Wraia felt strangely uncomfortable as she walked through halls of the Merlin, summoned by Commander Gueller after she'd shared the revelations from the logs. She wondered if this was just a power play, a way of reminding her of her place after she'd gone ahead and examined the logs without him.

Leaving Gallagher in command of the Cobra, she allowed a pair of the Merlin's deck officers to escort her through the ship. Her eyes roved, taking in the details of the older vessel, its boxy passages and darker panelling; clumps of exposed wiring that offended her eyes. She wondered how much of this was unavoidable design, and how much was simply down to ill discipline.

Men and women in Sol-Fleet uniforms scurried efficiently back and forth in the halls. Those who actually noticed her stopped and saluted, but most were too engrossed in their work to even register the presence of a senior officer from another crew. Wraia felt her irritation rising. She ran a very tight ship; Gueller not so much.

At length, she was escorted to the Merlin's primary tactical suite, where Gueller and his senior officers waited. The chamber was a carbon copy of the suite aboard the Cobra, save for the darker plate walls and old-fashioned, high-backed seats.

"Sir." Wraia saluted sharply.

"At ease, Lieutenant Commander," Gueller answered, gesturing to an empty seat. "Join us."

Relaxing her stance just a little, she took her place at the end of the oblong table, opposite Gueller. With her spine pressed against the solid back of the chair, she looked him in the eye.

"You asked for me, sir?"

"I did." He regarded her coldly. "I received the report form your technicians on the Manticore's logs. I would have liked to have been there to see them firsthand."

"I had them dispatched as soon as we had relevant information," she replied calmly. "It seemed the more efficient course of action with the Merlin engaged at Myrr Lomas."

The corner of his mouth twitched with irritation. She could see the calculations etched across his face – how far to push this in front of his senior staff. Clearly he felt personally slighted, but there were bigger things at stake than the politics of command right now.

"Indeed." That was all that he managed at first. Gueller drew his spindly frame up straight in his chair before continuing. "And you are of the opinion that the vessel those logs show is responsible for what happened to the Manticore and Myrr Idol?"

"I don't see that we can draw any other conclusion."

"I agree. And I believe we have another piece of the puzzle."

Wraia's eyes lit up, her dislike for Gueller forgotten in an instant. "Sir?"

"While you were busying yourself with the Manticore's logs," he continued, an edge of ice in his voice. "We found something beyond the orbit of the moon. Ms. Baxtrom?" He nodded to his second in command – a dark-skinned, sharp-jawed woman in her thirties with a lieutenant's bars emblazoned on her uniform. Baxtrom rattled a command into the control array in front of her, and brought the images up on screen.

At first it just looked like empty space surrounding the wizened sphere that had once been the planet's moon. Then a second push of a button overlaid a series of concentric circles over the display – markers of the moon's gravity well, overlapping with the larger gravitational pull of Myrr Idol itself, and wider than that, the pull of the system's sun.

Wraia instantly saw the bulges that pockmarked the image. The neat gravity readings were disrupted by strange bulges, zig-zagging away from the ravaged moon at regular intervals. Her brow furrowed and she leaned forward, clasping her hands together as she took a closer look.

"What are those?" she asked.

"Distortions in the local gravity field," Gueller said. "Analogous to what would be left behind after a ship transitions to dropspace, except these are much larger than anything left behind by a colonial ship."

"Dropspace," Wraia repeated. "Do they correspond to the damage to the interior of the Manticore?"

"We cannot say with one hundred percent certainty," Baxtrom answered. "But the theory put forward by your technicians is plausible."

"And this pattern," Wraia continued, indicating the screen with a wave of her hand. "How far does it go?"

"We swept several hundred thousand kilometres beyond the orbit of Myrr Lomas," Gueller answered. "The pattern persists – it follows a diagonal course out towards Myrr Idol's heliopause."

"Given the image you extracted from the Manticore's logs," Baxtrom said, "we theorize that the vessel on the recording must be responsible for these distortions. It would appear that whatever it is still utilises a form of dropspace technology to travel from system to system. Though, given the close proximity of these distortions, the drive must be very inefficient compared to our own."

"So we can outrun it," she murmured.

Gueller smiled. "Yes, Commander. If our hypothesis is correct we can use these distortions to extrapolate its course. And if we can outrun it, that means we can catch it."

*

The Cobra's dropspace drive disengaged, dropping them within the heliopause of the unclaimed system, designated only in Sol-Fleet databases as X19-1495. Wraia breathed deep, bracing herself for... well, anything.

"Navigation?" she said quietly.

"Same as Myrr Idol, ma'am," Ensign Hooper replied. "Heavy interference across all systems. Sensors are having a hard time identifying anything outside our local volume."

"What about Gueller's gravity distortions?"

After a moment, Hooper glanced across to her with a nod. "Looks like he was right, ma'am. I'm reading several of them along our present course. I've got the Merlin six thousand kilometres ahead off our starboard bow."

"Mr. Briar, inform the Merlin that we've transitioned safely and are awaiting orders."

"Aye, ma'am."

Wraia exhaled slowly. She was in two minds about Gueller's decision to immediately launch off into the unknown to chase down their quarry. On the one hand, she ached to discover what they were truly dealing with. Not knowing was like having sandpaper chafing against the back of her mind and she hated it.

But the memories of the Manticore and Myrr Idol made her think this might not be such a good idea. While they'd made some small progress in countering the strange blankets of static that their quarry left in its wake, their instantaneous SLC comms remained useless. They'd dispatched reports back to Davian Naval Command by standard radio burst, but it would be several hours before they received any response by that antiquated method of communication.

Who knew how far this might have gone by then?

"Receiving a navigation package from the Merlin," Briar said a moment later.

"Ms. Scarreth?"

"Receiving," the navigator confirmed. "Looks like we're keying off our astrographic charts, ma'am. Sensors still reported at less than 60% reliability."

"I trust your eyes, Ensign," Wraia answered with a thin smile, before nodding to the pilot. "Mr. Ratcliffe, let's not keep Command Gueller waiting."

"Aye, ma'am."

"Mr. Gallagher, make sure your gunnery teams remain on standby," she ordered. "All damage control parties should report to readiness stations."

"Ma'am." Gallagher saluted. "Expecting trouble?"

"Aren't you?"

"Always, ma'am."

Wraia let out a light chuckle at that as the Cobra's engines hummed below decks, bringing them into a close formation with the Merlin up ahead – just visible as a grey speck on the forward camera arrays.

What followed was a long, slow crawl through this dark corner of space. Wraia busied herself with examining the astrographic charts from Sol-Fleet's database, where long range sensors had mapped out this region, well before any human ship braved the unknown. There was little to mark it out as special – an A-Class star, six planets, two of them gas giants, and only one of the other four in the green zone for possible colonisation.

Even then, it was an inhospitable world by human standards, with high gravity and low temperatures. Not a prime candidate for colonisation, even before one considered the competing claims that would arise from the other nearby stellar empires.

She wondered why the trail would lead them here? What were they chasing? Were the Narvorians testing a new weapon? Or were they on the hunt for something else entirely? So many questions that kept her blood chilled as they followed the warped blisters of gravity in-system. They passed beyond the gas giants, and Wraia felt her anticipation rising when it became clear they were on course for the fourth planet in the system.

The only habitable rock in this region.

"Ma'am, I have ship-to-ship from Commander Gueller," Briar piped up.

"Put him through." Wraia activated the comm, her eyes fixed on the fast growing sphere of X19-1495 Four. "Go ahead, Commander."

"We're within sensor range of the planet, Ms. Clay," Gueller said, "and we're picking up debris in orbit."

She glanced across at Hooper. The tactical officer nodded.

"Copy that, Sir. We have it on sensors too."

"Hold formation. We're going to make a pass into high orbit."

"Understood. Mr. Ratcliffe, hold formation."

"Hold formation, aye."

"Ms. Hooper, what've we got?"

"A small debris field," Hooper said. "Sensor data is a little jumbled, but I'm reading metal alloys and radiation leakage. Tactical AI paints the wreckage as Narvorian from hull configuration. I'm counting parts from at least three separate ships."

"Those are military ships," Gallagher interjected, nodding to the forward camera displays as they drew close enough to get a visual of the wrecks. "That's Narvorian battle-plate."

Wraia pursed her lips, fingers gently tapping on her armrests. She had to assume these ships had been destroyed by whatever they were chasing, but unlike the Manticore, which had been largely intact, these ships had been pulverised; torn apart to form a scattered sea of twisted metal.

"I guess we can rule out the Narvorians being responsible," Ratcliffe chuckled nervously.

"So it would seem." Wraia frowned. "But what were they doing out here?"

"Could be a scout patrol," Gallagher suggested. "There aren't many habitable systems along this stretch. They might've been making sure no-one staked a claim."

"Scan the planet," she ordered. "Maybe there's something down there they were protecting."

"Aye, ma'am."

Several seconds ticked by. Wraia watched and waited as they made a close pass at the field of wreckage, close behind the Merlin. Gallagher's eye was proven correct as they closed in. She recognised the ugly plates of armour that would normally be wrapped around a Narvorian warship – far heavier than anything a civilian might be carrying.

"Commander!" Hooper's sudden shout tore her away form her musings and Wraia spun the command chair towards her.

"What is it?"

"I've got new signatures, incoming!"

"Barriers up! Identification?"

"Four ships, inbound at attack speed." She paused. Cursed. "Sensors are having trouble categorising them, but their trajectory has them coming in-system from Narvorian space. From their formation I'd class it as a Narvorian strike flotilla."

"Mr. Briar, signal red alert. All hands battle stations and get me Gueller, now! Mr. Ratcliffe, bring us around. Mr. Gallagher, Lock torpedoes on the lead ships and prepare counter batteries for defensive fire."

"I have Commander Gueller," Briar yelped.

"Commander, we have four targets incoming," Wraia blazed over the comm. "I have them painted as Narvorian and they're coming in hard and fast!"

"Copy that! We have them on sensors," Gueller yelped back. "Staggered defensive formation. Bringing main batteries to bear."

"Comms?"

"Nothing. It doesn't look like they came to talk."

The approaching formation appeared on the forward camera arrays at extreme range, picked out with red annotations from Hooper's tactical suite. Three of them matched the Cobra in tonnage, while the fourth was about half again the size of the Sol-Fleet cataphract.

They were Narvorian ships – she could see it instantly. Their design was uniquely inelegant, their bulbous hexagonal hulls trundling through space like an array of angular cigar tubes. They bulged all over with cumbersome wraps of thick armour, and the jutting, hemispherical heads of Narvorian mass driver batteries.

Inelegant as their ships, the weapons relied on sheer momentum and could turn pretty much any piece of blunt, solid material into a fearsome projectile by hurling it into the void at almost a thousand meters per second. They relied on manual targeting and a blanket fire approach, but Wraia knew that her vessel could only withstand a handful of direct hits from those guns.

"Three Narvorian colonial defenders," Hooper chirped. "One light cruiser – Narvorian navy, Pavos pattern. They're on direct intercept course."

"Evasive course, Ms. Scarreth," she barked, sinking back into her seat with her heart hammering in her chest. "Mr. Briar, blanket signal – warn those ships off!"

"Aye, ma'am!" Briar worked frantically at the comms, broadcasting the automated Sol-Fleet challenge out across space. Wraia watched the display.

The Narvorians didn't slow down, or change course.

"No answer, ma'am." Briar swivelled in his seat. "They're ignoring us."

"Commander," Hooper yelped. "They're painting us with targeting arrays."

"All hands," Wraia shouted through the ship-wide comm, "brace for impact!"

Then the shooting started.