"Has anyone used the word mutiny yet?" Phil asked.

"No," Sherman growled. "The crew is blaming everything on technical problems, but what else do you call it?"

"Both the right-side airlock and the hangar deck?" Phil asked with a note of incredulity.

"The service techs have partially dismantled the lock. They claim a routine inspection revealed a part that needed replacing. A spare couldn't be found and they are supposedly fabricating one now."

"And the hangar?" Phil asked.

"The one spacer who would talk to me said the deck master was redistributing some equipment when their restraints broke. They say they can't open the hangar until everything is secure and they fear the docking mechanism has been damaged."

"I assume we're talking about Sherman's flagship, The Battle of Kuzikos," I said during a thoughtful lull in the conversation.

Phil nodded grimly and I fought a perverse urge to chuckle at the mental image of the fleet commander locked out of his own ship. No matter how his crew dressed it up, this was mutiny. The only question was how far the mutiny stretched. Kouvaras shared their grim expression and I wondered how the situation involved the two of us.

"Have you been able to communicate with any of your command officers?" I asked Sherman.

"No. Most were on leave or with me on Flower of Dirt. Only my XO remained behind and he seems to be indisposed. I have no idea if it is against his will or not."

Phil leaned over the table, fixing me with a somber stare. "That's why we've called you here. Commander Sherman would like to know what's going on, but he doesn't want to involve anyone in his fleet."

"I want you and Force Leader Kouvaras to take a squad over there in a breaching pod and talk to them," Sherman said.

"I appreciate your trust in us," I began, my mind spinning as I tried to figure out what I was getting dragged into. "But I don't see how they will listen to me any more than you, sir."

"I don't expect them to listen to you. I expect them to listen to Kouvaras' men in the boarding craft with you."

Obviously, I was only going along as the token officer. "That's the thing, sir. If this comes down to an attempt to retake the ship, I'm going to need more than one squad. They must have a whole company of troopers. I'm not sure how much of a threat Commander Kouvaras' men will be."

"With all due respect," Force Leader Kouvaras interrupted. "I believe Sub-Commander Phon is mistaken. My squad can get you onboard that ship and if it comes to fighting, we can take the hangar deck and hold it until reinforcements arrive."

Sherman gave a curt nod of satisfaction. "Their stalling tells me that they're not yet committed to open mutiny, or at least not united in it. I'm sure in their minds Sunshine has violated their contracts by changing the objective and they are not obligated to follow him or any commanders who persist in an unauthorized action. If you can get me in there, I'm sure I can turn this thing around."

Ten minutes later, I sat strapped into a breaching pod with Force Leader Kouvaras, Squad Leader Marcello and eight of Sol's finest star troopers. They each wore Multi-Environmental Combat Armor, the lighter space-going version of dirt-side powered combat armor. A fully charged assault mag-gun was docked in the cradle by each right elbow. Not being rated for combat armor, I only had a standard pressure suit and a small sidearm. 

Some of us stared at a holographically projected sphere in the center of the pod as it displayed our approach to the Battle of Kuzikos. Others stared up at the low ceiling that would, should boarding be necessary, open into Sherman's flag-ship.

"Ok, people, this is our POA." Kouvaras tapped at a data panel and the holographic projection displayed a wire-frame schematic of Sherman's ship. "If the little pigs don't open up, we're going to play the big bad wolf and blow the house open here."

The troopers' chuckles were like the rasp of mag-gun power cells being shoved into place.

A target appeared on the side of the ship, midway between the hangar deck in the bow and the right-side dock. The image magnified, zooming in to show a room and passage beyond.

"We'll make insertion here in what appears to be a medical supply room," Kouvaras continued.

"How convenient," trooper Redburn muttered.

Kouvaras ignored both the comment and the following chuckles. "Beyond that room, a passage runs the length of the right side. As soon as we enter, Marcello will take Fuche and Cruze and secure the right-side dock. Your mission is to see if it's functional, or at least fixable. Edwards, you'll stay in here with the CO. Remember this is our only ticket out if the plan gets FUBARed."

Edwards glared at me as if his assignment were my fault.

"The rest of you," Kouvaras continued, "will come with me to the hangar to see if we can get the front door open. Our goal is to help the locals get the commander in. If both the hangar and the lock are out, he'll dock with us and come in through the pod."

Kouvaras paused until everyone's eyes were turned to him. "We have authority to use deadly force, but only if absolutely necessary. We don't want to fight the whole ship and a lot of bloodshed may ruin the FC's plans. Our area of operations will be in the null-G portions and we are specifically ordered to stay out of the habitat modules. This should keep collateral damage down and the zero-G will work to our advantage. Any questions?"

"What kind of resistance can we expect?" trooper Breiner asked.

"This hasn't become open mutiny yet, but they do have a full complement of troopers." Kouvaras made a face. "I don't know about spacers, but I'd like to believe troopers do not mutiny. Still, we must be prepared for the possibility of strong resistance. Any more questions? No?" Kouvaras gave me a nod, "Sir?"

Taking the cue to mean he was giving me a chance to play officer, I turned to Marcello. "Have they responded to any of our pings?"

"No, sir. No response of any kind."

"Very well, let's give them something they can't ignore. Cruze?"

"Yes, sir."

"Bring us around to their bow. Put us ten meters off from their main communication antennas."

The pod swung away at a couple of Gs then jerked to a halt.

"We're there, sir," Cruze announced.

"Switch on the docking radar."

Edwards, being a com guy, hissed in anticipated sympathy.

I let that blast their com system for a minute, cutting them off from the fleet and terrifying their communication techs. "Ok, switch it off and ping them again."

A minute later Edwards said, "What do you know, we've got a reply."

"Route it here." I swung up a data panel and opened the connection. A sweaty young spacer-first-class looked back at me, his large Adam's-apple bobbing up and down.

"This is Fleet Sub-Commander Kenneth Phon of the Torchbearer. We understand you are having difficulties with your hangar deck and are here to help."

"Th-thank you, sir. Y-your offer is much ap-preciated, but we are handling the s-situation here."

"I have some men here trained to get into ships the hard way and, as I understand it, your fleet commander is getting impatient."

The spacer's eyes widened and he practically vibrated with fear. "One m-moment p-please while I c-consult my s-superior." The screen went blank.

We waited a minute, then two.

"Is that it?" Redburn asked.

"Perhaps they're hoping we'll just go away," trooper Cassidy suggested.

"Edwards, do we still have signal?" Kouvaras asked.

The trooper checked his board. "The channel is still open."

"Kill the microphones."

"They're off, boss."

Kouvaras turned to me. "I think, sir, we have our answer."

I nodded. "Agreed. Still, let's give them a one more minute, then go with plan B."

"Ok, troopers. Secure yourselves for high-G acceleration. Cruze, program your course."

"Course ready, boss."

Another minute passed with no reply from The Battle of Kuzikos.

Kouvaras gave me a slight lift of his head. I took the hint. "Cruze, fire thrusters."

For a little ball whose only purpose is to cross the small space between two nearby ships, the breaching pod could really scoot. I swear we must have pulled nine Gs. One second we were nose to nose with The Battle of Kuzikos, the next we were a quarter of the ship's length away and our grapples were drilling through its outer ablative shell and bonding to the inner hull while the docking harness, with its diamond-hard carbon-tooth saws, did the same.

"We're through. Pressure is equalizing," Marcello announced.

"Go!" Kouvaras shouted.

The troopers exploded from their acceleration benches, snatching their assault weapons as they sprang towards the access hatch. I couldn't believe they didn't crash into each other at the door, yet they sprang through in well-practiced drill to fan out into the room beyond. Edwards tensed as if to leap, caught himself, then glared at me. I turned guiltily back to the monitor to access the troopers' telemetry. 

I pulled up two video feeds. Marcello's group was already approaching the right-side airlock. Kouvaras' camera showed empty passageways outside the hangar deck. So far neither had encountered opposition. Marcello's video panned along the wall outside the airlock. Open panels exposed wiring and various mechanical parts that operated the door. Even lacking the required engineering training, I could see that pieces were missing.

"Marcello here. The back door is closed."

"Is it fixable?" Kouvaras asked as he neared the hangar deck. The lights around the door glowed green indicating full air pressure inside.

"No," came Marcello's reply. "It's been partially dismantled. I think some parts are missing."

"Sabotage?"

"Can't tell, but we're not getting this door open anytime soon—uh, oh. Looks like trouble." His camera spun around to show an angry group of spacers floating down the passageway with knives and makeshift clubs.

Sitting in the pod with me, Edward said, "Looks like we've got troubles of our own." He turned a display toward me. Another group of spacers was approaching our breaching pod. They spied the sentry camera Redburn had left on the passage wall and smashed it. The screen went black. "Company coming. What shall we do?"

"What is it?" Kouvaras asked Marcello.

I turned back to Marcello's telemetry monitor while I racked my brains for an appropriate response to Edwards.

"The natives are restless," Marcello's calm voice replied, "and they're headed this way."

"Ok, fall back to the pod and hold your position there," Kouvaras ordered. "Can you get the lights on?" he asked Redburn as they stumbled through the dark hangar deck.

"Uh, that's the thing," Marcello replied. "We'll have to go through them to get to the pod."

"Do what you can, just try not to hurt anyone," Kouvaras said.

Marcello's camera swept back and forth across the mob as it neared. "Gee, thanks."

"I've taken out the cabin door's controls and jammed the mechanism," Edwards said coming back into the pod from the storeroom.

I kicked myself for dropping the ball. I was not doing a very good job of managing the situation.

"But it's not going to hold them for more than a minute," Edwards continued.

I looked at the chamber door. From my vantage point, framed as it was by the armored opening of the breaching pod, the chamber door seemed a feeble thing. "Why don't we just button up and wait for the others to get back? I doubt there's much they could do to us in here."

Edwards shrugged and sealed the pod door.

I turned back to Marcello's monitors and saw a jumble of screaming faces. Thankfully, I hadn't heard any weapons' fire yet. Kouvaras' screen was still dark. A beam of light flashed off of a floating crate followed by the crunch of impact and Kouvaras' cursing.

"Get that thing tied down!" He shook his head. His camera view zigzagged back and forth across blurred streaks of bright flashlights and black shadows. "Redburn, get those lights on now!"

"They're through," Edwards announced. He floated by the pod hatch, his nose practically pressed against the polarized window. "Didn't take half as long as I thought—oh, that's why." He turned to me. "Looks like they've brought a plasma cutter along."

I flew to the door and took his place at the window. A half-dozen spacers drifted in. The big guy in the lead held the cutter, which he promptly raised and aimed at our door. My heart began pounding in my head which already felt swollen from the effects of weightlessness on my body's fluids. My vision jumped with each beat. "That thing can't get through can it?" I asked.

"Not unless they have the patience of a robot. Not enough power." Edwards looked at him from over my shoulder. "Of course, if he keeps playing it on the seal like that, he could depressurize the whole ship."

I watched the spacer waving the cutter across the door, obviously unused to operating such a device. Behind me, I heard Redburn's voice over the tiny data panel speaker.

"That's better, at least we can see now."

"No, it's not," a female voice, I think it was Breiner, said. "They've jammed and braced the hangar door closed."

"Definite sabotage," Kouvaras said. "Troopers, fall back. We're going to have to bring the fleet commander through the pod. Cassidy? Where did Cassidy go?"

The situation was beginning to spin out of control. Sherman, what's taking you so long to get back here? I wondered.

"Maybe you didn't hear me, sir." Edwards brought his big square face near mine. "We have to stop them now. That seal cannot take any more of this."

"OK, OK." Thinking furiously, I tried to come up with a way to stop an angry mob armed with a plasma cutter. Any strategy I attempted would be no more than a gamble, but the time had clearly come to roll the dice. I licked my dry lips. "Let's try surprise. You hide by the bulkhead and come out slowly after I open the door. Show them your gun, but don't act like you're going to come out blazing, OK?"

Edwards shrugged as if he had been expecting more, but crouched against the wall by the door with a vaguely disgusted scowl.

I took a deep breath and un-polarized the viewport. I had to tap on the glass to get the leader's attention. He froze in evident surprise that someone should be inside the pod. I made a shooing gesture with my hand to indicate I was opening the door. With a puzzled frown, the big guy switched off the cutter and pushed back, grabbing the edge of a storage locker to stop himself.

I opened the door and moved into the room. Am I really doing this? a small voice squeaked in the back of my head. I'm not even supposed to be here!  I slipped one foot under a curl of inner hull plate that had been cut and folded back by our entrance. I tried to think of something commanding to say but my speeding heart seemed to have stolen all of the oxygen in the room. I couldn't catch my breath.

The worst possible thing I could do in this situation was to be indecisive. Unlikely as it seemed, these men—as all men do in such dangerous circumstances—needed to know that someone was in charge. The big space had slowly begun to drift to a flanking position on my left side. I had already waited too long.

I grabbed mister plasma cutter's shirt. Thankfully, my zero-G training in the MDF helped keep me from slipping loose and sending us both spinning into the mob. I shoved my pistol under his nose and in my best voice of authority demanded, "Alright, what's all this about?"

I felt Edwards' presence looming somewhere behind me. The big spacer staring cross-eyed at the muzzle of my gun cast a nervous quick glance over my shoulder. The rest of the mob drifted back a few feet as if a breeze had blown through the room.

"Uh, we, uh...want to get off the ship."

"Off? Why? Are you deserters?"

They all began speaking at once. "Deserters? No! Our contracts are up, but they won't let us off. They're holding us against our will!" Other silent spacers, their expressions more suspicious than angry, made vague noises of agreement.

"And you thought we'd have left the pod unguarded so you could steal it and run off to one of the market ships?"

The big guy's guilty smirk confirmed it.

"Fleet Commander Sherman will be here in a few minutes and he'll sort all this out," I said. "Until he arrives, go back to your quarters."

His eyes gave him away. He glanced down as the cutter snapped on. His mass shifted as he tried to lift it while anchored to nothing more than my fist in his shirt. Somehow, he managed to turn us both enough to raise it to my head. My foot slid to the edge of the warped deck plate. A sneer curled across his face as the heat of the plasma cutter rolled over my head.

I pulled the trigger. Dozens of magnetically accelerated needle-sized flechettes passed through his head and buried themselves in the bulkhead beyond. A cloud of brain, bone, hair, and blood sprayed outward in a pink mist. Tiny crimson droplets swirled outward, peppering everyone. The corpse tumbled slowly backward, heels over cratered head, drifting into the center of the room.

Wide-eyed spacers floated for a long motionless moment, then scrambled for the door. They met Force Leader Kouvaras' armored form as he entered the ruined door. He cracked his helmet's face shield open so he could yell, his weapon at the ready. "What's going on here?"

I slowly lowered my sidearm.

Edwards scooped up the plasma cutter and switched it off. "Just a discussion that got a little messy. Nothing serious."

"That's not what—I—" I stumbled through jumbled thoughts, unable to even describe what happened, much less explain it. Had I just murdered that spacer? Was my action justified? Had I been too aggressive in trying to make him back down? Could I have done something differently to prevent the situation from escalating?

Kouvaras held up a hand, cutting me off. "I'm not your superior. You don't have to explain anything to me."

I didn't find his response comforting. I looked around at the troopers. Other than Redburn, who elbowed the corpse aside as it seemed to drift up to him for a hug, none of them even noticed.

"Edwards, has the fleet commander docked yet?"

Sherman's imminent arrival only made it worse.

Edwards stared upwards as he checked his netpiece. "He's on approach now. He'll be docking in a minute."

"Good. Let's get this rabble secured." Kouvaras swung his weapon, indicated the subdued spacers.

They left in a swirl of red dots, the stench of blood thick in the air. Only I seemed to notice.