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  *****

  Infirmary

  TFR Tehran

  Two days later

  MELISSA LOVED HOW PLEASED JAMES looked to see her as she stepped up to his bed, reaching out and wrapping her hand around his. He was improving by the day, and the Tehran’s chief medical officer, a head-scarved woman with a small scar on her chin, had indicated a possibility James would be discharged within the next day or two and then left the two of them alone. This news had put Melissa into an impossibly good mood that, despite the gravity of the operation they were about to embark upon, refused to fade.

  She squeezed his hand affectionately, grinning down at him. “So, old man, I heard you were going to be discharged today.”

  “Old man?” James coughed, shaking his head and grinning back up at her. “Really? Is that all you came here to do, torture a sick captain by calling him old?”

  “But you are old,” she playfully teased, squeezing his hand again. “It’s just the truth of the matter. There’s no offence intended, of course, but the facts regarding your exact age—or, at least, the age you appear—can’t be denied.”

  “Well, excuse me, Commander, but I think you’ll find being a captain gives you certain… privileges that give me an edge in this particular situation. More specifically, that the captain’s age is both whatever I say it is and also none of anyone’s business, especially not rival commanding officers with tight buns and a penchant for hogging all the glory.”

  She felt his dark hand grasp her backside. With a swift glance around the infirmary to make sure that nobody was watching, she shuffled closer and permitted the hand to remain there for the moment.

  “Mmm. Hogging all the glory, huh?” She leaned over his bed, casually resting her elbows on his chest. “So that’s what I am—the villainous evil-and-sexy CO, rival to the plucky hero, who lives for snatching rightfully earned triumphs from the crew of the Tehran?”

  “I don’t know if I’d call myself plucky exactly”—James trailed his fingers up Liao’s back—“but you do seem to enjoy cavorting around space doing all the important stuff while the Sydney gets mine-laying duty.”

  “You gave the Sydney that ‘important mission,’ remember”—Melissa stifled a gentle yawn— “and as you said yourself, her systems still aren’t working right. She’ll get her turn; we both know that.” She grinned. “And anyway, what are you whining about? The Tehran got a lot more action in the Hades engagement than the Beijing did and almost certainly destroyed a whole lot more enemy tonnage than we got to. It’s like Operation New Dawn all over again.”

  “We also nearly died,” he reminded her, his hand wandering up her body and reaching the back of her head, his fingers running gently through her hair. “And my ship was heavily damaged.” There was a pause as he considered his next words, but Melissa pre-empted his questions with a gentle sigh.

  “The repairs are coming along well,” she answered to his unspoken question, “and there’s some even better news. The first detailed engineering analysis is complete. The ship’s superstructure appears mostly intact except where the strange energy beam hit it. Fortunately, they’re clean cuts, so it’s simply a case of rebuilding the hull around that area and then adding the hull plates and the internal systems like power, electrical, air. Then a little stress test, and she’ll be ready to fight again.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “What about the damaged hull sections? We lost the majority of our forward hull to those damn Toralii weapons.”

  She nodded, gently kissing his chest right above the sternum. “The damaged sections have already been unbolted and are currently being replaced. Your girl’s basically stark naked at the moment, captain.”

  James snickered at that. “And your boy is just watching on.” He regarded her, gently rubbing the back of her head again. “You know, I think he might be a bit of a pervert.”

  Laughing, Melissa slapped his side, which caused him to groan in pain. “Hey, you can make fun of me all you like, but don’t talk shit about my ship.” She straightened her back, putting her nose in the air indignantly. “He’s a good boy, and he loves his mother. He would never peek.”

  “Unlike his captain.”

  “That would depend upon the viewing pleasure presented to her,” she retorted, her hands slowly slipping under his hospital gown, “and on the number of days she’d been without her special little plaything.”

  “Is that what you call it now?” He squirmed on his bed, closing his eyes as she began idly toying with him.

  “Oh, I have a few names for it all picked out.”

  He chortled. “You’re naming my penis?”

  Her hand continued its work. “Well, yes, of course I am. If something’s going to do all the thinking for you, that thing should at least have a name.”

  “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind filling me in on—mmm—what you were thinking… just so, you know, I can veto anything particularly embarrassing… or degrading.”

  Melissa's tone was soft and sly. She rubbed her thumb in slow circles. “Ooh, well, something Chinese, perhaps… so that you don’t know the meaning, or so I can make a dirty joke. Something like Kang or Feng. Or Zhou, or… or Long, or—”

  “Uh, Captain Liao?”

  With a start, Liao yanked her hand out from under Grégoire’s hospital gown, pulling both hands against her side and spinning around. The Tehran’s chief medical officer—a woman whose name Liao did not know—stood close by, her hands clutching a clipboard remarkably tightly. Her eyes flicked down to Liao’s fingers, and Liao knew she’d been spotted.

  Obviously doing her best to remain professional, Liao regarded the doctor and stiffly folded her hands in front of her.

  “Doctor, I… wasn’t expecting you here. I thought your shift was over.”

  “It was, but… uh, I realized that I had left… my notes… back in sickbay.” She held up the clipboard demonstrably. “I can’t organize my life to save… to uh, to save my life, so I write things down—notes to myself, really—on my work clipboard and then review them after my shift is done. It helps; it actually does help, so… um, yes.” An awkward silence hung in the air, and the woman floundered. “A-anyway, uh, while I’m here, I figured I’d also just adjust James’s medication slightly; I had planned to yesterday, but things got out of hand.” A pause. “I mean, wait, not like that!”

  Liao nodded. “Right, right. I see. Well… don’t let me distract you. Proceed.” There was an awkward pause as the Beijing’s captain felt as though she was out of place. “Can I lend you a hand?”

  It was only after the words left her mouth that Liao realized exactly what she’d said. The doctor’s eyes went wide.

  “I… That is not necessary, Commander Liao, believe me, I—”

  “Uh, no, no, no! Of course not, Doctor—”

  “I’m not… I don’t… I’m not interested in women in that way, Captain, so—”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean—of course not—”

  “No, absolutely not, no, no… no.”

  “No.”

  They stood there awkwardly for a moment and then Liao motioned towards Grégoire’s IV. “The… um. The medication, Doctor.”

  “Oh! R-Right.”

  The woman shuffled forward, checked the levels on the IV, and then switched out the active fluid bags with one on standby. With the task complete, she gave Grégoire and Liao nothing more than a very quick, very embarrassed glance each and then beat the fastest retreat out of the infirmary that Liao had ever seen.

  With a low sigh, Melissa put her face into her palm. “Great. Just… just great. I blame you for this, just so you know.”

  James chuckled. “Okay, so she says, ‘things got out of hand,’ and then you offer to ‘lend her a hand’… Really? You both really just said that by accident?”

  “Apparently so.” She turned back towards him, hands on her hips again. “So, yeah. The sooner you’re discharged, the sooner I can fondle you in private.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” The
re was a pause as he considered his next words. “So… the arrangement’s still on, then?”

  Liao’s smile gave him her answer.

  Conference Room Two

  TFR Beijing

  A week later

  “And so, on the Tehran, the final death toll was sixty-two casualties, including four strike craft pilots, nineteen engineers, eight marines, one civilian contractor, and thirty crewmen who died when the port rail gun chamber exploded.”

  The debriefing, conducted for the mutual benefit of both crews, was led by Captain James Grégoire, who had been quietly discharged from the medical bay a day after Liao’s visit.

  While the captain of the Tehran was recovering quite well, particularly under the ministrations of Commander Liao, his ship had not been so lucky. The Tehran would require a full month in the lunar dry dock to repair all the damage, and there was some speculation that, due to the damage to the superstructure, the ship would never be quite the same.

  Grégoire would not hear of that talk, however, and stubbornly declared that, instead, the ship would be repaired better and stronger than it previously had been; he ordered the damaged areas reinforced and up-armoured, so that the ship’s obvious weak points would be better protected in future engagements. The engineers on the Sydney and the Beijing had, somewhat begrudgingly, accepted his conclusion and mimicked the changes on their own ships as best they could.

  “This coming Thursday, a non-denominational memorial service will be held for those who perished, and Doctor Mahmud would like to remind everyone that his door is always open for grief and loss counselling. We’ve been through a tough time, as a crew and as a family, and there’s no shame in admitting that.” James smiled reassuringly to the combined senior staff of both ships. “I’ll be visiting him myself, so I expect all my senior staff to at least make a quick appointment.”

  Liao nodded her agreement. “And for the Beijing senior staff and crew, I expect the same. Although we mourn the loss of those who have passed, we also look to the future; grief and distraction in the light of so much loss is a normal, expected part of the service, but it must be only a temporary condition. The Toralii are out there, and while the Sydney has completed her mission with the last of the high-energy gravity mines, we can’t rely on these simple tricks to keep them at bay forever.”

  Liao tapped her remote, scrolling the large monitor to the next screen. “But before we discuss our next course of action, I’d like to give everyone here a full debriefing of the Tehran’s mission after contact was lost in the Hades system.”

  The senior staff of the Beijing leaned forward expectantly. No official statement had been made and, accordingly, the rumour mill aboard ship had been spinning in overdrive since the great battle. Everyone in the Beijing’s crew was clamouring for a recounting of what really happened. Although the interval between the battle and the briefing had been only two weeks, for the crew it seemed more like two months.

  Jointly presented by Liao and Grégoire, the debriefing was detailed and complete, reiterating more or less the story Sabeen had told Liao earlier, with the senior staff of the Beijing hanging on every word.

  “…Then Commander Sabeen jumped the ship. The rest you all know.”

  There was a brief pause as the story was digested. When the silence abated, Saara spoke again, and although the majority of the senior staff from both ships had at least some experience with her remarkably easy-to-learn language by now, the repair operation on the Tehran had taken up all of their energy and time. Liao did not begrudge their inattentiveness to their studies of Saara’s dialect and nodded as Lieutenant Yu dutifully translated for her.

  “Saara wants to remind us that, while the strike on the Hades system was decisive to the Toralii Alliance, they are unlikely to take this obvious aggression lying down. The question is not if they will respond in force but when.”

  Liao nodded her head in agreement. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.” She clicked her remote, scrolling the floor-to-ceiling monitor of the conference room across to a new image, one that bore a close-up image of the planet Mars and her moons.

  “The strike on the Hades system taught us that we can beat the Toralii Alliance if we attack when we have the advantage. While we may have given them a bloody nose and also given them cause to stay away from us for the moment, these are temporary measures. We can’t hope to simply mine our system and pray they don’t find a way past it in force.”

  Liao pointed to the image of Mars on the monitor. “So, instead, we’re going to make a stand here, near Mars.”

  Grégoire nodded his agreement. “This comes directly from Fleet Command, ladies and gentlemen. This is the big one. Intelligence believes that if we once more give the Toralii Alliance something to think about, we may be able to find a more permanent solution, either a military one or a diplomatic one. Here’s hoping for the latter.”

  He gave a nod to Liao, who returned it.

  “We’ve also received official confirmation that three completely new Pillars of the Earth have begun construction on the moon, in the very same construction berths, no less. Tentatively, these ships are named the Madrid, the Moscow, and the Tripoli in keeping with the naming tradition we’ve started.”

  Smiles and approving murmurs between all the staff. “They’re still a few years out,” Grégoire cautioned, “but it is heartening to know that there are reinforcements on the horizon. The new ships are packing quite the punch; they’re employing a lot of the new technology we seized from the Toralii and reverse engineered. When these new ships of the line arrive, our ability to project military force will be substantially increased.”

  Liao turned over a page in her notebook. “However,” she began, “that’s still a long way in the future for us. In order for those ships to ever see combat, we have to push the Toralii Alliance away and make sure they stay away, which brings us back to our current course of action.”

  She clicked her remote. Several small dots, ringed by thin, green circles to make them easier to see, appeared on the monitor.

  “These are missile and rail gun batteries on the surface of Mars, built by remotely operated construction teams over the last two months. There are sixteen rail guns and twenty rapid-fire missile batteries stationed on the planet, all clustered into three main fire bases, and all built so that at all times there’s a full battery pointing towards the Mars-Sun L1 Lagrange point.”

  Aharoni raised his hand. “Captain, how do you propose to entice the Toralii to jump into that particular point? No doubt they’ve tried to engage counter-attacks by now and found the innermost jump points to be disabled. Given how badly the failed jump affected our systems, I doubt they would be constantly checking them, even with robotic probes.”

  Liao nodded the man’s way. “Excellent point, Major, and for that I defer to Captain Grégoire.”

  She ceded the floor to the dark-skinned captain, who gave her a formal nod and then addressed the collective senior staff of both ships.

  “We know that the Toralii have some way of communicating with the Forerunner—rather, they did before we ripped out its power core. Without up-to-date jump coordinates, eventually they’ll be unable to jump into this solar system at all, which would obviously put a dent in our ambush if we can’t get them to show up.”

  Grégoire let a slow grin spread over his face despite his best efforts to remain strictly professional. “So the plan is… tag and release. When the trap is set, we’re going to take the Forerunner out of the Beijing’s hold, plug the power supply back in, and let it merrily jump away. We don’t know how long it will take the Toralii to respond, but Saara’s best guess is ‘very quickly.’”

  As though on cue, Saara spoke once more. Lieutenant Yu again translated.

  “Saara says that the Toralii keep at least one fleet on high alert, generally to watch for Kel-Vorian aggression, but also for situations like this. Right now, they’re probably working to find ways to jump into this system, testing each of the jump point
s in turn and methodically plotting bloody vengeance.”

  Saara grumbled something, and Yu gave a sheepish grin. “Saara technically said, ‘a counterattack,’ but I… dramatized it a little.”

  Another response from Saara, then Yu translated. “She does agree, though, that the dramatization is accurate.”

  Liao nodded towards Yu, tapping the edge of her notepad absently. “I’m certain that they’re gunning for revenge, and I’m certain that this time they won’t be caught by surprise. Rather than attacking a supply facility with a number of inactive vessels, we’ll be facing them on an even playing field. We’re going to be essentially going toe to toe with the best the Toralii have to offer. There’s even a chance, Saara informs us, that the Toralii could field the same energy weapon that attacked Earth and use it on our ships.”

  Liao paused a moment, letting the gravity of what she was saying sink in.

  “Despite the best-laid plans, the best weapons and tactics the human race can provide, and all the luck in the world, this is going to be a lot more difficult than the assault on Hades. Yes, this time we have the home-field advantage, but they’ll be coming to us—the element of surprise will be working against us. To pull this off, we—and I mean to say all three crews of all three ships—are going to have to give our absolute best. There is no room for error in this operation, and if we fail, we lose it all. If we can’t hold back the Toralii, we can’t contain and destroy them… and there’ll be nothing between them and Earth. This hand is all in, ladies and gentlemen.”

  Rowe chuckled. “So, no pressure, huh?” She glanced around the room. “I’m guessing it’s far too late for me to become a doctor as my dad always wanted.”

  There were titters from the senior staff. Doctor Saeed leaned in towards the red-headed woman. “Being a doctor doesn’t get me out of it.” He gave her a playful nudge. More chuckles and banter filled the air until Liao held up a hand for quiet.

  “Thank you once again, Summer, for your continued disruptive presence.”

  The redhead bowed playfully in her seat.

  Liao let her settle and then nodded firmly, casting her eyes around the packed briefing room. The brightly lit room was full of faces, all staring at her, and she wondered just how many of them would still be left after the operation.

  Or if any of them would.

  Taking a breath, Liao composed herself, glancing at each of her senior staff, looking in the eyes of each one. She wanted to project an aura of solidarity and strength, to inspire and bolster the courage of each and every one of them.

  Liao wasn’t sure if she succeeded.

  “If there are no further questions… dismissed.”

  Captain Liao’s Quarters

  TFR Beijing

  Four hours later

  It was amazing what four hours worth of sleep could do for you if you really, really needed it, which Liao did. She jumped out of bed as if she had springs on her heels, throwing on her uniform in record time. As a young girl, she had often sung while dressing herself; this was a luxury she did not permit herself this time, but it would be a lie to say that the idea did not cross her mind as she slipped on her epaulettes and tightened her belt.

  Liao spent some time looking at herself in the mirror. Her hair had grown out and was getting too long. Memories of how it floated around with the gravity disabled caused her to strongly consider cutting it. She slowly combed her hair and then put it up in a tight bun. This was to keep it from touching her collar. That was the regulation with women’s hair; it was allowed to be almost any length, but in order to maintain order and formality, it had to be arranged in a style that would not permit it to touch the collar. It was a rule she had spent a great deal of time fighting against but had been forced to accept and then eventually embrace.

  For the female officers under her command, she enforced it strictly, with Rowe being the only woman on board to escape her determined crusade against long hair. Almost all of the other women on board went with bob cuts.

  She clipped the scrunchie bun around the tight ball of hair, giving it even more form and stability, and then silently proclaimed herself presentable. With one glance towards the mirror, Liao adjusted her belt and then opened the hatchway to the corridor beyond.

  Saara was waiting on the other side of the metal door. Liao had not heard a thing and wondered how long the Toralii had been waiting there; it was slightly unnerving to think that all the while she had been playing with her hair, someone had been waiting but a few metres away, separated only by an internal bulkhead and Saara’s sense of decency. She idly wondered if all Toralii were so patient and quiet or if this was something unique to Saara.

  Still, it was very heartening to see Saara moving around the ship without her assigned guard. Liao wanted Saara to feel welcome aboard the ship. She had been an invaluable ally to their cause and had provided them with a well of information—including the language of her people—without which they would have been groping in the dark. Saara clearly took her debt to Liao seriously.

  “Are you ready for the big day?”

  Saara gave a roll of her shoulders, a gesture she had picked up from her time spent with the humans aboard the Beijing. Liao had asked her about it once; the Toralii did not have a “shrug” gesture. Instead, they tended to flick their tails from side to side, something that Melissa saw her doing in tandem with the adopted shrugging motion.

  [“I am as ready as I will ever be, I suppose.”]

  Liao frowned slightly, although she forced her face to return to a neutral expression. “That doesn’t sound very reassuring,” she admitted, and Saara gave another one of her combined shrugs.

  Folding her arms, Liao leaned against the inner frame of the hatchway to her quarters, regarding her Toralii friend with a concerned look painted on her face.

  “Is this… about the upcoming operation? The release of the Forerunner?”

  Saara paused, and Liao could see that she was reluctant to talk… at least, in what essentially amounted to a public corridor.

  “Why don’t you come inside?” Liao beckoned into her quarters, stepping out of the frame so Saara could enter. She didn’t.

  [“I’m sorry, Captain, but I cannot. The captain’s quarters are an almost… sacred place to the Toralii, a tradition we adopted during the early years of our development as we transitioned into a spacefaring race. For me, who am not even a member of your crew, to dare step foot into your private sanctum would spell disaster for us in terms of our fate, Captain.”]

  Saara’s language use was slightly beyond what Liao could comfortably understand, but she got the general gist of things. She had no time for such superstitions, but she respected those among her crew—and otherwise—who had faith or belief of a sort. Melissa gave a polite nod.

  “As you wish, friend. If you wanted, we could arrange a visit to the conference room if it’s not booked.”

  Saara’s smile gave her answer. Minutes later, they were stepping through the threshold to the spacious room, the two of them pulling up chairs. Liao poured them both a glass of water and then got straight down to business.

  “What seems to be the problem, Saara? You don’t think the Toralii Alliance will take the bait?”

  The Toralii shook her head. [“No, I am confident that they will. The Forerunner’s automated systems will tell them everything they need to know in order to jump directly into the jump point we’ve prepared for them. I see no reason why, based on our current intelligence and my knowledge of the Toralii Alliance, they would not eagerly leap upon what they perceive to be the perfect opportunity to strike back.”]

  “I’m very much inclined to agree.” A pause. “Is it… something else, then?” Liao tilted her head. She had often wondered how Saara would integrate into the crew; she was a Toralii, after all, and therefore not only an outsider but someone with whom many of the crew might bear a somewhat understandable animosity. Saara had been spending a great deal of time in the engineering bays of late; if she had encounte
red trouble from the rest of the humans on board…

  [“I… suppose I am concerned about my role in the upcoming battle. While the idea of us fighting other Toralii is not abhorrent to me, we still cannot be sure which faction, specifically, will respond to the Forerunner’s call first. If it is the Toralii Alliance, all is well and good; if it is the Telvan…”]

  Liao could understand her distress. If the Toralii people were as Saara had described them—factionalised, much like the nations of Earth, and often warring—then it stood to reason that she would have no qualms about humanity engaging her enemies. But if her own faction responded to the call…

  “The Forerunner was Alliance property. It’s extremely unlikely any Telvan ships will detect the probe’s hails. And even if they do, it’s less likely still that the Telvan will rally a fleet to fight their enemy’s battle.”

  Saara threw her a questioning look.

  Without her needing to ask, Liao simply nodded her head.

  “But I promise, Saara, if Telvan ships respond to the call, I will do my utmost to try to avoid any bloodshed. I will even allow you to talk to them directly if I can.”

  Saara seemed locked in thought, and Liao gave her the moment to think. Finally, the Toralii slowly nodded her head, her decision apparently made. [“That sounds fair.”]

  Liao gave her friend a little smile and stood, pushing her chair back. “We should make our way to operations. The last of the preparations are being made as we speak.”

  Saara gave Liao a slight nod and then stood. The two walked together to operations, but despite her reassurances, Liao could sense that there was still some unease in the way Saara carried herself.

  Operations

  TFR Beijing

  Liao walked with Saara. The two women, human and Toralii, stepped into the operations room of the TFR Beijing. At once, Liao was besieged by voices, and she addressed them in turn. The missile batteries on the Martian surface reported that they were in perfect firing position. The communications officers on the Tehran and the Sydney both reported that their ships were ready and standing by, and Major Jazz reported that the strike craft were fuelled, armed, and prepared for launch. There was some delay bringing all their power plants up to battle power, however, so the Beijing was the last piece of the puzzle to be set.

  Liao was always nervous before such serious operations. Although she and the crew had been through quite an adventure in the last half year, this was different. Liao felt her stomach doing backflips again, another wave of nausea bubbling in her belly, threatening to cause her to run for the head and empty its contents into the steel bowl.

  Liao's discipline would not allow her to throw up in the command centre of her own ship, so she brutally suppressed the feeling and ignored the sickness. However, despite her best efforts, the upset in her belly remained, doggedly nagging at her; she knew that if artificial gravity were cut, she would almost certainly lose her breakfast.

  Excusing herself from the operations room, she visited the head. Instead of throwing up, however, she reached for her radio.

  “Captain Liao to Doctor Saeed.”

  It took a few moments for the call to be answered, moments that seemed to crawl past. When Saeed’s voice finally filtered through the radio’s tiny speaker, Liao felt relief flood her.

  “This is Saeed. What can I do for you, Captain?”

  Liao knew better than to lie to her physician, but in some circumstances a slight untruth would be preferable to spelling out the whole issue. She did not want to be taken for a coward. “Doctor, I’m experiencing a little stomach upset; it’s possible that my breakfast was undercooked this morning. It’s not too bad, but if you had something to settle it, I’d be quite appreciative.”

  Saeed’s voice seemed entirely understanding, and for that Liao was infinitely thankful.

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” he chirped through the radio. “We’ve been getting a few reports of similar cases today. Honestly, I think it’s some kind of bug going around. Probably to do with the food. I’ll have one of the nurses bring up something to help.”

  Relieved, Liao stepped out of the cramped bathroom and waited outside operations for the nurse. When he arrived, she snatched up the two white-and-red pills and immediately swallowed them. The nurse, sheepishly standing nearby with a full glass of water, merely shrugged and went back the way he had come.

  She gave the pills a few minutes to work. Rowe or someone else in operations would call her radio if her voice was required, but blissfully, nothing like that came through at all. She had a brief encounter with what she and other captains referred to as “pure gold,” a moment or two of complete and utter, uninterrupted silence.

  She rapidly began to feel better and made a mental note to thank Doctor Saeed for his skill. Stepping back through the hatchway to operations, Liao was greeted not with a barrage of reports and requests but with a single voice, Lieutenant Jiang, who called to her from the tactical console.

  “Captain Liao, all sections report condition green, and the Forerunner is ready for launch. Martian surface batteries report they are standing by for fire missions.”

  Jiang glanced around to make sure nobody else had any other comments and then nodded to Liao. “We are clear to initiate the operation.”

  Moving to stand by the command console, Liao nodded her head. “Very good, Mister Jiang.” She deliberately paused as she considered, ordering her thoughts and clearing her mind.

  “Launch the Forerunner.”

  Lieutenant Jiang flicked a single switch, read from her sensors, and then twisted in her chair. “The Forerunner is away, Captain.”

  Liao nodded to her, her hands on her hips. “Very well. When it reaches six hundred metres, return power to the probe.”

  The minutes ticked by as the probe gently drifted away from the ship. When the time came, they restored power with a flick of a switch. A call came from Ling, the radar operator. “Power restored, Captain. The Forerunner has jumped away.”

  Liao settled down in the seat beside the command console, deliberately taking a moment to smooth out her uniform and get settled in. She would likely be sitting down for some time, and she wanted to be comfortable.

  With her hands folded into her lap, Liao looked around the operations room, as if to check that everything was where she expected. She could be patient, yes, but this wait tested even her nerves.

  There had been problems, yes, but at least the Forerunner had gotten away. The most critical part of their plan, then, the setting of the trap, was complete. They had done everything they could possibly have done; the crew had outdone themselves by every measure.

  “And now… we wait.”

  Chapter XIV

  Fire in the Sky