Tanaka bowed his head and breathed a heavy sigh before continuing. "I will assist Chief Engineer Singh in the removal of the remote failsafe system," he said. "There are likely some other features of the Ares you're not fully aware of. I will work up a full brief. How much time do I have?"

"Thirty-seven hours until the Chesapeake is ready to get underway at last check," Jackson said.

"Then we need to get started." Tanaka rose gracefully from his seat.

"Thank you, Doctor," Jackson said respectfully. "Your courage and sacrifice will not be insignificant in the coming battle."

"I have a family on Haven," Tanaka said. "I do this for them. I will be imprisoned or worse if the board learns what I do here. I am trusting you to protect them."

Jackson sat staring at the hatch after the three of them had left, feeling some regret for the position he'd put the scientist in. After a moment, he shook it off. He was preparing to fly into a system that was controlled by some of the most powerful people in the Terran Confederacy. He had no doubt that if there was a built-in weakness that the designers had included in his ship, someone there would know about it.

"Coms, get me a representative down on the surface of New Sierra," Jackson said, holding down the intercom button. "Route it to my office."

"Aye, sir."

It was twenty minutes later before the puffy face of Governor Tellaride appeared on his terminal.

"How may I help you, Captain?"

"I just wanted to update you personally," Jackson said politely. "All of our ships will be leaving your shipyards within the hour and will be warping out of your star system as quickly as possible after that. The two Ninth Squadron ships will depart immediately afterward. I regret that this incident escalated, resulting in needless deaths."

Tellaride just glared at him a moment before answering. "You seem to sincerely believe in what it is you do, Captain," he said. "From what I've been able to find out about you, it seems you do not partake in the political games your fellow starship captains do so love.

"We were warned about your arrival long before you appeared at the edge of our system. Word came from Haven itself along with details of which two ships, and which two NOVA teams, would be assaulting the shipyards. That's why we had our forces deployed in such a way as to hide them from your scans when you appeared at the Haven-New Sierra jump point."

"I see," Jackson said noncommittally, his mind racing.

"Embarrassingly, the advantage still didn't secure a victory," Tellaride continued. "Your tactics completely confused our untested and, honestly, unqualified commanders. The only reason I called for the ceasefire was that a com drone appeared with an order countermanding the one that called for us to try and hold the two Black Fleet groups here as long as possible."

"I don't suppose you'd like to offer any more detail as to who those orders came from?" Jackson asked hopefully.

"I don't think so, Captain," Tellaride chuckled humorlessly "This communique alone is enough to ensure I will not be in good favor. I may be the head executive in this system, but I serve as little more than a pass-through for decisions made in Columbiana. I respect what you are trying to accomplish, and I felt you at least deserved fair warning: Do not trust anyone on Haven. The Phage have shined a bright light on our complacency, causing the roaches and rats to scurry for cover. Good luck, sir."

"Holy shit, I need a drink," Jackson said to the ceiling, rubbing his temples and trying to digest yet another bombshell that had been dropped on him.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, he was still having trouble believing that in the face of such a dire threat as the Phage, there were still humans who looked at the situation as an opportunity to gain just a little more power, a little more wealth. He found the entire situation offensive.

"Captain, all sixteen Black Fleet ships have broken orbit and are making for the Haven jump point," Lieutenant Davis said as Jackson strode onto the bridge, refreshed after a nap and a hot meal.

Davis was once again sitting at the OPS station, but he decided to let it slide.

"Who's in command of the formation?" he asked instead.

"Admiral Iccard on the fleet carrier, Chesapeake," she said. "Flight OPS has also reported that Dr. Tanaka was successfully delivered, and the shuttle is on the way back now."

"What about our Jacobson drone?"

"Already recovered and stowed, sir," she said. "The Icarus is thirty thousand kilometers off our port stern and pacing us in orbit."

"Has Commander Singh sent up the encrypted packet for Commander Wright?" Jackson asked.

"I just got it ten minutes ago, Captain," Lieutenant Keller said from the coms station. "Should I send it now?"

"Standby," Jackson said. "I'm also giving you a set of orders for the Icarus and another message packet. Send it once you get them both."

"Will the Icarus be remaining in the formation when we depart, sir?" Davis asked.

"Negative, Lieutenant." Jackson began going though the incoming department reports on his display. "She'll be heading directly to the Frontier to meet up with the rest of the Ninth while we go and investigate this Ark and find out what in the hell that's all about."

He'd made sure Daya had meticulously documented the procedure for removing the remote failsafe control from his ship and packaged it into a tech order that the Icarus's chief engineer could follow. After that, he had drafted orders for Commander Wright to take the Icarus to the Frontier and ignore all recall orders from CENTCOM. He hoped she'd be able to arrange for the Artemis and Atlas to also pull all the nefarious black boxes from their engineering bays. Either way, the Icarus needed to be close to the front, not sitting in dock at Jericho Station waiting on yet another politically appointed CO.

After he'd taken care of that, he asked Daya to add one more modification to the Ares after Dr. Tanaka had disembarked. He wanted to know if someone tried to activate the remote override for his ship. The plan was to program an innocuous looking icon on his display that would let him know if the dummy receiver Daya was rigging up down below received an activation signal. The makeshift box was smart enough that it would actually send back the proper responses as if the ship was answering the given commands.

Dr. Tanaka had been adamant that the system was benign, meant only to be activated in the event that the crew was incapacitated, or if the need ever arose for a single crew to command multiple ships. Jackson had simply nodded indulgently at the designer's explanations. Sadly, Tanaka truly believed what he was saying. No doubt that's how it had been sold to him.

Dr. Allrest had been much the same when he'd first been brought onboard to head up the research effort behind the remains of the Phage Alpha Jackson had destroyed-wide eyed and innocent. Now Tanaka was heading back to a probable bleak future when Tsuyo figured out he'd helped sabotage their newest starships, and Allrest was in the wind, recording secret messages in restrooms before disappearing.

"The Icarus is signaling they understand their orders and are ready to depart, sir," Keller said, intruding on Jackson's internal musings.

"Tell them they're clear to execute their mission... and Godspeed," Jackson said. "OPS, inform Engineering that we'll be departing shortly ourselves. I want full engine power available."

"Aye, sir," Ensign Hayashi said, having slunk onto the bridge and slid silently into the seat Davis had vacated. Jackson was amused that the young officer gave the appearance he'd done something wrong when in fact he was still over thirty minutes early for his watch.

On the main display, the Icarus's engines flared, and she began to accelerate out of orbit and back up out of the system. Jackson felt marginally more comfortable about Wright taking command of the ship on her own than he did before they flew into the DeLonges System. On one hand, it seemed impossible for her to be ready after such a short period of time, but on the other, he had to admit that she was far more qualified to command a starship in combat than he'd been when the Blue Jacket had finally caught up with the alien invader two systems after discovering the destruction of Xi'an.

"Nav! Plot a course out of this system via the Columbiana jump point," he ordered after the Icarus had cleared the immediate area.

"Aye aye, sir," the chief manning the nav station said without hesitation.

"OPS, inform Engineering that I'll be needing the warp drive available soon," Jackson said. "Helm, when you get your new course, accelerate along the orbital path at half-power, until we reach .15c."

"Aye, sir," the helmsman said. "Clear for ahead one-half."

"Lieutenant Davis, you have the bridge." Jackson paced behind the forward bridge stations. "Resume normal watches, and keep an eye on all the Fourth Fleet traffic. Alert me immediately if any com requests come in from the surface or any other ships enter the system."

"Yes, sir," Davis said, sliding over into the recently vacated command chair.

"How is it that I'm the one constantly getting mixed up in these situations? Am I really that unlucky?" Jackson asked rhetorically as he and Daya sat alone in the wardroom finishing off the evening meal.

"You can't be serious, Jack." Daya's incredulity clearly showed on his face. "It was dumb, blind luck that you were the first one to discover that Alpha chewing up planets, but everything after that has been your fault."

"I'm not sure I see how that's true," Jackson said.

"It was your choice to pursue that thing and take it on with a ship that should have been decommissioned years prior," Daya said. "Since then, these situations don't fall into your lap,' as you like to say. They're hand delivered. Everyone is terrified about what is coming, and they hope that they can hide behind you, that you'll have one more miracle to pull out to save them all. If you can't, then they'll have to face reality and stand on the line to face the Phage."

"I think we're corrupting the definition of miracle' when describing that first engagement," Jackson said sourly. "If this Ark is what I suspect it is, I'd say the decision has been made long before now."

"What do you think we'll find there?" Daya asked.

"Honestly?" Jackson idly spun his water glass on the hard plastic tray. "I think we're going to find that a few very influential people have betrayed the human species in order to save their own asses."

"I hope you're wrong."

"As do I."

Chapter 15.

"OPS, go silent, no emissions of any kind. Have Engineering check the warp drive and get back to you on why that transition was so rough. Tactical, begin a passive survey of the system." Jackson wiped coffee off the front of his utility top. The Ares had bucked her way back into normal space just outside of a star system that didn't appear on any official survey reports.

"Aye, sir," Barrett and Hayashi said almost simultaneously.

"I can tell you now that there have been ships with Terran warp drives coming to this system, sir," Barrett said after a few moments. "The dissipating radiation from a transition leaves an unmistakable signature."

"I concur, Captain," Hayashi said. "I would also add that it seems a lot of ships have come in through this jump point."

"We'd better clear the area then," Jackson said.

Jump points were locations in space that had been designated as safe for transition, but given the slight variances and inaccuracies of each starship's internal systems, ships coming into a system could miss a jump point by a few hundred thousand kilometers.

"OPS, bring the mains online in low-output mode. Helm, minimum forward thrust and port maneuvering jets only. Get us drifting away from this jump point without giving away our presence."

For the next five hours, the engines gently pushed the Ares though space, angling away from the jump point until they'd reached sufficient velocity to clear the jump corridor in a reasonable amount of time. Jackson ordered the engines cut off and allowed the destroyer to continue her drift out of the area while the passive sensors watched and "listened" to everything happening in the star system.

As the conversations tapered off, the bridge crew was left with only the omnipresent whir of the air handlers and the beeps and hums of consoles as they faced another long, dull watch. Jackson wanted to stay near enough to the jump point that on the off chance they were lucky enough to catch a ship coming in, or trying to leave, they'd be able to get a positive identification on it with the passive sensors.

Seven hours had passed before Barrett finally had something to report. "Captain, I've got some preliminary results from our survey."

"Give me the highlights, and then make your report available on the server," Jackson said.

"Yes, sir." Barrett turned in his seat. "In addition to the evidence of Terran ships coming in through this jump point, I've also been able to determine that the fourth planet is inhabited. The light pollution on the planet's dark side is significant, even at this distance. Luckily, the planet is to the right of the primary star relative to us in its orbit, so we were able to detect it."

"Even though I'm a little surprised you were able to spot it at this distance, this wasn't unexpected," Jackson said. "What else?"

"The other oddity is that there are no radiated emissions from artificial sources in this system that we can detect. No beacons, coms, or broadcast signals of any kind. I've already run diagnostics on the equipment to make sure it isn't a failure on our side."

"They're keeping special care to hide this planet, not even allowing radio waves to escape and possibly give them away." Jackson tapped his chin. "We'll respect that... for now. Double check that we're not emitting anything ourselves."

"We're going to have some low grade leakage on the receivers from the local oscillators, sir," Hayashi said.

"Understood," Jackson said. "But that would be almost impossible to pick out of the cosmic background noise."

"Do we risk flying in for a closer look?" Davis asked.

"Not yet," Jackson said. "OPS, have a recon drone prepped. If they can quick turn a Jacobson, go ahead and do that. I'll send you over the load out instructions momentarily."

"Aye, sir."

A little over two hours later, a specially prepared Jacobson drone fired out of the starboard launch tube on a blast of compressed nitrogen, drifting away from the destroyer until a predetermined time had elapsed, and it engaged an auxiliary, low-power ionic jet motor.

"Drone is away, Captain," Hayashi said. "It checked in once with a com laser to confirm that it was operating correctly before going silent. There will be two opportunities along its course for it to engage its main engine and perform a long burn as it approaches the planet."

"Very good." Jackson stood. "Maintain standard watches, no special alerts for now. Tactical, keep a sharp eye for anyone trying a stealth intercept. We can't be guaranteed that our transition went unnoticed. Lieutenant Davis, you have the bridge. I'll be back to relieve you shortly."

"Of course, sir."

Jackson nodded to the Marine sentry and walked quickly off the bridge. He made his way to the set of lifts near the aft section of the command deck by way of the wardroom to top off his coffee. He absently nodded to spacers and officers as he walked the corridors, deeply troubled by what they'd found so far.

A backup plan to keep and protect humanity's treasures and knowledge was one thing, but from the grainy images he'd seen on Barrett's display, this "Ark" looked like a full-fledged colony planet. Why waste the resources building something so extensive? And when did they start? The Phage had only been a known threat for a little over four years. There was no way in hell they propped a whole colony planet up that quickly.

That left a few possibilities, and none of them were particularly pleasant. It was possible the planet had been colonized for some innocent purpose years ago, but why the secrecy? The unnamed star system didn't even appear on the official Fleet registry, a fact that was quite suspicious by itself. If it had been built up after the appearance of the Phage, even counting when the Asianic Union first began losing planets and ships, it still represented an unfathomable diversion of critical resources needed on the Frontier. Either way, the fact they were obviously using such stringent emission security protocols meant that whatever was going on down on that planet likely had little to do with defending the Confederate citizens with their asses hanging out in the breeze along the Frontier.

"You look like a man lost in his own head, sir," Chief Green said from a hatchway as Jackson strolled down the port access tube toward Engineering.

"Just making an unannounced inspection, Chief."

"Uh huh," Green said. "It might be more effective if you were looking at the ship and not out at something in front of you with that glazed look in your eye... sir."

"What brings you down here, Chief?"

"Inspections, sir." Green shrugged. "These fucking sewer maggots think that a couple calls for general quarters is some sort of excuse not to clean the goddamn decks."

His last comment was directed loudly at a pair of junior enlisted spacers who happened to be walking by. They'd slowed in order to greet their captain, but at the sight of Master Chief Green, they averted their eyes and hustled down the tube.

"You heading to Engineering, sir?"

"I am. Care to join me, Chief? They usually have decent coffee and pastries down there," Jackson said.

"I'd be delighted, sir," Green said.

"Maybe you could spring a surprise inspection on the drive techs," Jackson said half-jokingly.

"Not a chance, Cap," Green said seriously. "Commander Singh runs a tight ship down there. He doesn't need me coming in and disrupting his people."

Jackson made a mental note to pass the compliment on to Daya as they were very, very rare from the salty chief. Triply rare when it came to compliments for officers.

During the brief visit in Engineering, Jackson took a perfunctory look at the twin deuterium fusion reactors that powered the Ares as well as a host of other systems. He complimented all the spacers in the section, made a fuss about the ship breaking a speed record from the Frontier to Haven and outrunning a CIS Broadhead during the process, and then quietly slunk out of the area as Daya and Chief Green had a friendly conversation that he couldn't quite make out.