The natives abandoned the system as soon as they saw us coming. Their habitats, their fabrication plants, even the population of some of their more lightly colonized worlds were loaded onto ships which fled by the thousands straight into the surrounding nebula. When we docked at one of their abandoned stations, we found a bonanza of supplies largely traded for—or perhaps stolen from—Cack traders. The largest portion was parts for both ships and weapons.

The order came down from Smith not to steal or destroy anything, but to treat the natives' possessions as we would those of a respected host. We took only what we absolutely needed, mostly in the way of food, and left IOUs written in crude machine-translated versions of the Indwellers ideographs. We had no clue of how to understand The Swords' native language, but we hoped, since they traded with the Cacks, they would understand our notes.

Smith's com officer broadcast messages offering an alliance with The Swords against the Cacks, but though we stayed for hours servicing the drives, we never got any response. The next day, at the regular commanders' conference, Smith said, "Our scouts report that the path from here passes through the thickest part of the nebula. Our movements will be tightly restricted as will our speed. If the natives prove hostile, we can expect to face constant hit-and-run attacks and it will be difficult to protect the ships we have, especially the captured non-combat vessels to say nothing of the most damaged of our own ships. My chief strategist has suggested we consolidate our crews and leave as many of these ships behind as we can."

Dexter shook his head. "I know some commanders who are not going to like that. I've seen some pretty nice captured yachts."

"It's also going to cut into the crew shares," Maxwell said.

"The crews would best be concerned with saving their own skins and not lining their pockets," Abrams said, irritably.

"My logistics officer has one further recommendation," Smith continued. "We can expect few chances to resupply as we go deeper into The Swords territory. This means our supplies will quickly start running low, especially food. Crew support services have already started ramping up production of cultured yeasts. I'm afraid we're going to be living on it for a while, probably until we get back to Solarian space."

A collective hiss shivered through all present except me. As a college student, during a certain period where my father cut off my stipend as punishment, I found myself eating a lot of ramen made from cultured yeast. Having grown up with a personal chef, it was something of a novelty. Somehow I never developed the dislike for the stuff that everyone else had, though I was certain I was going to be regretting the lack of meat eventually.

"In light of this," Smith hesitated as if unsure or uncomfortable with his next suggestion. "Newman, my XO, has recommended that any Crawdads or any other non-Solarian personnel who are not considered mission-essential be invited to leave the fleet."

Maxwell gasped and both Abrams and Dexter's heads snapped up with startled glances at Smith.

"Just leave them, here? In The Swords?"

Smith stiffened. "Obviously we won't just dump them somewhere if we know its certain death, but at this point, we can't guarantee anyone's survival. Our chances will go up if we reduce our number of dependents and the crawdads, being pacifists, are pretty much on good terms with everyone."

"That may generally be true," I said while the others were thinking. "But we don't know what their relationship with The Swords is like. The Swords seem to be a pretty xenophobic lot."

"We don't have to decide this now." Smith waved the idea away irritably. "But I suggest we move all non-essential non-Solarian personnel to one of the support ships and I would like to vote on the rest."

I wondered briefly that, if all "non-essential" personnel ended up on one surplus ship, whether that ship might find itself undefended during a critical encounter. It was an uncharitable thought and probably a suspicion Smith didn't deserve, especially if the suggestion really came from Sub-Commander Newman, yet I sensed a certain undercurrent of selfish desperation in the contingency planning.

The discussion of the Crawdads gave me an idea. Having largely kept silent and only observing the others, I spoke up. "I have one last proposal to put to a vote." The others turned curious looks my way. "It has long been the policy of most fleets, including our own to invite the oracles to these planning sessions. With the emergency, we've fallen out of the practice, but I believe we still have a couple of oracles with us. I'd like to bring at least one of them into these discussions."

Maxwell gave me a skeptical look. "They didn't much help Shines Like the Sun or even Sherman."

I conceded with a nod of the head. "Predicting the future is still a lot like predicting the weather, but they've generally answered specific questions accurately." I winced a little inwardly, recalling how I had gotten dragged into this situation with a leading question.

Everyone ultimately agreed. As we discussed which ships we would keep, which we would lose and where we would put the crawdads, I felt like we were sliding towards that ugly point of desperation where we were going to have to start placing values on individual lives. I worried about that and what other hard choices extreme necessity might force us to make.

* * *

After the meeting, Newman surprised me with a request for a private discussion. He asked for a secure conference, so I had to seal my quarters and implement security procedures. I tried to maintain a friendly expression when his face appeared on my display, but something about him had always rubbed me the wrong way. 

He was as conniving and duplicitous as Moony, but where Moony was an effusive people-pleaser, Newman was an arrogant Spartan. Most Spartans had an excess of ego, but many had earned it by fighting in the hardest wars, commanding massive fleets, governing colonies and generally doing something to be proud of. Newman hadn't. He hadn't exactly slept his way to the top, as Moony was said to have done, but he had certainly hopped on a lot of coattails.

"I need to talk to you about an important fleet matter," Newman said.

"Sure. Go ahead."

"It's about Commander Smith."

Little prickles of suspicion tickled the back of my neck. "Oh?"

"I probably shouldn't say this, I shouldn't even know about it, but I've learned Commander Smith is taking medication for Pelosism." 

I nearly laughed. I thought it was a joke. It was the sort of thing a comedian would say only because it was the worst possible thing that could go wrong now. With the fleet lost hundreds of thousands of light-years deep in hostile territory, our senior-most commander suddenly develops an incurable neurological disorder which leads from sporadic episodes of irrational thinking, to a delusional detachment from reality, then death.

I took a deep breath, pausing to consider an appropriate response. Was this truth? Rumor? Or some sort of power play on Newman's part? I decided that, if he were bluffing, I'd have to call it. "If what you say is true, he'll have to be removed from command."

Newman looked alarmed by the suggestion. "Oh, I don't think so—we wouldn't have the authority—only the chief medical officer..."

"If what you say is true, the chief medical officer will have to support us."

"Those two are pretty close; they've known each other for a long time. It appears they think they are controlling the disease with medication."

"Are you saying they may have colluded to hide information critical to operational security?"

"No!"

"At the very least we'll have to have a talk with his chief medical officer."

"You can't!" Newman yelped. "I mean, patient confidentiality won't allow his doctor to discuss his case."

I enjoyed watching him squirm. "There is no confidentiality in the military."

"Yes, but...." He paused. His panicked look faded and a new confident expression tinged with smugness stole over him. "He's Spartan military and you're not. As far as the law is concerned, they only answer to Spartan Command. All Solarian governments have agreed to this."

I stared at him for a minute thinking that one over. Unfortunately, he was correct. Short of taking the issue to the other commanders and trying to turn them against him—a move that would guarantee the break-up of the fleet but wouldn't necessarily remove Smith from his position—there wasn't much I could do. "So what do you want me to do?"

Newman relaxed a little. "As I said, the drugs seem to be controlling the symptoms—at least he hasn't shown any—however, he's largely delegated the day-to-day operations to me. Which is why I contacted you. Since I'm largely running his fleet anyway, it would be helpful if you would include me in your fleet commander briefings."

So now we come to his real motivation, I thought. The question was, did he want in the meeting because he wanted inside information, or because he wanted to be seen as important and improve his position in the minds of the other commanders. I considered that latter to be more likely. I shrugged. "I have no objection to you attending—in spectator mode—but you'll have to get Commander Smith's permission first. I won't go behind his back while he's in charge of his fleet." I disconnected while he pondered that.

* * *

Proceeding onwards, the nebula closed in thick about us. Feeling like we were stumbling along blindfolded, we were forced to break up the fleet into our smaller tactical units and proceed at reduced speed. Though the natives had fled, they never quite left us and I could see the faint mass of their small ships fading in and out on my gravimetric sensors as they followed us from within the nebula. We did not get very far before they attacked.

They appeared out of the nebula, leaping in front of us, firing antimatter pellets from electromagnetically accelerated Gauss guns. We were forced to drop out of FTL to return fire at which point other FACs, who had been waiting for us, followed up with heavier missile file. As a result, the fleet had to keep stopping and coming back for those of us in the rear. This slowed our progress and degraded the operational capabilities of the ships in the rearward wings. Under these conditions, if they had had the numbers, they could have destroyed the entire fleet.

This continued, without interruption, for nearly a week.

Finally, after a particularly bad exchange where one ship was shot up so badly it might as well have been considered a total loss, I felt I had to do somehow get an advantage over The Swords. The thing is we didn't know anything about them. In fact, we hadn't even seen a live member of the species.

I messaged Troop Commander Kouvaras. "I may have some work for you."

Kouvaras chuckled. "Work? But we've been enjoying this little pleasure cruise. The boys have all been lounging around eating their yeast cakes—I think they've put on too much weight to even get in their armor."

I heard an outraged yelp in the background.

"I'd like to try and lay an ambush," I said. "Think you could wedge your troops into their breaching pods?

"An ambush, eh? Sounds like fun. Name the time and place and we'll be there."

"I'm sending you the details now. I'd like your input on the plan."

I had noticed that The Swords liked to attack when we were passing through the thickest parts of the nebula. Our route wound around from one transit station to the next attempting to avoid the worst of it, but there were still plenty of places for small low-mass ships to hide.

Our opportunity came soon afterward. Deep in the territory of The Swords, we came upon a system with a young bright star and a small heliosphere. Knowing we would prefer to travel through the clear space near the sun, the natives lay in wait out beyond the heliopause, in the thick shell of gas and debris of the nebula, preparing an ambush.

Their attack was heavier than usual. One of our battle cruisers lost its antimatter containment and exploded, killing the entire crew. The Swords damaged another ship so badly it had to be evacuated and destroyed. We fell back, leap-frogging each other as we fought our way into the system. I had expected the rest of the fleet to stop and form up in a defensive sphere once we were in the clear space of the system but instead, once they were out of the nebula, they ran away toward the far transit station.

I watched the receding ships on the gravimetrics in disbelief. It felt like they were just leaving us to die. Sensing our sudden vulnerability, The Swords' ships chased us into the clear space. I messaged Kouvaras. "Tell your men we're about to do some fishing, assuming we survive."

"Right."

I messaged Brennon. "Begin Operation Teutoburg's Revenge."

We dropped out of FTL as if we were going to fight. The Swords continued after us in a roughly conical pattern but with no real formation. The fleet shifted to a lens formation to broaden our profile, only pausing long enough to blow our waste anti-matter in a wide dispersal pattern, then accelerated away at maximum relative speed. The Swords slammed into the antimatter destroying nearly a dozen of their ships. Two were destroyed in a collision from their sudden attempt to maneuver around the hazard. This gave us time to put some distance between us, though The Swords followed with--if anything--more determination than before.

Diving back into the nebula, on the other side of the system, we dropped out of FTL and launched the breaching pods. Switching to the reaction drives, we moved away from the pods and stopped at missile firing range. We turned and waited, ready to fight. The few FACs we had, moved off, disappearing into the nebula. Behind me, the rest of our fleet was transiting through the next gate as if they'd forgotten we were behind them.

The Swords appeared firing missiles. We concentrated on our point defense and waited for the breaching pods (which were too small to show up on the gravimetrics) to do their thing. The FACs lunged out of the depth of the nebula and attacked The Swords from the rear. Many of their ships hesitated, not sure which enemy to fight and not understanding why some of their ships were screaming confusing warnings over the com or worse, not responding to their calls. A great number were simply destroyed. A handful of ships were seized and captives were taken. The rest ran away and didn't come back.

"Phoenix, this is Tango-Bravo-Zero-One-Zero, do you read me?" Kouvaris' voice came on the ship-to-ship com.

"Tango-Bravo-Zero-One-Zero, this is Phoenix. We read you," our com's officer replied.

"Please tell Commander Phon that the fishing was good and we caught a bunch for him."

"Will do."

I relayed orders that the prisoners were to be secured onboard the phoenix and kept under watch. The Swords' ships, however, were useless to us, so I had them destroyed. I didn't worry too much about the particulars of all this at the time. I was too upset at Smith for taking off with the fleet. At the first opportunity, we turned around and raced to join them.

* * *

"Why did you leave us?" I demanded the second Smith answered my urgent flash. "We lost two good ships and we've damaged several others almost beyond repair!"

He turned his furrowed brow away to another monitor and tapped an icon. "This is our scouts' report."

An incoming message flashed on one of my displays. I opened it and got a detailed multi-spectrum map of the system. It consisted of nothing more than a white dwarf and a ring of debris where the Cacks had, generations before, set up a—now extinct—mining colony. Hidden among the asteroids, some the size of planetoids, hundreds of enemy ships lurked.

"Our scouts detected the first ships coming in. We were trying to beat them here because we knew, if they got dug in, they'd be impossible to get out. Unfortunately, we were too late. We've sent scouts out looking for alternate routes, but they've come back with nothing."

"Well I may have something that can help," I said. "When they saw the rest of the fleet appear to abandon us, The Swords launched an all-out attack. Fortunately, we were able to set up an ambush and took out quite a few ships. More importantly, we were able to capture some prisoners."

Smith blinked, startled. "Alive?"

"Yes."

"Have you questioned them?"

"Not yet. I understand the troopers have some training in this. I was about to go down and see to it next."

"Wait for me. I want to see these Swords first hand."