As the numbers funneling through the restaurant's doors dwindled. I grabbed Cathrine's hand and we plunged into the flood. I found myself wishing they would stop the habitat and return us to weightlessness so that we could use that extra dimension in which to move. We bumped and jostled our way to the shuttle deck, which was weightless, but it did us no good. Even if we could have got around the mass of people waiting for transport, the first group of shuttles had left and the docking bays were all empty. These people had shuttled over all day from ships across the combined Solarian fleets and it would take hours to ferry them all back.

I flash messaged Cruze. He responded by voice,

"Let me guess, you're trying to get off the Blaylock and all the transports are full."

"Not only that, they've left."

"Huh? I expected you to call sooner. OK, on the left side of the boarding deck, you'll find a security door. Today's pilot code is ten-sixteen. Punch that in and go down to the service deck. If anyone questions you, just flash your ID and keep going like you belong there. I'll be there in a couple of minutes. Just hang tight."

He killed the connection and I scanned the boarding deck until I found the security door hiding in plain sight. I caught Cathrine's attention and pointed at it. "This way."

The code worked and soon we drifted down to the service deck and waited nervously outside the sealed pod. I checked the external camera feeds again. The jump ships continued disgorging battlecruisers like seeds from a field of dandelions in a wind storm.

A minute later, Cruze came leaping from wall to wall. "Did you kids have fun?" He slapped the hull with a digital key and stared into the laser which scanned his retina.

"Up until the invasion started," Cathrine said.

"Have they started shooting yet?" Cruze dove into the pod and powered up the systems.

"Not yet." I helped Cathrine in and dove in after her as the hatch started to close. "But the fleet officers are probably going berserk."

"Deck master, this is tango-bravo-zero-one-six requesting emergency departure," Cruze said into his audio pickup.

"Acknowledged tango-bravo-zero-one-six. This is the deck master. What is your destination?"

"The Torchbearer—and I have some VIPs who need to get back now."

"One moment while we clear it with flight control."

"How long is this going to take?" I asked as the deck master relayed our request to flight control.

"We're too small to lock properly in a docking cradle, so the only thing holding us here is—" Cruze punched a control. Something clunked and the pod let go of the docking port. Cruze backed us out into the empty hanger area.

"TB-zero-one-six! You do not have permission to depart."

"I told you it was an emergency." Cruze whirled us around to face the hanger entrance.

"Deck master, this is flight control. A flight plan has been approved for tango-bravo-zero-one-six. Please stand by while we transmit—."

The acceleration hit like a punch in the stomach. The hanger entrance rushed towards us with eye-blurring speed then we were out in the cluttered void of space, staring at the lights of hundreds of ships circling the gas giant below. Breathing suddenly seemed out of the question so I concentrated on merely holding my lungs in.

The acceleration stopped briefly. Cruze whipped us around to face away from the Torchbearer and then fired up a one G deceleration. "Torchbearer, this is Tango-Bravo-zero-one-six returning hot and heavy. Please inform the flight deck master I need the doors open or I'm going to be coming through them."

"Cruze, is that you?"

"Yes, Lori. I didn't realize you were awake. I hope I didn't disturb your rest."

"I'll show you disturbed if you leave skid-marks on my flight deck again."

"Just have the doors open when I get there."

"We're supposed to be locking everything down right now."

"I'll only be a minute."

"That's what he said."

Cruze throttled up the engines to a crushing deceleration.

My vision darkened as I lay pressed into the acceleration couch and shaken by the roar. This continued for what seemed minutes before the engines abruptly stuttered and cut off. I assumed he had stopped us just outside the hanger deck and would begin to maneuver into a docking cradle when I heard the gentle thump of docking clamps. As we unstrapped and rattled out of the pod, flying through the connecting tube on the way to C&C, I could feel the heat radiating from the surrounding bulkhead and support structures which he had bathed in the plasma of his fusion engines. To say I was impressed was an understatement, but I didn't think Lori would be able to ignore this.

* * *

Cathrine and I raced into C&C and found Phil floating alone at the center of the room, looking at a hologram of a constellation of ships. He raised a questioning eyebrow at us but only said. "There you are."

"We just got back from the Blaylock. Where's Chris and Brian?"

"Chris is stuck on Madam Wong's Pleasure Barge looking for a ride back—"

I burst out with a laugh, while Cathrine gave a nervous giggle. Madam Wong's synthesthetics were usually associated with perverts or sad and lonely people.

"I told Brian to get some rest," Phil continued. "We'll probably be boosting soon and he'll be on first watch."

I looked around and noticed the alarm signals were not flashing.

"We're no longer on alert?"

"That was a miscommunication." Phil gestured at the holo-display. "Those Cack jump ships were carrying Solarian warships—reinforcements. They're the remains of the fleet that was laying siege to the homeworld of the Free Government of the Thousand. Spartan Fleet Commander Smith has joined us along with nearly ten-thousand Cack ships."

"Ten Thousand! We have over a thousand ships already," Cathrine said. "Shines Like the Sun thinks he needs even more to defeat Fading Glory?"

"It's not just the battlecruisers." Phil tweaked the holo-display. The view jumped to the edge of our current system. "This is Good Passage. This is a double gate. It leads to a system whose physical location is unknown, one has to go through this system in order to get into the Middle Sphere. The problem is that this system is heavily defended. In order to reach Faded Glory, we'll need to have our entire fleet pass single file through a single gate."

"Obviously we have a plan to deal with that. What is it?" I asked.

Phil smiled a knowing smile. "Sunshine believes Faded Glory has concentrated his forces in this one system, leaving the systems beyond largely undefended. The jump ships, however, can reach nearly any system in the Cack Moiarchy directly..."

"He's going to use them to outflank Faded Glory," I said.

Phil nodded. "Precisely."

"But jump ships are just large-mass transport," Cathrine said. "They're not warships. A single small local defense gunship could easily destroy one."

"Ah, but they have to reach it first. Local defense craft have very limited range. A jump ship can easily pick an isolated spot in the system and dump a hundred battlecruisers before the local authority has a chance to respond."

Sunshine's plan began to unfold in my mind. "Once beyond the double gate, his ships can spread out and attack hundreds of systems. Faded Glory will have to at least detach the majority of his fleet to deal with that, which means at best he would only be able to fight a delaying action. Most likely he'll simply withdraw."

Phil stared into the glowing dots of the holo-display, each sporting a ring of letters and numbers representing key information on that ship. "That's the Plan."

* * *

It is frequently said that Cack jump ships are the largest self-propelled objects in the universe. Designed for freight transport to fringe systems lacking transit stations, these ships, when fully loaded, could mass as much as a small moon—even producing their own microgravity. Empty, the jump ships were little more than hollow frame-works attached to massive TCR generators and giant anti-matter engines. Once those lumbering ships got to one hundred or more AU out from the nearest system's primary, they could use those massive generators to produce temporary wormholes to any system in the Cack economic sphere.

They turned out to be useless.

As the fleet neared the transit station, warships from Good Passage began accelerating towards us from the station's far side. Alarms sounded and the fleet jumped from Fleet Alert Stance Delta to FAS Gamma. All non-combat activities were canceled and both the fleet and the individual ships configured themselves for combat. 

At the fleet level, we double checked our communication links with the ships assigned to us and began calling up all the sensor data we had. This far out, light hadn't even had a chance to reach us yet, so all we had to study was the gravimetric data. We could calculate their mass and velocity, but had no idea of what type of ships might be headed toward us, except that their average speed—being about six times the speed of light—implied they were either warships or the galaxy's biggest racing yachts—besides the Argippos.

"They don't seem to be in either a defensive or particularly offensive formation," Brian said.

"Maybe the merchants are all fleeing because they know we're coming?" Chris chuckled.

Phil frowned at him. "Flee toward us?"

"Some of the old Cack combat doctrines called for what they called chaotic-patterned fighting," Cathrine said. "This was usually implemented with large-scale hit-and-run attacks."

Phil looked at the display and shook his head. "They don't have the numbers. It would be hopelessly ineffective."

I was glad he had said it. I had been thinking the same thing but hadn't wanted to be the one to shoot her down.

Cathrine shrugged. "Perhaps they're an older reserve force coming to soften us up or delay us as they build up their forces—or perhaps they're a local force operating independently of the regional manager, determined to go down fighting the way an Indweller should." With the shadow of a smile, she gave me a wink and I realized she thought all our speculation was pointless.

"We could send a recon drone," I said. Since the H-drive would sever the EPR transceiver link, it would have to use a reaction drive. It would not give us much of a warning, though.

Phil punched away on his data panel, calculating the time of intercept. "They would meet just at missile range limit at which point our picket drones sensors would alert us."

Silence settled on the C&C as we check and rechecked our data and com links. A fleet-wide alert flashed on our displays. It came from the Battle of Kuzikos, Sherman's flagship. It was an order to stand down. Everyone in the C&C exchanged looks of disbelief. As the gravimetric plots drew near, I started getting requests from my SCs for confirmation. I looked at Phil who frowned back.

"Go to Delta."

I relayed the order to step the alert stance down one step. We wouldn't be firing the first shot, but we also wouldn't be caught with our pants down if fighting broke out. I watched the dots on the screen close in on our position and hoped delta would be enough.

The C&C grew very silent and the whisper of the air handlers seemed to grow louder as we waited for the first sign of attack. Instead, the lead ship stopped just outside missile range.

"Looks like they're forming up after all," Chris said.

I scrolled frantically through my data feeds, trying to find the scout probes feeds. I nearly scrolled past them before tapping the correct feed. I was just resolving the ships images when a fleet-wide message alert flashed.

"Attention ships of Shines Like the Sun. This is Commander Abrams of the Thedus Security Company, formerly in the employ of Ancient Glory to provide security in the middle sphere. Um, you wouldn't have any job openings would you?"

Sunshine was ecstatic. Apparently his personal oracle, Dr. Hindmost had told him he would see the light of the inner sphere before he saw his enemy's face. When the deserters from Fading Glory arrived, he very nearly paid his oracle on the spot. Convinced Fading Glory would not fight, he sent his jump ships away and his fleet entered the middle sphere unopposed and confident of a swift and easy victory.