Star Light

"Tales of the ESDF"  [13+] by Eric the Fred
    Tales from the Earth System Defense Force
PREVIOUS:"Secret Identity" 

STAR LIGHT
Eric Paul Fretheim
Chapter I

Fighting fatigue and pain, Rissa slid the missile bay door closed. She had taken care of her wingman. Her body would not suffer the punishment she was doling out for much longer.

She floated motionless for a moment in the vacuum outside her craft, collecting her strength. The cabin light had been broken by the last hit, so there was little illumination other than her helmet light. No Sun, she thought. Only star light here. That thought set off a chain reaction in her skull, that led to a chant from childhood.

                   Star light, Star bright,
                   First star I've seen tonight,

She clamped down and concentrated on getting back to her cabin. At least she didn't need the maneuvering gun anymore. After the first tug on the tether, she could occasionally brush against the hull with her good foot for control while she took up the line, with a supplemental tug or two as she got back to the open canopy. During the slow, careful journey, the children's rhyme doggedly continued in the back of her head.

                   I wish I may, I wish I might,
                   Have the wish I wish tonight.

It insisted on repeating itself, too.

She couldn't see the others, anymore. Her neck flared with pain, from turning a little too far to look for them. She wondered if she were going to last long enough to carry out her plan. Every minute, she found herself in a bit worse shape than she had previously thought.

She hauled herself into her couch, her side seared by pain, and tapped the closure control. Her canopy closed off the hateful vacuum, and the atmosphere began hissing in. A fresh dose of willpower flowed into her soul as the cabin pressure came up. Another tap, and her flight controls went live. She brought the guns on-line a moment later.

She spun her craft around, gripped the trigger and fired.

                                                 *      *      *

The crash-out had been far from the usual shipping lanes. If the Tor-Emmi system weren't on the frontier, the Sesseem who guarded it might not have been patrolling diligently enough to notice the incoming transit.

It looked like one of their own. They remained cautious while approaching, however. No pure carnivore species reaches intelligence without developing a strong talent for suspicion, and the Sesseem provided an awesome example of that rule.

The craft drifted dead in space, clearly battered and torn in a valiant fight. It made no response to their calls, and the sensitives in the patrol pack believed no living Sesseem were on board. The pack leader had already given to his subordinates the permission to prepare honors, but he continued the investigations.

One of the more universal stories among sentient races was shared by nearly all who were both hunters and story-tellers, the story known by one such race as 'The Trojan Horse.' The Sesseem told a form that might have also been equated to 'The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing'. The lesson was, after all, the same. The leader considered how to test further before risking one of his crew, and hit upon an idea.

All Sesseem gun cameras had the ability upload their contents remotely, for the purpose of spreading honors as rapidly as possible. Often, combatants in dogfights deserved promotion or decoration long before the end of the battle. The Sesseem consider this an issue of utmost priority. The pack leader gave the order, and the technicians polled the cameras.

The excitement was contagious, and nearly instantaneously. The cameras held records of a glorious battle with several compatriots, and the Enemy ring the craft had fought was bigger than any pack member had seen in years. Furthermore, it looked very much as if the enormous ring might have been destroyed.

Suspicions continued, however. The pictures included no victory pass, no final shots fired into the fallen enemy. Indeed, the last weapon fire seemed instead to be of empty space. The leader began to suspect that this was no Sesseem crew. Could it be an elaborate Enemy fake?

As the lead craft came close enough to get good visual details, the answer came to them. Barely visible on the atmospheric surfaces, alien characters advertised a non-Sesseem identity. Most members of the pack recognized the markings immediately: "ESDF".

The symbols stood for the Earth System Defense Force, their Human allies. The pack leader wondered once again how such a simple series of shapes could stand for such a complex thought.

The wreck was a Human craft, but not one of the local pack. He had forgotten that the ESDF often used Sesseem hulls, because the Human base on the Sesseem colony world here flew only Gr'ts'ck-designed craft, or the peculiarly shaped designs they cobbled together out of their own technology and salvage they purchased from their elder Allies.

The leader ordered a halt to the advance, and instructed the pack to offer their honors at a distance. It was best not to trifle with a wounded alien, even an Ally.

The wreck was too far out for hyper-light communication to punch a message all the way through out of Normal Space, through Meta-Space and on to the local command center. He instructed his number two craft to transit into Meta-Space, to shorten the distance for the transmission.

                                                 *      *      *


Master Commander Jared Matthew Ross, Battle Fleet, ESDF, listened as his crew worked Strike Cruiser Orion through her final evolutions on approach to Abernathy Station. They had already begun to drop sails and adjust tails, to kill the massive velocity from their interstellar flight. The Helmsman had just arrived to take her seat, plug in, and manage the tricky work of transiting fifteen thousand tonnes into Normal Space.

Across the control room, his XO quietly fried the hapless Sail Master's Apprentice who was trying to direct the sail transitions on his own. CWO Gorecki had insisted that the kid should have a go at it, and was purposefully keeping herself somewhere else. "This is what milk runs are for, Captain," she had pointed out. "Besides, you'll be present. You can take over, if it goes badly."

That would the bad side to inspiring confidence in your subordinates, he noted to himself ruefully.

He wasn't sure his rusty sailing skills would do any better than those of the trainee currently at the ropes, but he had suppressed the temptation to remind Gorecki that the bulk of his sail experience had been in single-seat fighter craft, not multi generator warships. Although it was true he had been in Aviation at the trainee's age rather than Fleet, that wasn't the Sail Master's problem. This was his ship, and Gorecki had a right to expect that he could sail her.

He turned an ear to the XO, to see what had him rattled. The wiry German was a fine officer, but sometimes a little brutal on younger crew. From the look on Farouk's face, the boy was ready to give up on being a warrant officer and head back to the sail generators.

"I would prefer," Commander Metzger specified quietly, "to see a sun in the sky when we come out of Meta-Space, Mr. Farouk! You cannot be so light on the drag with a ship of this size. Overshoots take a long time to recover, and cost reaction mass!"

Just an issue of technique, he concluded. They were not actually overshooting so badly, or Metzger would have raised the issue to him by now. Likely, he had already marched the kid through the adjustments. Ross suspected he would be hearing about the 'interference' from Gorecki later. He looked away before the trainee saw the eye of the Old Man on him.

The voice of the Bosun's Mate On Duty came over the PA, giving the take-hold warning. Metzger's couch was next to Ross, and he came charging over. Fortunate that they were currently braking, creating 'gravity', or Metzger's trip would have been a slow swim instead of a quick sprint. Ross checked the data feed through his nerve-ware, and discovered that the radioman, not the helmsman, had issued the alert. The low-data-rate comm was chattering out emergency orders from Abernathy. The take-hold had simply been the standard procedure specified when this occurred, an assumption that maneuvers were about to follow.

"Flash EO, Abernathy, Captain!" the Radioman yelled, then continued in cadence. "No classification level. Intercept and Assist. Coordinates packet incoming. Details to follow."

"Relay coordinates to the Sail Master's board, and read out details as you get them." Metzger directed.

He didn't look over that way, but he suspected that Farouk had paled upon hearing the news. He considered having Gorecki called to the deck, but decided to see how the kid did, first. Since he didn't know that the Captain was his back-up, it would be instructive to see what the youngster could show for himself.

"Mr. Metzger, if you please," Ross requested. The German looked over toward the Sail Master's board.

"Sails, please plot a minimum time intercept. Expend mass conservatively, but as needed. Helmsman, please request Motors to steam up. Mr. Farouk may need them earlier than we expected. "

"Aye, aye, sir," the two chorused, nearly in unison, as the control room dance began.

                                                 *      *      *


Commander Reinhard Metzger felt a peculiar pride about being here in this craft, in the presence of Allies. The boat he rode away from the ship was a design swiped from NASA, a seven-crew pod capable of orbital maneuvering and even emergency atmospheric re-entries. In the ESDF, it was called a 'Yankee', in honor of its origin.

Most things Humans used in Space were either alien hardware adapted for humans, or mix-and-matches of alien and human tech. Only recently had they begun using any pure Human technology, like this boat or the suits they would shortly wear outside. Those were pure Russian designs, not the part-alien-manufacture things that deckhands formerly wore.

The Sesseem had been space-faring for over five thousand years. It was nice to be able to show them that Humans weren't 100 percent dependent upon their Allies' technology, even if they were still 99 percent dependent.

He considered himself a patient man, a fact that would surprise many a subordinate. If they realized how seldom he doled out actual punishments, as opposed to the quiet verbal butt-kickings he preferred, they might have understood what he meant. Most of the crew, though, had learned or heard to stay on his good side and avoid his tight-lipped, quiet wrath.

The Captain had on a number of occasions warned him that he needed to be 'flexible', but his reasons seemed to center more around what kind of CO Metzger would make some day, not what sort of XO he made, now. A reasonable concern, since he was already of sufficient rank to command a Frigate, and 'some day' could come at any moment.

Since he had not 'come up in the Force', having served first in the Deustche Marine, the Captain often wondered out loud about whether he was learning to do things the 'ESDF way'. He didn't seem to have any complaints about how his ship performed, though. It was Metzger's theory that the Captain's culture was a bigger factor in this particular concern than his command experience. The Captain's easy Jamaican grace did not mesh easily with his plainspoken German intensity.

The Captain had nothing to worry about, anyhow. Metzger fully intended to leave the discipline and details to his XO when it was his turn, just as the Captain stayed out of the way for him. Until then, he would see Orion running as tight as her airlocks allowed.

He regarded the alien crewman who was the current strain on his patience, using the level gaze he worked so hard to copy from Ross, and did his best to remain civil. He reminded himself before speaking that a Zindavoor was not a Human.

"Crewman," he observed "we have been waiting now for twenty minutes. It will hardly take much longer for the machine communicators to pass the message."

"With all due respect, Commander," the big alien replied, "it is unlikely they will translate this message so quickly. Quiet, please, sir, they speak again." He fell back into his 'trance'.

The Bosun's Mate piloting their craft spoke up from the front. "Take-hold, sir. Looks like we need to move."

Hands all over the cabin shot out to grab hand-loops, and the attitude jets began popping. After a small constant push, and an opposite braking push 10 seconds later, he spoke again. "All clear, sir."

"What was that all about, Boats?" Metzger queried, once the man was finished.

"Lights from a Sesseem, sir. These guys don't give much warning when they come through."

The pilot did not turn around to respond to him, nor should he have. One of the many practicalities Metzger appreciated in the ESDF was that no pilot at the controls was ever required to salute, turn toward, or frankly, even respond, if he was busy enough, no matter what rank the officer. Metzger knew of more than one ensign who had caught hell for forgetting this and chewing out a boat pilot on duty. A Bosun pissed at a junior officer who interfered with one of his pilots could be an awesome and terrifying thing.

'Lights' meant a make-way request. It was dangerous, hanging around among so many alien craft. The communication lags lead to many accidents and misunderstandings. A simple direct communication system existed, consisting of turning a light toward the receiving craft and blinking a simple code, but very few things more complex than "Get out of the way!" could be communicated with this method.

He studied the tranced Zindavoor again. The alien riding inside this Human disguise was an unsettling presence for him. Something about that not-quite-human manikin face....

Earth owed much to these secret colonists, who had worked for the ESDF for centuries, supplying their labor and their talent as Sensitives, a capacity essentially missing from the Human population. He knew that his carefully suppressed discomfort was intolerance, which he, like most of his nation, had acquired a strong dislike for in recent decades. Since Able Crewman Lucius was a sensitive, Metzger had to assume that he knew about his XO's feelings. He hoped that the alien either was used to it, or understood, because Metzger could not seem to fix it.

The manikin eyes opened as the Zindavoor within again woke. "They are finally finished. It must be relayed, now. Sorry about the delay, sir." The eyes closed again, as the alien tapped into the data net to upload his English translation. Finally, he gave Metzger his full attention.

"The Sesseem are very enthusiastic, sir. It seems all are to be extremely respectful of the hero within the craft ahead. They have instructed all of their ships to move out of the way now, so this boat can make its way in. They instruct that a leader shall be present to retrieve the body. That would be the XO, sir."

"We don't even know that the pilot is dead," Metzger groused. Keeping the Sesseem happy was the only reason he was even on this boat. Graves detail did not ordinarily require the supervision of the XO. The original transmission from them had already spoken of 'Heroism'. Sesseem didn't use anything like Freeze-up. To them, he knew, a dead crew was a dead crew, and must be properly honored, even though they knew Humans aviators equipped with Freeze-up had the potential for revival.

He called up to the Bosun's Mate, "Boats, bring us to within tether distance of the craft, please," then turned back to the Zindavoor as the pilot acknowledged and called take-hold again.

"That short message did not take such a long time to receive, Lucius," he deduced, wondering if the alien would get the hint.

"No, sir. Very sorry. It took very long for them to get around to that message. Sesseem have different priorities."

Metzger gave the alien a few more moments to figure out that he ought to explain further, but the Zindavoor didn't. He cleared his throat. "Crewman, you will please fill me in on the details of your conversation with the Sesseem."

"Aye, aye, sir. It was listening, mostly. The Sesseem sensitive was relaying his pack leader's speech, as that one conducted rituals of honor for the crew of the human craft. The rituals required recounting of the crew's deeds. Apparently, these honors were put on hold until Orion could be present, when they were told the ship was coming."

Metzger knew the Sesseem had been fighting and holding their own against the Enemy for five thousand years, but he wondered again, as many had wondered before, how they ever found the time to get around to fighting.

"Deeds, Crewman?"

"This consisted mostly of what they could guess from the gun cameras. Apparently they polled them remotely. The cameras recorded a significant battle. The Sesseem believe that the craft is a member of a squadron. They suggest this is the last survivor. They believe the squadron may have succeeded in taking out an Enemy ring before they died. They suggest that her injuries had driven her into battle-frenzy by the end.... In a Sesseem's eyes, that last item would be a good thing, sir."

"And the Enemy that the squadron took out?"

"It is unclear, sir. They apparently were lured out by one enemy, which may have been a Slave light cruiser or heavy frigate. This craft appears to have fired one of the killing shots on that ship. Before the kill, however, they were also beset by a large Enemy ring. They believe it possible that the ring was taken out, but they aren't certain."

Metzger thought for a bit, before inquiring, "What class of ring?"

"Your pardon, sir. It is difficult to translate the Sesseem usage of mind-glyphs into English on most things." As best as he could judge, the fellow was uncomfortable with the question for some reason. "Technical terms such as weight classes are especially difficult. It is uncertain...."

The XO cut him off. "Give me your best try, Crewman! It is vital intel, if a heavy Ring is within a light year or two of here!"

The Zindavoor hesitated, then complied. "The mind-glyphs roughly equate to the phrase, 'a worthy opponent bearing fifteen clan's honor' They have a great many categories for rings, but it is to believe that this is one that Humans would call... 'Class E'." He looked unhappy about being forced to say that.

Metzger stared in shock at him, unsure whether to laugh in disbelief, or be very appalled. He had never even seen a Class E, outside of a text book.

The Bosun's Mate called out again. "Take-hold, sir. We're braking into tether distance, now." Hands all over the cabin again shot out to grab hand-loops, as Metzger ducked his head to see through the nearest window.

The craft finally came into view. The pilot illuminated it with his searchlight. It was a Banshee, probably the pursuit type. From its condition, its arrival in-system may have been a certifiable miracle.

                                                 *      *      *


Ross peered out a porthole, watching the Yankee bringing in the pilot's body. A cargo boat outbound would fit the stricken fighter with limpet motors for the tricky job of bringing it in by hand.

It isn't either of them, he told himself. We hadn't switched to Banshees when it happened. We were flying 'Ernies' back then..

He had known it was a long shot. They had been lost close to here, but only in the interstellar sense. The missing pilots wouldn't have had more than a hundredth of a cee of Normal velocity when they crashed out. If, by some miracle, they ever did show up here, it might be fifty years or more before it happened. Nevertheless, he had been hoping for that miracle.

And the Sesseem had detected the transit when the craft crashed out. That's how they found the wreck in the first place. It hadn't been drifting for twenty years at all.

He gave himself a mental kick. This pilot wishes for rescue as much as the others. It doesn't matter who it is.

While the Yankee docked, the Bosun and two dozen deck hands busied themselves clearing out davits and preparing braces along the main port corridor. The crew of nearly 600 waited to find out what it was that had sidetracked their port call. Meanwhile, the Sail Master, the Helmsman, and the Chief Engineer huddled in the control room to discuss the handling problems that the cruiser was going to face with an unplanned 30 tonne wart sticking out one side.

It was difficult, he had agreed, but it was possible. Therefore, it would be done. He left it at that, and went back to check on their new charge. The XO and the graves detail were just coming up the passageway outside Sick Bay just as he arrived.

The froze-up aviator looked like a mummy, bundled up in an emergency vac-bag, her helmet and breather mask visible but the rest covered. He was thankful he could not see her face. He found the not-dead-not-alive look, only seen on those in Freeze-up and on wax museum replicas, deeply disturbing.

The Surgeon's Mate had joined the detail at the lock, but she just moved along with the litter. That had him worried. If she were planning to revive the patient, she would have dashed back here ahead of time, to make ready.

"You aren't going to revive her, Doc?" Medical ratings were always 'Doc', but he checked her name tag quickly. SuM1 Hsing Tsu. He'd stick with 'Doc'.

Tsu gave a quick head shake. "No, sir. Her injuries are very serious. Without the Freeze-up, she would have died very quickly. We need to get her to a real doctor at a real hospital as soon as possible." A Surgeon's Mate was essentially a paramedic. Orion carried four such, but no doctor or nurse.

"Room temperature is bad for Freeze-up, Doc. Do you have facilities?"

She nodded, and smiled. She very nearly smirked. "Sir, this ship has two former Aviators and a former Scout engineer serving in her. Three potential Freeze-ups, so we keep room for three." She led the graves detail into the sick bay. Metzger stayed with him in the hall.

Ross paused for a minute, a little astonished at the ratings' humor. That had been an unusually familiar tone for an enlisted to take with the ship's captain.

"How comforting, Mr. Metzger," he noted quietly, "to know she keeps a spot reserved for me in the freezer." He shook his head and turned to hand-over-hand his way back to the command room.

Metzger gave one of his rare chuckles and followed his CO.

                                                 *      *      *

"That might have been a large craft speed record for this system," the Commodore suggested half-seriously. "I must check to see if such a record is kept."

She completed the stroll around her desk and grabbed Ross' hand to pump it vigorously. They had already exchanged salutes, but hers was so absent-minded, he wasn't sure she was aware she had done it. This handshake, he concluded, was her real greeting.

She followed with the XO's hand, flashed a wide grin at both and strode past them toward her office door. Caught by surprise, both men were slow to realize that she expected them to follow. They had to sprint to catch up.

Commodore Markova was a small woman, and by no stretch of imagination a young one, but Ross was surprised how difficult it was to keep up with her. Even granting that she had the advantage of little or no recent free-fall time, her pace was surprisingly difficult to match. She glanced over her shoulder at them to continue her thoughts. "I will send you a copy of the translator's log of the Sesseem local leaders. They were very unnerved at your display. I think you broke some local speed regulations."

Ross was immediately on edge. "We cleared our course with Abernathy's Harbor Master. Have we caused you a problem with the Sesseem?"

"Ah... no, not properly. When the Alliance gave responsibility of Interstellar defense in this region to us, the Sesseem accepted that Human warships must have primary right of navigation. They continue to control system defense here because of their colony, but they must avoid interfering with interstellar defense as they do so. I do not know if they're swallowing their pride and deferring to their juniors, or if they're proudly watching their protégées standing on their own, but either way, they aren't angry. We shall just say that you gave them the screaming willies, barreling in toward their planet with such high Meta Vee. I think you may have been pushing 100 Cee as you came around O-Soro."

It took a moment for Ross to recall that O-Soro was the local name of the super-Jovian planet. 100 Cee was somewhat faster than they might have been doing that close in on their original course, but it wasn't extreme. His ship had a few times managed 2000 Cee, a straight line Normal-Space equivalent velocity of 2000 times the speed of light, out in the deep interstellar. She was one of the few large Human craft ever to clear that milestone. Small craft like Banshees weren't even pushing themselves at those lofty velocities.

Orion had expended enormous quantities of reaction mass to get from the far point where the Banshee had crashed out inward to Tor-Emmi and Abernathy Station. Sailing star-ward in Meta was the equivalent of navigating a sea pass against the current. When coming in with the momentum of an interstellar journey, the outward pressure was a bonus, supplying much-needed braking force, but starting from where they had been, at less than orbital velocity and only five and half light hours from Tor-Emmi's sun, Eta Cassiopeiae A, it was a serious obstacle.

Sail Master Gorecki had proposed looping outward and catching a nearby Interstellar current to build up the velocity needed to punch star-ward, but the Captain had rejected the plan. They needed to get into port in hours, not in a day or two, because an Enemy ring was possibly lurking just out-system. And, he had pointed out, the builders put over-sized reaction motors in strike cruisers intending they would be used when the scenario called for it.

He avoided suggesting that using brute force to make the trip offended the Sail Master's sense of aesthetics. He suspected that she avoided suggesting that he wanted to use all three gees of Orion's reaction thrust because he was pining for his Aviator days. But he did note that her expertise was sorely needed to plot the least time course possible on their limited mass resources.

Gorecki pulled off a masterpiece, working out a path that first reached cross-system so that the ship could turn its nose and jet sunward, in the lee of the system's largest planet, a super-Jovian. Using its 'shadow' to shelter from the hyper-light gusting outward from the star had made a remarkable improvement in time.

She had cut it horribly close. Orion's mass tanks were sucking vacuum coming on orbit of Tor-Emmi. But, they had made it in a little over six hours, and Ross, Metzger, Tsu, and the frozen Aviator were on their way down to Abernathy Station in a little under seven.

They emerged into the light of Tor-Emmi's sun. The Commodore kept up her breakneck pace. Ross began to wonder if he was spending too little time in the centrifuge in Orion's gym. Like everyone else who served in her, he slept in one of the sleep sections, enormous low-rate centrifuges, but that only gave one enough 'weight time' to prevent heart and bone problems. Vigorous exercise was the key to keeping one's land-legs on long space trips.

"Begging the Commodore's pardon, Ma'am." Metzger called. "Where is it we are going?"

"Well, Commander, I appreciate you following Regs and Customs by coming to see me, first, but I'm guessing you would prefer to be at the hospital with the girl you brought in. Even if that isn't the case, you're going to need to start there."

"Start, Ma'am?" Ross wondered.

"You have time to kill. I imagine you haven't heard yet, but we have to replace all that mass that you used getting here by shuttling water up from the surface. Do you have any idea how much time it takes to shuttle up one thousand tonnes of water?"

Ross was shocked. "What happened to the orbital depot, Ma'am?"

She laughed. "Is now the orbital ice-cube. A system malfunction shut down the tank heaters. Too late before anyone realized. Passive cooling was working on sun side of orbit, heating was not working in shadow. Cracked every tank in the facility. We can serve you iced-tea now. That's pretty much all. Two months to repair."

"So, while we're waiting on the mass, you want us to do what?"

"I need intelligence assessment, fast. My photographic analyst is already looking at the gun camera photos, and your Chief Engineer is going over Banshee, and maybe the hospital will revive pilot, but who is going to pull everything together and tell me what it means? Do I have an enormous Enemy ring preparing God-knows-what out there, or just an enormous carcass? Where did this Banshee come from? It isn't a carrier version, and I don't have any Banshees in my inventory. Where are the girl's comrades? Is she sole survivor, or just badly strayed from squadron?"

She flashed her winning smile again. "She's your cargo, Captain, so she's your job. Unless you wish me to believe that your propulsion-challenged cruiser, on orbit in a friendly system, requires the presence of more than her second officer at the moment?"

If there really is a Class E ring prowling out there, Ross thought, that would be 'Hell, yes'. He held his tongue, however. He knew how to understand an order that had been phrased as a request.

They reached the base hospital, and the conversation lagged for a moment while they made their way through the doors. On the other side, Ross made his reply.

"Of course not, Ma'am. We would be honored to help."

                                                 *      *      *

                                                 Chapter II

Metzger considered the shapeless mass of wet cloth on the table before him with outright doubt. "This is her flight suit?"

The nurse shrugged. "We soaked her in a cold saltwater bath to remove the clothing. It was frozen to her skin. She must have been sweating pretty hard before she went out. We had to cut it away in pieces, because her limbs weren't flexible at the time. It wasn't coming off any other way."

She dried her hands with a disposable towel. "I'm sorry if it's a mess, Commander, but we aren't in the business of saving clothing, here."

He picked at a few spots. "Its going to take a while to get anywhere with this."

The nurse voiced her curiosity. "So we really don't know who she is?"

He looked at her and thought about it. "We know what she is. The Administrators can figure out who she is, without our help. What we have to know right now is where she came from. Somewhere in this mess, " he poked a finger into the mass "is her unit insignia. That should tell us. I hope to find her name and rank while I'm at it."

"Goodness." The nurse shook her head as she left the room. She paused at the door. "Her helmet said 'Cat-Girl'. Does that help at all?"

"I saw that, yes. That would be her call sign. Not something they put in the official database."

Metzger began separating strips and bits as they came available. It was slow work. The emergency thermo suit had been frozen to the outside of her flight suit, itself frozen to her skin. The medics had cut the two layers away together. Every piece had thermo suit stuck to the side of interest.

About halfway through the job he found a lump in one of the pieces. He peeled it apart and a small object tumbled into his hand. An ache began in his heart as he recognized it, disturbed by what it represented. Metzger's contact with the Aviation Corps had been limited. He went straight into Battle Fleet upon joining, and never served on a carrier. The object in his hands could surely not be anything else, though.

The captain came in to swap notes with him as he sat there staring at it.

"You're doing that by yourself, Mr. Metzger?" He asked in a way that suggested he was not actually surprised.

"I thought it would be best, sir," he answered, somewhat absently, and continued to stare at the insignia in his hand. "Having ratings pawing through her clothing seemed... wrong, somehow."

The captain did not reply, so he asked, softly, "Captain, does a purple double bar mean what I believe it means?"

"If you believe it means she's a minor, then yes, it does. If you had gone in to see her, that would have been pretty obvious. She's sixteen years old, tops."

His heart sank further on the confirmation. "She's... a child." A girl younger than my baby sister was in that craft when it took that horrible beating!

"With the rank of... Aviator?" Youth flying officers were given special ranks, so that they weren't yet officers but outranked Warrant Officers. They received commissions when they reached majority.

The captain shook his head. "One purple bar is an Aviator. Two would be a Senior Aviator. A purple chevron for a Flying Cadet." He reflected for a moment. "A Senior Aviator. She must be older than she looks."

Metzger unraveled another bit, and a cloth patch came free. "Her squadron patch. '77th Pursuit Squadron'."

"The 'Lucky Double'," the captain named it. "Well, I'll be."

"You know the squadron?"

"My squadron pulled moon duty with them, once. Long before this girl's time, of course. They're based on Earth, flying out of Texas. Gulf Base Three."

                                                 *      *      *

"She was flying out of Earth, and she showed up here," Ross indicated a spot on the projection. He had assembled a team in the commodore's briefing room. Sh was out attending one of the endless parade of Sesseem formalities.

"I've set the plane of this projection to cut through us, Earth, and the spot the Banshee crashed out. We have sent a messenger drone to Earth, so that we can get some idea of what direction they actually headed out, but that's a two day turn around. We aren't going to hang around for the response. For now, we should assume it was at least somewhat along the line between Earth and her crash-out point. That suggests they were running the Centauri current."

He touched a control and the projection now included the line he had just described, and a ghostly swath representing the current. "The crash-out point is nearly in line between Tor-Emmi and Earth. It would be an incredible coincidence if she came in from some other angle and just happened to crash out there."

He touched the control again, and circles appeared around three other stars, each marked with a "z" value, a distance away from the plane. The projection only showed stars within ten light years of the plane, to keep down the clutter. "More than four light years from here, she would have headed to the Human bases at these stars, or headed back to Earth. Coming here only made sense if she were in this region."

Another touch and a double cone, like a pair of misshapen ice-cream cones, appeared along the line. "Or, of course, across a fold interfacing this region. I have so far been unable to identify any navigable folds there. Metzger, ask the base personnel to do a navigation search for us."

"Aye, sir." He replied, jotting it down.

"Surgeon's Mate Tsu, did you get the doctor's estimate of the maximum she could travel in her condition prior to Freeze-up?"

"Sir," she answered carefully, "his answer was 'nowhere'."

"I beg your pardon?"

"In Lieutenant Commander Hacek's opinion, she crashed out directly from the point where she was wounded. He insisted she would have been in too much pain, and her 'ware was too damaged to use for interfacing the controls."

"We have confirmed already that no battle was fought on top of that location," Metzger pointed out. "No debris is in the area, either Normal or Meta Space, at all. This was the conclusion both we and the Sesseem reached."

"Yes, sir." She didn't look happy about being trapped between the opinions of two officers. "I noted that to the doctor. His response was 'tell them to check again'."

Ross thought for a while. That ring could not have been closer than a hundred light-days to Tor-Emmi traveling in Meta space. Both the Sesseem and the Humans would have seen it. No amount of stealth could hide something the size of what was in those gun photos as it moved through Meta. If they were patient enough, the Enemy could theoretically move something that size in secret in Normal space, but....

"Metzger, the Sesseem told us how far out from the Banshee they scanned Normal space, didn't they?"

"They claimed something that works out to about eleven light minutes."

"Woy, that's a huge area."

"Yes, sir."

"Much better than we could have done."

"Yes, sir."

He looked at Abernathy's photo analyst. "Chief Ludow, you believe that the fight occurred in deep interstellar, based on the gun photos. Can you explain?"

She pursed her lips, and then nodded. "Sesseem type gun cameras take three different types. A higher frequency visual and UV spectrum, a near infrared and a low frequency infrared. Between them, we can get a pretty good idea from reflections on the subject surfaces of the presence of a star the size of the sun here, if it's closer than a light day. At less than half a light day, if we're certain about the surface and the star, we can get the actual distance."

"And your conclusion, Chief?"

"Nothing. The initial combat was in Meta, while she was chasing a Slave cruiser. She went to Normal space after following the cruiser out. Neither the Meta sequence nor the Normal sequence suggests the presence of a nearby star. They were in deep Interstellar for certain."

He let the meeting go quiet for a moment and considered. The doctor was obviously wrong, but his opinion had to at least be taken to mean she did not sail a great distance. How far could she have flown less than an hour? He made a note to himself to check the hyper-light charts for that direction himself.

"So what more is there to learn from the gun photos? Is your work finished?"

Ludow shook her head. "I can glean nothing further from the subjects in the photos. I'm turning to the stars in the background, now. In most of the pictures, they're hard to see. Too many bright sources in the picture. However, since each shot is actually a sequence of nine pictures, we can sharpen the stars up slightly by superimposing the shots. Plus, there's a few shots with nothing else in the picture, where we get really nice views of the sky seen from there. Since we assume she must have been within four light years, most of the stars are going to be roughly where you see them from here. Only the closer stars will move radically."

"What can you get from that?" Metzger puzzled. "You don't have a way to take angles between the stars in different shots." He had been a sensory and navigation officer prior to command rank, Ross remembered. It occurred to him that he could harness that expertise by teaming him with Ludow.

"We're not trying to do stellar navigation, sir. We're just trying to pattern match. It's very slow work, but we may be able to match a particular pattern of stars to the sky as seen from a particular point. Or rather, from along a particular lay line. One pattern match won't nail down a point."

Ross summarized."So, if you can identify the patterns in multiple shots, and figure their lay lines, where the lines cross is where she took them."

"It will still be very rough," Metzger mused.

"How close?" Ross pressed Ludow. "Can you get me within a light day? a light hour?"

"Captain, the entire circle of Earth's path around the sun is less than 10 light minutes in radius." Metzger objected. "A light day would be a long search."

But he could see the value in Ludow's plan. "By now, their beacon signals have been traveling for a day or more! Get me within a light day and our sensory equipment has a chance of picking them up!"

He turned back to the photo analyst. "Chief, please continue along your current lines. Mr. Metzger, when you are finished researching the girl, I want you to team up with her. Your sens/nav experience will be of value."

                                                 *      *      *

The intense pain had returned, the nightmare of heat searing her leg and flaring up one side. Why isn't the Freeze-up working? the child in the back of her mind was wailing. Please make it stop burning! She drifted in a pool of agony, unable even to find her voice to cry out.

But there was something wrong here. Why was there light? Her light was broken. Had it started working again? No, her power bus had failed. Was a light shining in through the cabin? She wondered if she had crashed out yet... wait, hadn't she already crashed out?

She remembered now, coming so close, so nearly there. But she had been light hours out from Abernathy when her power finally failed... She'd crashed out, and no power for life support systems, so her oxy and her heat were both dropping. All that was left to do was wish herself luck and hit the Freeze. But I've already hit it! It isn't working!

Well, I guess that about wraps it up for Rissa, then. Without Freeze-up, I'm just dead....

And yet, the mysterious light was still there. And strangely, she could feel herself moving. No, she could feel herself being moved. She was lying down... so she was in gravity? I'm not in my cabin?

Somewhere within the fog of her pain, she began to conceive the idea that she had been picked up. That someone had found her dead spacecraft with her inside. She passed back into unconsciousness wondering if it were possible.

                                                 *      *      *

Ross studied the girl in the bed and wondered if the doctor was right. She had shown signs earlier of coming awake, but had faded again.

Metzger had located her name patch eventually. They now knew she was Senior Aviator Marissa Lee, ESDF 77th Pursuit Squadron. She was an unlikely looking hero. A pretty little blonde who ought to have no more worries than passing her next high school exam. He hoped the Sesseem weren't disappointed.

Although, he reflected, all humans were towering giants to the Sesseem. Besides, the girl was slight, but by no means fragile. Her exposed arm was toned and athletic.

She was still so small, though.

"Marissa Lee, youth officer, Aviation Corps," Metzger read off, from behind him. He had retrieved the service record from Abernathy's database. "Current age is fifteen, but her birthday is next month. Drafted and 'wared at age twelve. Flying Cadet at age thirteen. Aviator later at age thirteen. It does not mention a promotion to Senior Aviator, so that must have happened just recently. Thirty Four scores."

Ross had turned toward Metzger in shock during his reading. He continued to stare.          Metzger raised his eyebrows. "Yes, sir?"

"Twelve." he repeated, sick at the thought of it. "She was 'wared at age twelve."

"Yes, sir. That is unusually young, as I understand it."

He exploded, frustrated at the XO's lack of emotion. "It's bloody inhuman, doing that to a twelve year old! It was hell on wheels for me, and I was fifteen!"

The XO nodded, remaining his unflappable self. "I understand it's a painful procedure."

"It's the legalized torture of minors, Metzger! It's barbaric and sadistic. I don't believe I would ever want to meet the doctor who was willing to do that to any age of kid. It's just... wrong to do that to a twelve-year-old!"

He turned back to the girl and willed himself to calm down. He didn't understand why Metzger was acting so cold, but he suspected he might not be in a good frame of mind to judge. And after all, the man didn't have any of the experiences that he shared with the teenager in the bed. Nerveware implants couldn't be done on adults because the body still had to be growing. The only reason they did it to teenagers was that it was just too brutal for younger kids to take. Metzger might know that clinically, but between the two of them, only Ross knew it from firsthand experience.

Calm again, he considered the rest of Metzger's report. With some admiration, he realized. "Thirty Four scores. Quite a pilot"

"What defines a score, exactly, sir?" Still the reserved, cold voice. Metzger could be stiff, but he was being unusually stiff today. Something was going on in the German's head after all, Ross recognized.

"Combination of kills on small craft and significant strikes on large craft."

"Then she has at least four more. Two outriders killed, a strike on the Slave cruiser and a missile into the Ring. Quite a day."

"A target rich environment," he replied, then wondered if the XO knew the ironic implication of that phrase.

The girl made a noise. A sudden intake of breath. He saw the pain that had been in her face all along seem to intensify, and the breath turned labored. Awake or dreaming? Her eyelids were pressed closed, brow furrowed. Either way, she was suffering.

"Metzger, get the nurse." He leaned forward toward her. "Marissa?"

Her head rolled toward him. She did not open her eyes, but she began speaking, barely audible. He leaned in a bit more. He recognized a children's rhyme, the wishing star chant. "...wish I may... wish I might..."

"Marissa, can you hear me?"

Her eyes struggled open. "First star..."

He wondered if she had lost her place in the rhyme. "Yes?"

"Second star... third star." She seemed to run out of energy. He heard the nurse and Metzger coming in behind him, and held up his hand for silence.

He waited for a bit, then prompted. "Marissa? I need to ask you some questions."

Her eyes intensified. Angry? No, simply earnest. He was interrupting, he supposed. "Sirius.. Canopus... Solis..." she recited, then faded away again.

Metzger wondered from behind him, "Why was she reciting star names?"

"That was the stars of the sextant." Why did she do that?

"Of the... what?" Metzger frowned. "Isn't a sextant an instrument they used back in the wooden ship days?"

"Sorry. Aviator's term. We borrowed the word from the old days. I meant that it's the stars we use for near Earth mid-range navigation."

Metzger would know the method for getting the position of a big ship, but using different equipment. Aviators didn't have a suite of calibrated scopes to take apparent angles between stars, but they did the same thing with one fixed scope that they called the sextant, aligned on the axis of the craft. They would line up their craft on a star, zero out the attitude, then rotate to the next two stars and take attitude readings. Computer took the three attitudes and computed the position.

The girl made an indefinite noise. He leaned forward again.

"Marissa, please tell me. You ran into a big ring out there, didn't you?"

He thought she was shuddering, then realized it was actually a laugh. "Big ring. Whoa, yeah." This girl had some real steel in her, he recognized.

"What happened to the rest of the 77th? Are you the only one to make it out?"

"Not.. no. Others are ... still... alive..." Her breath was becoming labored as she fought against the pain raging in her limbs. He hated what they were doing to her, but he had to continue.

"Anything you can tell us about the ring, we need to know. How far out were you? Where was it headed? What shape was it in?"

"Splash." She said. And despite the obvious pain, smiled with satisfaction.

"What?" Metzger sounded puzzled. "What does she mean?"

"I think she just claimed they killed it." He said with wonder.

"Mein gott, that last shot of hers really was a killer?"

"What do you mean?"

"The last gun photo ... rather, the last one with an actual target in it, she had launched her second missile. It landed square, no deflection. That's what had the Sesseem excited about her."

"Sir," the nurse was very impatient, "the anesthesiologist is here. She needs painkiller."

"Lieutenant, I am ordering you to wait."

The nurse bristled. "Sir! This is a hospital, not a ship..."

He ignored her and turned back to the girl. "Senior Aviator, please tell me, where is your squadron? Why aren't you together with them?"

"Flypaper, " she gasped. The single word filled in the rest of the story for him, as his blood turned cold.

The anesthesiologist came around to the other side of the bed and made some adjustments to the dose meter. "Wait a moment!" he snapped, but the man ignored him. "Doctor, she needs to be awake! We have to talk to her!"

The man turned to face him. He could see the fellow had no intention of complying.

He heard the girl reciting again, as she faded away, "Sirius, Canopus, Solis..."

From behind him, he heard a second voice. He recognized Lt. Commander Hacek, her doctor. "You needed her to tell you about the ring."

Ross turned to face him, fuming. Obviously, the other was under his orders. The doctor continued.

"We heard. She told you it was dead. There's no ring lurking about out there, planning to attack the system. That's what we were ordered to let her become conscious to tell you. Now, if she has any hope of recovering from the damage she has taken, she cannot be kept awake any longer. She must go into surgery to begin nerve-ware replacement procedures immediately. You can have her again in about a week."

He boiled with anger. "Doctor, they may not have a week!"

The man was unperturbed "Who may not have a week, sir?"

He raged at him, even though he had already recognized the losing battle. "The rest of her squadron!"

"You must find them without her, " the man stated, unmoved. Ross watched, raging and helpless, as the medical personnel filed back out.

Metzger looked at him, puzzled. "What is.. 'flypaper'?"

His gut was still twisting. "Aviation Corps slang for an Enemy capture field." He turned to look at the girl, who had slipped back into sleep. "Her comrades are out still out there. Trapped. And Freeze-up isn't reliable in a capture field. They could be non-revivable in less than a week! "

"But if the Enemy took them prisoner..."

"The Enemy is dead, Metzger! Her squadron is somewhere out in the interstellar, stuck in a capture field, and the Enemy that took them prisoner will never turn it off!"

                                                 *      *      *

Metzger entered the conference room to discovered that he had been called away from his photo analysis work to attend another ad hoc meeting, this one with with the captain, an unfamiliar Aviation commander and someone on teleconference. The captain looked down at the console on the table. "Okay, the XO's here now. Metzger, this is Commander Wilkins. Ms. Takahashi, I understand your crew turned up something new on that Banshee?"

The teleconferencing console hissed a bit as it went live, and Orion's chief engineer replied. "Yes, sir. Two things, actually. First, we have recovered a body from the craft."

"A ...what?"

"A body, carefully wrapped in a vac-bag, stuffed into the empty missile bay. It appears to be another pilot. Sick bay says they are pretty sure we have a dead body here, not a successful Freeze-up. In the Surgeon's Mate's words, he died of 'severe trauma'. From what the crewman who found him described to me, I suspect that is something of an understatement, sir. We're arranging to transfer the deceased down to Abernathy now."

The captain considered the news out loud. "She must have pulled one of her comrades out of his craft and loaded him up, to bring him home. That must have happened after the battle was over. So, that confirms that Hacek's assessment of her condition at the time is at least a little off."

Metzger thought about what that entailed. She must have gone out by herself. Tethered, he hoped. Left her spacecraft, entered his. Pulled the dead body out of its craft.... He couldn't imagine it. He couldn't imagine the child in the hospital bed doing these things.

The captain looked back down at the console again. "Chief, what is your second item?"

"Well, sir, as you know, the computer was dead when we got the power back up. We have finished with data recovery, and it looks like there just isn't much that can be recovered. All we have is flight data that was in the write cache from just before the computer was put out of commission. The permanent storage itself was destroyed along with the flight data recorder."

She paused for a moment. The sound of rustling paper came through the speaker."According to the date stamps, the last write-times were at around twenty three hundred Greenwich, the day before the Sesseem spotted her crashing out."

"Which we have worked out to being at around oh-five hundred Greenwich, yesterday. Six hours earlier, then." the captain supplied. "And what was she doing?"

"There is flight control data showing high-gee maneuvers, firing reports, and mass expenditure readings. And one remaining mass reading. A very low one, sir. She was close to running dry. Judging from the kind of data in the cache, she was in the middle of a dogfight when her computer died."

They stared at the console in shock. The truth behind what she just said struck Metzger and sank in as the Captain simultaneously put it to words. "Lieutenant Commander Takahashi, are you telling me that she lost her computer during the firefight?"

They had been assuming it had died on the flight to Tor-Emmi. Its death could even have been the trigger for her early crash-out.

"Yes, sir." From Takahashi's matter-of-fact tone, Metzger knew she didn't recognize the significance of what she had just reported.

Metzger looked at his Captain in disbelief. The other was staring likewise back. "Captain," he finally put it to words, "could that girl have transited to Meta and navigated all the way here manually?"

It isn't possible! his thoughts insisted. This is not the work of a teenage girl! In the same moment, he realized that the teenage girls in his life had been his classmates in school. None of them had been 'wared at twelve and flew combat missions at thirteen. The girl in the bed had nearly as little in common with their world as did a Sesseem.

The captain shook his head slowly. Not in negation, but in wonder. "And near bingo mass. She would have saved what she had for planetary approach, so that," he glanced over to the meeting's other attendee, "means she was on sail power alone for the entire way."

                                                 *      *      *

                                                 Chapter III

Commander Natalee Wilkins' LRP squadron flew out of Abernathy, but she would never have known Jared was here if the Commodore hadn't pulled her in for the search. Now she sat across a dinner table from him in the Officer's Club. She wished it could be a longer reunion.

She was more than a little surprised when she first saw him. She had heard that her old squadron mate, the almost-too-large-for-the-cabin Aviator with the goofy grin, had grown up to be a cruiser captain, but she was never quite able to picture it. Once she saw the picture, though, she had difficulty accepting that this fortyish archetypal space captain was the undisciplined teenager she once knew. He was like a donkey somehow grown up to be a thoroughbred.

He had certainly cleaned up nicely. She couldn't hear a trace of the Creole vocabulary that peppered his English and made him so difficult for foreigners to follow on the voice comm. He now spoke in a neat British Academic perfection.

The rock-solid Captain had been there all along, she supposed. The man had a relaxed, confident attitude, a lack of posturing, which echoed the boy. Out on a mission, he was never the hotshot that he play-acted on the ground. He was a steady presence, especially when things went badly. Yes, it's Jared, all right, she accepted, it just isn't 'Cobra'... that part is gone along with the dreads.

She was finally certain he was the same man beneath it all when she saw the echo in his eyes, during the meeting, as they discussed the girl in the hospital. He sees 'Mako' in her. 'Mako' and 'Gorgon' crashed out somewhere close to here. She knew his thoughts were on them, wherever they were, right now.

"Master Commander Jared Ross." she declared, "I am taking off with my squadron in less than an hour. If we are to have any dinner conversation at all, sir, you shall have to get started."

It wasn't entirely fair to be a huffy date with him, she told herself. After all, she was the one who dragged him to dinner in the first place. He was not going to sit there and pick at his food if she could help it, though, not when she hadn't seen him in nearly twenty years.

He smiled back at her, a little self-consciously. "I suppose I'm not good conversation today, Nat. We should try doing this sometime when we don't have a situation."

The only reason we saw each other again after nearly twenty years was that we had 'a situation', she thought at him. She chose to say instead, "You're thinking about the two who crashed out near here."

He nodded. "Naturally. Aren't you? When we first knew we had a drifting fighter to pick up, I thought it might be one of them."

"They're dead by now, Jared. Even if they were in Freeze-up, it would be too long for a revival."

"People have been revived after twenty years before."

"A couple. Most haven't."

Another uncomfortable silence lingered over the table. Jared finally broke it with a curious chuckle and mentioned, "So, me 'ear you 'ad a couple dem pickney."

Natalee nearly strangled on her tea, laughing. "Lawd, Jared, that's the first Jamaican I've heard from you all evening. I had just been wondering what happened to it."

He brightened, his old easy smile come home from wherever it had gone. "I had to work pretty hard to separate the Jamaican from the English. You guys always thought it was a put-on, but I really couldn't help it. They wouldn't take me seriously at Christ Church, so I hired a language coach."

"At where?"

"The college I attended."

She contemplated the new Jared and thought about the old one. "Kinda sad. There's no more 'Dreadies In Space', you know. They closed the base and moved out of Ja. The old unit flies out of London now."

"No choice. That mess with the drug runners, you know. So, there's no more 'Bad Bwoys'. I wonder if they kept the unit nickname."

"Well, the whole dreads thing was a sham anyway," she pointed out. "There wasn't a Rastafarian in the bunch. It was just an image you guys were putting on."

He shook his head. "You never understood, Nat. It wasn't about religion, it was about national pride. About finding some way to stand out among all the American units and Euro units, and the Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Indian.... We were one little Jamaican squadron lost in the mix."

He thought for a moment, and then smiled. "So did you really have a couple kids?"

She grinned. "Sure did. I married a nice boy in Battle Fleet. He was serving on the Minerva when I transferred to the carrier group there. I took LOA and settled down to be a stay-at-home mom for a while. Surprised?"

"Not really. I'm surprised you didn't stick to it. You always were a bit kid crazy. I actually figured you'd end up a kindergarten teacher some day."

"Cho, I'm squadron commander, sem t'ing." She chuckled, then smiled sadly. "I went back into the service after he was killed. I'd rather not talk about it. My parents have Ministry jobs, so they take much better care of the kids than I would have, in the state I was in."

He was studying her, she noticed. She quickly changed the topic. "You guys have given me an awful wide area to search."

"We're still working on it."

"The thing with the gun photos."

"Metzger and Ludow will be heading in to work on it again after supper."

"You know, when I'm out there, it will be a long shot to find anything. The RF antennae on my Luna Moths aren't sensitive enough to catch the beacons farther than a light second or so away. Even spread out, with only twelve craft I'm not going to be able to check more than a couple light-seconds radius at a time."

She tilted her head and looked over at him. "Have you considered that there may not even be any beacons? They won't work inside a capture field, you realize. Electrical currents get scrambled. We're depending upon there being a wreck or two outside the capture field."

"We already know there is one," he pointed out. "That girl did not go into the capture field to pull out that body. There's the wreck of a craft floating free somewhere."

"And the beacon's working?"

"She chased the wreck down after the fight. I would have to bet, yes, it's working."

She shook her head and smiled. "You would have to bet."

"Stay inside a light year of here, for now. From the charts, it's hard to imagine she could have got too much farther under pure sail power in two or three hours. Even in a Banshee. The way the doctor talks, she couldn't have sailed for very long."

She nodded and settled into thought. He probably had guessed she was doing sailing time calculations, as he was leaving her alone to think. They had both flown the same craft type once, after all.

He finally broke the silence again. "Once they're done massing Orion up, we'll be heading out there to join you. We have more sensitive ears."

"There's only one Orion."

"Yes. We have to hope Ludow and Metzger can narrow the search area down."

                                                 *      *      *

The newest batch of pattern matches came up on the screen and Metzger again scanned through them. Nothing greater than twenty percent. Nothing more promising than the previous run. He shook his head and flagged the moderately more promising items for visual inspection.

While waiting for them to pull up, his mind drifted back to the mädchen in the bed. She was about the same age as Margrit was when I saw her last, he told himself. She even looks a little like her. That's why it bothers me.

That wasn't the reason. He knew better. When this funk first gripped him, he'd had no idea what she looked like. Only what color her bars were. The girl could have been darker than the Captain, could have been any color at all, and it would have hit him just as hard.

There is a madness to war, he lectured himself. A logic that offends the civilized mind. You knew that, going in. And it was for the sake of the children and all who were defenseless that you took this job.

Until now, though, he had not confronted the fact that some of the children weren't staying home. They were marching off to this war alongside him and his fellow adults. Until he'd held those purple bars in his hand....

It can't be helped. Nerve-ware is the only way we can control the alien technology. We don't have a choice. It's this, or surrender and become an Enemy Slave race. And fight on the other side of the same battles anyway.

"You're staring at your screen again, sir," came CPO Ludow's grandmotherly voice. She was trying not to laugh at him, he could tell. "Perhaps it's time for you to call it a night."

He pushed himself away from the computer. "Not just yet. But perhaps we should go grab a coffee."

A little while later, while staring at his cup, he realized for the first time how tired he really was. It was local evening, but his own waking had been on ship's time, well over twenty hours before. He tried to recall how long the local day was, but couldn't.

"You can bunk down in the storage room if you need to," Ludow let him know. "We have a cot in there for when the hours get long."

"Ah... no. if I were to sleep now, I would sleep until morning, and the ship should be about provisioned by then."

"So, what does that mean?"

"The Commodore has ordered the Captain to break orbit as soon as his ship is able. We are to follow Wilkins out into the search area. If I am to help here, I must do it now."

Ludow looked at him and shook her head. "Commander, your help is appreciated, and valuable, but it is not indispensable. I can continue the work after you sail."

He stared at her, uncomprehending, then realized that she had misunderstood. "No, Chief, it isn't like that. Of course I'm just an extra pair of eyes for you here. You don't need me to be here, to do this work. But, you see, I need me to be here."

Ludow looked at him, contemplating something. He continued. "I have to find her squadron."

"Yes, Commander," she replied carefully, "that is what we are trying to do."

He shook his head. "You don't understand. This situation is... intolerable for me. That child has done too many things, gone through far too much."

Ludow said nothing. Suddenly, all the frustrations that had been twisting inside his gut began spilling out. "She left out of Earth, and must have been flying for well over a day to get this far. She'd just battled the Slave cruiser that her squadron was pursuing, when she was jumped by the biggest ring I've ever run across. Somehow she got through that, too, only to find herself the only one still able to fly. All the adults in the squadron were either dead, or trapped. All her fellow youth officers as well. She was alone and light years from home."

He was shaking, he realized. "What's worse, she was injured. What's worse, her craft was crippled. It didn't stop there. She had a dead compatriot to bring home. Her computer was broken, she was nearly out of reaction mass, and she had to navigate manually, somehow remembering where the nearest base was without her nav! Finally, when she had almost reached it despite everything Fate had thrown at her, her craft gave out on her. For a child to be forced to handle all of that, for the universe to just continuously beat her down like that!..."

He took a breath, and stared down at the table. "It makes me feel worthless. As though we adults utterly failed her."

"Commander," Ludow gently reminded him, "She is a Naval officer."

"She is a teenage girl!" He was shocked at how forcefully he was speaking. He controlled his voice, and continued. "She should be back on Earth, enjoying living, going to school, being with friends, shopping, going on dates.... I know it makes no sense, but I feel guilty that my little sister has been doing all of that while this girl has been out here, fighting a war."

"God allots us each a different life, Commander," Ludow noted.

"That's no excuse!" he snapped. "What if that were your daughter in the Banshee, Chief?"

"It could easily have been my son, Commander, " she quietly replied. "He was 'wared when he was fifteen years old."

Metzger stared at her in shock. She met his eyes squarely and continued. "He's master of a mail packet now, but he was flying Luna Moths out of Chicago, four years ago."

She set her coffee cup down, and gazed into it. "We all have roles to play, sir. Some of us must be out here to ensure that others can live normal lives. Think about this, though... if your sister and others weren't living those normal lives, we would have nothing to fight for. We would be useless."

After a few moments in silence, she stood. "Let's go find that squadron, sir. We'll sleep in shifts, and keep the machines cranking all night."

                                                 *      *      *

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember her name.

'Mako' had been her call sign. The Flying Cadet who had flown her first sortie only the previous month. She had been earning incredible grades in sim, but had yet to meet an actual enemy. Four training missions, two lost bogies. Not even vaguely enough preparation for what would be her last sortie.

'Gorgon' was Lt. William Jeffryes. Tough and strong, massive dreads, the only male adult other than their commander. He was a long serving veteran, with dozens of scores and a long list of injuries. The sort who kept getting up no matter how many times he was knocked down.

Ross could picture both of them. He had trouble remembering his long-dead older brother's face, but he could picture both the pilots who were lost that day. He could remember Mako's call out.

"Gorgon's hit! He's crashing out! I'm following..."

They had fought a running battle, their squadron against a Slave cruiser and a half-dozen escorts locked in one of those unending chases down the Centauri current that were a constant risk for every Earth-based pursuit squadron. Something very similar to what Aviator Lee had experienced, in fact. In their case, they had pursued a commerce-raiding party that was successfully tracked after its latest attack. They had caught them less than a light year out of Tor-Emmi.

The Slave commander attempted a ruse... no telling what the full plan had been, but it had failed utterly, except that it succeeded in crippling Gorgon's Erinye before it failed.

Why couldn't the commanders have sent a Unicorn squadron after them? He always found himself asking that same futile question. Unicorns would have run the bandits down before the first light year. The Brass had been getting scared of the Unicorns already. Scared enough to avoid deploying them except in the direst need. Scared enough to pull some of them out of service entirely and force "Ernies" to replace them, doing Pursuit work.

Gorgon and Mako disappeared. Searches turned up no sign at all of the craft or wreckage. The only guess anyone had was that Gorgon had been dead or crippled crashing out, and Mako, his wingman, collided with him while trying to follow him out. Both fatally wounded, or perhaps one or both were still alive, but stranded somewhere between stars, entombed in their flying coffins forever. Perhaps Gorgon had died, and inexperienced Mako committed some fatal rookie mistake while trying to find her way home on her own. The only certainty was that they did not seem to be anywhere near where the battle records suggested they should have been.

Ross forced himself back into his work. Perhaps he couldn't find Mako, but he could find her kindred spirits, the squadron stranded out there in the capture field. He reached into the base datanet with his nerve-ware again, calling up another series of hyper-light observations. She must have been flying the Centauri, because no pursuit squadron out of Earth was going to wind up in Tor-Emmi by another route. Where did they leave it, though?... and how far off it did they go before exiting Meta-Space?

Somewhere deep into the local night, he made his way from the chart room down to Ludow's analysis lab. She was still at it, by herself now, patiently checking results, looking through candidates, specifying the next run.

She looked up and smiled. "Good evening, sir!"

"Has my XO finally given up?"

"Without nerve-ware to prop him up, he really doesn't have a choice. I promised him I would wake him in another hour."

He set a data card on her desk. "I've been able to eliminate about half of the search area, based on the currents. It isn't as good as I had hoped, but it may help."

"Thank you, sir. I'm sure it will."

                                                 *      *      *

The morning light was beginning to stream in through the window as Metzger finished viewing the latest slides. He was ready to say it. They were at least fifty percent confident on one line. With such a wide margin, though, that he could only say that it defined a half light year wide swath through space. A very loose definition of a line. At least it cut through their search area, he noted. That narrowed things down a bit.

He heard a noise at the door, and turned to see his CO coming in with a bag and a tray of coffees.

"Breakfast," he announced. "We've only about a half hour before we need to get going for the airstrip, so eat up."

He sighed and shook his head. "Captain, if anything, I should be bringing the breakfast to you."

"Nonsense," the Captain dismissed his protest. "You're my XO, not my side boy." He pulled out croissants and set one in front of Metzger with a coffee. He distributed the same to Ludow, eyes still glued to her screen as she scanned through pages of computer generated slides.

He sighed again and pushed away from the screen. "I suppose that's it then. I've done what I can do."

The Captain busied himself with another croissant and didn't reply.

Ludow finally looked up. "Oh, hello, sir! Thank you."

After sipping and swallowing, the Captain finally spoke again. "So, do you have any good news for me? Any narrowing of the field?"

"Well, sir, actually, yes. Only a little though."

The Captain had taken another bite, so he just looked at Metzger and waited.

He nodded and grabbed a print from the desk. "This is one of the wild shots she took at open space before she stopped shooting. It appears... or at least we're about 50 percent sure... that she managed to take a picture of Canopus."

The Captain stopped chewing and swallowed. And stared at him.

"Canopus?"

"Yes, sir. It looks almost as if she hit it dead on. As if she was shooting at it."

Metzger was puzzled. The Captain seemed to have taken this news considerably more seriously than could possibly be reasonable. What had he said?

"When she was shooting at nothing... at the end... how many times did she shoot?"

"She fired short bursts in three different directions, sir."

The Captain stared at him again.

"Which shot is this?" he finally demanded, with considerable force.

Metzger was a little shocked. His commander was more excitable than the German normally liked, but this shift was unusually sudden. "It's the middle one."

Ross stared at him with widening eyes.

"Let me see the first one!"

"Here," he pointed at it on the table, a bit mystified.

"Could that be Sirius, within a light year or so of here?"

"Mm. Could be," Metzger allowed. "Not easy to say. This is why we are having so much trouble pattern matching, you see. The field of view is very small, and the cameras are not intended for astronomical photography...."

"The third! Where is it?" the Captain demanded.

Ludow, who had joined them, indicated it.

"Could that be Solis?"

"Could that be what?" Ludow sounded puzzled.

"Solis! The Sun of Earth! Could it?" He looked from one puzzled expression to the other.

"It's very small," Metzger ruminated. "I honestly don't know. It's possible."

Ross stared at the photographs again. Metzger watched his expression changing, like a joyful breaking dawn.

"Oh that glorious woman!" He breathed.

"Sir?" Metzger was having some serious concerns.

"That beautiful, beautiful girl!" the Captain declared with wonder in his voice.

Metzger and Ludow shared a worried exchange of glances.

"Metzger, Senior Aviator Lee is genius incarnate! I swear I am going to marry her!" Ross declared.

Metzger struggled to keep incredulity out of his voice. "Um... sir?"

"I've got to go see the Commodore!" He grabbed the photo prints and dashed out the door.

Ludow's critique was carefully neutral. "They say that mental illness rates run pretty high among ship's commanders. All that on-the-job stress."

The Captain came storming back down the hall and stuck his head back in. "For pity's sake, come with, Metzger! I'm going to need you!" He dashed away again.

As he got to his feet, he worried "I wonder what for?"

"Best man?" Ludow ventured.

                                                 *      *      *

"Commodore, she wasn't shooting at shadows at all! She wasn't using her guns!"

The Commodore had always valued emotional hotshots more when in charge of smaller platforms like fighter craft, than when in commanding something the weight of a strike cruiser. She hoped he had good cause to be this excited.

"Captain," she replied patiently, "those cameras only take shots when weapons are triggered."

She could see Ross making an effort to settle himself down. Better. He nodded. "Exactly. We thought she had lost it, shooting at empty space, but it wasn't the guns she was using in those last shots. She just had to fire them, as the only way to make the cameras shoot."

"She even tried to tell me. First star, second star, third star. These are shots of --"

He laid down the first picture. "-- Sirius --"

The second. "-- Canopus --"

And the third. "-- Solis. Every time she pulled the trigger, she was taking a sextant shot!"

The Commodore could see it, but saw no value in it. "Okay. But it's completely useless, Captain. Without her flight data, we have no record of her attitude when she took each shot."

He nodded and grinned. "For a normal computerized sextant reading, it's useless. But she wanted to use the photos for something else entirely. She wanted to do exactly what we're already doing!"

She saw him shoot a glance at his XO, but the German didn't look like he understood, either. Ross shook his head and went back to explaining. "Pattern matching the stars in the gun photos is such slow work because we know neither where they were shot, nor what stars were shot. Too many variables in the equation."

He gestured to the three pictures. "Except these! We know the stars! The job just got a thousand times simpler!"

                                                 *      *      *

Wilkins' patrol would have been out of range even for low data rate transmissions, but the Commodore had maintained a communications relay using her pursuit squadrons. Her hurried orders caught them just in time, to circle until they could relay out new search coordinates. She gave new orders to delay Orion another half-day before breaking orbit, so that Metzger and the Navigation staff could continue to use Abernathy's equipment.

Despite the head start, the search area was still large, and the LRP found nothing before the cruiser reached the site. Once the sensitive ears of Orion were on hand, however, they heard the dead pilot's beacon within a day.

Within an hour, Wilkins' squadron matched velocities in sight of the wreck, and fanned out to search for the capture field containing the remainder. As the cruiser moved to join them, their lidar scan to turn up the trapped Banshees, and the Luna Moths moved in to find them.

The word came crackling back over the voice comm fifteen minutes after lidar contact.

"There!"

NEXT: "Moon Duty"