"What's this I hear about you commandeering Spartan ships?"

I stood up straight in my battle dress uniform and stared straight ahead at Director Sharkey's avatar. "That is not correct. The only ships I took command of were the ships you sent me to collect."

"And threatening to fire on Spartan ships?"

"I only targeted that traitorous Dexter's flagship and then only when he threatened to board one of my ships."

"This is outrageous," Dexter exploded. "How dare you call me a traitor, I have always been loyal to Sparta."

"Did Sparta order you to steal that jump ship and run out on us, leaving even your fellow Spartans trapped in alien space?"

"It was a human colony," Dexter said plaintively.

"Look! I don't care about your past," Sharkey said. "This is war and I can't have Commanders running around making up their own orders. What's this I hear about you trying to found a colony on La Roca."

I groaned. "Found a colony? We were trying to escape it!"

"You know you were trying to hide out there from the fighting," Dexter sneered. "You tried the same thing at Red Rock."

"Sir, the only reason we were stuck at La Roca was that the Oracles wouldn't let us leave."

"Hmph," Sharkey grunted. "I've had my suspicions about those oracles."

"Look, Director Sharkey, you know I didn't ask for this assignment. I was looking forward to going back to a normal life. I only took this job because you said lives were at stake and I was the only person in a position to do anything about it. If you want to run the show, I will happily turn this fleet over to you, I only ask one thing. Don't let this jackass have anything to do with it."

"How dare you."

"I have half a mind to accept your offer and take personal command," Sharkey said. "One moment—" His avatar suddenly blinked out and left me standing in the virtual office with Dexter's avatar.

Minutes passed while Dexter paced back and forth. I considered opening a diagnostic panel to see if we had lost connection when Sharkey's avatar reappeared.

"There's been a change of plans." A holographic model of a Cack warship appeared in the middle of the room. "It seems that the group of Cack LCs you encountered was indeed an advance group that had been Operating in the Golden Worlds for some time. They were preparing the way for this."

A strange ship appeared in the display. I walked around it noting the large engines and a strange lumpy projection along its spine. "I take it this is some sort of assault ship?"

"It is. It's an anti-matter powered gamma ray laser. It's capable of putting out the focused equivalent of a small nova and sustaining it for hours."

A grey planet suddenly appeared in its place. "This is AJX4050 A month ago it looked like this." The gray ball was replaced by a brilliant emerald gem.

I wouldn't have thought such a thing were possible. "The weapon did this?"

"Sterilized the whole planet. It was test fired the day you left Empire. We fear the Cacks have moved their schedule forward. It may, even now be entering the Golden Worlds on its way to Earth."

"Then we don't have any time. We need to get the fleet moving."

"Agreed. You should be able to intercept it at AIV0454."

Great. Back to where we didn't find the colonials, I thought. Then I wondered if perhaps it was the colonials' presence that had triggered this.

"Dexter, turn your ships over to Commander Phon along with any supplies he needs and return to Sparta."

"What? You can't be serious."

"I assure you, I am. I expect both of you to be out of La Roca in less than twelve hours."

"But! But!" Dexter sputtered.

"And no screwups! Spartan Command out."

Sharkey's avatar disappeared and Maxwell turned a stunned expression on me. I just smiled and logged out.

* * *

The fleet sat at AIV0454 for three days. Chris sent his scout ships out to the very edge of the Golden Worlds and pushed his drones further into Cack space. Finally his scout ships signaled the approach of the Cack fleet.

We broke orbit around the main planet in AIV0454 and boosted for the transit station, building enormous amounts of momentum. On arrival, the fleet turned in wide spherical orbits, setting up kill-zones on either side of the transit station. The local transit administrator had made us swear not to endanger the gate, which we had considered destroying anyway, but there was another bottleneck in the transit network if things grew that desperate. Destroying the gate would cut off both the Solarian sphere and the Golden Worlds from the rest of the transit network, trapping us inside, while only delaying the inevitable invasion. The more time the Cacks had, the greater the force we would face. Time was not on our side.

Their FACs and LCs came through first, spreading out and aggressively attacking our cruisers. They were trying to keep us too busy defending ourselves to stop the battle cruisers following behind. Our tremendous momentum, however, made us hard to target. Seconds after they had dropped out of FTL, we had already flashed past their ships under reaction drives.

I smiled, watching the Cacks copy our tactics and transit the gate using both lanes. It did them little good, for as each of their ships entered, the next of our circling ships broke formation and charged toward them at faster-than-light speeds. Our ship would drop out of FTL long enough to unload a compliment of missiles, adding its massive momentum to their propulsion, momentum which carried our battle cruisers out of range before the Cacks could defend themselves and hope to counterattack.

Their ships transited through the gate one by one, exploding in a fountain of fire and debris. As the field of debris grew, it became harder to target the arriving ships so that an increasing number made it through. Sitting in C&C, I hardly had to say anything. I just monitored the situation, assigning targets, and marveled at the quiet efficiency of our fleet. The communication channels were all silent except for short acknowledgments of targets received and targets destroyed.

Our encircling sphere of ships began to thin out as more and more broke formation to chase down the Cacks. We had chewed through nearly two-thirds of the Cack fleet, taking no serious damage, when I heard Chris call out on the all-ships channel, "Get it! Get it! Stop that ship!"

Hiswing converged on a single ship. It transitedthe gate and darted away as if by magic. I opened the optical feed's recording and scrolled backwards, zooming in on the ship's image. A little larger than a light cruiser, it was all engines and had a strange formation along its spine. I had no doubt this was the planet-killer Director Sharkey warned us about.

I sent an emergency com override to Mia, Brennon's tactical officer. "Catch that ship and destroy it!"

Seconds later the Phoenix wheeled about and pursued it at full speed. In the few seconds it had taken us to turn around and pursue it, it had already traveled nearly ten astronomical units—ten times the distance between the earth and the sun. A little more than an hour and a quarter later, we had crossed the diameter of the solar system and I grew hopeful as the far gate approached.

"Commander Brennon, when he slows down to transit, I want you to take that ship out."

Brennon cleared his throat nervously. "We're likely to be well within the safety margin. That could endanger the gate."

"Yes. I know, but we can't let that ship get away. The existence of the entire Solar System is at stake. Use the beam weapons if you can."

"Acknowledged."

We were only seconds behind him, practically right on his tail, when we suddenly dropped out of FTL and the acceleration alarms sounded. The enemy ship continued on at close to 10C. I flash messaged Brennon. "What are you doing? He's getting away!"

"We're carrying too much momentum. We can't go through the station at this speed."

"We don't have time for this!"

"And if we don't start decelerating, we'll take out the gate and our own ship. Hold on."

The reaction drives kicked on and what felt like a suit of lead armor wrapped itself around me. I wanted to message the chief engineer, to find out if this deceleration was really necessary, but I couldn't raise my arm. I estimated our deceleration at least around five Gs—possibly more, but as we slowed down, the Cack ship pulled away.

We approached the transit station at a speed we had never dared before. The gate flashed past us and the Phoenix went superluminal. Brennon was obviously giving it all he could, but the Cacks were nearly half a system ahead of us and we were only matching their speed. At least, now that we were back on H-drive, we didn't have to continue to suffer the high Gs.

An hour later, the Cacks arrived at the next transit station. They dropped out of FTL just long enough to slip through the gate and took off again before we could catch up. An hour and a half after that, we repeated the process. It quickly became apparent they could keep this up all the way to Earth and we would never catch them.

I messaged Chief Master Engineer Droemer. "Michael, I need a solution. How can we catch that ship?"

He shrugged. "Catching it is easy. We just find a faster ship or missile."

Find a faster ship? Was he serious? "I've heard rumors the military has H-drive missiles, but we don't have any of those, and I don't think even our FACs could catch up to them unless you've got some secret way of boosting their speed."

"I'm afraid not. The better question is how do we stop it? At FTL speeds, I'm not sure what we could do to stop them."

"I guess the QWEGs would allow them to ignore a conventional explosive."

"It would literally slough it off."

"What about an antimatter explosion?"

Droemer scratched at the back of his head. "Maybe, if the energy output was big enough to overload the QWEGs. If you could get out in front of the ship, however, and drop raw antimatter in front of it, you'd have a better chance. But again, if it interacted with any normal matter before coming in contact with the ship itself—including the stray hydrogen the ship is scooping up as it travels, there's a good chance it would survive."

A sudden sick feeling came over me. I remembered one ship, at least, that definitely could catch it. "If we could catch the thing, I guess we'd be reduced to ramming it."

Droemer gave me a grim smile. "We've seen what happens when two H-drives interact," he said, referring to Shines Like the Sun's destruction. "Even that isn't guaranteed. Theoretically one of the fields could retain its integrity while the other collapses—especially if there is a large differential in size."

"Can you think of some way to stop a ship without destroying it?"

"Do you mean something like, just taking out the drive? Short of sabotage, no."

We both stared off into space thinking. I tried to recall every story my father ever told me about piloting disasters. He normally didn't talk about such things, but I went through a phase in my mid-teens where I was determined to be a test pilot for TLS. He'd drag up every story he'd ever heard of pilots getting burned, suffocated, squashed by G forces or exploded in an attempt to dissuade me. In the end I simply got distracted by a couple of girlfriends and ended up with a liberal arts degree.

In all those stories, some involving pilot errors others design oversights, none were the sort of thing a pursuing ship at trans-luminal speeds was likely to be able to induce. Until we had lost the tachyonic-cascade reactor in the Torchbearer, I had never personally experienced anything like a spontaneous critical ship failure.

Realization jolted through me and I sat up straight. "Mike, when we blew torchbearer's TCR crossing that nebula, we took out all the ships around us within a certain radius."

Chief Droemer's eyes widened. "Take out the engine, by taking out the power plant—of course!"

"Can we do that on purpose?"

"If we overload a powerful enough reactor, if we get close enough..." His eyes darted back and forth reading mathematic equations in his head. "Yes! We'll cripple both ships but we shouldn't destroy either one outright. Of course we'll be stranded in space until someone can re-light our reactors, but how can we get close enough?"

"The Phoenix can't, but we have a ship that can. Get down to docking bay twenty-one. I'll send the access codes." I logged off, feeling a little sick. I could barely make myself copy over the command codes for the Argippus.