Alone in my cabin, I began the task of gathering up my few belongings. Aside from my clothes, I could have packed most of it in a shoebox. I commandeered a spacer first class and sent him to the C&C to collect anything I had left behind and to see that my clothes were cleaned. He came back with a surprisingly large pile. As I packed them away, I got a message from Commander Brennon.

"Commander Phon, the flight deck master technician informs me your ship, the Argippus has been serviced and is ready."

"Thank you."

"When do you plan on leaving us?"

"Right away. Now that the fleet has ceased to exist, there's not much reason for me to stay." Noting his dispirited expression, I paused in my packing. "Have you decided what you're going to do?"

Brennon shook his head. "What's left of the old Solarian/Pentaminc fleet is still debating where to go next. The colonials have gone off to raid the Golden Worlds. The Spartans are pursuing a rumor that Sparta is sending supply ships to the depot at La Roca de la Salvación. Many of the owner/operators like your idea of running off and founding a colony somewhere out on the rim. As for the corporately owned ships, Shines Like the Sun technically purchased them, though the corporations retained the right to buy them back from him at drastically reduced prices when the contract expired. Some commanders are thinking of claiming them as spoils of war and keeping them, or possibly selling them back to the corporations. Needless to say, the corporations' lawyers will disagree. It's a legal gray area."

"What about the Phoenix? That really is a spoil of war."

"Perhaps, but being a Cack ship with Cack technology, it's even more valuable than the ship we lost. That will only ensure Pentaminc's lawyers will try harder to claim it. I don't think we could afford to defend our claim if we go back."

"Well if you decide to head back to Sol, let me know and I'll talk to my father. I'm sure Trans-Luminal can make you a better offer for the Phoenix than Pentamic's lawyers. We can probably even set your crew up in new ships and get you all work much closer to home."

Brennon gave me an appreciative nod. "Thank you. I will definitely consider the offer."

I snugged my netpiece over my ear and tapped it on. Awakening the Argippus' cybernetic awareness, I told it to start its preflight checklist. A mixed group of officers and enlisted of all ranks met me at the boarding tube, including the Chief Master Engineer who might have been angling for a job contact at TLS. They wished me farewell and I shook their hands and boarded the Argippus.

It felt strange floating into the ship's cabin. The air was a little musty from having been sealed up, though I detected the faint citrus smell the cleaning crew left behind when they prepped it. The ship was, however, just as beautiful as I remembered. It seemed almost delicate after living in a big military machine for so long. The military style manual controls, made the Argippus' control interfaces seem like magic when they lit up at my thought.

Lori Seaward, the flight deck attendant released me, gave me permission to depart and wished me a safe voyage. I felt a strange tinge of nostalgia as I watched the Cack warship recede on my monitor. No more racing through transit stations or seizing the inbound lane, I thought ruefully as the transit authority took control of the Argippus and slotted me in between two freighters. I spent my long wait times catching up on the news and trying to care about what else might be going on.

Between the gates I pushed my engines to their limits and, after a long day of travel, came to Empire, the first major trading hub in human space. Empire had been founded by the, now-defunct, Star Empires trading company. It went on to become the political and cultural capital in that region of space.

I booked a hotel and got a reservation at a nice restaurant that served meat. As I said before, I've never learned to hate the yeast-based ramen that so many others love to hate, but after long months in space with no fresh food, I could see why many do. I checked into my hotel from the spaceport, sending my bags on ahead, and headed straight for the restaurant. I normally hate dining out alone and have often bought meals for random cute girls for the sole purpose of keeping me company while I eat, but this time as I sat at my table and ordered a little of everything from the menu, I didn't even notice the other diners. Five minutes into the meal, I got my first call.

It was a vendor who worked with my father's company. I set my status to busy and noticed another call already waiting and then another request queuing up. Mason, an old pledge brother and a writer for the media drama companies popped up in the list. We had been close during college, but our relationship cooled when my family's lawyers made him remove me from the video adaptation of our exploits. I connected out of curiosity.

"Hello?"

"I see you're back."

"How did you know?" I demanded. "I've been in port less than ten minutes. I haven't even landed planet-side yet!"

"No. I mean I see your back. You're on live feed."

"What?" I looked around the restaurant. I noticed most of the dinners were engaged in quiet excited conversations and they were all either snatching glances my way or openly gaping at me. Several held small video cameras the size of playing cards upright on their tables aimed my way.

"It's a little weird," Mason continued. "There's a slight delay in the signal processing so the video is out of sync with the call."

"Great Maker." I groaned. "I had hoped the public interest would have died down by now."

"Are you kidding? OK, maybe a bit while you guys were lost in the Cack badlands—I mean one can't put Elaina Lovejoy's drunken brawls with the superstars on hold forever—but your absence has only made the public curiosity stronger. What happened out there anyway? We'd heard the fleet had been wiped out three times, but then we kept getting rumors of you popping up here and there, turning pirate, switching sides and working for the Cacks...what really went on out there?

I sighed. "I'm going to have to call the family's PR company again, aren't I?"

"Speaking of which, have you sold the rights yet? I want them. You can't give them to anyone else, you owe me!"

"You know who to call." I disconnected then turned around and waved to the couple behind me with one of the cameras. I flagged a waiter, asked that my food be boxed up and sent to my hotel. Somehow it beat me to my room, but it wasn't alone.

I noticed the stiff suits lurking nonchalantly in the hall. They wore conservative dark business tunics but there was no mistaking the uniform in their bearing. They all studiously ignored me except for the one who must have been the team leader who gave me a too-casual nod of the head. I walked past them, looking around and verifying that all the exits were being casually watched before slipping inside my room the second my netpiece unlocked the door.

A man stood in the main room with his back to me, staring at the live feed of my virtual window. "I appreciate these executive suites. Corporate executives liked their privacy. Makes them easier to secure."

I paused in the entryway. "Obviously not secure enough."

He turned an indulgent smile on me. "Quite." He had a square face on a square head and he extended a big square hand toward me whose fingers looked like they were comprised of modular, government-issued, snap-together equipment. "My name is James Sharkey, Director of Spartan Interplanetary Defense."

He looked to be in his mid-sixties, though with state-of-the-art anti-aging treatments he could be twice that. His grip, as I shook his hand, still had the I-could-crush-your-bones-if-I-wanted-to firmness to it. "I bet I can guess what this is about," I said.

"And if you guessed the Cacks, you would be correct." He made a gesture and a female version of Harlow entered from one of the bedrooms with a holgraphic projector. She set it up on a table and turned it on. An enormous globe of stars filled the room and, when she dimmed the room's lights, I recognized the Cack Moiarchy. "I presume you can read a gravimetric plot?"

The display rotated, zooming in on first one section then another. I very quickly got the big picture. "I see a lot of heavy battlecruisers collecting in one spot."

"Our intelligence says that Righteous Ruler has managed to consolidate his political power over the Moiarchy and is gathering his forces for retaliation against us. Our own governments have been quietly gearing up for warship production and hope to have a sizable force ready by the time he is ready to attack."

"And you want to debrief me about their possible strategy and tactics," I said. I had been expecting this would come.

Director Sharkey shrugged. "Perhaps, eventually. We've already collected all the data you're likely to know and most of that fell out of date while you and your fleet were wandering lost in the Moiarchy's back-country. No it's your fleet we're interested in." He pointed to the display and it zoomed in on the gate to the middle sphere of the Moiarchy.

"My fleet?"

"See this cluster of ships? That is what's left of Bright Fortune, Most Noble and the other major Cack shareholders' fleets you've embarrassed. We don't know if they are acting under orders or just trying to redeem themselves in the eyes of Righteous Ruler, but they appear to be launching some sort of pre-emptive strike."

I stared at the vector maps. They were definitely converging on the gate to the Golden Worlds. "Do we know the target?"

"No. But given the current state of our military readiness, they can take out any single system they want."

"And if you could only destroy one human system, which would it be?" I asked.

"Precisely. We strongly suspect Earth, or rather, the entire Solar System."

"So what are you doing?"

Director Sharkey sat and spread his arms across the back of the sofa, crossing one leg over a knee. "The question is not what are we going to do, but what are you going to do."

I shrugged. "What can one man with no warships do?"

"You can go back and gather up your fleet."

"There is no more fleet. It's broken up. It was never much of a fleet anyway. It only functioned as well as it did because the ship commanders were all facing extinction. They've all since turned pirate."

"Not all of them." Sharkey tapped his netpiece and the display zoomed in on the Golden Worlds. "What's left of the Solarian fleet has apparently decided to go home. If you boost in the next twenty-four hours, you should be able to catch them before they leave the Golden Worlds at a little system called Two Worlds. From there, I suggest you find the colonial ships lost among the Golden Worlds and join Smith's fleet at La Roca. We are already loading supply ships to meet you there."

"Why don't Sparta and the Colonies do this? Between all the worlds, you should have enough ships."

Sharkey shook his head before I had even finished the sentence. "We haven't the ships or the crews to both protect our worlds and defend Sol. Even if we did, we wouldn't have time to collect them and get them out to the Golden Worlds. No. You and your fleet are the only ones who can stop this attack."

"You keep calling them my fleet," I said, growing more irritated. "They've no reason for them to follow me. What makes you think I can convince them to do anything?"

"Earth has offered billions of terra which should make a nice incentive for your crews. If that doesn't work, tell them that the entire human race faces extinction." He gave me a severe look as though I were an insubordinate junior officer and not a civilian being volunteered for a suicide mission. "If you agree, I've got five light cruisers standing by right now for your use to go recover your fleet."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I'd done the impossible before. Could I do it again? With nothing but death and destruction before and behind, whether I stayed or left, I might as well try and take some part of my fate into my own hands. I opened my eyes and let out my breath. "Tell me about the officers commanding the LCs."

I thought about the take-out meal cooling in the suite's kitchenette. I should probably order a bunch of meals to go tomorrow.