrees. Spectral analysis is incomplete, but I think we're seeing anomalous volcanic activity, too."

"Take us in closer," May ordered, and asked for signs of life. Parixians were mammalian, though, not terribly different than Terrans. Four hundred degrees would be just as inhospitable for a Parixian; there was no reason to expect good news, and they didn't get it.

"It_was_ Vallanax," Mitch Alexander confirmed, when the Dark Horse entered orbit over a moon shrouded in ominous clouds. As its planet obscured the sun and Vallanax fell into night, the clouds diffused an orange glow that was no less threatening for being hidden. "There are still satellites in orbit... or what's left of them."

David shook his head, staving off a sinking feeling. "Any distress calls? Any transmissions at all?"

"No, sir, not from this part of the system. The fourth planet is inhabited--our charts mark it as loyal to the Parixian government, but I can't tell you anything more than that. Except, from this distance at least, there doesn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary."

Mitch figured they might at least know what had happened, but the captain and first officer felt they'd be better off staying quiet. It was possible that the government thought of them as enemies--conspirators with the rebellion--and their intrusion would be taken as a provocation. General Zehev would arrive soon enough.

A few civilian ships appeared in the interim. In total, three hundred passengers and crew formed a small fleet, trailing like ducklings behind the_Dark Horse_ for protection. May feared the worst--that they were the only survivors of Vallanax--and when Zehev's ship joined them he'd clearly come to the same conclusion.

"The worst rumors are true. We thought they would never do anything like this..." General Zehev trembled; the curved horns in front of his wilted ears quivered as he tried to maintain his composure. "I should have known."

"What were the rumors?" May asked.

"When Calexa became king, he vowed to end what his father couldn't and bring us back under control. Civilians, even civilians sympathetic to our cause, have always been untouchable. We thought that he might begin reprisals."

"More than_thought_," Zehev's companion said. "They started attacking cargo ships bound for ODF-leaning worlds."

"Of course, we did the same," the general admitted. "It was war. The monarchists don't have weapons of mass destruction, though. Nothing like this."

Ensign Bader wasn't happy to be hearing about vague 'rumors.' The shepherd considered it somewhat of a breach of trust that Zehev had let them enter the system without any warning. "Based on our calculations, they would've needed something incredibly powerful--an antimatter warhead, maybe even a contained singularity."

"An asteroid. Orbital bombardment," Zehev said. "Those were the rumors, but we discounted them as the Royal Parixian Navy has no way of directing asteroids like that. But we heard they'd acquired powerful new allies..."

Madison leaned back. "The Wanesh. You thought you were dealing with the Wanesh--that's what our diplomatic officer said."

"Yes. We had no idea it would end like this."

"You should detach your fleet from the coalition. Your people need help, general, and that's more important right now... we can find a way to confront the Wanesh on our own."

Zehev didn't look happy, and didn't consent to abandoning the armada, and that was where the matter stood for all of half an hour. It was at that point that Petty Officer Smith summoned the captain to the bridge. When May arrived, the lights were dimmed and general quarters had been sounded.

"Miss Smith, what's going on?"

"We're picking up incoming, captain. Six RPN destroyers on an intercept course. They'll be in weapons range in about fifteen minutes."

"Shields," May ordered. "Ready firing solutions."

Léa Smith did as she was told--May hadn't clarified whether she wanted the ships disabled or destroyed, so the painted dog came up with a few different options, just in case. It occurred to her that she hadn't actually been able to put the guns of the_Dark Horse_ to good use.

Smith would have to wait for another opportunity: five minutes later, they were being hailed. Admiral Varsinik, aboard HMS_Davinax_, began by noting that his cannon ports were closed and politely asked that the Dark Horse do the same.

Madison May briefly muted the channel. "Tactical report. How quickly can a Parixian destroyer reactivate its weapons?"

"We're faster, ma'am." She'd guessed, correctly, what Captain May really wanted to know and didn't need to provide any actual numbers.

"Secure from tactical alert, then--but keep the weapons in active-standby." She waited for confirmation from the tactical station. "Admiral Varsinik, I've powered down my weapons in good faith--but I hope you can provide a damned good explanation for what we're looking at here."

"So do I," the alien replied. "I have a request. We know you're in contact with the traitor, General Zehev. We need to speak, on neutral ground: your ship."

"We're more than in contact with General Zehev. If we need to consider them officially under our protection, I'll do so--they're not to be harmed."

"Of course. I don't intend to harm them. There are pressing matters to discuss."

May let them aboard the_Dark Horse_, on the grounds that Varsinik would be accompanied by no more than two bodyguards. In any event, he came alone, which Madison found slightly reassuring. She tried to reassure Zehev, too, but he stayed bristled.

And when they met face-to-face, Varsinik minced no words. "Let me be blunt: it's over. There is no more rebellion."

The frills on Zehev's neck puffed out, and he bared his teeth. "There will always be a rebellion. The illegitimate--"

"Zehev, it is over. The Outland Democratic Front leadership surrendered immediately after the attack on Vallanax. They've ordered all ODF cadres to give up their weapons. Most of them have already consented: your ships are the only armed resistance left."

General Zehev's eyes glowed; Madison and Dave tensed with the same thought--that he was about to pounce, and would need to be restrained. "My fleet is the largest. Even if you can defeat me in the end, I'll make you pay for every victory you think you've won."

"You won't. We're not fighting, general. I didn't ask for a meeting so that I could mock you. I asked for a meeting to tell you that I need you to leave--for now. You've signed on with Captain May's alliance against the pirates, have you not? Fulfill your obligations."

"Why should I? The fight is here."

Admiral Varsinik lowered his head, tilting his stubby horns in Zehev's direction for emphasis. "It's not. Not for you. There are... there is_discontent_ in the Royal Navy. Many of us feel that the king went too far, and a line has been crossed at Vallanax that he cannot recover from. He's proclaimed victory over the ODF. You cannot fight us and win, Zehev, but if your fleet remains in the field there are those in the Royal Navy who can point to an alternative to the monarchy."

Madison coughed to grab Felicia Beltran's attention. "Should we be listening in to this? It sounds like you're coming pretty close to making us part of a military coup. We have a noninterference policy, don't we, Felicia?"

Their noninterference policy, despite Star Patrol's love of bureaucracy and order, contained a few exceptions--and the one for war crimes was big enough to drive a battlecruiser through. The leopardess, conferenced in over the hyperspace commlink from Rakili, gave the best diplomatic non-answer she could. "We are not, at the moment, an active participant. You merely brokered a meeting, captain."

"And we're not asking you to participate," Varsinik stressed. "I'm asking Zehev neither to surrender nor to carry on fighting. With luck, we'll move soon. With more luck, we'll be fighting alongside you in a week. General, I don't believe in your... 'republic,' but I know there are far larger threats to Parixi than you, right now. We need to focus on them."

"And the countless dead on Vallanax? Who will focus on_those_, admiral?"

"They'll be avenged. I swear it, general. As one soldier to another, I swear that they'll be avenged."

In the end, the two agreed to postpone their fighting, and when the admiral left, and he had time to gather his thoughts, Zehev agreed to stay on as part of the alliance. This was good for May; she needed their ships.

But the conflict was yet another sword hanging over what she had called 'our best scientists.' Shannon wasn't making progress with the jumpdrive, and Barry wasn't any closer to figuring out where Qalamixi might've gone to. The codex was simply too large for the Border Collie to glean any clues about the creature's behavior.

Xocoh Zonnie was the one to suggest--offhandedly, and possibly due to the drugs omnipresent in her system--approaching it the other way around.If you can't figure out where it might be, why not ask the damn thing to come here?

She helped him sift through the information until they found a communications protocol that matched the modulation Qalamixi used on their last encounter. Barry considered it a bit of a long shot, but with Mitch Alexander's help they were able to connect the codex directly to their transmitter--and when they activated the protocol, the data crystal flashed brightly and came to life.

"It's working," Alexander said. She thought it was working, at least; the transmitter was receiving data and looked to be adjusting the parameters of the antenna. "Or... holy Christ. Engineering, this is the bridge. We need more power to the long-range transmitter."

"Not just power, Mittycat," TJ Wallace answered over the commlink. "The temps are off the scale--I'm switching over to backup cooling but you're gonna get, like... dude, you've got maybe a minute until we start melting components."

"Try to keep it from doing that, Teej." But whatever the codex was telling their transmitter to do took more power than it was meant for by an order of magnitude. TJ forced them to call it off when a coolant line ruptured; Mitch shook her head at her captain's expectant look when they debriefed her. "No idea if they heard it, ma'am. Or heard anyway. We'll have to wait and see."

"And you don't know what we_said_," May confirmed. "We're just hoping it's not an insult or anything?"

Barry reassured her the best he could. "I don't think that's likely, from what we know of them." As a living starship, Qalamixi resisted attempts to predict or classify its behavior. Barry thought it had good intentions; May recalled that, when they'd first met, the ship had nearly destroyed them in an attempt at playing.

All they could do was wait; Madison left the bridge in Lieutenant Parnell's hands and retired to go over the latest tactical briefing Ensign Bader had prepared.

The alliance was now six partners, with the Nustar-Kessilia the latest to join. They were fairly new at starfaring--their first FTL test was barely a century old. And, for the most part, Kessiliot ships had been purchased from other races rather than designed indigenously.

Despite that, and despite having their noses bloodied by the Waneshans, they volunteered at once. Reporting over long-range radio, Dr. Beltran had said_they remind me of you, captain_. Whether she'd meant it as a compliment or not--and, after a fashion, she had--Madison approved them joining immediately.

Seventeen Kessiliot ships now joined six converted Ardzula mining barges, General Zehev's thirty-strong Parixian fleet, a dozen Ortalisian frigates from the Imperial Guard, and the Uxzu. The last was turning out to be largely theoretical, and May had the impression that the various houses were fighting over how to attack, and when.

"There's another possibility, captain: they're distracted. The Wanesh have been hitting Dominion outposts with increasing intensity." Of course, Dave had needed to read between the lines to come to that conclusion, because every dispatch from the Uxzu simply said they were 'counterattacking' Waneshan raiders in this system or that system. "They've got a lot of ground to cover, and not many ships to cover it with."

May nodded. "And we don't exactly have a battle plan. I've started thinking about, uh... well, between you and me, Dave, okay? You can't tell anyone else. We might have to think outside the box."

"You want to do something reckless," the Golden Retriever clarified. "How reckless?"

"Teej--damn, Spaceman Wallace, I mean--told me that he and the two archaeologists have figured out the control system for the boarding ship we found. If we can find out where to send it, we could try to infiltrate the pirate base. Or it would make a pretty good torpedo. Impossible to stop."

"That's honestly not as reckless as I was expecting."

The akita grinned at her first officer. "Good. 'Cause I also asked Shannon if we could find a way to integrate the jumpdrive into our systems."

Fuck. He wore the realization on his sleeve, and May kept smiling. It was definitely more along the lines of what he'd expected. "And has she made any progress?"

"Not officially, but you wouldn't like the way she's been smiling. We'll see." It obviously hadn't calmed him down, anyway, and May decided she might as well twist the knife. "Dave, I've been thinking about something_else_."

Coming from the akita he knew it was a dangerous statement, but the nature of the danger was always somewhat difficult to predict. He steeled himself, and asked, warily: "what have you been thinking about?"

"The Ortalis. According to Leon, their ships are individually fairly capable--I didn't follow everything he said, because he got kind of excited. You know how he is."

"Yes. I know. 'Capable' is a good summary."

"Powerful weapons?" she prompted.

Dave couldn't see where he was being led. "Pretty much. On a spreadsheet, their antiproton cannons are impressive--as good as or, hell, even better than anything I've seen. How they'll actually stack up is a different matter... the Imperial Guard has mostly fought punitive actions against their own pirates or separatist groups."

"And?"

"Fighting the Laughing Prince, they'll need to get close in order to score any hits. It'll be chaotic, fast-moving... they don't have a track-record with that, and I don't know that they train for it. I hope they'll be up to the challenge--their technical proficiency seems to be high."

"Ensign Bader says their culture prizes initiative, and winning individual glory. They might not act as one squadron... do you think?"

"I've considered it. Without a battle plan, though, we don't know how to mitigate their weaknesses or play to their strengths. I mean, think about it, Maddy: in a melee, that could be highly disruptive to Waneshan formations--our version of the Battle of the Radayan Nebula. The catch is... well, Admiral Jaan recognized his weakness after Radaya. Did you ever read about the last big engagement over Kirt? They tried the same thing, but Jaan had been drilling the Ydorian fleet for six months. They inflicted_seventeen to one_ losses--that was the end of the Kirt Republic."

May nodded, without saying anything.

"Not officially," Dave corrected himself. He'd misread her silence. "They didn't surrender for another year, but they'd lost their best captains and they never found a way to break up a Ydorian sphere."

"Could you?"

"Obliquely. Kirtic ships were always outmatched, one-on-one. In the long run, they should've learned not to engage. Hit-and-run attacks, you know? The sphere formation was slow and hard to move--and it took a lot of ships out of the line. If Kirt hadn't demanded the navy fight pitched battles, they might've worn Ydoro down. But... who knows? Why do you ask?"

"I want you to take command of the Ortalis ships."

Dave blinked rapidly, his fuzzy ears splaying. "Me? Maddy, c'mon."

"You understand the problem. They do, too... they know they need a fleet commander, and honestly you're probably an easier sell than someone from this part of the galaxy--like they'd be insulted if we told them to let their neighbors take over."

"I would suggest Captain Ford is a more logical choice."

"No." The akita liked Jack, but his comfort level ended with the glass of a cockpit; capital ships were something else entirely. "You have a strategic background, Dave, and you're smart. I think I'll wind up coordinating the Ardzula and the newcomers, the Kessilians, but I need somebody I can trust in charge of the Ortalis. What do you say?"

"I'll do what I can." He sighed and shook his head. "But I think I liked your recklessness better when all you wanted to do was have Shannon retrofit the jumpdrive."

***

Chandrika's eyes were fixed on the forward viewscreen, trying to make sense of what she saw. "That's a Qalamixi?" The ship, half as large again as the Dark Horse, resisted definition. It had no visible protrusions--no thruster pods or weapons ports or fins. The curved lines of its white hull rippled with organic grace.

"We don't know the name of its species," Barry said. "This one is called Qalamixi."

"It's alive?" The dhole found that she didn't really have a hard time believing it, when she heard her own voice. It_looked_ alive--like a cuttlefish, or something more primordial still. "This is incredible..."

It wasn't clear to the others, from her breathlessness, whether Rika was awed by the concept of a living starship or envious of an organism that never had to leave the safety of deep space. A little of both, but Barry assumed the former. "Qalamixi is a combination of technology acquired from eons of travel through the galaxy and its own living tissue. The hull, for instance..." He magnified the image on the viewscreen until they could see the lines of ancient scars.

Captain May arrived, caught sight of the other ship, and grinned. "Good work, doc. Hail them."

"Channel open."

"Qalamixi. I hope that you remember us. This is the_Dark Horse_... we encountered each other some months ago."

Lavender ribbons worked their way over the ship's hull. "Of course I remember. You are a Madison May, a discrete component--not part of your ship. Odd, but charming. You permitted me to speak to one of your other discrete biological components, a Barry. Is he still functioning?"

"I'm still functioning," Schatz spoke up. "Quite well. I hope you are, too."

"Yes. You called to me, I think... it is the first time I've heard my language spoken by someone not of my kind. A very intriguing concept, that... I didn't understand what you were trying to say. But I was curious." The purple waves crossing Qalamixi's skin brightened, like laughter. "Were you calling to me?"

May held up her paw to let Barry know she intended to reply. "Yes. Qalamixi, this part of the galaxy is in great danger. We'd like to request your assistance."

Its hull faded back to white. "Biological entities seem frequently to be in great danger. Does something make this more troubling than your normal travails, Madison May?"

"There's a new leader among the Waneshans, and they're looking for an incredibly powerful weapon. If they find it, they'd be unstoppable--they could destroy entire planets. They've done so in the past."

Other, fainter colors wandered over Qalamixi's skin. "This is still the complaint of numerous creatures. Your empires rise, challenge one another, fall... sometimes I do not even notice. I do not mean to say that I doubt you."

"Unfortunately, not all of us live for hundreds of thousands of years. I'd hope, at least, that you could offer some perspective. You might be in danger, too--you have information that the Wanesh think they might want."

"I doubt it. They're scavengers, unable even to comprehend what they steal. If they know of me, it's only because they want to extract the technological parts of my being... they have not succeeded before; they will not succeed now." The living starship stopped, and its hull shifted back to violet. "But I might speak with a Barry, if he can be detached and wishes to explain?"

Barry, who did not ordinarily volunteer for away missions, both wished to explain_and_ could be detached. Ayenni joined him on the flight deck, where Ensign Srivastava was preparing one of the Type 4 shuttles for launch. Rika wouldn't disembark from the Type 4, but she was looking forward to seeing Qalamixi close up.

So was Ayenni, which--as they drew closer to the huge living ship--sparked some curiosity in Dr. Schatz. "Do you know anything about this thing? You're not related, right?"

Ayenni was trying to get the hang of the skeptical cocked eyebrow Dave sometimes used, and Barry's question was a good opportunity for practice. "You think I might be related to the... living, million-ton, fifty thousand year old spaceship?"

"Well, the... colors, though. Chromasemantics isn't my field--there's nothing really like that in the Terran Confederation. I didn't know if maybe there was some kind of ancient commonality."

"I don't, either." She wasn't picking up on the ship's thoughts, if it_had_ thoughts in any conventional sense. And she didn't recognize anything in its language, down to its color-changing coat--nothing about it seemed like her kind's syntax. "I've never seen this species. Maybe other Yara have, or they've heard legends or something... but they weren't common, if so."

"First contact, then."

"True! I'm excited, I just don't know what to expect. What do you think, Miss Srivastava?"

The dhole, looking through the windows at the thing, had no idea how to even answer the question--let alone what she was_expecting_. "I think space is weird, that's what."

"In a good way?"

"In a weird way. Check your harnesses, though. We'll be landing soon."

When they stepped from the shuttle, a figure was waiting. It was naked, giving them a full view of its scales and the biomechanical implants embedded in each of them. "Welcome," it said. Ayenni knew immediately what had taken the Star Patrol crew some time to figure out: the creature, which gave its name as Iqem, was not truly an individual, and "pilot" understated its function.

"You're part of the ship. You're Qalamixi?"

"I am the Iqem of Qalamixi, yes. As these," it waved its arms at their heads. "These protrusions are the 'ears' of your own entities. The sound goes to your ears, yet the ears alone hear nothing. This is a Barry, I have encountered one before. You, however, are unfamiliar. A... modified_yala'qul._ Enhanced, perhaps?"

"Yala'qul?" Ayenni drew her breath in with a sudden gasp. "The qur-yara... that's what you mean... they went extinct in prehistory. How do you know of them? How do you know our term for them?"

"I am uncertain," Iqem replied placidly. "Someone I encountered knew someone who encountered them, I suppose... it might not have been recently. You resemble a creature I have heard called yala'qul, that's all."

"We share a recent common ancestor, so the resemblance doesn't surprise me--I'm just... I'm astonished that you know of them. The people of my planet call themselves 'Yara' today. My name is Ayenni."

"Good. One Barry and one Ayenni. There is another biological unit in your shuttlepod. It does not talk?"

"Standard protocol for these away missions is to keep the shuttle ready for launch. And standard protocol for shuttles is to have somebody aboard at all times when the engine is running. Just in case."

"I do not recognize the configuration of this particular organelle. I should like to encounter it, at some point." Iqem phrased it as an academic concern, and kept the same flat tone. "Later. What is it that you wish to discuss? Fighting."

Barry nodded. "The Wanesh. They've been attacking other civilizations, causing great devastation. An Uxzu fleet was annihilated three days ago. You know what the Dominion is--we first learned about them from your codex."

"The Uxzu have been hunting me for centuries. This does not engender great sympathy."

"They're.... not always the... easiest to get along with," Barry Schatz admitted. He much preferred Qalamixi to the Dominion, and he didn't know what Madison May saw in the huge predators. "Worse, then. They bombarded the Parixian moon of Vallanax, killing every living thing on the planet. It's a wasteland now. Tens of millions dead."

"They were your friends?" Iqem surmised.

"It doesn't matter if they're our friends." Ayenni couldn't get a handle on the creature's emotions--its thoughts were a constant, quiet white noise. Was it actually curious? Concerned? Excited about the possibility of causing such destruction itself? "A culture that's willing to do something like that is a threat to everyone else. Every_thing_ else."

"But in the end, they will be forgotten. I enjoyed my conversation with this one, the Barry. It was unique, and pleasant. Our conversation might be, too. But even then, you see... even as I enjoyed it, I was compelled to remember that, soon, he will die. You will die. You live for almost no time at all. It does not cause me to enjoy you less, but it does provide context for the magnitude of your tribulations."

Barry couldn't help feeling a_little_ insulted. He tried to stay logical. "In this case, the timescales are closer to ones you might appreciate. These Wanesh are following a new leader--the resurgence of a culture that arrived thirty or forty thousand years ago. One that you might know: the Hano Empire."

"Hano. Hano," Iqem repeated, whirring softly.

"Hexapods, like Iqem, with four walking legs. Large, warm-blooded, and non-telepathic. They might be biologically identical to the Wanesh, or maybe the Wanesh are descendants--like... like whatever it is you thought Ayenni was. We didn't know they were so old, but we've found archaeological records and... and Ayenni's culture even considers them part of their old myth."

Ayenni opened her mouth to explain further, but the white noise of the ship's thoughts rose up in a hoarse, heated shout and all that came out was her startled yelp. "You know of them," Iqem said. "More. More than you admit."

There was an odd, unpleasant, heated flush in her skin. "No," she managed to say. "It was our first clue, the... the Yanokal, but I don't... I don't know more than... that."

"You do. You see...something..." Iqem sounded puzzled, but Ayenni was losing the ability to distinguish any voices from the din flooding her head. Pain shot through her--the voices twisting into something sharp and white, splintered glass driving into her mind--

And then she was in space.

Everything was silent. There was no sound in space. There was no air, either, of course--but somehow she didn't think of that. She didn't need to breathe. She was surrounded by stars. Below her--what does 'below' even mean? How do I conceive of it--was Qalamixi. And three other ships, larger but otherwise identical.

Feeding? Mating? She didn't know what brought them together. Their thoughts were...

Not hidden, she realized. Would she say a volcano hid from a spider making its web in the crevasse between two rocks? Qalamixi's kind had no sense of time on the span of minutes or hours, no more than Ayenni consciously perceived nanoseconds racing by. Their thoughts were beyond her, try as she might stretch to encompass them. The web shook with the rumbling of the earth beneath, but the spider gained no further sense of plate tectonics.

But then.

Then one of the beings disintegrated--shattering, torn into jagged pieces by something unseen. Ayenni squinted, trying to make it out; there was nothing but shadows on shadows. Monstrous shapes in the dark. The volcano erupted, and the spider had no way of recognizing the pyroclastic cloud that swept it into oblivion as a cry of terror.

When she woke up again Ayenni was aboard the_Dark Horse_, in the medical bay. 'Headache' failed to adequately describe the feeling--every nerve was offering up some form of protest to what had been done to it. She didn't think she was alone; there was a silhouette in the darkness. "Hello?"

It was Sabel Thorsen, who had kept the lights off because they'd obviously disturbed the ship's doctor and, with his technologically enhanced vision, the spitz didn't need them to see by. "Hello," he said. It would've been Terran custom to add something pointless after that, like_you're awake_ or welcome back, but his programmers never got around to small talk and he'd learned his attempts at intuiting it were generally unwanted.

"How long have I been out?"

"Thirty-one hours. Your life signs were perplexing. Unfortunately, we have no other qualified medical personnel. I'm the closest thing, considering my training."

Ayenni sat up, carefully, and focused on the pain until she could get a handle on blocking it out. "You have medical training?"

"For what would be relevant under exigent combat circumstances, yes. I can amputate and apply a tourniquet with both precision and efficiency. However, since the problem appeared to be in your brain, I have elected not to employ this talent."

"Thanks," she muttered. The discomfort finally started fading. "Do you know what happened to me?"

"Along what time frame? Ensign Srivastava brought you back from Qalamixi when Dr. Schatz and the ship's pilot reported your injury. We then set you up with the medical monitoring equipment and commenced an intravenous drip. At regular intervals since, I've administered the following: ten CCs of--"

"Thank you," she said, before he could explain. "But I mean, do you know what Qalamixi did to me?"

"No. I do not believe that it knows, either. But it did volunteer to cooperate with us."

Barry Schatz came to see her as soon as he knew that she was awake. "Welcome back. How are you feeling?"

"I need to think about it more before I know for certain. I feel... raw. Sabel says that Qalamixi is helping us?"

"'Helped,' yes. Past tense. We've been able to analyze the jump signatures of those boarding ships and determine the location of the Prince's main base. You... I guess the term is that you jogged Qalamixi's memory."

"Of the Hano? They attacked Qalamixi's... parents?"

"Qalamixi is a young individual of a species known as the... uh, well. It's about sixty syllables long. Qalamixi is only a nickname, too, I guess. 'Qalamixi's species' will have to do. The Hano hunted them mercilessly when they arrived in this sector. And, well, it got off to the wrong start when Qalamixi's species made first contact and destroyed a Hano ship... but when the Hano saw that Qalamixi's species could integrate the technology they'd captured, they were fascinated."

Qalamixi didn't know everything, which limited the information it had been able--or willing--to pass along to Barry. But the Border Collie knew there'd been a great deal of fighting, and in the end most of Qalamixi's kind had left the galaxy rather than confront the Hano head on.

"Qalamixi's parents remained. In the end the Hano cornered them, and Qalamixi was the only survivor. The toll on the remnants of the Hano Empire was severe enough that they were never able to consolidate their hold... and now that they might be, Qalamixi believes that it needs to take action. Not directly... it's become something of a pacifist. But it was willing to help us decipher how the jumpdrive works. And that's something."

"What now?" Ayenni was a pacifist herself, but the Hano operated at a level beyond the justification of her natural aversion to violence.

"We're gathering the fleet. I think things will come to a head very soon."

***

Ciara Munro didn't believe her eyes. This wasn't because the vixen was looking at anything confusing, not really. It was because the 'helpful hints' section of C61.55, 'Field Manual for Reconnaissance Pilots,' spelled it out in big block letters.

NEVER BELIEVE YOUR EYES

Your eye can resolve up to 20 seconds of arc, with binocular vision increasing resolving power by the square root of two. Ergo, under good conditions, you can resolve an object 70 meters across at a distance of 1000 kilometers. The Cyberdyne S54-2E mixed laser system, in contrast, can produce a 5-centimeter mesh at this distance. And it doesn't blink.

She didn't know whether or not she was blinking, either: there was a lot to look at. Ships bustled around a huge, crystalline structure that seemed to be growing organically somehow in another entirely unremarkable system dominated by the red giant that had grown tired of having planets and melted them all.

Her tactical display registered, at that moment, six hundred light attack ships, eighty heavy cruisers, nine of the same missile dreadnought she'd engaged at the Kolash shipyards, and one...something. A six-sided prism, sixty kilometers long, about which a host of small construction vessels swarmed constantly.

The computer chimed to report an updated tactical report, adding twenty-three more light attack ships to the tally. It was the largest fleet she'd ever seen in one place. The boneyard where the_Tempest_ lived had been full of old hulks, and she'd thought that overwhelming--but there couldn't have been more than a hundred retired Star Patrol ships there, most of them no larger than a harbor tug.

From eight thousand kilometers away, Ciara was able to let her sense of awe outweigh her sense of abject terror. The huge vessel under construction made her think of watching wasps hard at work--single-minded purpose. Not quite like hers...

She'd been ordered to conduct a simple tactical reconnaissance mission, since the_Tempest_ was the ship most likely to approach undetected. In the four hours following her arrival, nothing had given her away. She had a working knowledge of their patrol circuits, and the defenses guarding the installation.

And no company. Captain Ford asked her if she needed a copilot, and she'd said no--she could handle it herself. Which was true: nothing in the mission profile required a second crewman. But she could've used someone to bounce ideas off of.

The Wanesh--Hano, apparently, if we're being precise--flew a dozen simultaneous patrols with six raider-class ships each; based on the patrol radius and the maximum acceleration of a raider, they could meet an intruder from any direction with eighteen corvettes in only a few minutes. Was that enough time to assemble the rest of the fleet? She didn't know.

Besides the patrols, her sensors alerted her to around a hundred missile batteries positioned in a spherical cloud. Each battery had independent guidance and fire-control equipment. That would be enough to deter a moderately sized attacker, but no more. Was the Laughing Prince trusting that his preparations could remain hidden and they didn't need to waste resources in more defenses? She didn't know.

The raiders and heavier warships had plenty of obvious rocket pods, but the huge ship under construction offered no similar clues. Its size and construction recalled any one of a number of warships with energy weapons--even the_Dark Horse_ had its length defined by the track of its linear particle beam generators. But was it armed at all? She didn't know.

Captain May expected her back in another two hours.

"What are you doing?" the vixen asked herself. But she was the one watching the closest patrol as it finally turned away, and she was the one who pulsed the thrusters on the_Tempest_ to bring the ship in for a closer look. "Acting like that damn coyote..."

She kept the scanners running and logged everything she could. As close as a thousand kilometers, the guideline in the field manual, there was no indication at all that anyone was watching. A quiet chime, calibrated to be soothing, announced that they were within five hundred kilometers of the next waypoint.

The next waypoint was the center of the Hano complex, and Munro wasn't particularly soothed. She licked at her muzzle, and her shaky fingers called up the controls for the ship's stealth systems. The_Tempest_ presented an infrared signature one five hundredth of a degree over background. Active projectors on her hull gave them perfect camouflage.

Right? Perfect camouflage for me, she realized. What if the Hano were sensitive to other wavelengths? That wasn't in the tactical brief. Her course took her within forty kilometers of the strange, half-finished vessel. And she wanted--needed--to get a better look. But Ciara's sense of self-preservation was too well-developed for her not to remain in a state of near panic.

And the closer she got, the larger "sixty kilometers" really turned out to be. Its six equal sides were practically flawless--flat to under a centimeter, which was the resolution limit of the_Tempest_'s passive scanners. And they stretched on, and on, their polished finish reflecting the stars and the firing thrusters of the construction ships all around them.

The far end of the ship was more irregular, covered in various structures that resembled nothing so much as a miniature city.Miniature--she caught herself. Seven kilometers across made it plenty large enough. Bigger than the town she'd grown up in, for sure.

Her cockpit fell into shadow; the Hano vessel was now blocking out the sun. A construction ship passed by dangerously closely--under a kilometer away; she could see it without the help of the sensors. Nobody noticed her. And sound didn't carry in space, but even still she held her breath until the sun came back, and the distance between the_Tempest_ and the alien ship was again growing.

She'd gathered a few petabytes of surveillance information, everything May had asked for. And despite that, and her training, and the field manual, the only thing Munro really_believed_ was the way the light had vanished.

***

Captain May had written 'GOOD NEWS' and 'BAD NEWS' on the whiteboard; she had also conspicuously drawn a box around 'BAD NEWS' that gave her much less room to put things. Her crew understood the implication. "Shannon," the akita began. "Go."

Lieutenant Hazelton nodded. "Sure, Mads. Our ship is as ready as it's ever been. The battle damage is fixed, we've recalibrated the deflector shields to increase their effectiveness against Wanesh missiles, and Spaceman Eddie has cobbled together two new damage control drones with some of the spare parts we picked up at our last stop."

"Ideally we don't need them," May said, but she wrote 'readiness 100%' and 'better DC' on the board anyway. "Your special project?"

"Yeah." The raccoon cleared her throat. "Barry's friend gave us enough information to integrate the jumpdrive we captured with our ship's systems. TJ and Mitch are ironing out the navigational controls now, but we'll be able to use it."

"Question," Lieutenant Commander Bradley began.

Shannon cleared her throat again. "This is for the other column, Mads. We get... three uses out of the jump core--maybe four. With more time, we might be able to reverse-engineer the technology and figure out how to scale it up. Not in the next six hours. The stress will burn out the core."

"Four jumps," May said.

"Three," Shannon corrected. "We can't play around with this one, Mads. If it fails in mid-jump, I don't even want to think about what would happen. Write down three."

The akita frowned, clucking her tongue, but decided--to everyone's relief--that she wasn't in a good place to argue the point. "It's better than nothing. Ensign Bader, your turn for good news."

"Yes, ma'am. First, from a tactical point of view, I concur with Lieutenant Hazelton. Our weapons and shields are in good shape, the defense grid is completely operational, and we're up against a foe we understand fairly well."

"Good. And the order of battle?"

"Lieutenant Munro provided more surveillance data than Ms. Smith and I can process quickly, ma'am, but at a high level--we're not_that_ outnumbered. About... eight to one, but that sounds worse than it is. Most of the enemy vessels are those light raiding ships. We can deal with them."

"How?"

***

LCDR David Bradley's personal log, stardate 67765.5

The Ortalis don't sleep, and they looked a little puzzled when I asked where I might be able to get some rest. I should've known it wouldn't matter. We're eleven hours from the Hano main base and I can't imagine my nerves calming enough before it's too late.

Everyone has agreed to the plan. Privately, Maddy and I both think it might work. But who knows what will happen when the shooting actually starts? The Ortalis squadron is supposed to take on the Wanesh capital ships--we think they'll be the most vulnerable to our weapons. I trust May will carry out her attack on the flagship, and I trust the Dominion to suppress all those damned raiders...

But...

He hadn't finished the log entry; he didn't really know how. There were six different cultures, using wildly different technologies and tactics. They could barely even communicate--who knew what might happen if their plans needed to change? He couldn't dwell on that. They didn't have the time to dwell on it.

At least everyone agreed on the importance of their operation. Tavan, captain of the destroyer_Sanatis Vinsali Soladdon_, told Dave that his government feared the Wanesh even though Ortalis had yet to fall into their sights. The omens, Tavan said, were clear. The Ortalis proved to be a superstitious people.

They'd encountered the Ortalis once before, responding to a distress call from a research station protected by a defensive drone that had gone rogue. Dealing with that had only taken a few hours, and Jack Ford's excellent aim. And at the time, Bradley hadn't thought much about the scientists' insistence that the precise turn of events was foretold on ancient Ortalis lore.

It didn't_seem_ like many religious traditions had stories about a buggy combat AI deciding the best way to protect its charges was to annihilate them, nor about the drone being vanquished by a brave if reckless coyote and his snow leopard wingman. But who knew? The Ortalis claimed it was so, and they were fiercely devoted to their legends.

This had certain benefits. They were, themselves, lightly built; their ancestors had once been flying creatures, though their feathered wings were now vestigial. Despite Dave's stockier build, his fur, and his four limbs to their six they accepted him--saying that he looked like a mythical animal, a herald of a new age for the Ortalis people.

They probably do not mean that literally, Dr. Beltran reassured him. When he reported aboard the Sanatis Vinsali Soladdon, Captain Tavan ordered the entire crew to meet him in the shuttlebay, and their hushed, reverent whispers did not do much to convince him that Felicia had been right.

Nor did their unwillingness to question a single strategic decision the Golden Retriever made. Tavan seemed to believe that he was an expert in everything, and because the Ortalis had no concept of history as distinct from myth--and no sense that myth might be inaccurate--the concept of a history degree was lost to them. "Your people must have so much knowledge," Tavan said. "The legends of a thousand cultures--I am envious. Though quite respectful, of course."

"Of course."

Ortalis hyperdrives were faster even than the one on the_Dark Horse_, and the crew was used to traveling quickly; Dave used the downtime to go over the plan again. They needed to close, quickly, and fight the capital ships before their missiles could take a toll. Bradley had them divided into two attack groups, each covering the other to prevent the Wanesh from concentrating their forces.

"So this mythical animal," David prompted.

Captain Tavan perked up. "A_lavissa_. The great hunter Shalin rode one with Emperor Kulaa in pursuit of the monstrous demon Tokurn who had stolen our stars. Shalin pierced the armored scales of the demon, and the stars spilled forth in a great causeway through the heavens. That's the road we Ortalis have followed ever since."

"And in the myth. Did Shalin and the lavissa survive? Just out of curiosity."

The destroyer's bridge crew dropped everything to answer him, and what followed was a polite, chaotic shouting match with nearly everyone participating.

"Shalin went out with a hundred cavalry to defeat the demon and--" "One hundred seventeen cavalry, according to the Allarin text--" "Other translations say one hundred and five, you have to remember that--" "The demon's hide was too strong. The arrows of the cavalrymen could do nothing--" "Emperor Kulaa hadn't enchanted them, he didn't believe in the enchantments--" "Just like the sorceress!" "Well, of_course_ like the sorceress."

Dave coughed, raising his voice to be heard. "But did they survive?"

"Kulaa was swallowed alive by the demon!" "Kulaa_chose_ to be swallowed--" "That's not what Allarin says, Allarin says--" "Well, Sanat says chose, and I say chose, and I'm the captain. Kulaa chose to be swallowed and used the enchantments to weaken the--" "No! He used them to point to the one gap in the demon's armor plate--" "Either way, Shalin charged, and the momentum of the lavissa forced his spear into the demon's heart and--" "And!--" "Yes, then--"

"Did they survive?"

"Who knows?" Tavan blinked. "After the demon fell to the ground, dead, Shalin wasn't seen again. Sanat--my clan is of the Sanatis school--believes they went together over the star road. I don't know what Allarini have convinced themselves of."

Commander Bradley didn't really know what he'd been_expecting_ from the crash course in Ortalisian religion, although if nothing else he felt comfortable in saying the answer hadn't been especially clarifying. He resolved to trust in the battleplan, which said nothing about stars, demons, or cavalry.

"We're ready," he told Captain May, when she hailed them and announced that the Star Patrol cruiser was in position with the rest of the fleet.

Madison nodded. "That's all of us, then. I'm starting the countdown. Good hunting, Dave." Her signal dropped out, and Dave found that his first thought, oddly, was how much he hoped he'd be able to see her again. He counted down the remaining seconds, and then they dropped out of hyperspace and back into the real world.

"Captain Tavan--report!"

***

"All ships are in position, captain--we came in right on target." Mitch immediately started to bring their sensors to bear on the Wanesh for the tactical report Ensign Bader would need in just a few seconds.

"Good work, Lieutenant Parnell. Lay in a course for their flagship. Tactical, ready firing solutions."

Leon was_ready_ before she'd asked--that wasn't the problem. "I have a firing solution, captain, but there's a problem. I'm picking up massive energy readings from the main complex. Some kind of force field. If these readings are right, we're going to have a hell of a time getting through it."

Mitch recalibrated the ship's tactical scanners, and the Abyssinian didn't like what she saw. "They weren't right--off-scale. And--" a jolt that ran through the length of the ship served to dramatically introduce the next complication. "Spatial disruptions generated by a gravitational anomaly...within their flagship. Our FTL drive is nonoperational."

"Get it back online," May ordered. "And hail the Ortalis and the Uxzu. Commander Bradley, are you seeing what we're seeing? The Wanesh have a shield online and they're jamming our ability to engage the hyperdrive."

"We can confirm that. The chief engineer is trying to compensate but we're not optimistic."

Kolash matriarch Kenra Tellak growled. "A further question: we counted on operational surprise. How could they be jamming us if they don't know we're coming?"

"What do you mean?" May swiped her paw over the controls on the captain's chair, putting the tactical map on the viewscreen instead of the holograms of the other commanders. "You think it's a trap?"

"No, not from the disposition of their patrol ships," Dave said. "They're where we expected them to be. It's probably just a consequence of either the shield or whatever's going on with their flagship."

"Then we have to continue to attack, I think. Matriarch?"

"Agreed. We'll begin launching our fighters to intercept any incoming..."

And there would be a_lot_ of incoming, judging if nothing else by the sheer weight of numbers arrayed against them. Leon Bader had the point-defense grid ready, but with literally hundreds of enemy ships he knew they'd be overwhelmed, eventually. May knew it, too, just like she knew they needed to find a way around the deflector shield. With ten minutes until the first Wanesh ships would come into range, she called the two civilians to the bridge in the hopes they'd know something she didn't.

Miguel Ribeiro shook his head at each of the barrage of questions he received. "No--no, captain. We know very little about their military technology. Paghuk-Hån used a gravity-based weapon of some kind, I think, but nothing that prevented us from using a hyperdrive. Right, Xoc?"

"Right," the coyote said, though it was with some hesitation. "We found it through gravitational effects, though... Maybe this is some kind of... test? Like a prototype or something? Nah. Nah, that can't be."

Leon listened to the conversation with one ear. The rest of his attention was focused on the unfolding battle: the first of the Uxzu ships were close enough to begin exchanging fire with a contingent of the Wanesh. It didn't bode well--the Dominion traded a dozen fighters for knocking one of the raiders out of commission, and that was one out of six hundred. The second salvo produced more of the same.

And then Mitch called out an incoming, fleetwide transmission. "It's from the Wanesh. They're sending it to all ships."

"Put it through?"

"You have denied us our place in the galaxy for too long. Dismissed us, derided us--well, now it comes to this. I can only hope some of you survive to tell your people about what's to come." The unseen voice laughed, cold and cruel. "Though I suppose they'll know when you don't return, too. Or you could surrender now, and perhaps we can come to some agreement."

"Do we have a two way-channel?" May asked.

"I... think so? We do now," Spaceman Alexander confirmed. "It's open."

"This is Captain Madison May, of the Star Patrol ship_Dark Horse_. We're not the surrendering type. And we're not about to give up without a fight."

"As you can see, that possibility doesn't trouble me, captain. We can defeat you just as easily in the field." On the viewscreen's tactical map, a flashing icon marked the sudden loss of one of the Uxzu cruisers, to drive the point home.

"Destroy us, and you lose your chance to find the map you're looking for. Our records. The key to... Paghuk-Hån."

The voice just laughed again. "That? Oh, we don't need that anymore. We've rediscovered the technology on our own--what do you think we've been doing here, captain?Esoth-hån Paghuk doesn't require chasing any more hidden treasure."

Xocoh Zonnie tapped the akita on the shoulder, and tapped her finger against her muzzle. May muted their outgoing transmission while the prince continued his diatribe. "What?"

"He's bluffing."

"How do you know that?"

The coyote grinned. "Because that's what I'd do? That's what I_did_, actually. If that weapon was actually working, they would've used it by now. The name he just used means, uh, 'son of Paghuk-Hån'--right, Sancho?"

"Yeah. Even using the name, he must want you to believe it's related to the old weapon. I don't know much about strategy, but... I'd also point out that when we used the weapon, there was plenty of collateral damage..."

"And they're sending their ships pretty damn close to yours, captain. He's bluffing. Trust a coyote."

May doubted that this was ever particularly good advice, but she had neither a counterargument nor any better options. She tapped the channel closed, cutting the prince off in mid-rant, and called the other commanders back. "We're not surrendering. But we need to come up with a new plan, here. Matriarch Tellak, how are your ships holding up?"

"We will fight to the last one." It wasn't an enlightening reply. Subsequent interrogation drew out that two of their ships had already been destroyed and two more were adrift. The Wanesh, with decades of practice fighting the Uxzu Dominion, had their antimissile defenses carefully tuned to what the Dominion could throw at them--scoring a hit required completely overwhelming those defenses, and with increasing losses it was getting harder to fire enough missiles.

***

That much was just as obvious from aboard the_Tempest_. Ciara Munro had been doing her best to pick out weak points in the Wanesh formation. Now, though, it was hard to say there were weak points--they kept sending more and more ships to plug any gap that threatened to emerge. The Dominion fleet, with all their fighters launched, had gone from facing a hundred raiders to two hundred and seven.

And, with every starfighter aloft, there was nothing left to give. Over the radio she heard Captain Ford putting their two Type 7 scout-interceptors in the lead of an enveloping maneuver, counting on causing at least a_little_ damage with the long-range weapons the scouts carried. And then what? Then they'd have nothing. It was foolish. It was a very coyote thing to be doing, all things considered.

Lieutenant Munro switched to the shared net between Ford and the Dominion wing commanders. "This is the Tempest. Switch off your targeting computers and link the missile guidance systems to my scanners."

"Their terminal guidance kicks in at under five thousand kilometers, lieutenant."

Ciara didn't need Jack's reminder. "I know, Shamrock. I'm going to take the_Tempest_ as close as I can get. If they don't have clean signals to fire on, I'm hoping the Wanesh defensive batteries are going to have a hard time with this." Hoping. The vixen slid the throttle forward, and the spy ship leapt into the challenge. In two minutes she'd outpaced the leading Uxzu ships, and the Star Patrol Type 7s. In five, she was drawing perilously close to the first squadron of Wanesh raiding ships.

She heard one of the Uxzu give the order to fire, and in an instant two hundred missiles were racing dumbly towards her and the enemy formation just beyond. Thirteen ships. Fifteen missiles apiece. Then she thought better of it, apportioned ten to each of the raiders, and switched the internal guidance systems back on the remainder. Maybe they'd work, maybe they wouldn't.

It didn't really matter. The defensive batteries saw seventy missiles and decided that was all that was coming. The gunners didn't realize their mistake until the first impacts. Lieutenant Munro could only blink in surprise. All thirteen ships had been disabled, and half of them were well on their way to completely disintegrating. A few of the straggling Uxzu missiles, under their own guidance, found nothing left to resist them and finished the job.

That worked? This, too, was a very coyote thing. Ciara ignored that and picked the next group of targets. "Stand by, I'll be in position in three minutes..."

***

A newfound, apparently inexplicable ability to evade Wanesh defenses did a good, though not complete, job of evening the odds. That left them with the shield, which Ensign Bader informed the bridge crew wouldn't have been out of place protecting a planet, let alone a space station--even a decent-sized one like the prince's home base. "There's no way we can penetrate it," the shepherd said flatly. "None."

"And it protects the flagship, too."

"Yes, ma'am."

Captain May, who was facing Leon, had her back to the viewscreen. The akita glanced over her shoulder. Reeling from the sudden destruction of several dozen raiders and two of their larger missile cruisers, the Wanesh had started pulling back to the relative safety of their base. The Uxzu were following, of course--they'd never met a pursuit they didn't like.

Recognizing the same vulnerability that May did, Commander Bradley put in a request to support their attack, lest the Dominion be surrounded and cut off. The Ortalis ships were the only ones fast enough to close the distance in time; she let the retriever commit them, and ordered the Parixians to do their best to prevent any Wanesh from hitting the attackers' flanks.

This did nothing about the shield. Barry Schatz offered no help, either; the science officer could only say that it was powerful enough that they'd need a good-sized asteroid to punch through it. "Or a supernova would do the trick," but the system's red giant didn't seem to be in the mood for obliging them. Dr. Schatz had other conclusions, none of them directly relevant.

The existence of the shield itself, for example, confirmed to the Border Collie that the Laughing Prince was unconvinced of the loyalty of his followers. The shield drew power from an internal emitter, and it had no weak points--nothing suggested a hidden entrance or anything sort of vulnerabilities that might be exploited by rebellious elements. For that matter...

He tilted his head, looking again at the sensor readings, and the way the shield's energy was perturbed by the flagship it also guarded. They'd called the subspace interference 'jamming,' but that suggested something_deliberate_, and there were no other signs that the prince anticipated an attack. Which meant that...

"Captain. Their flagship is the source of power for the complex and its shield. I think they're using a contained quantum singularity as a power source--that explains the chaotic disruption to hyperspace. Lieutenant Munro didn't report anything like this... it must still be under construction."

"Meaning there might be some kind of vulnerability..."

"Conceivably, yes," he told Leon.

Maddy shook her head. "Screw 'conceivably'--that's how this works. If it's still under construction, there's a vulnerability. Find it."

***

The weapons officer on the_Sanatis Vinsali Soladdon_ reported dispassionately, evenly, and completely in opposition to the deafening round of explosions that had shuddered through the destroyer's hull. "Our hull plating is still holding. Three impacts, captain."

Dave didn't like operating without deflector shields, but the heavily-armored Ortalis ships were weathering the Wanesh onslaught fairly well despite letting more than the occasional missile through. And whatever the Uxzu were doing, it cost their enemy dearly. Lieutenant Commander Bradley's battle map tallied eighty-four pirate raiders destroyed and seven capital ships.

Of course, it also showed five hundred and sixty corvettes, twenty-three_Jenmir-_class battlecruisers, four missile-bearing dreadnoughts and the Son of Paghuk-Hån remaining. Many of those were within the protective belt of the prince's shield, and the first of the retreating ships were fast approaching the barrier.

"They'll have to drop the shield to let any of their ships through," Dave pointed out. "Order the squadron to compute solutions and be ready to fire as soon as we have the opportunity."

"Yes, honored commander," Tavan bowed. "The prophecies said you'd know what to do when we faced this test."

"This test? Your prophecies said something about a force field?"

Ortalis 'laughter' was silent; they ruffled up the brightly colored feathers about their necks and fanned the air with a jostling wag of their vestigial wings. The laughter came from Tavan's XO. "Not merely Shalin and the Demon. Echoes of the time the hero Ivvortalis destroyed the walls of Rasroti, don't you agree, Tavan?"

Tavan laughed as well. "Echoes. Legends always echo. Our firing solutions are computed. Take us into position--fifty ships are massing to cross the shield barrier in forty seconds."

"Our ships are in position. We're ready to fire."

"As soon as the shield drops," Tavan told the weapons officer.

"Standing by... standing by--there! Firing--wait..."

"Report," the Ortalis captain demanded--Dave was trying to make sense of what he_thought_ he was seeing on the battle map, too. "Did they just..."

"Captain, one of the Wanesh cruisers intercepted our fire. The ship is a complete loss."

But they'd bought time for the others to escape behind the shield. Twenty more raiders were still outside, trapped between the shield and the closing Uxzu attack. Dave ordered Tavan to be ready a second time, but the second time never came: rather than lowering their protective shields, the prince elected to allow them to be annihilated by Dominion missiles.

"Did that happen in your prophecy, too?"

"I'm sure it did," Tavan said. His eyes were wide. "But even the demon Tokurn was not so callous..."

***

Barry Schatz saw what had happened, too, but was distracted enough with the engineering implications to spare thoughts for callousness. In that regard, he was nearly alone--the rest of the bridge crew witnessed the slaughter with some surprise. Miguel Ribeiro suggested the Hano sense of hierarchy and birthright made the sacrifice a logical one from the prince's point of view.

With limited grounding in history--that had been the province of his girlfriend, among a dozen other topics--Barry didn't quite agree but couldn't argue the point. It seemed to him that the Hano might certainly have done things one way, but the Wanesh were removed from those traditions by forty thousand years and it was a bad prince who was willing to throw away the lives of his followers.

Unless he truly didn't have a choice, and following this line of thought led Schatz to discover the vulnerability May was looking for. "The power link between the generator on the flagship and the shield emitter, captain... it's improvised. Badly improvised. They can't rapidly bring their shields on and offline--that's also why they can't return fire. We'd only need one good shot on that node to take the shield down."

"But it's protected_by_ the shield, right?"

"Well. Yes."

Leon Bader, trying to think outside the box, considered surgical precision rather than overwhelming force. "Could we narrow the particle beam diameter enough to overpower the deflectors at a single point?"

"No. That kind of 'narrow' is below the range of quantum effects on the beam structure. And even then, I don't think our reactor can generate enough power."

Madison May briefly thought about asking Shannon Hazelton to rise to the challenge. But she thought Hazelton would protest. The raccoon's protests came rarely--which made them worth listening to. Normally she was willing to do whatever crazy thing May asked.Hm. "Is it vulnerable from the inside?"

Barry put a diagram showing what they knew of the prince's base on the viewscreen. "Yes. It's this right here--the exposed machinery. It requires line of sight to their flagship, so by definition it would be exposed to our attack.If we could get the shield down. We wouldn't need very long."

The akita was no longer thinking about that. "Lieutenant Parnell, did you figure out how to get our hyperdrive back online?"

Eli shook her head. "No, captain. We haven't had any luck. Rika thinks that we might be able to plot an accurate course with the proper gateway deflection, but there's no way to stabilize the aperture for long enough to actually transit."

"What about the captured jumpdrive? That doesn't require a KA gateway. Can you plot an instantaneous jump_within_ the radius of their shields?"

The wolf looked across the bridge to Mitch Alexander, who'd been working on the software to interface with the jumpdrive core. Spaceman Alexander shrugged. Eli turned back to her console and ran a few quick test calculations. "Yes. I think. The core's resolving it as a valid jump sequence. I'll need a minute or so to compute the precise variables."

Maddy rubbed her paws, happy with the way a plan finally looked like it was emerging. "Do it. Two jumps. One into the shield, one behind it. Leon, can you be ready to hit the node?"

"Yes,ma'am." The long months of his mission with the akita had done wonders for removing any sense of doubt. If Captain May thought it would work, by God, Leon was sure it would work. A minute later, Eli had the jump coordinates ready and sent them to him for review. "We can do it, for sure."

"Captain, a complication? I can't calculate the second jump parameters from here. We'll have to start recalculating from the point we arrive. It'll take another minute or so--I'll work as fast as I can, but..."

"Ensign Rika, take the helm. Tactical, be ready for counterfire. Hail the fleet."

***

Dave Bradley would've guessed that 'is she crazy?' was the most logical question from Tavan. It was not: "Do you believe her plan will succeed?"

To be honest, the Golden Retriever's first reaction was to reply that it was the only plan they had and he doubted they'd come up with a better one in short order. But it wasn't what Tavan wanted to hear. "Of course it will. With our help. When they jump into attack range, they're going to get hit by every Wanesh ship in range. Tavan, order Captain Saviru to have his wing ready to engage the Wanesh battlecruiser in quadrant two-four-seven. We'll provide cover against the ships coming from the other arm of the station. We need to buy them time to escape."

"Exactly." Lieutenant Commander Bradley was beyond thinking the reply a curious one--it either meant that his answer_did_ fit some prophecy, or that it had been reshaped into something close enough. "Saviru is moving into position..."

"Captain Tavan, a transmission from the station on all frequencies," one of the other Ortalis reported.

"You see that we have reached a stalemate. Your coalition has taken heavy losses with nothing to show for it. If you wish to discuss a cease-fire to conduct salvage operations, I_might_ be generous enough to permit it."

The next voice on the open channel came from Madison May. "I hardly think that'll be necessary. This ends now."

"Does it? And how do you intend to do that? One single Earthling ship, a patchwork alliance of half-wits and brutes and mercenaries? You presume to 'end' this battle? Oh, May, you were everything I was promised." He began to laugh, and proved unable to stop himself. "Everything!" The laughter carried, built--

Then cut out abruptly. "Jump signature detected. The_Dark Horse_ has executed its maneuver."

***

"Fire," May snarled.

"Helm, attack pattern Alfa-Two, left thirty, up six."

"Thirty mark six, coming about. Framing maneuver in four, continuous on primary, switch interlock--now!"

"Tactical interlock," Bader called back, taking fine control of the_Dark Horse_'s helm to point her bow directly at the power node. "Firing. Good effect on target." The power transfer equipment, almost the size of the Star Patrol cruiser itself, fractured and tore itself eagerly into pieces. "The shield's down. And we have incoming: twenty-plus raiders on an intercept course."

"Evasive maneuvers--and signal the fleet to fire at will!"

Rika would have much preferred for Eli Parnell to be in the driver's seat. But Parnell was occupied, the ship needed a helmsman, and the dhole steeled herself and threw the controls over. "Engaging evasive pattern echo, aye, captain!"

***

The twenty ships Leon had reported were only the vanguard; Dave saw that another forty would presently be in range. The_Dark Horse_ might have been able to jump in time; the next targets would be the Uxzu, and the Parixians--and his own Ortalis, who had so far gone mostly undisturbed.

"Our hyperdrive is working again," he heard someone tell the captain.

Which meant it would be working for everyone else--the Wanesh included. Without the power draw of the defensive shield, the reactor on the prince's flagship was no longer disrupting hyperspace. They could flee, too. "Tavan. Put Saviru's ships between us and the raiders and take our wing about. Direct them to fire on Esoth-hån Paghuk at full power."

"Sir," Tavan bowed. "Transmitting the orders now. May I ask... why? We're ignoring the real battle."

"Yes. But this was our strategic priority. We're the closest ships in range. If they think the battle's turning, they might try to jump--and your antiproton cannons are going to be the most effective thing we have to take that thing out. Target your fire on..." The Golden Retriever's eyes narrowed.

That, he knew, was where Madison May would have used her intuition. She would've stabbed with a finger at some random point, and in all likelihood the akita's characteristic luck would've paid off. He was not an akita. Most of the prince's flagship seemed to be taken up by the weapon, even if it was nonfunctional. That part was heavily armored, almost impregnable.

The stern of the ship was enigmatic; the scientists said it made up most of the inhabitable space on Paghuk-Hån and he assumed the replica worked the same way. Somewhere in it was a reactor core, highly likely to be protected. But it had to have supporting equipment. If nothing else it had a transmitter to beam energy to the destroyed shield generator. "Here. These structures. Hit everything. Find what seems to be taking damage and concentrate our efforts there."

The_Sanatis Vinsali Soladdon_ was the first ship in firing position, which made it the first ship to take incoming fire. A dozen missiles scored hits just as the opening barrage from the antiproton cannons showered the complex superstructure of the prince's ships. Six more impacts. The bridge lights dimmed. "Our hull plating is being compromised."

"Stay on target," Dave growled--they were having an effect. Power readings from the ship showed signs of fluctuation and when there was a 'contained' black hole in play he figured that was promisingly dangerous. And a good sign.

The destroyer kicked. "Hull breach, decks four through six! Starboard lateral thrusters inoperable."

Tavan--trusting in prophecy, retrievers, or both--didn't flinch. "Compensate. Keep firing."

"Auxiliary fire control offline--life support is failing on deck six. Captain..."

"Fire. Again."

A bizarre ripple twisted and warped Esoth-hån Paghuk, almost as though the ship was caught in a funhouse mirror. It happened again, and when the tactical officer said it looked to be losing structural integrity Tavan and Dave counseled escape at the same time.

Fortunately their main engines hadn't taken serious damage, and the speed of an Ortalis starship more than proved its worth. Tavan steered the squadron around the station, putting it between the Ortalis fleet and the imminent demise of the flagship.

This kept them from seeing exactly what happened next.

***

Captain May wanted to know what was going on, and nobody answered because they were all at least as confused. The flagship, the Son of Paghuk-Hån, was gone, along with its resident black hole, a few of the closer and less fortunate Waneshan ships, and half the starbase. That was the clearest bit of information available to them, and it wasn't worth much.

At first Mitch thought the Waneshans had started moving in random directions, and Leon Bader thought they'd also begun to fire in random directions. It was another minute or so before they could begin to detect patterns. A quarter of the pirates had split off and were looking to withdraw; the remainder had begun to split their anger between the nearest coalition forces and the retreating ships of their erstwhile allies.

The simplest answer would have been that they had 'lost the initiative,' along with any central command. Only the automated missile batteries continued to perform adequately, and only because they were--as the name implied--designed to work without instruction.

"Hyperdrive signatures," Mitch said. "Lots of them."

"Theirs? Leaving?"

It was not. Two hundred ships of the Parixian Royal Navy appeared, and the pirates decided_en masse_ that their feud could be well-continued somewhere more private. With ten minutes, the last of them were gone, and within twenty the missile batteries had been disabled.

"Secure from condition one." Madison May took a deep breath. "How bad did we take it?"

***

It could have been worse--that was the best way to look at it. The Ardzula had lost one ship, a converted mining barge that hadn't really been up to the task in the first place. Their commander averred that, even so, the sacrifice was worth it.

They were happy to be safe--risk-averse as they were, the promise of having their borders secure was all they really needed. The Parixians felt similarly, although General Zehev clearly had other things on his mind.

Only one Ortalis ship sustained serious damage--the_Sanatis Marat Hasolara_, which Dave Bradley was told amounted to a fulfillment of their prophecy. He was happy to have been of help, and in the bridge crew's excited chatter he heard yet another myth being added to their records.

Most of the losses had fallen on the Uxzu Dominion, who were interested neither in prophecy nor in secured borders. The battle cost nearly two hundred starfighters, and not all of their crews had been able to escape.

"A trivial matter," Kenra Tellak said. "Considering the resulting victory. And now we can focus on what comes next."

Given her history with the Dominion, May knew that what "came next" could be anything from organizing a triumph to salvaging the Waneshan wrecks to see if anything edible remained of their crews. "What do you mean?" the akita asked carefully.

"We go on the offensive. Xabok, on the_Kedagh_, is already assembling ships for the attack. We have the initiative--we must take it while we can. Let the others waste time licking their wounds if they must. You should come with us."

"We have... some other things to take care of..."

"It will be glorious, though--to smash these vultures once and for all? They'll sing of it for many generations, tiny hunter. Besides, my niece likes you. She says you have an enviable spirit despite your stature."

In some quarters this amounted to a left-handed compliment, but then, May was rather fond of Xabok herself. "We'll be in touch," she promised.

She didn't know who all would be included in "we"; Admiral Mercure had contacted her, ordering the_Tempest_ to return to Confederation space with the two civilian scientists. May expected Lieutenant Commander Bradley to go with them.

So did Ayenni, who found herself curled up in the retriever's arms. He'd become quite fond of it, and she'd adapted to the feeling of his thoughts--they were no longer terribly overwhelming when she was physically touching him. Indeed, they weren't intrusive at all, in fact; mostly they were simply pleasant.

"I've been thinking about it, and... if you wanted, I could go back with you..."

"To Earth, you mean? Back home?"

Ayenni trailed her fingers up the retriever's arms, and nodded. "Your home, yes. I'd miss exploring--seeing all the new things your captain is finding... but... when you think about it, everything over there would be new, too..."

Dave nodded as well. "It would. But I won't be going back. Probably good if I spend some more time learning the ropes. Before my own command..."

He wasn't a natural at it like the akita, but nor could he say that he was completely averse to the idea. It was something he could come to appreciate. Come to succeed at. Given time, and until then, Madison still needed his help.

She wouldn't have denied that. She appreciated it, too. And she was quite happy to learn that he'd decided to stick around. The two of them saw Lieutenant Munro off, with the two civilians. The vixen nodded her acknowledgement when May gave her thanks for her help. "Strange to say, as short a time as I've been here... I'm a bit sad to be leaving so soon."

"It has a lot going for it! We do some good work. A peace treaty here, a comet charted there... saving the galaxy now and then..."

"Yes. That. I should tell you, Captain May, that Admiral Mercure pointed something out to me." The vixen's smile had more than a little trickster in it. "The_Tempest_ is in violation of intergalactic treaty--it can't be operated within the Terran Confederation's borders."

Madison May raised an eyebrow. "And what about beyond them?"

"That depends on how much mission creep you're willing to accept." But Lieutenant Munro read her reply in the akita's slowly widening grin. "I'd be interested in taking a remote assignment."

"We'll be headed for Lupethenna after this--the Parixian rebellion and the military junta have asked for a mediator, and we'll be there to get the talks started. At least a week... if you're away for longer than that, contact us over the long-range radio. We'll be listening."

"It shouldn't take that long, don't worry. But we should get started." She saluted, and made her way up the boarding ramp. Dr. Ribeiro was right behind her.

Xocoh Zonnie paused. She turned, holding out a Star Patrol-standard data chip. "Your ship's database," she said. "I copied it. No, I didn't ask permission first, Dave. That's why I'm giving it back to you. I'm being nice. This is what nice looks like, isn't it? Sancho--oh, he's gone. Well. You'll have to take my word for it."

Lieutenant Commander Bradley growled, taking the chip from her. "Right. Thanks."

"I wanted to look at something," the coyote said, her green eyes flashing with an ominous mischief. "You should, too. Take another gander at the records of that battle."

Neither May nor Bradley were happy with the glint in Xocoh's eyes. "What would we be looking for?" May finally asked.

"A jumpdrive signature. Just after the replica, Estoth-hån Paghuk, was destroyed."

Bradley looked at the chip in his fingers, as though he might have been able to read it with his own eyes. "We didn't detect anything..."

"You wouldn't have. You had your sensors calibrated for the telltales of those boarding pods they were using. This wasn't one of those. But if you extrapolate what they'd look like for one of their larger vessels... something the size of those little pirate ships they use."

"The Laughing Prince?"

Xocoh patted Dave's paw. "I guess we'll find out, won't we?"