Vanguard

Chapter 1

There was something about breathing the air of a new world, something about knowing that the oxygen you inhaled had never before sustained any human being. It felt crisp and new and strange and exciting. Not like Earth, which he had visited once, where every molecule had cycled through countless generations of humanity, where the same old stories had played out endless times on land trod by untold numbers of people. Here, this spot, right there, had never before felt the weight of a person’s foot. There, where trees with strange leaves and odd shapes marked where the grassland changed to forest, no person’s eyes had ever before rested. Compared to this world, even the planets in the Alfar Star System felt like what they were now called, an Old Colony.

The sun overhead wasn’t quite the right size for someone familiar with the sun that warmed the planets orbiting Alfar and looked a little too orange, but it was at the right distance from this world so that the heat it gave off allowed a person to walk about in shirtsleeves at this latitude and this time of the planet’s year. The air had that fresh relish to it and could be breathed by humans. The green of the plants felt a little too blue, but that was all right.

A flock of small, birdlike creatures rose into the air with a thunder of wings and high-pitched, warbling cries. Like every habitable world that humanity had discovered so far, this one held an array of native life but nothing that could be considered sentient. If other intelligent species existed in the galaxy, they were still somewhere out there, beyond the current boundaries of human exploration.

Robert Geary knelt and touched the grass, grinning. Behind him, he could hear the rumble of machinery coming off the landing shuttles that had brought the devices down from orbit. Soon enough, those machines would begin constructing the first buildings of a city. Not an old city, with memories of generations of people and buildings, but also something new, not burdened with history but still awaiting history’s first imprint.

A new world. A new beginning.

Unlike Alfar, the Old Colony he had come from. In human terms, a new place that had become Old in a few generations. Where “how we do things here” had fossilized rapidly into a society where no one was supposed to rock the boat because the rules set forth by the first colonists were the best and only imaginable ways to do things.

And if you could imagine other ways? If you wanted to try something different? Or, worse, change the way things were? Who do you think you are?

I think I am Robert Geary; therefore I am not going to put up with this when I can go somewhere new with other people who want to be able to breathe. Somewhere we can make our own rules.

“Rob Geary?”

The call from his comm unit jarred Rob from his reverie. He frowned at the worried tone of it. Why would the president of the colony’s governing council be calling him? “Here. Is something wrong?”

“A ship arrived at the jump point from Scatha five hours ago. They sent a message as soon as they showed up, which we have now received.”

“And?”

“They say this star system is under their ‘protection,’ and we owe them what they call residency and defense fees.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Rob said. “I thought we were granted full ownership here by the Interstellar Rights Authority.”

“We were, and we intend on telling them that. But what if they don’t listen?”

“Why are you asking me? I’m not on the governing council.”

“Because that new arrival is a warship. And the warship is heading toward this world.”

He gazed upward, where the blue of the daylight sky drowned out sight of the countless stars. Somewhere up there was… what? A warship belonging to some other recent colony? A private corporation wanting to sell security services in a new part of space? A pirate, absurd as that seemed? “What does the council expect me to do about it?”

“We need advice, Rob. Advice from someone who knows something about this kind of thing. And in this colony, that’s you.”

Rob Geary touched the place on his collar where he had once worn the insignia of a junior officer in the small fleet of Alfar Star System. He had thought he had put that part of his life aside forever.

But maybe not. Whether whoever controlled that other ship called themselves pirates or privateers or security professionals or part of whatever fleet Scatha had, they were playing a very ancient game. It looked like humanity had brought some old, bad habits along with it to new stars and new worlds. And as someone who had chafed at not being able to make changes, to make a difference, Rob wasn’t in a very good position to refuse to help when asked.

Fortunately, a shuttle had been about to lift back up into orbit to the ship, saving Rob time that could be valuable.

“What have we got?” Rob asked as he entered the command deck. The elderly passenger and bulk-cargo carrier Wingate, called the Wingnut by everyone, had been built to haul people and materials in a single star system, then had a new jump drive added on and instantly became an elderly interstellar transport. Aside from the up-to-the-minute jump control panel, the rest of the command deck was taken up by displays and controls that had been in service for decades—and showed it.

The main display flickered erratically until the Wingnut’s captain, a woman apparently as old as the ship, slammed her fist against a control unit in a spot already dented by many similar blows. As the display steadied, Rob squinted at the information about the ship that was demanding protection money. “It’s a Buccaneer Class cutter?”

“Yep,” the captain said. “Not good for much in the Old Colonies but still handy where there’s not much else to threaten them.”

“You don’t seem to be very worried,” Rob told her, not bothering to hide his irritation at her attitude.

“You already paid me,” the captain said, “and those guys from Scatha won’t give me a hard time because I already paid them a license fee to operate in this region.”

“License fee? You mean extortion?”

The captain spread her hands. “Call it what you want. Do you have a better idea? You going to fight that Bucket with your fists?”

Frustrated, Rob took another look at the display, then stormed off in search of the colony’s governing council.

Half the council were already gathered, crammed into Wingnut’s grandly named recreational room, which was just a compartment with several aging displays built in. The men and women of the rest of the council, still on the surface of the planet, could be seen on one of the displays. As Rob entered the compartment, a storm of argument dwindled as everyone looked at him. Council President Chisholm, looking unhappy, nodded at Rob. “Thank you for getting back up here quickly. What’s your assessment?”

He didn’t waste time asking why the leaders of the colony were calling on a lowly former lieutenant for his opinion. The Old Colonies tended to have really small military forces, which was why ex–junior officer Rob Geary was the most senior veteran among the initial group of roughly four thousand colonists settling this world.

“They have an old Buccaneer Class cutter,” Rob told the council. “It arrived at the jump point from Scatha, about five light hours from this planet we’re orbiting and colonizing. The information we have is still almost five hours light-delayed, but they were headed on an intercept for us at that time, and there’s no reason to think they’d change vector. Their velocity is point zero five light speed, and they can’t afford to push it any faster even if they had newer technology for their propulsion system. That means they’ll get here in a little more than three and a half days.”

“What can you tell us about the Buccaneer? How dangerous is it?”

Rob made an indecisive gesture with one hand. “Back home? Not very dangerous at all. The Buckets are nearly a century old, not very fast or maneuverable, and fairly small. They were built for law-enforcement duties like stopping smuggling and for search and rescue. All of the Old Colonies have retired and sold their Buckets, which is how a new colony like Scatha could get its hands on one for what was probably a cheap price. But in this star system, as the only ship equipped to fight, it’s as dangerous as it needs to be. The sensors on the Wingnut are too badly maintained to tell us any details about the Bucket that showed up here, but it’s probably got the standard weapons. That would be a single grapeshot launcher and a single pulse particle beam projector. Those are both close-in weapons. They’ll have to be right on top of us to hit us, and their particle beam is probably early second-generation equipment, which means its hitting power is limited.”

“But what can it do with those weapons?” Chisholm pressed.

Rob paused to think. “They could destroy our shuttles, preventing us from landing any more people or equipment, and stranding anyone up here in orbit. They could also decide to target this ship directly despite the owner’s having paid them off earlier. Destroying the Wingnut would take a lot of work, but hitting critical areas like access hatches, air locks, and shuttle docking sites could cripple us.”

“I kept saying we should invest in a warship of our own!” Council Member Kim complained.

“We didn’t come out here to fight wars!” Chisholm snapped at Kim. “We went out to find the freedom and the room to follow our dreams! It’s easy to say now what we should have done, but when all of us here decided where to put the money for this colony, we found that we couldn’t afford even one warship like this Buccaneer cutter.”

“We can’t afford to lose any of our shuttles or pay this extortionate demand, either!” Kim tapped his comm pad furiously. “If we pay this, we’ll barely be able to proceed with building the colony.”

“According to the message from the warship, Scatha Star System says we need to be protected,” another council member said. “Shouldn’t we learn more before making a decision to reject their, um, offer?”

“They are not making an offer,” Chisholm said. “Scatha is making a demand. That is not the action of someone seeking to help us.”

“Do we know anything about Scatha?”

“All we know,” Chisholm said, “is that the name they chose for their star system, Scatha, appears to be derived from that of an ancient warrior goddess. That and the fact that their first interaction with us is a demand that we pay them a very large sum.”

“Appeal to Old Earth!” Council Member Odom urged. “When they hear—”

“They won’t hear for months,” Chisholm said. “And then what will they do? Old Earth has made it clear that while they love having their children spreading colonies among the stars, that love does not extend to actually helping them when they run into trouble.”

“Old Earth got badly beaten up during the last Solar War,” Kim grumbled. “They’re still trying to rebuild. We can’t expect them to help us. Which is why I wanted to buy our own protection!”

“Can’t the police force do anything?” Council Member Odom asked plaintively.

“Twenty men and women with nonlethal weaponry?” Kim asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“We have some weapons,” Odom insisted.

“Hand weapons for hunting.” Chisholm looked to Rob again. “What can we do?”

“I don’t know,” Rob said. “There are two other veterans among the current batch of colonists, and they’re both former enlisted specialists from Alfar’s fleet. They might know something about the Bucket that could help.”

“You were an officer,” Kim pointed out. “Surely you know more than any enlisted.”

“Being an officer meant I knew enough about the systems on my ship to know how to best employ them,” Rob said. “Most officers are generalists. The real equipment experts are the enlisted. I’ll ask them. But regardless of what they tell me we can do, I need to know what we’re willing to do.”

Chisholm looked around, most of the other council members avoiding her gaze. “I know how criminals work,” she told them all. “They’ll take as much as they can, returning to hit us up repeatedly, while still leaving us enough to survive and generate more loot for them. We can’t afford to give in to that. I need options beyond refusal and hoping they don’t carry through on their threats,” she finished, gazing at Rob once more.

“I’ll see if we’ve got any,” Rob told her.

Lyn “Ninja” Meltzer was still aboard the Wingnut, naturally enough. Also, naturally enough, she wasn’t where the colony’s individual locator software said she was on the ship even though that software was supposedly hack-proof. Rob punched her ID into his pad, hoping she would accept his call. “Ninja, where are you? We’re dealing with a reality-bites situation.”

Her reply came in moments later, showing her head against the top of her bunk. He had only met Ninja a few times, but she smiled in welcome at seeing him. “Hey, Lieutenant! Reality for real?”

“Yeah. Break time is over. Do you know anything about the old Buccaneer cutters?”

“I might.”

“What about Torres? Do you think he’s familiar with them?”

Meltzer grinned. “Corbin Torres served six years on a Bucket.”

“How do you know that?” Rob asked.

“He’s the only other fleet vet with this mob. Who else am I going to swap stories with?” Meltzer eyed Geary. “I heard there’s another ship in-system. We’re dealing with a Bucket?”

“Yes. Let’s you and me and Torres get together and brainstorm this.”

“Corbin isn’t going to want to play.”

Rob exhaled slowly. “Tell Corbin he either meets with me and you in the break room on the third deck in ten minutes, or the police will show up in fifteen minutes and drag him there.”

“We’re not being recalled, are we?” Meltzer asked. “Because I wouldn’t like that, either.”

“No one is being recalled. But the council, and all the other people with us, need you and me and Torres to figure out if there’s anything we can do about that Bucket. If you and Torres want to go walkabout after we’ve hashed over the problem, I won’t try to stop you.”

Fourteen minutes later, as Rob was getting ready to call the council, Torres shuffled into the break room and sat down heavily in the seat next to Meltzer. In a colony group made up primarily of young people looking for a start in life and middle-aged people seeking a new start, Torres stood out for being older, his face bearing the lines of experience and the resentment of someone who thought life had not dealt out the rewards expected for a long life of work.

Acutely aware that his authority over Torres was limited, Rob tried not to talk like the lieutenant he had been. “You two know the problem, right? And you both appear to know more than I do about Buckets. What can we offer the council as alternatives to surrendering and paying the protection money being demanded?”

Ninja made a face. “If they haven’t upgraded their systems, they’re probably still running on HEJU.”

Corbin shook his head, speaking grudgingly. “Unless they gutted the systems, they’re still using HEJU. Those things were designed around the operating system. That’s why everybody sold their Buckets instead of upgrading them.”

“HEJU,” Rob commented. “Is that the one where you have to input commands backward?”

“Yeah,” Ninja said, smiling.

“No,” Torres insisted. “HEJU is designed to make you think through the entire process and your end goal before starting, so you have to enter command sequences in the reverse order you want them executed.”

“Same thing,” Ninja said. “That means their firewalls must be extremely obsolete. No one has coded in HEJU for at least twenty years, so there couldn’t have been any upgrades in ages.”

“The crew codes HEJU,” Torres corrected again. “They have to. The operating system needs patches and repairs. But they’re probably not any good at it, just stuff they learned on the job, so the patches and repairs are probably just able to get by.”

“Do you think there’s any way we can deal with that Bucket?” Rob asked him.

Torres paused, eyeing Rob as if trying to judge the sincerity of his outward respect for the former sailor’s knowledge. “If we had anything better, and just about anything would be better, that Bucket would be toast. Even an old Sword Class destroyer could take it without breaking a sweat. But this old tub,” he said as he kicked the deck of the Wingnut with his heel, “is useless. They didn’t bring any weapons?” he demanded.

Rob shook his head. “No. Just hand weapons.”

“Then you got a boarding party. That’s something.”

“A boarding party?” Ninja laughed. “Like some old pirate vid? We swing across to the Bucket with knives in our teeth? How do we get them to open a hatch for us?”

“Can’t you do that, Ninja?” Rob asked her.

She paused to think. “You mean hack their systems? I don’t know. If we had some stuff on HEJU aboard—”

Rob held up his pad. “I just checked. We do. In the colony library.”

“Cool. Yeah, I can hack them. Just tell me what you want me to do.”

“Can you disable their weapons?”

“Permanently?” Ninja frowned in thought.

Torres shook his head. “HEJU is an obsolete and gnarly system, but it’s easy to patch. That’s its only good feature. No matter how you hacked the weapons, they could do a work-around if they had time.”

Ninja raised one eyebrow at Rob. “I could try to jinx the power core. Cause an overload. They wouldn’t have time to patch that.”

“An overload?” That would certainly solve the problem of the Bucket. But… “How many people do they have aboard? The database says standard crew size is twenty-four.”

“You can run it long term with six, as long as nothing big breaks,” Torres said. “It’d be hard to handle a battle with that few, though. Or pack in as many as forty. What’s the matter, Ninja? Don’t want to have that many lives on your conscience? Don’t worry. They’re all just apes like us. Nobody important.”

“Shut up, Corb,” Ninja told him.

“I don’t think we should blow it up,” Rob said, trying to think beyond an immediate solution. One of the things that had frustrated him back on Alfar was the attitude that short-term solutions were fine because in the long term someone else would have to deal with the problem. “That would work for an immediate solution. But it would leave us without any defense against the next predator who showed up. If we could capture it—”

Torres glowered at Rob. “Don’t even think about drafting me to help operate it!”

“I wasn’t,” Rob said, letting his voice grow cold and sharp. “I’d think you’d be interested in the idea of setting yourself up as a private contractor to help maintain the thing for the colony. Ninja, can you hack the systems on the Bucket to drop their shields and open a hatch? Without the Bucket’s crew knowing right away, so they wouldn’t try to override your hack?”

“Yeah,” she said. “That should be doable. You’re seriously thinking about a boarding operation? Does anybody with us know how to do that? And, just for the record, I don’t.”

Rob didn’t bother asking Torres. “I went through a couple of drills. That’s it. But it sounds like those are our two options. Either try to remotely override the controls on the Bucket’s power core so it blows up or try to capture it.”

“Or pay the money,” Torres said.

“Yeah. Three options. Thank you,” he said to both Ninja and Torres. “I’ll let the council know and see what they say.” He paused, once again having to focus on the fact that he could not give either Ninja or Corbin Torres orders. “Please stay where I can get in contact with you again quickly if the council has more questions.”

The council was still in session when Rob returned to brief them. They didn’t bother hiding their lack of enthusiasm for either of the options. “There has to be something else we can do,” Council Member Odom insisted.

“You asked me to look at military options,” Rob said, trying to keep his voice level. “That’s what I did, along with Lyn Meltzer and Corbin Torres.”

“Why can’t your IT person shut down everything else on the cutter except the power core?” Council President Chisholm asked. “Then they wouldn’t be a threat.”

Rob used his hands to illustrate the movement of ships as he spoke. “We could try that. Two things might happen. One is that the Bucket crew figures out how to get their systems working again, patches the damage done by Ninja, and comes back at us. Torres says they should be able to patch anything Ninja does if given enough time. The other thing that might happen is that the Bucket crew can’t fix it, and their ship doesn’t brake velocity before they reach us, instead being stuck on the same vector as they race past this planet and the star and onward out into the dark between stars, where they would slowly starve to death.”

Council Member Kim smiled derisively. “Not a humane alternative, then?”

“The closest we have to a sure thing,” Rob said, “is to task Ninja with trying to get the Bucket to blow up.”

“But can she do that?” Chisholm asked. “I’ve met my share of programmers who say they can do what I need and end up delivering something far short of that.”

“Ninja got asked to leave Alfar’s fleet because she was too good at breaking and entering,” Rob said. “I reviewed her case when she was getting pushed out. That’s how we met back at Alfar. She got her nickname both because her code is so hard to spot that it can get into anywhere and because she never left footprints firm enough for anyone to nail her afterward. The service could never get enough evidence to charge her with anything, so finally they just pushed her out. If anyone can do it, Ninja can. But she hasn’t promised she can do it. She needs to brush up on the programming language used on a Bucket, then probe their systems from long range to see what can be done.”

“Then how can we know that she can support that other alternative, capturing the ship?” Odom complained.

“Supporting a boarding operation should be simpler,” Rob said. “Power cores have a lot more safety interlocks built in. You’ve asked me for advice, so I think we should try to capture that Bucket and use it to defend this star system until we can get something better. I’m putting my money where my mouth is on this because I know I would have to lead any boarding effort. I’m the only one with our colony who knows anything about how to do it.”

A long moment passed while the members of the council exchanged wordless glances. One finally spoke up. “There’s a fourth option. Leave. If Scatha plans to prey on whoever occupies this star system—”

A furious eruption of voices drowned out the speaker.

“This star system is ours,” Council President Chisholm said after she managed to silence the uproar. “We will not cut and run, leaving it to anyone who threatens us. So, Rob, you and this Ninja and Corbin Torres would be part of this boarding effort—”

“No,” Rob said, shaking his head. “Ninja will be doing her thing aboard the Wingnut. Torres has no interest in participating and no training in that area. He’s also not a young man, and a boarding operation can be extremely stressful physically. I was hoping the police force could assist.”

“We’d have to ask for volunteers,” another council member advised. “The contracts for the police force do not include this kind of thing. We have no authority to demand that they take part.”

“We could ask for volunteers from everyone,” Kim argued. “How many do you need?”

“Twenty,” Rob said. “I’d only have three days to train them.”

“Why are we even discussing this?” Odom said. “We don’t have the means to take over that ship.”

“Then I have to recommend that we try to blow it up,” Rob said.

“We can’t just decide to blow up another ship!” one of the members down on the planet protested.

“Self-defense,” another chimed in.

Chisholm halted the babble of cross talk that followed. “We’ll research this and consult with our legal team. We have almost three and a half days to make this decision and ensure that it is legally justifiable.”

“Excuse me,” Council Member Leigh Camagan said. Short in stature but with intense eyes, her two words commanded everyone’s attention. “What happens if we can’t blow it up? Physically cannot. Citizen Geary said that is a possibility. If all we do is prepare for causing that ship’s power core to overload, and we find out it cannot be done, we will have no alternative but to pay the extortion.”

Silence fell until Council President Chisholm spoke again. “What do you suggest, Leigh?”

“Prepare for all possibilities, not just the one we prefer. Have Mr. Geary recruit some volunteers and train them. If we don’t need them, we haven’t lost anything. But at least we might have another option if the power core overload does not work.”

Kim nodded. “I think Council Member Camagan is right.”

The vote went in favor of pursuing both plans.

“Mr. Geary needs some authority if he’s going to do his part,” Leigh Camagan pointed out.

Another vote was taken, and Rob Geary, formerly a lieutenant in the small space force of the Old Colony Alfar Star System, found himself temporarily a lieutenant once more.

“Really?” Ninja asked once he had found her again. “A temporary lieutenant in what?”

“The otherwise nonexistent defense forces of this star system,” Rob said.

“So you’re, like, the most senior officer, and the most junior officer, and you’ve got no enlisted? Who’s going to do all the work?”

“Are you interested?”

“No way.”

“I do have a budget, so there’s money in it for you,” Rob pointed out. “And a challenge to your skills.”

“The money is enough,” Ninja assured him, “if it’s enough money.”

It was.

He was pleasantly surprised when ten of the twenty-officer police force volunteered for the possible boarding operation. Those ten contacted friends who they thought might be interested, and in short order, Rob had the twenty volunteers he needed.

“I also need battle armor and military-grade weapons,” he commented to his new second-in-command.

Val Tanaka was a police veteran of the tough district around the largest spaceport on the surface of Alfar’s primary world. She was at least ten years older than Rob, one of the middle-aged types looking for a change. Rob had met her once on Alfar while bailing some of his sailors out of jail after their night on the town had gotten seriously out of hand. “What you’ve got are survival suits and nonlethal shockers,” Val commented. “Why exactly don’t we have any lethal weaponry?”

“Because we wouldn’t need lethal weaponry,” Rob explained. “Or so they told me. Because we’d all get along, and everyone else would leave us alone because it’s such a big universe.”

“Did they ask anybody who actually lives in this universe whether that made sense?”

Rob shrugged. “It came down to money. They had other things that were regarded as higher priorities.”

“Sure,” Val said. “I bet they found enough money for insurance, though, didn’t they?”

“You’re right. Investing in some military forces would have been another form of insurance. But what would they buy? A full-on space combatant like that Bucket? Aerospace craft for defending a planet? Ground forces? Get them all, and that’s really expensive for a new colony that has a lot of other things they need to spend money on.” Rob gestured toward the outside of the Wingnut, where infinite space held uncounted stars. “But the main reason is because they’re still thinking in Old Colony, pre–jump drive terms. Space is too big, so aggression between star systems is too hard, and even minimal defenses will prevent anyone’s being tempted. And if anybody does try anything serious, Old Earth will jump in and put things right. The jump drive changed all that, but the jump drive is too recent, less than a couple of decades old, so a lot of decision makers are still caught in the past. Trips that required years between neighboring stars now only take a week or two. The same thing that made it affordable for us to plant this colony makes it profitable for somebody on Scatha to shake us down using an old warship.”

“And because we can go so much farther, Old Earth is a long, long ways off. So what’s our plan?” Val asked.

“We act pretty much helpless.”

“We are pretty much helpless.”

Rob grinned. “Then that ought to make our act believable, right?”

Space might have become much smaller in terms of human ability to travel between stars, but when floating in endless space, gazing at countless stars, it still felt very much like infinity. It was strange, Rob thought, that the human mind could not really grasp forever, but human emotions could feel it. Infinity felt cold and uncaring, too vast to even notice the insignificant gaze of humans, but also almost unbearably magnificent and beautiful, because humans were a part of all that and could sometimes sense a connection to something immensely greater than themselves. Perhaps that was just an illusion, but it felt real.

Drifting weightless and gazing on the universe from outside the protective shell of a ship or a world was humbling, Rob decided, no matter what other emotional responses it triggered.

Also humbling was trying to figure out the “intuitive” maneuvering controls for a thrust pack whose customer service was light years away. Instead of working pointer style, where you pointed one hand toward your objective and the thrust pack calculated and triggered the necessary push to get there, it used a look-style system, where you looked at your objective and the thrust pack used that input. But it was too sensitive, reacting to every twitch, which meant that every time Rob’s eyes wandered even a little, the thrust pack took that as a new input command and adjusted its push. The constant small jolts and jerks were not only incredibly irritating, they also burned up energy at a ridiculous rate. His attempts to scroll through menus to change the sensitivity settings kept running into the software equivalent of blind alleys and bottomless pits.

It reminded him all too much of the reasons he had been happy to leave the small fleet that Alfar had maintained. Getting anything done had been almost impossible, and by the time he’d actually achieved something or gotten somewhere, he had a hard time remembering why he had wanted to go there in the first place.

But that in turn reminded him of one of his failures that had particular relevance right now. The one time he had actually led a boarding party in a drill, he had totally failed. The memory of that still stung, and added to that now was guilt that he hadn’t mentioned it to the council.

Rob finally got the target positioned about half a kilometer out from the Wingnut. The target was simply a large panel with tethers on the corners to keep it from drifting away from the ship. He double-checked the data on the movement of the warship from Scatha that he had entered into his survival suit’s very limited heads-up display, making sure that the bulk of the Wingnut blocked any view of what was happening here from where the Bucket was currently located. The Bucket was still a couple of light hours away, about two billion kilometers, but even the obsolete sensors on the old warship shouldn’t have any trouble seeing clearly across such a distance, and the last thing Rob wanted was for the crew of the Bucket to see people near the Wingnut apparently practicing jumping from one ship to another.

He rejoined his waiting recruits at an air lock facing the target, nineteen men and women who had volunteered for the boarding operation despite none of them having even worn a survival suit before, let alone space jumped. “There are two things to remember,” Rob explained. “One is to keep your eyes on where you want to go. Your suits don’t have thrust packs like I have because the Wingnut only has two and wouldn’t sell us both. But that’s fine. For training, you’ve all got tethers tying you to the ship, so you can’t get lost. Before you jump, keep your eyes fixed on the target and push toward it. Your body will automatically go where your eyes are looking. It’s that easy.” And that hard, because as the old saying went, everything was simple in space, but all of the simple things were difficult.

“The second thing is to remember that you won’t slow down,” Rob continued. “Whatever speed you jump off at is the speed you’ll be going when you reach your target. You’ll instinctively want to push off hard because that’s how we learn to jump on planets. That’s a bad idea. Jump off hard in space, and you hit hard when you get to the other ship. Think about if you’re on a planet and you’re going to jump straight at a wall right in front of you, how hard are you going to want to jump to be sure you can catch yourself on the wall without hurting yourself?”

“How strong are the tethers?” one of the volunteers asked, unable to keep the nervousness from his voice.

“You can’t break them,” Rob said. “You’d need ten times your mass moving at a dozen times the velocity any human could manage using their own muscles. Even if you jump too fast and get hauled up hard at the end of your tether, the only thing that will hurt is your pride. I’ll go first, with the thrust pack I’m wearing turned off, so you can see how it goes.” He paused. “One other thing. Some people have trouble out in space, especially close to a planet. If you get out there and feel yourself panicking, lock your eyes on the Wingnut and keep them there. I’ll pull you in, and you’ll be fine.”

He did a textbook jump from training because that was the only way he knew how. Rob didn’t think his volunteers would be happy knowing that Rob himself had only made two space jumps prior to this, so he hadn’t brought that up.

Fortunately, he got it all right, with a smooth, easy jump off, flying through space, eyes on the target as it quickly got closer, then the tether reaching its end and hauling him up just short of the target. He pulled himself back inside the Wingnut’s air lock.

Val Tanaka went next. She flew out smoothly, but at the end as her body swung around on the tether, she began flailing her arms and legs, her breathing suddenly harsh and heavy. Rob pulled her in quickly, cursing inside. Why did Val have to be one of those who panicked in open space? Not only would he lose his second-in-command, but the others would be unnerved by her experience.

“It’s fine, you’re fine,” Rob said reassuringly as he steadied Val inside the air lock. She looked at him, her breathing slowing. Rob could feel everyone else staring at him as he tried to come up with an inspirational speech to get them past this.

Before he could say anything else, Val Tanaka turned, positioned herself, and jumped for the target again.

Once more she flew directly to the target, but this time when the tether halted her she hung calmly as Rob pulled her tether back in.

He could see through the visor of the survival suit helmet that her eyes were closed until the moment she touched the side of the air lock again. She grinned at him, the gesture tight with tension, her breathing still fast. “Piece of cake.”

“How did you do that?” Rob demanded.

“I didn’t give the fear time to get settled,” Val replied. “Got back on the horse, you know?” She turned to the others. “Let’s go.”

Only one of the others panicked, but they felt obligated by Val’s example to try again and managed it the second time. Rob stood back watching as everyone made additional jumps.

Val joined him, standing side by side. A tiny symbol appeared before Rob’s eyes, telling him that she was calling on a different circuit than the one being used to speak with the other volunteers. “What’s up?”

“I was just wondering what you were afraid of, sailor,” she replied.

He paused, gazing out at the star-spangled dark of space. “What makes you ask that?”

“You’ve hesitated a few times when talking about this plan, and out here you’ve sounded a little less confident than you should and a little too much like you’re trying to convince yourself.”

“Do you think any of the others have picked up on that?”

“If they haven’t already, some of the others will. So what’s the story?”

Rob grimaced. “When I was with Alfar’s fleet, I only did one serious boarding practice exercise. As an ensign, still new, but I’d gone through other training. And I failed. The scorers took me apart.”

He was surprised to hear Val chuckle softly. “Didn’t you have time to learn that there are two kinds of graded drills? The first kind are the ones where the grades directly affect the promotions and awards for the top bosses, whoever they are. People always get passing scores on those. Dead people could get passing scores on them. Because the bosses want to look good, you know? The second kind are the ones designed to show you how important the scorers are. People always fail those and get torn apart for all the things they did wrong.”

Rob turned his head to look at her. “What about graded drills designed to give you experience doing it and identify critical errors?”

“In a perfect universe, that’s how they’d all work. But in a universe run by humans, drills over time often become self-licking ice cream cones that justify whatever purpose those in charge of the drills are looking for.” Val looked back at him with a mocking grin. “Were there other graded drills along with that one you failed? How’d the others go?”

“We failed all of them,” Rob said. “You’re saying that was the point?”

“That was the point, and my point is that it doesn’t matter. You’re still the one guy with us who knows how to do this and has done it enough to fail at it once.”

“Thanks, Val.”

“Now, you gonna get out there and lead like you know what you’re doing?”

“I can fake it,” Rob said.

He came out of a tired sleep that night when someone grabbed his shoulder. “Hey, Lieutenant!”

Rob blinked sleep from his eyes, keeping his voice low to avoid disturbing the other two men still sharing his cabin. “What’s up, Ninja?”

“We’re not blowing up the Bucket’s power core. Can’t be done,” she whispered.

“Their firewalls are that good?”

“Pfft!” Ninja said. “Their firewalls are as easy to get through as wet cardboard. But that doesn’t help us with the power core because they’re running it on manual.”

“What?” Rob stared at her. “How can you tell?”

“Because the auto controls are all disabled. Probably nonfunctional.”

Rob sat up carefully, running one hand through his hair as he thought. “I didn’t know you could run a power core on manual.”

“I asked Torres. He said you could, but he wouldn’t,” Ninja said. “It’s possible, but inefficient as hell. And if something goes seriously wrong, whoever they’ve got nursemaiding the core had better react fast and do the right things.”

He nodded, blowing out an exasperated breath. “I’ll tell the council they can stop debating whether or not to blow up the Bucket. Either we board it, or we pay up. You can get into the right systems so we can board that ship, right?”

“Oh, yeah. Easy.” She glanced at him, then at his bed. “I wouldn’t mind relaxing a little right now if you’re in the mood.”

Rob sighed again. “Ninja, a couple of days ago I might have taken you up on that. But, at the moment, I’m your boss. It wouldn’t be right.”

Ninja shook her head. “Why do I always go after guys who follow the rules?”

“Opposites attract?”

“That might be it.” She paused, looking down. “So, you’re going to do the hero thing? Jumping over to the Bucket with a knife in your teeth?”

“Metaphorically, yeah,” Rob said. “I think the council is leaning heavily toward not just giving in to extortion.”

“Try not to get hurt, okay?”

He gave her a surprised look. “I didn’t know you cared, Ninja.”

“Well, duh. Do you think I make an offer like that to just anybody?”

She left before he could say anything else.

Rob stared after her, startled that he had without realizing kept himself from thinking about Ninja that way. Probably because their first interactions back at Alfar had been him as an officer and her as an enlisted. And despite his dislike of Alfar’s fixed way of thinking, he must have taken on some of that, not considering the possibility that circumstances had changed and so could how he thought about her. He had always liked Ninja, even when he wouldn’t allow himself to like her more than he should. Maybe now…?

If he didn’t get himself killed trying to capture that Bucket.

He couldn’t do anything about Ninja at the moment. All he could do was lie there in the dark, thinking of all the things that could go wrong when a barely experienced former junior officer led a bunch of inexperienced and poorly armed volunteers against a warship. And thinking of what would very likely happen if he didn’t lead that mission.

Thanks to the distant protection of Old Earth, Alfar’s small navy hadn’t had much in the way of heroic traditions born of war. None, actually. But there had been other causes for sacrifice. Like the young sailor on Rob’s ship whose mother had died a decade earlier on an asteroid habitat with failing life support because she gave her oxygen recycler unit to a child who would otherwise have died instead. “She left me a message,” the sailor had told Rob. “She said she couldn’t just stand by and let someone else die. Not if she could do something; because that kid might have been me, and she’d have wanted someone else to save me.”

“Do you ever wish she hadn’t?” Rob had asked.

“Every day. And every day I wonder how she would have been able to live with doing that. She made her choice, sir. That’s all any of us can do, right? Try to make a choice we can live with.”

The next morning, the council gave him his orders to try to capture that ship. He could have begged off, could have found numerous excuses not to lead such a risky effort, but instead Rob Geary saluted and said he would do his best.