Windward Passage
Moretto Line
Flagship Aurora

“Send to the fleet,” said Admiral Yuuvi. A young operator keyed a fresh message screen and set off top secret encryption.

“Stand to, all vessels. Stand to.” A minute later, the signal burst from the ship's communications antennas.

Deep Space
Uhlek Badlands
Aboard ISS Belfast Windfall

The weathered caravel cut a slow, smooth arc out of the black sky, rolling to starboard, laying on an upspin heading.

“Glad it’s not 4620,” noted Biggs, watching the drifting fleet of Uhlek slave ships start to fall astern. The Windfall was pulling gently away from the looming ghost ships.

“No lie,” said Boz Grabow. “Hurt locker to Davy Jones’ locker in under sixty,” said the old sea dog, watching the reapers float by like flotsam. “Damn, they’re close in. What a nightmare.”

There were no signs of lifeboats from ISS Negelle. Biggs hadn’t expected any. He closed his eyes and prayed for a moment. Then he keyed the pad on his desk and made the necessary log entry: ship name, location destroyed, survivors, and narrative.

Windward Passage
Moretto Line
ISS Restoration

The thin blue line glistened with rare beauty in the icy starlight.

Captain Boruul thought of a line of ancient poetry, wondered why it came to mind:

Restoration’s bridge was thumping with activity, alive like a market on some gold-rush world out on the fringe. “Shields, spin tubes one and three, open a channel to Afaara and Yorkshire,” said Commander Franklin, running down his mental checklist. “Engineering,” he continued, now talking into his comm link, “this is the XO. Execute high water batten protocols.”

Captain Boruul waited while Commander Franklin readied the ship. It was going to be a close fight, but thanks to the last starflight project, they had a chance to win. One brave crew had come sprinting back, through time and across the treacherous starveldt of the Cloud Nebula, carrying the weaponry of the ancient Leghk.

“Restoration, Yorkshire actual,” came the first response crackling across the speakers. Afaara’s captain came on the net a few seconds later.

Captain Boruul cracked the security case, read the code and keyed his link. “Yorkshire, Afaara, this is Restoration actual, stand by to copy, break,” said the Elowan. He paused, then keyed again, and read the code.

“Uplift awry, fly the red ensign."

Deep Space
Uhlek Badlands
Aboard ISS Belfast Windfall

The medical bay was quiet, save for the warm whirr and thrum of monitoring equipment and computers. Doc Biss slouched amid the dying Leghk on her examination beds, surrounded by a flurry of expended medical supplies. All her knowledge and all her advanced equipment hadn’t mattered at all. The Leghk were here, but also gone, their emerald glowing skin now a pallid gray sheen, their eyes gazing into the distance.

The hatch bleeped, then ground open. Biss turned to seek the black-cloaked Senator HvHuss enter the white-walled bay. “Senator, are you injured?” asked the doctor.

“No Doctor Bisss, I am quite unharmed,” said the ancient dragon. “May we sssay the same of our Leghk friends?”

Biss looked down. “No, Senator. We’ve lost them,” she said.

“Oh, I wonder,” HvHuss said, a thin sliver of a smile crossing his reptilian visage. “I wonder about that.” The senator walked to Volusze’s side and looked down at the drifting Leghk guardian. “Perhaps just a push,” he said, gently shoving Voluzse’s orbicular body. “Perhaps a push from an old Thrynn.”

Across the small bay, the sound from the vital signs monitors changed, and the computers started whirring out an analysis. Biss picked up her data pad and looked in disbelief at the rising trend lines. Suddenly, the Leghk were bouncing back from their nearly comatose state.

“What did you do?” blurted Biss. HvHuss had already turned for the hatch.

“It’s not what either of us did,” said HvHuss, his deep voice adding weight and dignity to his words. “In the realm of the medical sciences, one cannot underestimate the therapeutic power of a boarding torpedo packed with Marines.”

The hatch closed behind Senator HvHuss, leaving Biss dumbstruck.

Earth Sector
Deep Space
Uhlek Badlands

Colonel Venn’Bk awoke in the frigid lifeboat escape pod that had blasted him from the burning Regepple. He sat up slowly, tried to shake the grogginess from his head. As he gained his bearings, he leaned over to look out one of the small portholes. He expected to see the Uhlek ships, perhaps the wreckage of the Regepple, and he expected to see Jussru coming to rescue him. But all he saw was the merciless interstellar gulf.

His mind snapped into focus. He looked at his timepiece, and realized it had been nearly a day since the lifeboat had launched. Venn’Bk spun around to the control panel. The distress beacon was blasting signal, but nothing the Jussru would have been monitoring.

A horrifying realization came over Colonel Venn’Bk. He was buried at sea.

Deep Space
Uhlek Badlands
Aboard ISS Belfast Windfall

Senator HvHuss lingered in the dim light of the internal cargo hold, standing motionless amid the cold black sarcophagi that held the Hanhalene exiles. He imagined that he could feel them sleeping all around him, could feel the hope they carried for Thoss. Here in these ancient vessels rode the fragile soul of a people, a soul forfeit for a thousand years of tyranny.

“Can they save you?” asked Biggs Hilsfar. He stepped into the red gloom of the hatch marker light, knowing he’d surprised the senator, looking for some visible reaction. He didn’t get one.

The august solon said nothing for a long moment. He could give no answer that would immediately satisfy this interesting human, this Hilsfar who was perhaps more than he seemed.

“I cannot see the outcome, commander.” The senator touched one of the black metal pods, reflecting. “But, then, I see other things.” He turned to face Biggs, who stood, arms crossed over his worn gray utility jacket.

“I stand here among these ancient castaways, lately exiled on the far shore of some alien world, fated to the cruel, dreamless sleep of a thousand years. How completely improbable that they have survived,” mused HvHuss. He leveled his sliver eyes to meet Biggs Hilsfar’s, measuring what he saw there. “Your people were utterly destroyed by the barbarians. You were swept ruthlessly from the stars, a dead race, a quickly receding footnote in the history of this ancient galaxy. Crushed,” said the senator.

Biggs grinned. “That sound you hear is my starship. We’re still around.”

“Indeed, you are,” said HvHuss, cocking his head. “And from that simple fact a new world of possssibility. Look on the Elowan: subject to countless wretched cruelties by the wraiths of Thoss, driven from world to world, hunted. By all logic, they should have been extinct eons ago,” he said, a glimmer of wonderment on the leathery reptilian face. “Yet they bloom,” he said, “…like desert flowers.”

Senator HvHuss lay a hand on one of the cryostasis tubes, the face within obscured by cold fog. “For the first time in centuries, all three are together: Thrynn, Human, Elowan.”

Biggs thought for a minute. “So you believe this Ollsrl thing is real.”

“I believe, commander, in an old song.”

Windward Passage
Moretto Line
ISS Restoration

Captain Boruul gave the order to fire. The laser cannons shot, and the plasma tubes belched their impressions of hellfire.

Hold me now.

Uhlek Badlands
Aboard ISS Belfast Windfall
6-18/0317Z-4642

Biggs bolted ahead, toward the bow, running at a dead sprint. A minute earlier, Mack had called him from the bridge. There was flash traffic from Starport Central. Biggs hadn’t waited for Mack to finish his sentence.

He skidded to a halt outside the bridge, smacked the entry button, and bounded through the hatch, wearing a pair of sleeping pants, sandals and his identification tags.

“What’s it say?” he managed to blurt, still half asleep.

“The Moretto Line is under attack,” said Mack, handing Biggs the printout. Biggs looked at it, rubbing his forehead as he read.

//FLASH FLASH FLASH//
FROM: STARPORT CENTRAL ES125,100
TO: INTERSTEL FLOTILLA, ARTHENEAN VESSELS, ALLIED SHIPPING
1) SPEMIN CONVERGE MORETTO LINE.
2) ADMIRAL YUUVI’S FLEET ENGAGED.
3) ARMED ARTHENEAN VESSELS RESPOND, LEND AID.
4) UNARMED VESSELS REMAIN CLEAR OF THE AREA.
5) RECOMMEND ALL VESSELS PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
6) NEXT BROADCAST IN 4 HOURS.
//MESSAGE ENDS//TERMINATE//***

“Raise the shields, kid,” said Biggs, still reading.

“Already done, sir,” said Mack. Grix, Boz and Arella stumbled onto the bridge, all squinting in the light. Mack quickly explained the situation.

“Are we going to go get in the fight?” asked Arella. Biggs crumpled the traffic in his hand and looked down at the deck.

Biggs Hilsfar knew how to fight. He’d slugged it out on the playgrounds at Saint Iodocus. He'd gutted it out from the ruins of the Old Empire to the starfields of the Cloud. He’d thrown drunken punches in bars, matched up in flooding titanium mines and rolled in red mud on worlds with orange skies. He wanted to gun Windfall’s engines and get hip deep in it with the Spemin.

But you gotta pick ‘em.

At that moment, Biggs had a passenger list that would floor anybody with a nickel’s worth of historical understanding -- Leghk guardians, Thrynn castaways from a thousand years earlier, and a Thrynn Senator who was trying to bring freedom to the choked jungles of Thoss. Somehow, they were a new variable that could bring peace to this new thing people were calling an Empire. Maybe it could bring some strength, too. In short, Biggs Hilsfar had some good lines for a story that wasn't going to end happily on its own. He knew his mission wasn’t on the Moretto Line fighting alongside the fleet. Some other time, but not now. The Galaxy needed saving in more ways than one.

“Get in a fight? now?" said Biggs. "I’ve got millions worth of cargo back there,” he explained, thumbing toward the cargo bay. “The Elowan are going to line my pockets if I get those Thrynn back intact, and I need the cabbage."

Arella looked at him accusingly.

“Besides,” said Biggs, sounding offended, pointing at his chest, “Biggs O has done his bit for King and Country.”

Arella rolled her eyes. "You're a horrible man, Biggs Hilsfar." She walked off the bridge, the hatch hissing behind her. Biggs looked at Mack, Grix and Boz Grabow.

“What?” he said. Somewhere, maybe hidden in the crow's feet around his eyes, he was smiling.

The Interstel Superphotonic Starship Belfast Windfall slipped silently toward the Cloud flux, and toward Starport Outpost 1, which lay beyond, across an ocean of space.

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