Smith led the first wave. His fleet stayed low, just above the debris field, then veered sharply upwards only when a wall of relativistic missiles flew at them. Even with their greater speed, some of Smith's ships barely cleared the expanding arc of missiles.

Our fleet followed them from beneath the ring of debris, drawing additional fire and covering the Phoenix as we slid in behind a planetoid-sized rock. "Tell Kouvaras to launch when he's ready," I told flight control. Less than a minute later, a dozen breaching pods and an escort of remote fighters threaded their way in three winding columns through the asteroids.

With our EPRs cut off from the other fleets, we could only communicate with our own attack force. I sat back in my crash pod and surveyed the empty C&C. Empty meal packages littered the floor and one of my spare flight suits lay draped over Chris' pod. The cleaning crew hadn't been in here since I had practically moved in. It suddenly seemed empty without Phil, Cathrin and Chris. I even missed Harlow. We had come a long way since that first meeting on Biggs or Dark wherever it was that Sherman joined us, or even the nameless system where I first talked to Kouvaras when I helped put down the mutiny on Sherman's flagship. A lot had changed since then.

The trooper's breaching pods surprised the battle station, slipped past their point defenses and latched onto the outer hull. I followed their data feeds, watching the troopers as they flowed through the corridors of the station like water, appearing as nothing more than ripples in the air due to their optical-mimetic camouflage. Their conversation came in short clipped bursts as each team identified itself, announced its location and status. They identified and secured key parts of the station as they brushed past startled technicians and support personnel without resistance. Something like a security force did surprise one team, but they were effortlessly eliminated.

"Team Leader, this is Team Five. I think we found the main power plant."

I glanced at the data feeds and saw that Redburn led the team. They stood on a platform inside a large space filled with variously sized pipes, conduits and cables. Catwalks overlooking the confusion led off in every direction. A group of alien technicians stood poking excitedly at a control panel set up at one side of the platform.

"Acknowledged, Team Five," I heard Kouvaras say. "What's your status?"

"No resistance, just a handful of technicians."

"Secure the plant and secure the technicians. No one comes in or out until we've secured the station."

"Acknowledged." Redburn moved toward the technicians and raised the speaker of a Cack translation device. Troopers followed him, weapons at the ready. "Step away from the panel." The click and hisses of the translation echoed from the nearby piping. The technicians glanced back at Redburn and continued jabbing furiously at the controls.

"I said—"

The display flashed white and the signal cut off. All my displays showed red broken link icons.

"Holy Crap!" Chris' surprise came across the command channel. I glanced up at my main tactical display wondering if a signal router had somehow been hacked and noticed a ring of ship icons flashing ugly damage indicators. Assuming it was a hit-and-run attack, I expanded the field of view looking for the attacking ships. We must have missed someone hiding in the debris field, I thought.

"It's gone!"Chris said. "It just blew up."

I search the tactical display and found no space station.

* * *

"Who screwed up?" Smith demanded later in our regular commanders' meeting in v-space. "Do we know who's responsible?"

I sighed. "Our data analysts believe the Sons of Heaven themselves are responsible."

"They blew up their own station?" Maxwell said. "On purpose?"

I opened the report with the troopers' videos attached as thumbnail clips. I watched through their eyes as they moved with swift purpose through the corridors and felt a nauseating sense of loss. I listened to their confident and efficient voices as they checked in, knowing that trooper country on the Phoenix was almost completely empty now.

"None of the troopers were firing weapons are altering any of the station's systems." I expanded Redburn's video clip. "Our engineers haven't completely deciphered their controls—they may not have enough video to do so—but they currently believe the aliens deliberately collapsed the magnetic fields of the anti-matter containers."

"Is it possible our troopers disrupted their systems with their boarding action or prevented the aliens from correcting an unrelated problem?" Solomon asked.

"Our engineers feel that is extremely unlikely," I said. "A number of critical fail-safe systems had to all fail at the same time, including the one that would jettison the antimatter into space if the magnetic fields collapsed."

"But why? Maxwell asked.

I shrugged. "We can only speculate what they thought would happen if we captured the battle station. We just don't have any idea of what they were thinking."

"This should have been anticipated," Smith said. "Their commander should have ordered them to secure the power plant first." I think I successfully hid my shock as I cast a questioning glance at Solomon. Though Kouvaras commanded the troopers, I commanded Kouvaras. I couldn't believe that, in the midst of disaster, Smith would suddenly start pointing fingers at me. "And just what would you have done differently?" I asked Smith.

Smith stiffened. "I would have had them shoot all the technicians on sight so they couldn't sabotage the station."

Maxwell and Dexter exchanged puzzled glances.

"That would be a complete abrogation of standard boarding protocol," I began. "Current doctrine emphasizes speed and surprise. What you're proposing has been shown to only instigate the desperate measures we see here."

"I'm still saying you should have anticipated this," Smith said, giving up any pretense this wasn't a personal attack.

Solomon rubbed his temples and grimaced. "We can leave the historical analysis for the experts in the war colleges. For now, we need to finish our damage assessments for the ships damaged in the explosion and finish our survey of system resources."

Smith gave him a dirty look, but said nothing.

"I have all my engineering crews on twenty-four hour duty rotations," Solomon continued, "I suggest you others do the same if you haven't already. I don't want to spend more than a day in this system."

* * *

It took us another week of cautious fighting to make our way through the systems of the Iron Workers. They were not as aggressive as The Swords, but they were more professional and nearly as persistent. They continually followed behind, attacking our slowest and most damaged ships and I was constantly forced to send Chris off with groups of FACs and light cruisers to chase them away. By the time we left their systems, are supplies were nearly completely exhausted.

Afterwards, we came to the systems of the Harvesters. Once we were through their perimeter defenses, we found a number of relatively wealthy worlds from which we were able to resupply. A week into the Harvesters' territory, we came to a large trading world called Agile.

Smith sent his FACs and light cruisers in first to secure the gate for the battle cruisers. Once in system, they were greeted by an armada, not of war ships, but traders.

"Proper nearings sons of He Who Looks Up," the alien's ambassador said. "Pleasing us in being in your presence. We were continually pursuing your narrative among the information array of Those Who Dwell Within."

"Thank you for your kind greetings," Smith said while the rest of the commanders watched in v-space. "Why have you come to meet us?"

"We are having sent exchanges of supplies and seeking your friendship. I am to also possibly be serving in guidance to you through hostile spaces."

"You are to be our guide?" Smith asked. "Where would you guide us?"

"If following me you will seeing He Who Looks Up's suns' lights in four hundred thirty two intervals."

No one in v-space said anything, as if fearing they had misheard our potential guide. I did a quick calculation. Assuming he was using Cack time unites and assuming I understood him correctly, he was telling us he could bring us home to Solarian space in five days.

* * *

"I think our new friend is using us," Abrams said four days later during our regular commanders' conference.

"What make you think that?" Dexter asked. "The fact that he's repeatedly claimed unarmed trading ships were planning on attacking us or the way he's begged us to annihilate largely defenseless worlds."

Abrams glared at Dexter. Our initial enthusiasm over nearly being home had begun to wane over the last few days as our trust in our guide ebbed a bit. No one had said anything yet, but his promise to get us home tomorrow was looking a little thin.

"I've been studying the systems we've been traveling through," I began, "and I'm certain some of them are multiply connected on the transit network. I can't prove it, but I'd say our guide is zigzagging us through his enemy's territory, hoping we'll cause as much damage as we can."

Smith rubbed a hand across his unshaven face. I could hear the bristly scratch of his chin on the audio pickup. The months of traveling at high alert had taken a toll on his health and his gaze looked vague and uncertain. "Either our guide has kept his promise and we will reach Solarian space by the end of the day, or he has lied to us and will pay the price before tomorrow's first shift." Smith seemed to drift off in thought, then brought himself back with a heavy sigh. "I am tired of all this endless speculation. You know what you need to do now. Just do it. Tomorrow we will do whatever the circumstances require, then again the day after and the day after that until we either reach home or die trying."

* * *

We swept through system after system, met at each gate by desperate defenders convinced we had come to conquer them and take everything they had of value. Though our ships were patched and Jerry-rigged and continually low on missiles and other supplies, our crews were veterans a hundred times over and well drilled in combat procedures. "Danger is Likely" was our new normal and we rarely bothered raising the alert status in actual combat. As we proceeded, it seemed as if we had left the entire Sagittarian arm of the galaxy blazing behind, drawing a growing swarm of vengeance-seeking ships after us.

At the end of the day, as we orbited our last scheduled transit station and waited patiently for our turn through the gate, I was already expecting some sort of attack when I noticed the first ships through had begun to drop off the network. Only a sudden jump to the H- drive or their sudden destruction would cause that. I checked what I had left of my ship-to-ship network and flagged one of the tac officers of a ship preparing to transit.

"What is it? What's going on?" I demanded.

"Solaria!" came the startling cry. "We're home!"

I opened a video feed the tac officer had tagged and saw a distant star shining through the far gate. The navigational computers flagged it as Black Mesa, a Solarian colony.

"Solaria! Solaria!"

All the channels were full of people cheering and crying.

"We're home!"