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Chapter 1:

Best posting in the whole kiith, was it? Hah! Ensign Kheral Balek, Kiith Somtaaw Fleet Strikecraft Arm interceptor pilot and heir apparent to the rank of Somtaaw-Re, lit a cigarette and gazed moodily out across the hangar deck of the great Explorer-class mining vessel Kuun-Lan. Even now it was worryingly crowded; there had been several collisions whilst taxiing to and from the elevators already this tour, one of them serious enough to write off both craft and land one pilot in the infirmary. What it would be like during a scramble, or in the rather unlikely event that kiith Somtaaw found the personnel and the budget to bring the Kuun-Lan up to her full design complement of fighters, was something the young Acolyte pilot was trying hard not to think about.

The sandy-haired man watched with mild interest as a four-ship Seeker flight descended from the launch bay, leaning on the railing around the balcony attached for no obvious practical purpose to the Quick Reaction Alert ready-room. This had to be better than that pre-Landfall rustbucket of an Imperator that had constituted the entire Somtaaw fleet prior to the launch of the Explorers, Kheral reminded himself; as one of`Somtaaw's few Soban-trained pilots under the age of forty he could all but write his own ticket, and had. But at this point in time, it seemed as if all he'd gained was the opportunity to be undersexed, underemployed and bored out of his skull somewhere with slightly nicer crew quarters and fewer bits falling off.

Kheral crushed the cigarette butt out in the overflowing ashtray some well-intentioned soul had welded to the railings, and was just considering lighting another when a dull, throbbing klaxon blared throughout the hangar.

"Attention, attention! All hands man your battle stations, all hands man your battle stations! Emergency hyperspace in three minutes!"

Boom Boom Satellites: Shut Up And Explode

Training kicked in immediately. Kheral spun on his heel and jogged towards the personnel elevator on the far side of the ready-room, pausing only to snatch up his flight helmet from the nearby rack. The other three QRA pilots crammed aboard the too-small elevator platform, and clung on grimly as it rocketed upwards with a dull thung of high-powered magnetic repulsion. It slammed to a halt on the launch deck with bone-jarring suddenness, -literally; a previous scramble had taken off a pilot light when someone sprained an ankle- its occupants racing to their assigned ships. Kheral scaled the ladder and swung himself into his cockpit, starting his preflight checklist even as the canopy descended. "Scorcher One One, good to go," he reported crisply, connecting his helmet's O2 feed and sealing the respirator across his mouth and nose. He barely heard the flight leader's acknowledgement, watching in steadily increasing worry as a second Acolyte four-ship was lifted from the hangar bay. "This can not be good," he said to himself.

"All hands, this is the captain." Kheral instinctively straightened in his ejection seat. "We have just received a distress call from the Home Fleet reporting an Imperialist incursion into Hiigaran territory. All communications channels with the Homeworld are being jammed, so we have no intelligence on the size or objective of the enemy force, but we are proceeding to render all possible assistance.

"I don't need to tell you people what the stakes are here. We've all been under fire before, so just remember your training and stay sharp. And may the Martyrs of Kharak watch over us all. Captain out."

"This is gonna suck..." someone murmured.

"Stay cool, rookie," the fighter direction officer soothed. "Scorcher One, you are clear to taxi to catapaults Alpha through Delta."

"Taala, Scorcher One." The flight leader shifted frequencies. "You heard the lady, boys."

"Copy that. Scorcher One One, taxiing to catapault Bravo." Kheral started the small electric motor powering his fighter's landing wheels and sent the Acolyte towards one of the four ramps leading out through the narrow hangar aperture. A crewman in a pressure suit guided him into position with two lighted rods, and the sturdy Bentusi-derived fighter shuddered slightly as a powerful electromagnet rose into place behind its tail, the residual energy beginning to push against the dozen magnets built into the vessel's stern. Red warning lights flashed for fifteen seconds, and then a dull roar fading to a soft hiss indicated the decompression of the launch bay. The hangar doors ground slowly open, and the deck control officer knelt down with both batons pointed towards open space. Kheral shoved the main thruster controls forward just as the electromagnet kicked in. The acceleration pressed him back in his seat as the fighter roared out of the hangar bay, then cut off as a quick burst of retro-thrust brought it to a halt. By now, his central multi-function display was alight with an influx of tactical data from the command ship and the Hiigaran sensor network.

The news wasn't as bad as it might have been. Opposition forces currently amounted to four destroyers, a lone Qwaar-Jet heavy cruiser and a dozen frigates, plus a beleagured assortment of fighters whose presence indicated that there was a carrier in the vicinity. On the other hand, the Home Fleet was showing up several vessels short, including one Avatar and a couple of Revelations. To Kheral's eye, the playing field seemed very nearly even at this stage.

"Scorcher One, Taala. Incoming bandits, vector 017 by negative 12 and engage."

"Taala, Scorcher One. Flight, go card and follow my lead."

"Copy that." Kheral twitched his left-hand attitude control stick and increased the distance between himself and the wing-leader, peering intently at the radar screen. "I make it five bandits, Triikors by their speed."

"Concur. Two, bracket right. Go nose-cold; we'll catch 'em with their pants down." The four fighters split in opposite directions and looped around behind the Taiidani interceptors, disengaging their onboard radar and relying exclusively on the datafeed from the Seeker squadron's Heavy Neutrino Sensor Arrays. Kheral watched the arrow-shaped pips in his HUD slowly transform into the distinctive asymetrical Triikor interceptors, lining up the gunsight on the leader for a deflection shot and watching the range indicator scroll steadily down to...

"Now!" Kheral's index finger tightened on the trigger, sending a two-second burst of a hundred iridium-tipped iron slugs into the enemy fighter's engines. It went up like a firecracker as its fuel tanks ruptured. "Splash one!" the pilot roared exultantly, then swore and flipped his fighter along its own axis as the survivors rolled out of his field of vision. Something carommed off the Acolyte's lower fuselage as a volley of glowing mass-driver rounds whistled through the point in space it had been a few seconds earlier. The Triikor that fired it shot over his head, so close that Kheral thought he saw the pilot's eyes widen in surprise at being out-manouevered by a mere Hiigaran.

"Two, I've picked one up!" his wing-leader called urgently. "I'm on it," he replied tersely, searching the void for his superior's fighter. It was close and heading towards him, jinking violently to spoil the aim of the bandit close on its tail. Kheral headed towards it at full throttle. "Going for a head-on pass, break low now!" he called out, letting rip as the other Acolyte dived sharply. The Triikor never stood a chance, and turned into a short-lived comet of metal and superheating deuterium that tumbled wildly for a few seconds before the canopy burst outwards and a spacesuited figure drifted away from it. "Thanks for the assist, kid!" the wing-leader called out.

"Welcome, skipper. Taala, Scorcher One One. Tai pilot bailed out, request you mark position for SAR pickup."

"Copy that, wilco. Scorcher One, new target at thirty klicks, bearing 047 by positive three; link up with Scorcher elements and assist friendlies."

"Taala, Scorcher One. Flight, form up and follow my lead. Two, I thought I saw you take a hit, are you good to go?"

Kheral glanced over his instrument panel. "Affirmative, lead, no apparent damage; must've glanced off at an angle."

"Copy that. Close formation, fingertips."

* * *

Their targets turned out to be a dozen Kaark bombers, which were engaging a Firelance squadron. The lumbering ion cannon frigates were taking desperate evasive action, light sprays of tracer ineffectually pecking at their assailants from the bridge airlocks; marines or ratings with shoulder arms, Kheral guessed, more of a gesture of defiance than anything else. "Eyes open, people,"warned the wing-leader, "Intelligence says the Tai have started fitting their bombers with tail guns."

"Took 'em long enough," someone muttered. "Weapons and nose hot, engaging!"

Kheral lined up on the nearest bomber and fired a long burst, sideslipping as it was answered with more enthusiasm than accuracy; the new tail guns appeared to be on an unpowered pintle mount, whose addition couldn't have done the structural integrity of the cockpit canopy any favours, and operator training had also evidently been somewhat abbreviated. Better than nothing, he supposed, dipping under the tail-gunner's field of fire and raking the bomber with his own guns until it blew up. But not by much. "Splash one- Jakuul! " The whole fighter lurched violently, and a cacophany of alarms started chiming urgently in his earphones as tracer sizzled past the Acolyte's nose. Kheral tried to bring his fighter around but only about half his manouevering thrusters responded. "I'm hit! Thrusters damaged, tumbling! Son of a bitch, what the hell just hit me?"

"Three new bogeys, interceptors! Watch your backs pilots!"

Kheral swore until he ran out of new profanity and somehow turned his stricken fighter in the general direction of the command ship. "Pan pan pan, Scorcher One One is RTB with damage."

"Copy that. Do you require landing assistance, over?"

Pride and prudence warred for a moment, but Kheral knew a losing proposition when he saw it. "Affirmative, my attitude thrusters are shot to hell; I'll be doing well if I don't wind up on the moon."

A Worker was standing by with a magnetic grappler, and towed the stricken Acolyte into the launch bay, depositing it on the main elevator. Kheral ran through the post-landing checklist in an ill humour, chagrined at the way he'd been caught out, becoming so fixated on the target in front of him that he'd let the Imperialists catch him unawares.

The taxiing motor declined to start, compounding his frustration. “Oh, come on! Leave me at least a little bit of my Qwaardamn dignity!” Kheral grumbled, thumping the instrument panel. A recovery cart was waiting for him at the bottom of the elevator shaft, and the crew hooked a tow cable around the nose gear and dragged the battered fighter to the repair bay. Kheral popped the canopy and clambered awkwardly down the proffered ladder, pulling off his helmet and barely resisting the urge to throw it across the deck. "All yours, Chief. Sorry about the mess."

"Don't worry, lad, I've seen worse," replied Chief Petty Officer (Eng.) Meklan, regarding the young pilot with almost fatherly concern; down at the sharp end the Somtaaw Fleet Strikecraft Arm wore rank with Number One mess blues only. "What happened?"

"Got bounced while I was busy pasting another bandit," Kheral replied glumly. "Of all the stupid rookie mistakes..."

"So learn from it. That which does not kill us, right?"

Kheral laughed weakly, trying not to look at the jagged, blackened scar across his fighter's underside. "Bloody close-run thing that time around. How soon can I be back out there?"

"Ask me again once... Ah, here we go." A fitter had succeeded in prying away the remains of an access panel with a crowbar. Meklan examined the stricken fighter's innards with the aid of a pocket torch. "Not too bad," he declared. "Armour took the brunt of it; couple of boards got smashed but that's the worst. I can have her flying in about twenty minutes, maybe a bit less. Don't wander off too far, eh?"

"No further than the QRA mess, Chief, promise." Kheral tucked his helmet under one arm and fell in step with a couple of Seeker pilots. "So, did I miss much?" he asked, fishing a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his hip pocket.

"Not much; looks like things are winding down now. Those Firelances you bailed out slagged the Tai carrier, and it looks like this was just a big commerce raid anyway," replied one of them.

"So how the hell did they get this far in-system?" Kheral wondered. "I thought we were looking at the fag-end of a maximum effort that got chewed up by the frontier patrols."

"Round the back way apparently," the second Seeker pilot replied. "We linked up with some Manaani pilots hunting for that carrier, and they said the Tai did a drive-by on their picket squadron covering Chapel Perilous."

"They got through that maze with what, four squadrons of fighters and a couple of dozen corvettes covering the battlewagons?" Kheral whistled, impressed despite himself. There were patches of the Hiigaran system's outermost asteroid belt where chunks of planetary-collision debris orbited mere scores of metres apart; a heavy cruiser could block the orbit of three or four along its own length. "Got to give them ten out of ten for nerve, though no points for common sense."

"Imperial Loyalists generally have more balls than brains," replied the first Seeker pilot sagely. "And we've probably killed most of the stupid ones by now."

He made it as far as the balcony before his hands started to shake, and he still managed to strike a match on his first try. Kheral was really quite proud of himself for that.

"You doing alright, kid?" Kheral turned, and saw his wing-leader carrying a large mug of tea. "Here, get that down you."

"Thanks Rin." Kheral took a sip, and nearly spat it out in revulsion. "Ugh! How much sugar did you put in this?"

"Drink up, all of it; it'll take the edge off the shock without rotting your lungs."

Kheral shot his superior a mutinous look but finished the tea without further complaint. "I only smoke because it pisses Dad off anyway," he added.

"Hah! How old are you, fifteen?"

"Only in new money." Hiigara's rather longer year was something the Kushan-born former Exiles were still adjusting to. Kheral stubbed out the cigarette, sobering somewhat. "Everyone get back alright?"

"One of the recon pilots had to punch out, not heard anything yet. Plenty more came in damaged, but yours was about the worst. I saw the panels they stripped off your ship; you did well to get her home in that state."

"That'll teach me to watch my back," Kheral agreed with a wry smile.

"Happens to the best of us. Anyway, head shed wants a piece of that cruiser before they make a run for it; ready to get back in the saddle?"

"Much as I ever will be."

* * *

"Those things are long overdue for the scrapyard," someone remarked sourly. Kheral at glanced the dozen Thunderbolt Mk.3 bombers lumbering alongside his Acolyte, inclined to agree. Refitting them with the Acolyte's unique remote-refueling system had improved their handling characteristics and freed enough internal space for a nose-gun, but they were still easy meat for strikecraft and flak, and even the ponderous traverse of a Qwaar-Jet's guns could score a lucky hit. Fortunately, like most Taiidani ships of the line, the Qwaar-Jet was highly vulnerable to attacks from astern and above or below; a skilled and cautious bomber pilot could get in several shots from maximum range and break away before straying into its firing solution, reattacking in the same pattern from another vector before the stricken capital ship could come about to engage.

"I count three escorts, probably Seejurs," called out the Seeker pilot providing forward reconnaissance. "And I'm getting some extra fire-control radar emissions, at least two sets; source seems to be the cruiser. Looks like this one's had the refits."

Kheral's eyes narrowed behind his helmet visor, and he peered closely at the radar screen. The Taiidani Republic had realised fairly early on that vast fleets of highly-specialised capital ships covered by equally specialised escort vessels were an expensive luxury, and devoted most of their defence budget to improving their big iron's ability to look after itself versus strikecraft. Those still claiming fealty to the Imperial dynasty had been slower to change their own thinking for ideological reasons, but pragmatism was slowly winning out. This wasn't going to be fun...

"Spread formation, go card."

"Copy that."

At three kloms the flak started up, slow-firing but quite heavy calibre cannon firing airburst shells, probably repurposed Raachok turrets. Not as bad as it might have been; unless one blew up less than a dozen metres from your hull it was possible to weather quite a few hits, and the Somtaaw formation was loose enough to give the enemy targeting AI serious trouble placing shots for maximum effect. "Concentrate your fire on the Seejurs," Rin ordered. "Voodoo, try and burn those damn flak turrets off the hull first!"

Kheral nudged his attitude thrusters to avoid a burst of fire as the Acolytes entered the range of the Seejur wing's guns, flinching as a flak cannister blew up dangerously close to his starboard wingtip. So-called Defenders like the Seejur and its Hiigaran copy seldom scored many kills against the loose, widely-spaced formations favoured by Hiigaran fighters, but then they didn't really have to; their pilots were trained to fire a single short deflection burst at a target and then move on to the next, the objective being to spoil the enemy's aim by forcing them to jink all over the sky. Combined with the heavy flak going off all around, even three Defenders were-

"Holy shit!" A glowing ball of plasma the size of a small car leapt out from the cruiser and blotted an Acolyte from the sky. Kheral yelled in pain and averted his eyes from the blinding flash. "They've got their main armament trained on us! Hit the big guns, fast!" He lined his gunsight up on the huge turret as its muzzle swiveled to bear further back and out than any Tai battlewagon had a right to be capable of, slamming the throttle forward in the hope of getting into range before it could get another shot off. Plasma bombs from Voodoo flight sailed past, flak bursts rattled the whole fighter and railgun slugs crisscrossed the sky all around him but all Kheral could see was that huge hole in the centre of the turret as it seemed to point straight at him...

An internal explosion ripped the turret clean off its sponson, spinning the cruiser around. Kheral released a trigger he didn't even remember pulling and worked his attitude and braking thrusters, aiming to skim over the dorsal hull and dive underneath the stricken cruiser, hopefully too low for its guns to depress, then realised it was unlikely the cruiser could have fired if it wanted to; plumes of fire were venting out of a great rent in the vessel's side where the aft turret had been, spinning the stricken vessel around in a lazy circle, and the main drives were unlit. Escape capsules were spilling away from it like birds from a falling tree, and as he watched another internal explosion tore several armour plates clean off the dorsal hull, probably the fire reaching the ammunition for the flak guns.

"Attention, Kushan strikecraft," a Taiidan-accented voice growled over the distress frequency. "Our reactor seals have been compromised; it would behoove you to get out of the blast radius."

Kheral flipped his Acolyte over and gunned the main engines, sideslipping wildly to avoid the lifeboats as they jetted away on high-powered rocket motors. An instant later, the fighter shuddered from nose to tail as the blast wave rolled over it. Its pilot let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding and brought his ship to a dead stop, switching on his collision-avoidance LIDAR to avoid pranging either a lifeboat or what was left of the cruiser. "Nice of you to warn us," he remarked conversationally into his radio mic.

"Consider it professional courtesy," replied the Taiidani who'd spoken earlier, presumably the ranking survivor. "Could I possibly prevail upon you to reciprocate by not using our lifeboats for target practice as your military is so often wont to do?"

"Yeah, like you Imperials are a bastion of fucking military correctness," someone snarled.

"Button it!" Rin interjected. "Anyone fires on an escape pod and I'll blow him out of the sky myself. Scorcher One is RTB,now."

They were within sight of the Kuun-Lan when the Home Fleet command ship, which happened to be a Nabaal vessel this year, broadcast a message of thanks from which Somtaaw was mysteriously omitted. Angry mutterings from the Acolyte pilots were silenced when a nearby Firelance in Nabaal colours signaled them with its message lamp: KIITH-SA WROTE THE SPEECH. OUR CO TRIED TO ARGUE BUT WAS OVERRULED. FRIGATE SQUADRON N32 OWE SOMTAAW OUR LIVES AND WONT FORGET IT.

"Poor bastards," Rin remarked. "Bet you a week's wages their CO gets dumped out on half-pay for standing up for us, too."

"No bet," agreed one of the Thunderbolt pilots. "I dunno about you lot, but I could have lived with us getting annexed if their kiith-sa wasn't such an arse."

"He's actually not an unpleasant bloke if you meet him socially," Kheral added. "Bit too slick for his own good, but he's hilarious when he's drunk; I'd leak some video footage of a certain anniversary party to the media if there weren't people I'll have to see again in it."

"Heh. I forget how nobby you are sometimes," his wing-leader observed.

"Must be doing something right, then. Gear... down."

* * *

Kheral powered down his taxiing motor and ran through his checklist methodically, using the familiar routine to soothe his still-frayed nerves. A dull clang made him glance up, and he watched with mild interest as the refitted Providence resource gatherer that served as the Kuun-Lan's lighter descended to the main hangar deck via the heavy-duty elevator. A sizeable party of marines and several medical officers were heading towards it at the double. Must be doing SAR pickups from the cruiser, Kheral supposed, pulling off his helmet. Wonder if they'll let us paint a turret kill-marker on the squadron birds? A flash of movement caught his eye, and he saw a figure in a pilot walking slowly towards the lighter. What he could see of the man's expression beneath the helmet he had yet to remove was not reassuring.

"Jez?" Rin called out. "Jez! Jesban, whatever you're thinking, don't!"

Kheral swung himself over the side of the cockpit, hung there a moment to break his fall, and then dropped. He landed in a crouch, unbuckling the holster of his service automatic as he straightened. Rin caught his eye and shook his head minutely. Kheral subsided, keeping his hand on the butt and his eye on Jesban's hands; he was a powerfully-built man, and if he kicked off...

"Jez, look at me," Rin urged, putting his hands on the younger man's shoulders. "This is crazy; you're better than this..."

"Spare me the 'moral high ground' lecture," Jesban snapped.

"Turning into one of them won't bring anyone back, Jez. Now give me your sidearm before you get yourself in trouble."

Jesban seethed for a long moment, then unbuckled his holster and lifted the weapon out between thumb and forefinger. He handed it over to Rin, shot Kheral a look just shy of outright hatred, and stalked off without another word.

Kheral found his cigarettes and lit one, inhaling deeply. "Well, that was fun," he muttered.

Rin shrugged helplessly. "Jez had a wife and a couple of kids in cryosleep with him in Tray Six. He made it, they didn't."

Kheral winced. "That's... Hell, there's not a word for what that is."

Rin nodded, his expression indecipherable. Relatively few of the Exiles had had close friends or family back on Kharak, susceptibility to homesickness being a strong disincentive to sign up for the Gold List, but cases like Jesban's were far from rare. "Go get cleaned up, kid," he said at last. "The Old Man'll probably want a word with you."

It was something of an open secret that Kheral was a relative of the Kuun-Lan's commanding officer; the passing facial resemblance would have given it away even if it weren't common knowledge that Ifriit Balek Somtaaw-Re and Rear-Admiral Tarn Irbol were brothers-in-law. It had never been openly discussed, the black and scarlet medal ribbon on his mess jacket and his proven competence forestalling any suggestion of nepotism, and it was assumed that Kheral was a distant cousin from some cadet branch of the Balek family in whom Tarn was taking a dutiful interest at Reyan's behest.
This was wrong in almost every detail, not that Kheral was about to correct them.

He snapped to attention and saluted smartly. The Captain returned it and gestured to the ready-room door. Kheral entered and stood in front of the desk at parade rest until his superior took his seat, removing his cap and setting it on the desk. Kheral recognised the gesture for what it meant; no cap, no formalities. He was tempted to leave his own on and feign ignorance, since he had a pretty good idea of what was about to be said and did not feel terribly well-equipped to deal with it just now, but discarded the idea as unworthy of him; behaving like a petulant teenager wasn't going to get Uncle Tarn off his back.

"At ease, kid. How you holding up?"

"No worse than the rest of the squadron," Kheral replied rather pointedly, reaching across the tiny office to hang his own cap on a coathook before taking a seat.

"Now, now," Tarn replied, more amused than anything else. "We agreed I wouldn't treat you any different from the rest of the crew, but you never said I couldn't worry more."

"Yeah, I'm sorry, that was uncalled for. It's been kind of a rough day at the office, you know?"

"Tell me about it," Tarn agreed. "We had the Imperials hitting four different flanks at once and Home Fleet still trying to keep their fighter screen in reserve in case they turn out to have some ADWs squirreled away after all and some rookie taking forty litres of paint off the hull trying to land a Worker under fire and your mother finding out you were out there today..." Kheral banged his head gently on his commander's desk. "It would help you'd call her every once in a while," Tarn suggested.

"If Mum wants me to call her, she can stop complaining about my career choices every single time we speak, which she has continued to do in spite of any advice she might have received to the contrary. It's not that I'm unsympathetic to her desire to see me live to a ripe old age..."

"Yeah, I know. But I'd hate to see you turn around and find she's gone and the last conversation you ever had was a fight."

"So would I, but let's face it, me calling her won't help that right now. She'll come out of it in her own time or not at all." Everything but his voice stated that Kheral dd not greatly care which option his mother settled upon.

"You're as stubborn as she is," Tarn grumbled. "But you're also probably right there. Oh, and I heard you mention thatvideo footage earlier. I should probably warn you that arranging a private viewing for your squadron-mates would be... detrimental to your prospects for advancement."

"I only meant the bit with the dancing!" Kheral protested. "Vilrath nodded off before the bit with you in it."

"Nevertheless," Tarn said forbiddingly.

"Alright, all right. You continue to honour your promise not to give me special treatment, and I won't let the crew see you, Dad and Uncle Rey doing the limbo. Deal?"

"Deal."

Chapter 2:

"Okay, someone remind me what problem this is supposed to solve?" Kheral grumbled, not caring in the least for being in a cockpit yet unable to control his own destiny.

"Half the wear and tear on the drives, and we can kip in shifts on long runs?" suggested the pilot currently flying the bizarre 'corvette'.

"Oh, yeah, that's an idea that's going to end well..."

The Acolyte Composite Vessel had in fact been conceived, by a committee of civilian engineers, as a direct replacement for the Hammer and Cavalier-class gunships that were being phased out of frontline service by most spacefaring kiithid. Whether anybody particularly wanted to replace either design with a vessel that had nearly all the same weaknesses and only minor performance improvements was not clear to the frontline pilots of Somtaaw Fleet Strikecraft Arm, but presumably someone had seen sufficient merit in the idea to permit four Acolytes to be modified for trials.

"Genesis, Taala. Exercise terminated, return to the Command Ship and stand by for new tasking."

"Copy that. Two, stand by to disengage link."

"With pleasure!" Kheral resumed control with mixed relief and nervousness, immediately putting some distance between himself and his partner. "Guess we found that Mannie destroyer."

"Or someone found us..."

Having finished helping the Home Fleet pick up lifeboats and tow the worst of the wreckage into a stable parking orbit for later disposal, the Kuun-Lan was making a short detour on her way back to the site of Somtaaw's in-system mining claim at the behest of Kiith Manaan, to assist in searching for a Revelation-class destroyer that had been separated from the Chapel Perilous picket fleet when the Imperialist raiding party blasted through. The last communication from the UHNS Bushan-Re reported significant engine damage and, ominously, an unidentified vessel of considerable size lurking on the edge of their detection range. That could mean several things, nearly all of them extremely bad.

Minutes later, Kheral found himself shepherding a Worker kitted out for repair duty towards the stricken Manaani destroyer, in the unaccustomed position of being formation leader through seniority. His wingmate was actually some years older than him, an Exodus veteran by the name of Jira who had joined the Somtaaw only recently. Nobody had found out her birth kiith, let alone her reasons for leaving it, and proposing increasingly ludicrous explanations -a Nabaali spy, Karan S'Jet's illegitimate daughter, a former Kadeshi prisoner- had been a popular pastime in the QRA ready room until Rin had found out and put a stop to it.

"Gotta be rock rats," she remarked as they neared the stricken Bushan-Re. "Imperialists would've just hosed her, but to the Raiders she's valuable loot."

"They might have some clever plan about flying in under false colours, or just be really short of spaceworthy hulls."

"First one I can see, maybe, but those pricks'd let their daughters marry a Tobie before they'd stoop to pressing one of our boats into service."

"Bet you dinner?"

"You're on."

"I don't know about you fighter jockeys," interjected a Worker pilot, "but I'll be a lot happier if we never find out!"

"Better get cracking then, hadn't you?" Kheral suggested mildly. "Taala, Magic Five. Rendezvous complete, requesting further instructions."

"Magic Five, Taala. Vector 020 negative four and assume guard position. And stop hitting on your wingmate."

"Copy that. Not jealous, are you?" he replied smoothly. The fighter direction officer chose not to dignify that with a response.

The Bushan-Re wasn't as badly damaged as initially feared; a lucky shot had seared through the hull and pierced both engine exhausts, leaving the destroyer's main drives able only to spin her around on her centre of gravity and taking her cleanly out of the fight. More critically, her navigation systems had been knocked about badly enough that neither the bridge crew nor the automatic systems had detected the interference of a dampening field until the hyperspace core burned out. A core intended for a Chieftain-class mobile refinery was broken out of stores and conveyed to the stricken Revelation, whilst work crews in pressure suits carefully positioned the replacement hull plating fabricated by the Workers for final lockdown. The Acolytes hung in space nearby, maintaining guard against whatever was stalking the Bushan-Re.

* * *

"Are you guys seriously playing I-Spy over there?" Kheral laughed.

"If you can think of a better way of killing time..."

"You could always come give us a hand if you're that bored," suggested one of the Manaan engineers.

"Why not? Anything's better than sitting here counting pebbles."

Kheral gently lifted his helmet's visor to rub eyes blurred from too long peering at his sensor scope, and pulled his respirator away from his face for just long enough to take a long draught from the bottle kept in a pouch by his left knee. The surprisingly palateable energy drink refreshed him slightly, the electrolytes and caffiene taking the edge off a steadily worsening headache. "I should've brought a book," he grumbled to nobody in particular, wincing as a sharp pain lanced through his temple.

"Lead, are you okay?" Jira called. "You're drifting out of position."

"What? Oh, hell!" Kheral nudged the attitude thrusters and put another dozen metres between his Acolyte and the destroyer. "Thanks, Two. Don't worry, just a headache I think; the refresh rate on these bloody displays is going to be the death of me..."

"Check your life support's running alright; you don't sound too good."

"I'm fine, really," he protested mildly, "just spent too long staring at the radar screen." But he still tapped a button below one of his MFDs and brought up the environmental controls. The readouts showed nothing amiss, but Kheral manually boosted the oxygen levels in the gas mix anyway; malfunctioning instruments weren't unheard of, and he was showing some of the early symptoms of hypoxia. The increased O2 flow seemed to help a bit, and he took another pull from the bottle for good measure.

"Wish they'd hurry up," he muttered, glancing over his shoulder as the Workers finally engaged their Phased Assembly Beams to weld the replacement panels seamlessly into the destroyer's hull; the Somtaaw's rather simplified version of the technology was significantly less persnickety than that employed by the famous Mercy corvettes, but a damn sight slower.

"So do the Raiders, I reckon; why not let us do all the hard work for them?" a Worker crewman added. "Unless they bottled it..."

"We should be so lucky," his Manaani colleague replied gloomily.

Kheral pondered this uneasily. Whoever was allegedly shadowing the Bushan-Re had avoided a straight fight when all they were facing was a single crippled destroyer, albeit with full weapons function, and now the odds were stacked even further against them. But if they'd simply despaired of engaging the Bushan-Re's Somtaaw escorts without unacceptable casualties, their departure by hyperspace would have been picked up.

So they're either settling in to lurk until some unsuspecting merchie or survey ship wanders through, which would be fairly pointless given that not even Manaan sail through that rockpile behind us if they can help it, or they know something we don't.

"Attention, Bushan-Re. This is Fleet support unit Mike Alpha One Five, we are responding to your distress call."

"Uh, copy that Mike Alpha One Five," someone on the Bushan-Re's bridge replied. "The Kuun-Lan's people have already patched up the worst of the damage, but if you guys have a replacement hyperspace core..."

"I think we can manage something. We're inbound in your four o'clock at twelve kloms, see you in a couple minutes."

There was a soft triple-beep in Kheral's earphones, indicating that his fighter's secure radio was handshaking with another unit. "This is the Bushan-Re," a mildly garbled voice said a moment later, speaking in low tones as if fearful of being overheard. "Mike Alpha One Five is in the middle of being converted to an escort carrier unit; they won't be leaving drydock under their own power for another week."

"You're sure of that?" Rin said dubiously; fleet disposition reports had been known to contain the odd typographical error.

"Positive; my son's posted to one of them."

"Understood. Magic Five, intercept and do a flyby."

"Copy that. I've got an idea..." Kheral switched back to broadcasting in-clear, and flipped his Acolyte's radar on and off a couple of times for good measure.

"Magic Five Zero, Taala. We just lost your radar feed," the fighter-direction officer cut in, also in-clear and right on cue.

"Taala, Magic Five Zero. It just died on me too; sweeps for a few seconds then flashes RESET. Let me try recycling it..." he repeated the performance. "Nope, it's buggered."

"Copy that, Magic Five Zero. Return to the Command Ship for repairs. Five One, provide escort."

"Taala, Magic Five. Think they went for it?" he added over the secure channel.

"We'll know in about thirty seconds, lead. They're coming up in your one o'clock low."

"Got 'em." Kheral trained his Acolyte's multi-spectrum optics on the approaching Matriarch-class support frigates, his unease deepening. "Flying frigates in delta formation isn't exactly by the book..."

"Yeah. And see that pennant number on the leader's bow? That's the font the Paktu use, not Manaan."

"I'll have to take your word on- Bloody hell." Kheral blinked. "Two, am I seeing things, or do those bridge windows look like they're painted on?"

"If you are, then so am I. Whatever these things are, they sure as hell aren't support frigates."

Kheral had yet to form a reply when a blinding flash of scarlet sliced across his vision; the Bushan-Re had brought her main armament to bear and fired her twin ion cannons just barely across the lead frigate's bow. "Attention Mike Alpha One Five, or whoever the hell you are. Power down your engines and prepare to be boarded; you have ten seconds to comply and will not receive a second warning," the destroyer's captain said coldly.

The frigates shimmered briefly, then vanished. "What the crap-?"

Cheap Trick: Mighty Wings

Kheral had dragged his Acolyte into a violent evasive turn before he'd even finished the thought. The reflex action saved his life, a short burst of coilgun slugs glancing off the fighter's armour at a shallow angle. A flash of rust-streaked hull metal was suddenly outlined by a scarlet box, and a wireframe image appeared on his left-hand MFD. Raider gunboats, the so-called 'Thief' class designed for boarding actions and softening up civilian ships; not all that dangerous to a modern fighter except in superior numbers, or if they took you by surprise.

A two-tone howl sounded, accompanied by a blinking text warning across his head-up display. "Bollocks! Where did they come from?" he hissed, continuing the shallow turn and looking over his shoulder. Two narrow plasma trails, closing fast. Kheral reversed the turn and fired off several chaff bundles. The clouds of tinfoil confetti created radar and lidar returns the size of a frigate, but only one of the missiles detonated in them. Turanics like to mix and match active-radar and heatseekers, Kheral recalled belatedly, S-turning sharply and tossing out half a dozen decoy flares.

The last thing he thought before the missile loomed large as a planet in his reflector was, or so he claimed later, "I cut that a bit fine..."

What he actually said, as the missile veered a few degrees to the left and detonated, came out more like, "Fuckingcuntyshittingarsenuggets!"

The missile had exploded just barely outside the lethal radius of its fragmentation warhead. The Acolyte was thrown across the sky like a pasteboard glider caught in a gust of wind. Kheral was flung heavily against his seat restraints, half-blinded by the explosion, and it was several seconds before he could correct the spin.

"You alright kid?" someone called; Kheral thought it might have been Jesban.

"Still flying," he replied shakily, manfully suppressing the strong urge to vomit. "Lost a few litres of paint, but I'm still flying. Two, rejoin when you can."

"Copy that, I'm- Watch out, you've picked one up!"

Kheral fired the main engines and rolled his Acolyte along its x-axis, lining up a Turanic interceptor in his gunsights. He raked it from nose to tail as it shot beneath him but didn't see if he scored a kill or not, but suddenly there were three more coming in from the left and he had other problems. He caught a brief glimpse of a Raider strike carrier illuminated by brilliant cerulean fireballs as the Thunderbolts engaged it, then swerved to engage a missile corvette. The threat warning receiver shrieked briefly, but he was pulling the trigger before the Turanic gunner could even get a decent lock. There was a painfully bright flare as a coilgun slug hit one of the missile pods, and Kheral had to turn his head quickly to avoid being dazzled. If this old girl didn't already need a respray... he thought irrelevantly.

Things seemed to be winding down. A somewhat battered strike carrier was lumbering away from the engagement, its remaining strikecraft diving for home. Kheral caught a glimpse of a few tiny quantum wavefronts forming; apparently the rumours about the Raiders swiping Bentusi fighter drive tech and freeing up enough internal space in their strikecraft for a hyperspace core were true.

"Looks like you owe me dinner, lead," Jira observed wryly.

"Glad you lived to collect."

* * *

"Bloody hell." Kheral couldn't think of much else to say, so he said it again. "Bloody hell." The Acolyte's hull was almost entirely black, only odd patches of rust-coloured primer or royal blue topcoat visible on the upper surfaces. Some sort of latticework broadcast dish, apparently part of the holographic emitter system the Raiders had been using, was dangling from one outrigger.

"Blimey, lad. I'm not going to let you borrow them if you keep bringing them back like this!" Chief Meklan quipped.

"Still flies alright, doesn't it?" he rejoined.

"Oh, fine. Just try to avoid shooting at twenty tons of thermite, lox and rocket fuel from point-blank range in future, eh lad?" the NCO suggested.

"Not something I planned on making a habit of, Chief, I assure you." He glanced over his shoulder as a haulage cart descended the main elevator, carrying a bevelled oblong of greyish brown metal nearly the size of a fighter. "What the hell's that?"

"Old distress beacon apparently; someone spotted it orbiting one of the bigger rocks and snagged it. Maker knows where it's from, but they say it might be worth a bit of brass."

Kheral eyed the beacon with mild interest. Its surface was mottled in a way that wasn't caused by micro-meterorite impacts, radiation or any other space phenomenon he'd ever heard about; if anything, it resembled the surface of a stone that had just been scraped clean of moss and lichen. Splashed by corrosives, maybe, he mused.

The haulage cart headed straight for a hazardous-materials storage bunker, a heavily-armoured compartment which normally held beehive charges for breaking large asteroids up into easily-processed chunks. Without really knowing why, Kheral was rather pleased to see the thick metal door close and lock on the strange, alien object.

Chapter 3:

Being flightcrew and a junior officer earned you your own quarters, such as they were. Each cabin was about two and a half metres by two, and contained a bunk, a desk and computer terminal and a washstand. Storage space consisted of an overhead locker, three drawers under the bed and a mirrored cabinet over the sink, and there were no viewports or portholes or whatever the hell you were supposed to call them anywhere on this deck. The walls and ceiling still reeked of fresh paint, Command having recently relented in the face of incipient mutiny and replaced the hideous institutional pale green of the sort used in schools, hospitals and prisons with a more aesthetically pleasing blue-grey.

All in all it wasn't much, but not a lot worse than someone on a pilot's salary could afford to rent back on Hiigara; even after fifteen Orbits of rebuilding, nearly a quarter of a Kushan century, residential property was still a seller's market. At least it was decently soundproof. Kheral sat down heavily on the bed and dragged off his boots, absently reaching out to turn his computer console on. Fifteen emails, mostly official bulletins about nothing terribly important. He made a mental note of the one about the possibility of organising a display team, opened the media player and started streaming radio.

"Good evening fellow crewmen, this is hip hop an' happening KLRN with your host, Kam Gerdun!" an irritatingly cheerful voice said at about three hundred words a minute; the internal radio network was manned by enthusiastic amateurs, and was tolerable only because they were allowed to pick their own playlists.

Led Zeppelin: Houses Of The Holy

Once the kettle was filled and switched on, Kheral sprawled on his bunk and picked up the book that he'd left on the pillow, a collected volume Rei Magann's cryosleep poetry that a well-meaning relative had bought him upon hearing he would be seeking a career amongst the stars. Kheral found the man's language and imagery to be both overwrought and obtuse, but felt obliged to persist to the bitter end; his copy was a pre-Landfall hardback edition and therefore quite valuable.

There was a low rumble, and the whole ship rocked hard enough to knock the kettle over and throw hot water -not yet painfully so, fortunately- over very nearly everything in the room. "Oh, hell! What're you doing up there, handbrake turns?" Kheral grumbled, grabbing a t-shirt from the laundry hamper wedged into a corner and using it to mop up.

The Kuun-Lan was currently in hyperspace, making to rendezvous with the science vessel Clee-San to have some of her specialists take a look at the old disaster beacon they'd found adrift near the Bushan-Re; it seemed that someone higher up had spotted an opportunity to make cheap political capital out of the discovery by keeping it in-house. The relative inactivity wasn't totally unwelcome -being bored is greatly preferable to being under fire- but after two days in hyper there wasn't even much in the way of makework left, and the atmosphere in the Strikecraft Component quarters was reminiscent of a rainy bank holiday weekend.

Kheral set down the book, suddenly unable to face any more bizarre, almost wilfully indecipherable metaphorical imagery that was less likely to be inspired by a cryosleep dream than a really spectacular MDMA trip. He glanced at his wristwatch, and on impulse shot an instant message out to Jira to see if she felt like collecting on the bet she'd won back in Chapel Perilous. She replied in the affirmative five minutes later, and they arranged to meet in the Recreation Deck in half an hour. Kheral debated with himself over the correct attire for a few moments -this was hardly a date, but he felt obliged to smarten up at least a little- and finally decided to simply shower, shave and don a fresh day uniform.

* * *

The Kuun-Lan's Recreation Deck was a rather more modest affair than its grandiose name suggested. It was sited directly above the hangar module, squeezed in around the elevator shafts as they passed between the Command sector and the main body of the ship. Space had been found for a small cinema, a gym and a couple of games courts and a small commissary with an attached restaurant, and it was to the latter that Kheral was headed. He didn't eat there often; the food and service weren't very much better than you got in the canteen, and the mark-up for the ambience was pretty hefty for what you actually got. If you wanted quiet conversation, however, it was all that was on offer.

Jira was slightly early, and had claimed a table in the non-smoking section. "Hope you don't mind, but I can't bear the smell of stale cigarette smoke," she said apologetically.

"Me neither, actually. Want me to go place our orders?"

Dinner arrived a few minutes later, steak for Kheral and some sort of fish for Jira, by which time Kheral was helpless with laughter as she described the events of the last shore leave the squadron had been granted before departing on this tour. "How did I miss this?" he groused, once he'd recovered his breath.

"Because you were so knackered from Academy training that you nodded off before we left, apparently," Jira replied. "Just as well, really; you'd have probably died."

"Would've been worth it. So how'd you end up with us, anyway?" Kheral asked, sipping his fruit juice. "Everyone thinks you've got a Past."

Jira chuckled. "Hardly. I used to be with Haalok, one of the service-sector kiithid that made a living off the Mothership project."

"Not familiar with them, I'm afraid."

"No reason you should be; we weren't especially big back on Kharak, and what's left now wouldn't fill this room. My parents were spacers, and I followed them into the family business after secondary school because I couldn't think of anything else to do. I qualified on the kiith's supply tenders, and Dad and I ended up hitching a ride out and back on the Mothership when our boat mechanical'd on us. Next thing I know they're drafting anyone who can fly so much as a remote-control aeroplane, and I ended up in Blades. I'm still alive, so I must've picked up the knack pretty quick.

"Anyway, the war ends and we end up doing basically the same job as we were back home. 'Course, now I knew what real flying was like it was boring as fuck, Home Fleet and the big merchies were taking resupply back in-house so the money was drying up anyway and Dad and I had a blazing row about the Somtaaw I was dating..."

"Daddy didn't like his little princess dating a miner, hmm?"

"Daddy mostly doesn't like his little princess dating another woman, though if I'd got as far as mentioning the fact she was a miner I don't doubt he'd have cut up even stroppier. Anyway, in the end I told him he could go and boil his arse and signed on with you lot."

"Sorry to hear about that," Kheral replied, unable to think of anything else to say.

"Don't be," she replied with a sad smile. "All in the past now. Anyway, your turn."

"Me? Not much to tell, really. My family's old money, or what passes for it these days. I wanted to fly fighters, but at the same time I didn't want there to be any suggestion I was trading on my name, so I applied for a place at the Soban Academy. Did okay, not stellar but good enough to get me assigned to an Explorer rather than the old Shining Path. So far so good, I suppose; I'm no Palten of the Star Guard, but six certs and a probable in eight combats isn't too shabby though I say it myself, even if four of them were Raider shitheaps that can't outfly a Blade trainer."

"Here now!" Jira protested good-naturedly. "I'll not hear a word said against the Blade series."

"The series overall, fine, but I'm talking about the 5b here."

"Yeesh! I take your point." The initial-production Blade Mk5a had been hastily redesigned to be faster and cheaper to mass-produce after the destruction of Kharak, at a cost of significantly reduced reliability and component life. Only ever intended as a wartime expediency measure, they had been quickly phased out of UHN service after Landfall in favour of a new production series only slightly modified from the prewar version, and Somtaaw had reluctantly acquired the remaining spaceworthy examples as slightly better than nothing.

"Yeah. Don't get me wrong, I did fifty hours in the Blade at the Academy and loved every minute; couldn't choose between one of them and an Acolyte for love or money. But the ones we had in service were bloody deathtraps by the time they got to us; we had more written off with a knackered engine than lost in action."

"We weren't that impressed with them in the war, either; you know those times the radiator breaks loose and pisses your coolant away if you make enough sharp turns, and you have to junk the whole fighter even if you can tow it in? Known fault since Kadesh. And let me tell you, finding out firsthand was not fun." Jira winced at the recollection.

"I can imagine; saw it happen when we were still phasing in the Acolyte, though not under live fire thank the Trinity-" The deck lurched, almost sending their drinks flying. "Bloody hellfire that guy needs some flying lessons!" Kheral grumbled.

"Or he's still hungover," Jira added. "I heard it was some Bridge officer's birthday yesterday."

"Typical. We can lose our wings if we touch a drop within eight hours of getting behind the controls of a single fighter, but do they breathalyse the guy steering fifty billion quid's worth of supercarrier? Evidently not!" Kheral grumbled.

"Such is life. Anyway, I'm on first CAP rotation." Jira stood up.

"Catch you later then. It's been fun; we should do this again sometime." Kheral finished his drink; he had another hour before he needed to suit up.

* * *

"What the hell's that thing?" Kheral exclaimed.

"Something R&D just knocked up; gonna be testing it in a minute," Chief Meklan replied with a broad grin.

"Oh, they're not trying to pirate those Frerrn porn channels again, are they? I mean that stuff's just wrong!" The strange fighter-sized craft did indeed resemble a commsat bashed together in a weekend out of whatever old junk the Research and Development team had lying around in the storeroom.

"No, nothing like that. Ready when you are, Jez!" A helmeted figure gave a thumbs-up from the cockpit. The ugly, misshapen craft shimmered briefly, and became a slightly too glossy and out-of-focus Triikor interceptor. "Great, innit?" Meklan enthused. "Copied it off the Raider holo-projectors we scrounged." The Triikor became a small planetoid, then a scale-model of a battle mecha from an imported television show of which Kheral had been fond as a child. "Here, that's not meant to be... Oh, gods! Jez, turn it off for crying out loud, there's ladies present!"

"I can't, it's locked into the test cycle!"

"Shut the bloody drives down or something then! The CO's going to be down here any-"

"Cap'n on deck!"

"Oh, sod it."

To his eternal credit, Rear-Admiral Irbol seemed to take the tableau he'd walked in on completely in his stride. "Yes, the new ship is quite versatile, isn't it?" he remarked to the R&D officers who'd entered the hangar deck with him, and were now trying very hard to look as if this was nothing whatsoever to do with them. "I think we can leave this particular setting out of the production version, however. Don't you agree?"

"Oh, I dunno, sir," Kheral piped up. "It'd certainly throw my aim off a bit if a ten-foot holographic todger suddenly popped up out of nowhere."

The ensuing laughter was interrupted by a dull klaxon. "Attention, attention. All hands to defence watches, all hands to defence watches," boomed a pre-recorded voice. The assembled personnel were running for their stations before the echo faded.

* * *

"This'll have to be a quick briefing, but we know sod-all anyway so no big deal," Rin quipped. "We picked up a badly garbled distress call from the Clee-San a few minutes ago; we don't know if she's come under attack or just having comms problems but Command's playing it safe, so our squadron will be escorting a four-ship of Seekers to go and take a look. We've narrowed the search area down to a few hundred square kloms, but she's a good ten-minute flight from our current position so we're not getting backup in a hurry."

There was a silent exchange of worried glances. Thirty-odd Acolytes and a dozen increasingly clapped-out Thunderbolts wasn't much firepower to go around at the best of times, and they were being spread awfully thin. If a ruck kicked off they'd be on their own, unless the Kuun-Lan micro-jumped in to back them up, and nobody was wild about cutting the Command Ship's fighter cover down that far either.

"Do we have any intelligence on possible hostiles?" someone asked.

"Nothing current," Rin replied with a touch of bitterness. Having been refused Unified Hiigaran Navy membership or even affiliate status, Somtaaw was denied access to the official Fleet Intelligence reports on Raider and Imperialist activity; what they could obtain informally was often outdated and incomplete. "Paktu had a mixed group of Raiders and Taiidani deserters tangle with one of their convoys not far from here, but that was a fortnight ago. Anyway, you all know the drill; if we can't outfight anything we come up against, outrun it and come back with the heavy mob."

Long sprint to the Homeworld, Kheral thought gloomily. She might have the armament of a destroyer and a fighter complement as good as any carrier in Hiigaran service, but the Kuun-Lan was still only one ship.

This had all the hallmarks of being one of those days.

I'm afraid this chapter's BGM was impossible to locate on YouTube or last.fm; if you find it being streamed somewhere, let me know and I'll edit the chapter accordingly. Onwards...

Chapter 4:

“Passing the half-way mark,” Jira observed to nobody in particular, sounding as tense as Kheral felt. He glanced down at the centremost MFD, which was unnervingly empty; they were too far from the Command Ship for a live data feed, and had only one another's scanners to rely on.

“Sandtrap, Bloodhound One. Faint HNS returns at extreme range, looks like some debris.”

“Shit,” someone spat.

“Too much to have come from the Clee-San; cruiser's worth at least. Might be left over from before Landfall; we're right on the old Frerrn-Tai border.”

Kheral put the lead Seeker's sensor feed up on another display, but before he could look at it, one of his secondary radio transceivers crackled to life. “Got a signal on the distress frequency,” he called out, punching up the volume. It was garbled to hell, but he managed to pick out the words 'Clee-San' and 'Raiders'. And, just as the lead scout's sensor imagery began to resolve itself, the word 'mines'.

“Oh, hell...” he said to himself.

"That ain't wreckage," Jez added grimly, reaching the same conclusion.

"Spread formation, go card," Rin interjected. "We're going in for a closer look."

"I just knew you were going to say that," Kheral muttered.


The minefield was roughly spherical, and widely spaced enough that individual fighters could possibly slip through without being hit, if the pilot was very lucky. Nobody tested the supposition.

"I suppose we can take it as a given that the Clee-San's on the other side of this lot somewhere," Jira observed. "The Frerrn warship keeping an eye on her must've put up a hell of a fight." Somtaaw lacked the warship tonnage to adequately protect both the Clee-San and the Shining Path, but agreements had been reached with most other kiithid and some neighbouring states to provide an escort for the science ship in return for access to any survey data gathered in their territory. The Frerrn Aggregate were particularly assidious in this duty after receiving advance warning of a potentially dangerous rogue planetoid, and usually detailed a light cruiser for the job.

"Yeah," Kheral agreed, zooming his Acolyte's camera in on a mine. "Crude little fuckers, aren't they? I'm not picking up any active scanner emissions; heatseekers, maybe."

"Either that or teleoperated; keep an eye out for an old prox sensor or something they might be using for a spotter."

"Copy that... What the-?" There was a soft chime in his earphones and a bat-wing symbol appeared briefly on his radar screen. "You see anything on radar in your one o'clock? Just got a twich on mine."

"Negative, but those mines are playing hell with my screen; had to turn the filters up a bit."

"Sandtrap Three, Bloodhound Two," interjected a Seeker pilot. "I've got a faint infrared signature in that general direction, might be an exhaust trail."

"Copy that, we'll check it out." Kheral made a minor course adjustment and increased his forward speed slightly. "Going radio-silent." He powered his radar down to standby for good measure; current-gen Taiidani ELINT gear could track its emissions from further away than he could get a legible radar return, and the ex-Imperials who'd turned warlord or pirate had made good use of what they'd made off with.

It paid off; he saw the bandits long before they became aware of Jira and himself. Three old Taiidani minelayers were cruising in loose line abreast as they deployed mines, with a quartet of Bandits and a single Fiirkan light interceptor ostensibly keeping lookout. They were being extraordinarily sloppy about it, however; all four Bandits were flying on the same orientation as the minelayers, and the Taiidani deserter had apparently resorted to putting his craft in a slow 360-degree spin to at least partly cover all other vectors. Kheral allowed himself a moment of genuine pity for the man, who was probably cursing his luck for being saddled with a bunch of amateurs, then caught Jira's eye and indicated by gesture that they should split up and engage from different vectors.

Area 88 Sound File 2 - Track 08: dogfight

Their approach had been timed such that the Taiidan pilot had been facing the wrong way. The first they knew that they were under attack was when Kheral lit up his radar at fifteen kilometres. One Bandit managed to turn to face the oncoming fighter before he opened fire, walking a three-second burst through two of them before breaking off to evade return fire from the Fiirkan. The little Taiidani fighter was probably a bigger threat than all four Bandits put together; it had nearly twice an Acolyte's delta-vee, and the pilot evidently knew his business better than the Raiders. "Tallyho, tallyho! Visual on eight bandits, three minelayers with escort!" he called out.

Kheral's fighter shuddered suddenly, resounding with a cacophany of clattering as a wave of superheated gas and debris washed over it; presumably Jira had splashed a minelayer in the act of releasing its newly-fabricated payload. Those things must pack a fair old wallop, he thought fleetingly. Now where the hell was-?

"Fuck!" Kheral flinched as a burst of fire sizzled past his canopy from behind and to the right. He fired his Acolyte's reverse thrusters and then began a lateral turn, hoping to catch the more agile bogey as its pilot took evasive action. The split-second it was in view was enough for a short burst, but if any rounds were on target it didn't hit anything vital. The Fiirkan's answering burst bounced off his fighter's armour and chipped the canopy, and an amber warning light illuminated on his control panel. Slow leak. Great; Chief's going to bloody kill me.

Kheral fired the main engines and put his fighter in a shallow climb, heading back towards the minefield, and glanced into his reflector. The Fiirkan was closing fast. "Two, I could use a little help here."

"Copy that, I'm coming up in your three o'clock low; break left hard in three, two, one... Now!"

Kheral threw his fighter violently into the turn, gunning the main engines to shift the fighter's direction of travel abruptly enough to make his head spin. He continued the turn, meaning to come around behind the Fiirkan if it engaged Jira instead of staying on his tail, just in time to see the pilot eject as she put a three-second burst through its engines.

"Guess I owe you dinner again," he remarked, taking a long moment to regain his breath. "I'm going to go pick that guy up."

The Taiidani pilot drew his sidearm and sighted along it at the approaching fighter, then reluctantly holstered it again. "Wise man," Kheral declared over the distress frequency. "Can you hear me?"

The radio produced a noise that put Kheral in mind of someone trying to form vowel sounds with an array of rusty mangles. "Bugger." Kheral tried again in Taiidan Common. "Can you understand me?" A nod. "Good. Do you have a...?" What the hell was the word for rescue harness? He held up the carabiner of his own and finished, "One of these?" Another nod. "Good. There is a..." He groped for the word and settled on, "ring, behind the canopy. Hook up to it." The downed pilot made a gesture he recognised as the Taiidan equivalent of a thumbs-up and readied the D-ring as Kheral inched closer, getting his first good look at the face behind the helmet; his former adversary was of some vaguely insectoid race that the Taiidan had probably conquered back in the bad old days. He latched on securely and made himself as comfortable as possible against the hull, then thumped the canopy to indicate he was secure.

"Okay, hold tight."

* * *

"Taala, Sandtrap Three Zero. Inbound with downed Tai pilot, going to need a Marine detail on the deck. It'd help if you could get a linguist down there too; he can understand Taiidan Common well enough but Maker knows what he uses for vocal chords; sounds like one of my cousin's synth-blast demo tapes."

"Copy that, Sandtrap Three Three. Proceed to the auxiliary landing bay, we'll have a welcoming committee waiting for your passenger. Does he have a weapon?"

"Affirmative, he had it out when I first approached; still got it as far as I know." Kheral glanced nervously at the Taiidani pilot. "He's been compliant so far, though."

"Copy that. The Marines have their orders."

Kheral still felt somewhat concerned for 'his' prisoner. Jez wasn't the only one with a vendetta, for all that Taiidani deserters were held in slightly less contempt than the loyalists; even the ones who'd set themselves up as bandit chieftains were at least a marginal improvement on Riesstiu IV.

The Acolyte passed into the area-of-effect of the Command Ship's gravity plating, bouncing lightly on its wheels and rolling to a stop as it snagged the arrestor hook. A ten-man fireteam of Marines was waiting with carbines at port-arms, and an officer with a holstered pistol was carrying a portable translation computer. The Taiidani pilot unclipped his carabiner and slid down the wing onto the deck, raising his hands. The officer said something in Taiidan Common, too fast for Kheral to follow. The prisoner responded at length in his own language, which sounded rather less atonal in person than it had over the radio.

"You can pop the canopy now, ensign," a voice he didn't recognise said in his earphones. "The prisoner has asked to surrender his weapon to you personally; cultural thing apparently."

"Fine by me." Kheral swung himself out of the cockpit and landed in a crouch, then went over to the Taiidani pilot, who'd taken off his helmet. He drew his sidearm with two fingers on the grip, and presented it butt-first. Kheral accepted it carefully, double-checked that its safety catch was engaged, and stuck it in one of his jumpsuit's numerous pockets. The Taiidani pilot snapped to attention and saluted crisply in the Imperial fashion, which Kheral returned Hiigaran-style. The prisoner then turned and walked over to the waiting marines, who quickly and efficiently frisked him for any concealed weapons or tools before leading him away.

"Thanks ensign," said the officer who'd acted as translator, whom Kheral belatedly realised was a full Commander. "We might call you in to talk to him later; he's more likely to let something classified slip to you."

"Understood, sir. Oh, and what should I do with this?" he added, indicating the captured pilot's sidearm.

"You can keep it if you like," the Commander replied. "It's no use to us but too good to scrap. Consider it a trophy of war."

"I had been thinking of getting one for some hobby shooting," Kheral agreed. "Thank you, sir."

***

Firearms in crew quarters were against regulations, so Kheral borrowed some tools and a field manual on enemy small arms from one of the armourers and disassembled the pistol. The pieces went into the mini-safe where he kept his military ID and some ready cash in various currencies for shore leaves. He had just sat down with a cup of tea and a cigarette to compose his after-action report when a message box appeared on the screen of his computer console to tell him he had a voice call. Kheral recognised the number, took a very deep breath and hit 'Accept'.

“Hello?”

"Hi there laddie! How goes things?"

Oh, thank the Great Protector... "Hi Dad. Things go well enough, I suppose. Uncle Tarn's still keeping his end of the deal up."

"So that would be why I was on hold for half an hour?" his father laughed.

"Sorry about that; I only just landed," Kheral explained. "And I'm afraid will have to be a fairly quick call; it's going to be all hands to the pumps in a bit."

"Not literally, I hope. Anyway, I just called to warn you that your little exploit with that cruiser made the papers in a fairly big way; I've just seen some leaked gun-camera footage of you putting half a drum right down the barrel of that turret."

Kheral choked on his tea. "Are you telling me that I did that?" he exclaimed, once he'd got his breath back. "On my own?"

"Looked that way in the footage I saw. The press have gone mad down here, mostly about the poor relation of the spacefaring kiithid all but single-handedly bagging an Imperialist warship of the first rate with a meagre handful of strikecraft. Apparently a Paktu bomber flight got a good look, and the pictures found their way to one of the news sites. The footage was clear enough to read the tail number of your Acolyte, and one of our groundside people named you soon after; I intend to transfer him somewhere unpleasant."

"Good," Kheral mutttered, gently banging his head on the desk. "I'm never going to hear the bloody end of this, am I?"

"It might be advisable to spend your next leave in your flat," his father agreed. "I'm afraid your mother had one of her little moments when she found out."

"Oh, glee..."

His father laughed, which made Kheral feel a bit better. It was a sound he'd not heard very often since taking the red. ”She does love you, you know,” he added quickly.

“You could have bloody well fooled me,” Kheral snapped, then regretted it. “Sorry, I didn't mean to take it out on you; you must get enough of that already.”

”She'll work through it in the end; it's no worse than what she did when Tarn went back into the service.” Kheral could hear the wistful smile in his father's voice. ”And for what it's worth, I've never been so proud of you in my life.”

“It's worth a lot, Dad,” Kheral said quietly. Before he could say anything else, an instant messenger window popped up on his workstation summoning him to the brig. “Damn. Got to go, sorry.”

”No worries. Try not to die, eh?”

“Will do.”

* * *

“They never mentioned this in the recruitment ads,” Kheral grumbled, putting his jacket back on. Intellectually he could see the reasoning behind having him surreptitiously take on the role of interrogator, but it still felt rather unsporting. “Are you sure this is going to work, sir?”

“As much as I can be; the translation computer will help compensate for any limitations in your acting ability, and the wire's invisible to the naked eye.”

Kheral reflected that one doesn't always have to see something to know it's there, and that body language is quite legible without any assistance from a translation computer, but didn't bother to argue.

The cell was spartan but not uncomfortable, painted an unpleasant shade of pastel pink that some xenopsychologist thought most sentient species would find tranquilising. Its occupant was seated on one of the two hard chairs reading a tattered paperback, and offered Kheral what might have been a polite smile.

“I suppose they've sent you in here as the good cop?” he enquired, the translation computer kicking in automatically.

“Yeah, something like that,” Kheral replied, deciding there was no point in insulting the man's intelligence. “Listen, Mr Rakhz -did I pronounce that right?- you were the only pilot in the formation doing his job, so I'll assume you're smarter than the average pirate. We're probably going to pass you over to the Taiidani Republic and let them figure out what to do with you, and unless you're wanted for strafing an orphanage or whatever they'll just give you your discharge money and pack you off home, so-”

“I grew up on Devidium,” the prisoner interjected. “It was subjected to Atmosphere Deprivation Warhead bombardment by the Loyalists shortly after we overthrew the occupation forces, along with nearly a third of the old Nalthoran Federation's inhabited worlds. There's nothing left for me there. My home, such as it is, is now the Pan'Rei Protectorate.” He took in Kheral's blank look. “A collection of some twenty stars with three planets between them, none of which have a breathable atmosphere. Population about fourteen thousand, nearly all of them wanted for something unpleasant. Had you captured my formation leader he would no doubt have waxed most eloquent wrath about Frerrn and Hiigaran incursion into our territory; I think he'd actually started to believe his own shakedown speeches.”

“I see,” Kheral said slowly, filing this information under 'useful to know'. There were quite a few outfits like this 'protectorate' out here on the fringes, hiding behind the Taiidani Republic's public commitment to grant independence to any ex-Imperial system that wanted it in order to demand 'tariffs' and 'visa fees' from passing merchant shipping, then play the martyr if anyone tried to put a stop to it. Taking on a frontline warship was a bit ambitious for a ragged-arsed mob of deserters and crooks, though. This lot must have some extra firepower, maybe a destroyer whose crew had mutinied.

Abruptly, he made a decision. “How'd you like a shot at going straight? Maybe a bit of cash to help you start over?”

Rakhz gave Kheral a very old-fashioned look. “What could you people possibly offer me that would be better than a time-shared bunk with five ex-cons, field rations three times a day and worse pay than the Imperial Navy? Apart from just about anything, of course.”

* * *

“The 'good cop' approach wasn't supposed to include outright bribery, ensign,” the intelligence officer remarked with some asperity.

Kheral shrugged. “You did tell me to gain his trust and secure his cooperation, sir. An appeal to avarice was the most expedient way I could think of.”

“Yes, I suppose there's that, though if it hadn't worked you'd be on a fizzer you'd not soon forget. Very well, then; it's not as if we don't budget for the odd backhander. Conditional on the DNA check confirming he's who he says he is, we'll give him passage to the nearest Republican world and five thousand coronets. If he's given us a false name then he can take his chances with a Frerrn court.”

* * *

“Okay, everyone. Since Kheral's boyish charm knows neither species nor gender barriers...”

There was a murmur of amusement from the assembled pilots. Kheral winced. He'd get Rin for that.

“... we now have a clear picture of what happened. And it ain't good,” Rin continued, sobering quickly. “It seems the local protection racket got lucky, or unlucky depending how you look at it; their carrier botched a microjump and came out right in front of the Clee-San's escort. The Frerrn cruiser T-boned it and they lost reactor containment, both ships went up with all hands. The survivors set to pinning the Clee-San with mines and stood off to wait for their head shed to miss them and come looking, and Maker only knows when that'll be. We would ideally like to be long gone before that, so we're going to try and clear enough of the mines to let the Clee-San slip through and make a break for it. And before you ask, the mines are equipped with quantum waveform detection as well as infrared seeker heads; if she so much as powers up her hyperdrive to standby, boom.

“Before we start minesweeping, however, we're going to try and get around their jamming. And that's where the Flying Dick comes in; we've crammed a hypercomm transmitter aboard that our prisoner assures us will not trigger the mines if our decoy is squawking the right codes, and hopefully the bandits won't look at it too closely. Once we establish secure comms with the Clee-San we'll have access to her telemetry, and that should let us see the mines more easily. And I'm glad to report that the Command Ship is moving up to three thousand klicks from the Clee-San's position, so this time we'll be fighting a bit closer to home. We take off in four hours. Questions?”

“Who's flying the holoship?” someone asked.

“Jesban volunteered, don't ask me why.”

Kheral shot Jez a worried look. They hadn't spoken beyond professional necessity since the confrontation in the hangar a week ago, but it didn't seem as if he'd spoken much to anyone else either. The Burning of Kharak was a wound in the psyche of every Hiigaran, one that had barely scabbed over even now, and it looked as if Jesban's had reopened. Kheral was privately rather relieved that Jez wasn't flying anything with weapons today.

It would take a very, very long time before he forgave himself for that sentiment after what happened.