Deep Space
Windward Passage
Thrynn Frigate Jussru

The warship drifted quietly. Colonel Venn’Bk stood in a shadow on the edge of the cargo hold, behind a stack of equipment, and watched as the Marines trained. They were quite useful, sharp as knives, these ones. On the bridge, the crew scanned constantly for some sign of their quarry. Discretely, a junior officer approached Venn’Bk and handed him a note before melting away. The colonel unfolded the heavy paper, his muscles tensing slightly with each line he read. Somewhere near the Essok depot on Thoss, a brief, violent confrontation had erupted. Venn’Bk drew a breath. Black cloaks.

Deep Space
Thrynn-Gazurtoid Frontier

It wasn’t really a border, more accurately a blurred line marked by the destruction of random skirmishes. Thrynn and Gazurtoid warships constantly sought advantage, ducking behind asteroid screens and radiation waves, lashing out furiously in a perpetual cat and mouse game. Moving steadily upspin, a Gazurtoid ship pressed straight through the middle of the killing fields. The gamble was that the Gazurtoid wouldn’t take great notice of one of their own while the Thrynn—too clever by half—wouldn’t take the bait for so obvious an ambush. With any luck, they’d make the Windward Passage in twenty hours. In the cool blue light of the makeshift bridge, Boz leaned back in his chair and looked over at the quiet Senator HvHuss who sat motionless, draped in a red cape. “So far so good,” said Boz, studying the alien.

Deep Space
Windward Passage
Aboard ISSBelfast Windfall

The sleek exploration vessel sliced through space on the echoes of superphotonic light waves, the stars shooting by like fireflies. Arella Newark was going over the evidence they had pulled together at the monastery and the information the Elowan had provided. They had the sketch of an old starmap that staked navigational true zero at the heart of the old cross nexus. Arella relished archeological hunting. At the rendezvous point, Boz Grabow’s team would have the final piece of the puzzle and then, well... She looked at her watch. She stood, stretched and pushed her hair back into a loose knot andsmiled quietly, thinking of Mack. Bumbling knight. A few moments after she left her science lab, the motion sensors noted the absence of movement and turned the lights out
on another day.

Deep Space
Moretto Line
ISS Neuilly

The bridge rocked under a final impact of plasma bolts. “Abandon ship,” ordered Captain Luu, depressing the all stations intercom key and holding on tightly to his chair as the vessel convulsed. It was the hardest probe the Spemin had launched yet. As the crew streamed to the evac pods, Luu scanned the tactical display. They’d nailed one. But Neuilly was finished and one-for-one numbers weren’t good enough. Not by half. ortunately, ISS Ixnay was standing by on station to pick up survivors. Luu keyed the self-destruct code then fought through the smoke to a waiting pod. The storm was going to crack wide open, and very soon.

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Next: “Double or Nothing”