"Are the two behind us moving to pursue?" Jackson asked.

"No, sir," Barrett said. "They've broken formation and are accelerating up and away from the engagement."

"They're completely confused right now," Jackson said, "so they're going to try and blanket the area to deny us access to that jump point. Tactical, keep track of where those two ships end up during the redeployment, and that should give you a rough idea where our two hiders are."

"Yes, sir."

"OPS, try to ping our drone," Jackson said. "I'm sure it's probably been hit by a surface to orbit weapon, but let's be sure. If you get a positive response, go ahead and send the destruct codes."

"Aye, sir."

After the frenzied bit of activity, the bridge settled into a tense quiet as the Ares barreled toward two battleships of indeterminate capability. Whoever was in command of the battlegroup defending the system was apparently content to just block him from what was likely the only cleared jump point, more than happy to allow him to continue down into the system.

Had Jackson been stuck on the idea of leaving the same way he came in, the strategy wouldn't have been a bad one. The two battleships in front of him could continue to push him down toward the inner system, and even once the Ares shot by and was behind them, there was no way to get her turned and accelerating back up out of the well toward the jump point without the four other picket ships easily intercepting them.

"No response from the Jacobson drone," Ensign Hayashi said after another hour had passed. "I'm transmitting the destruct signal anyway."

"Don't bother, Ensign," Jackson said. "Tactical, it looks like the two in front of us are under heavy decel again. Can you confirm?"

"Confirmed, sir," Barrett said. "Measuring a significant negative acceleration corresponding to an increased engine output."

"Helm, come starboard another fifteen degrees, and pitch down thirty degrees." Jackson studied the tactical plots. "Be prepared to fire the auxiliary boosters. OPS, you will give the order to fire the boosters when the Ares is within five hundred thousand kilometers of the lead ship."

"Helm answering new course," the helmsman said. "Engines still at one hundred and fifteen percent of maximum output."

"Acknowledged," Jackson said. "If the plasma chambers begin to get too hot, throttle back to within the normal operational range-if Engineering doesn't beat you to it."

"Aye, sir."

"Captain, there's a priority one-double-alpha com request coming from the fourth planet," Lieutenant Keller said. "It's addressed specifically to you."

"Any idea who it is?" Jackson knew Marcum was on one of the battleships, so he assumed it would be some high-ranking civilian official on the other end of the channel.

"Decryption routines confirm that the address is one reserved for the Commander in Chief."

"I see," Jackson said neutrally. "Put it through here."

A sharp double-beep let him know the channel was live.

"This is Captain Jackson Wolfe of the TCS Ares," he said respectfully.

"Captain Wolfe, this is President McKellar," the familiar voice said crisply over the bridge speakers. "I think it's time we end this little misunderstanding before needlessly putting anyone in harm's way, don't you?"

"I would like to do nothing more, Mr. President," Jackson said. "However, I am not certain that cutting my engines and allowing half a dozen battleships to close in on me is the best way to accomplish that, sir."

"I understand your confusion, Captain," McKellar said tightly. "But you have to realize, the fact that I'm speaking to you from the surface means this project was sanctioned by the highest levels of government."

"I sincerely hope that's true, sir," Jackson said.

He had to agree that the President being on the surface did lend credibility to the claim that this was something planned and sanctioned by the Confederate government and CENTCOM. Despite his reputation, Jackson was very much an officer that put his faith in the chain of command, and right now, he was being ordered to stand down by the two highest ranking members of Starfleet-including the Commander in Chief. But something just didn't feel right, and his gut told him that nobody on his crew would see the light of day again if he allowed the Ares to be boarded.

"I respectfully decline, sir. At least until I have some sort of guarantee that my crew will not be incarcerated or otherwise harmed. Is Admiral Pitt available?"

"I do not answer to, nor take requests from, some lowly destroyer captain," McKellar said, his voice brittle enough to etch starship hull alloy. "I am the ultimate military authority any way you look at it, and I have given you a direct order. Do you intend to comply?"

Jackson took his time before answered. His answer would dictate how the ships ahead of him, who were almost certainly monitoring the conversation, would respond. He was yet again taking his career and rolling the dice, but somehow that no longer seemed significant.

"It is with regret that I must inform you that I have no intention of allowing my ship to be boarded... sir," Jackson said. "We will return to Haven, and I will submit myself to CENTCOM authorities on Jericho Station."

"You are relieved of duty, Captain," Marcum's voice broke in on the channel. "Commander Wright will assume command of the Ares, and she will make way for the fourth planet of this system, enter a standard holding orbit, and await further instructions. Is that clear, Commander?"

"Commander Wright is not aboard the Ares, sir," Jackson said.

"There isn't an order given that you will simply obey without question, is there, Wolfe?" Marcum snarled. "Must be something in your genetic makeup. Lieutenant Davis, you will carry out the same order."

"I am relieving myself from duty, Admiral Marcum," Davis said in a clear, strong voice.

Before Jackson could object to Jillian tossing her career down the same drain his was circling, Hayashi motioned frantically and held up five fingers.

Jackson turned to Keller and chopped his hand across his throat to mute their end of the channel. "Tactical?"

"Both battleships ahead of us have ceased braking and are turning in," Barrett said. "We're being hit with tracking radars from both ships. They're getting a firing solution."

Jackson was vaguely aware of both the CENTCOM Chief of Staff and the President of the Terran Confederacy yelling over the com channel for him to respond. He set that surreal, insane part of the situation aside for a moment and focused on the scenario directly in front of him. Not having any performance numbers on the Dreadnought-class battleships was a serious hindrance when it came to devising a workable strategy, but he had to assume that a ship with nearly ten times the mass of the Ares would at least be half as quick to accelerate. He hoped.

"Helm, fire the auxiliary boosters," Jackson ordered. "Maintain current heading. Nav, standby to begin giving us course vectors for a warp transition. It will be fast and furious when I call for it, so be ready. Mr. Keller, go ahead and kill that channel."

"Aye aye, sir," Keller said. "Closing the channel the President and Chief of Staff are still talking on, sir."

Jackson didn't miss the inflection in his voice.

"Those of you that have served with me before will find this situation somewhat familiar." He raised his voice to be heard over the harsh rumble of the mains at full power and the auxiliary boosters firing. "As you heard, I'm about to disobey a direct order from both the President and his Chief of Staff. Anyone not comfortable with that may leave the bridge with no chance of reprisal no matter the outcome. You are not under arrest, you may simply return to your quarters as conscientious objectors. For those who choose to stay, rest assured, I will not open fire on a Terran vessel... even one that fires on us first."

"Permission to return to duty, Captain," Davis said from the XO's station, a small smile playing across her lips.

"Granted, Lieutenant." Jackson nodded.

Lieutenant Keller looked like he was about to get up, looked around, and remained seated although not appearing to be entirely happy about his choice. The rest of the crew were staring at him with a mixture of resolve and, alarmingly, not a little bit of adoration and hero worship. When he'd put them in the same impossible situation before, his chest had swelled with pride. This time, his guts churned as he risked the careers and freedom of his people on something that he might be gravely mistaken about.

"We're with you, Captain," Master Chief Green said simply from his customary spot by the hatchway.

"Very well." Jackson returned to his seat. "Helm, maintain max burn for another ninety seconds, and then kill the auxiliary boosters and throttle the mains back to within the normal operating range. If we haven't given ourselves enough of an edge by now, we never will. Nav, I want a course for a warp transition along our current heading, one light-week... I know we're still deep in the system, so we're just going to have to play the odds. OPS, inform Engineering we will be deploying the warp drive momentarily."

The crew quickly went to work preparing the Ares to perform a warp transition out of the system along an uncharted, unapproved path. The risk was minimal, despite how hard Fleet beat the drum about the hazards of straying off the warp lanes. Space was very, very big, and the Ares was comparatively very, very tiny. The odds of their warp fields encountering anything with enough mass to destabilize them was incredibly remote, and he was taking extra care by having them enter warp at a downward angle off the ecliptic to avoid most of the perimeter debris that was left over from the star system's formation. The forward distortion field pushed most of the smaller stellar debris out away from their flight path before the ship came through.

"Lead battleship is firing, sir!" Barrett said. "Forward laser battery. Thirty seconds to impact."

"Helm, roll to starboard one hundred and five degrees," Jackson assumed this was a low-power warning blast, but he didn't want to take the chance that they'd targeted his port main engine, so he rolled the ship to let the blast hit the Ares on the belly where the thermal shielding and ablative layers had the most coverage. Thirty seconds later, there was a clap and a slight shudder as the laser shot impacted them cleanly.

"No damage," Hayashi reported. "Heat absorption on the hull indicates the shot was less than five hundred terawatts."

"Warning shot then," Jackson said. "Nav, do you have my course?"

"I will in fifteen seconds, Captain!"

"OPS, deploy the warp drive, and handoff command authority to the nav station," Jackson said. "Helm, zero thrust and secure main engines from flight mode. Nav, you may transition us out of here at your discretion."

"Zero thrust, aye," the helmsman said.

"Engineering is securing main engines," Hayashi said. "Plasma chambers purging now."

"Standby for transition!" the nav specialist shouted, triggering an automatic alert that was heard throughout the ship.

A few seconds later, the main display dimmed, and the Ares shuddered slightly as she vanished from the system.

"You told me he was controllable," President Caleb McKellar said, practically spitting the words out at the display.

"A miscalculation, sir," Joseph Marcum said. "After his experience aboard the Blue Jacket, I really didn't think the man would even want back on the bridge of a starship. I figured we'd parade him around to increase recruitment and public support for CENTCOM's budget, but it didn't work out that way."

"I noticed," the President said dryly. "What matters now is what we do next. What options do you have?"

"I need to get in touch with the director of the CIS and find out why a Broadhead was snooping around out here and then we try to track down the Ares," Marcum said. "There's little damage he can do at this point. He'll likely return to Haven to make a report to Pitt, and then we can have him apprehended and recall the rest of Ninth Squadron."

"What about the report I'm looking at from Podere?" McKellar looked away from the screen, appearing already bored with the matter.

"I saw that too, sir," Marcum said. "It's as we feared."

McKellar sighed. "Intellectually, I understand and agree with the choices we've made, but that doesn't make it easy when it actually happens."

"I feel the same way, sir," Marcum said. "But the choice was made because it had to be made, horrible as it is."

"Just go get Captain Wolfe, and do whatever you need to do," McKellar said. "There's too much happening now to have a single Fleet officer being such a large distraction."

"I understand, sir," Marcum said. "I'll handle it."

Chapter 16.

The Ares slammed back into normal space after the short warp flight. So short, in fact, that the opposing fields hadn't fully stabilized before the computer had to begin the very careful process of collapsing them in such a way that they didn't tear the destroyer in half.

"Report." Jackson seemed to ignore the fact that his coffee mug had gone sailing all the way past the tactical station.

"Confirming position now, Captain," the chief at nav said.

"Minor damage reported in Engineering," Hayashi said. "Water leak on reactor two's secondary cooling system. Repairs are already underway, and it won't affect ship functions."

"Let me know when it's been repaired," Jackson said. "I'm assuming there were no injuries as a result of the rough transition?"

"None reported, sir."

"Position confirmed. We're almost exactly a light-week outside of the previous star system, sir."

"Good job," Jackson said. "Now, get me a course that intersects the Ark-Columbiana warp corridor. We need to get back to Haven at best possible speed."

"Aye, sir."

"Won't they be expecting that, sir?" Davis asked.

"This isn't about doing the unexpected, Lieutenant," Jackson said. "They'd have an impossible task in trying to track us down out here in interstellar space, and Marcum knows that. He'll have a com drone heading back to Columbiana now to begin disseminating the order that we're to be apprehended on sight. Our only goal right now is to get back to Jericho as fast as we can and let Admiral Pitt sort this out."

"What if we were wrong?"

"Then I'll be arrested, and hopefully someone will be put in command of the Ares that can get her to the Frontier and do some good." Jackson shrugged. "This also isn't about individual careers anymore. Things are happening fast now, and if the Phage aren't stalled or stopped completely by the time they reach Nuovo Patria, all of Terran space is at risk."

"I understand, sir," she said.

Jackson glanced over at her and could see her face pinched into a worried expression.

It was a few hours before the ship was cleared for warp flight by Commander Singh and Navigation had a course that would allow them to ease into the warp corridor without another short jump that the new-generation drive seemed to hate so much. Jackson took the time to walk down to Engineering and inspect reactor two, making sure the coolant leak hadn't posed any health risks to the crew. By the time he'd left, Singh was already opening the bypass valves to recharge the system and test all the pumps.

He'd also stopped by his office to take a peek at what Pike had transmitted to him before the Broadhead and slipped out of the system, but the entire contents save for a plaintext message had been locked down with an encryption he didn't have the key for. He tossed around the idea of giving it to his com department to try and crack, but the accompanying message gave him pause.

Senator, suspicions confirmed. Worse than expected. Data package contains as much detail as I can get. Ares has appeared in-system, so I will use the distraction to bug out.

Jackson assumed the message was to Senator Augustus Wellington, Aston Lynch's boss. He'd never fully understood if Agent Pike worked directly for the Senator, still reported to CIS, or was just a wild card that seemed to appear in places where he was least wanted. Either way, he would not be adding to his list of impressive offenses on this cruise by trying to force his way into a com package that was intended for a powerful senator.

"Captain, our course has been verified and entered, and the warp drive has been cleared for operation," Lieutenant Davis said as he walked back onto the bridge.

"Bring the mains online," Jackson said as he sat down. "Helm, you're cleared for maximum acceleration once main thrust is available. I want transition velocity as quickly as possible."

"Aye aye, sir," the helmsman said. "Mains going hot now."

"Is the plan still the same, sir?" Davis asked.

"Affirmative, Lieutenant," Jackson said. "We'll hop in and out of the Columbiana System and be on our way to Haven just as fast as she can take us."

"Engaging mains now," the helmsman said. "Answering ahead full."

"The man is worse than you when it comes to getting himself into trouble." Senator Augustus Wellington snarled, pacing in the cramped main cabin of the Broadhead. "What in the hell was he doing there in the first place?"