"Preventative maintenance on a platform this large can take a good sized crew up to a week to perform, and that's if everything checks out and no repairs are needed," Pike said. "I guess the designers figured it was easier and safer to have them live aboard rather than in a docked ship. I also heard rumors that the original intent was for the platforms to be used as a lifeboat in case of an emergency."

"That's fairly stupid," Jackson said. "They wanted a ship so damaged that its crew needed to abandon her to fly up to, and dock with, an irreplaceable com platform?"

"Now you know why you've never heard of it until now," Pike said. "Sounded good on paper until someone without such a myopic point of view mentioned how dumb it was."

The platform was cold, but as they walked through each corridor, the automated systems kicked on infrared heaters in the ceiling so that although they could see their breath in the cool air, Jackson was becoming uncomfortably warm. He was just thankful that the platform had a gravimetric generator, weak though it was, that allowed them to shuffle through the corridors. Despite spending most of his life in space, Jackson was not all that graceful when it came to maneuvering his body in a weightless environment.

Soon they left behind the comforts of the crew living area and were carefully avoiding the sharp angles and overhead obstacles that littered the guts of the platform. The area was built entirely with machines in mind. The engineers were just kind enough to include the narrow, somewhat treacherous, path to get back to the main system interfaces.

"Give me a moment to get past the layered security," Pike said as they entered a cramped control room that was barely large enough for the two of them. "Actually, it'll be a lot of moments."

Jackson waited patiently while Pike painstakingly entered long, convoluted pass codes he was reading off this comlink. There were a few truncated alarms that sounded before he would enter another code and silence it. Just over twenty minutes had passed when he pointed to a universal data jack near the panel he was working on.

"Go ahead and cable up and get the packaged queued," he said. "I'll let you know when to send it."

Jackson uncoiled the hard line he'd been carrying in his pocket and plugged one end into the data jack before attaching the inductive connector to his tile with a magnetic snap.

"Ready."

"I'm almost there," Pike said. "The platform is no longer accepting new launch requests, but it's still storing and loading all the incoming com traffic. I'm setting it to launch every drone, maximum coverage. Each drone is loaded with another set of override codes for when it hits the next platform. Go ahead and upload your package."

Jackson pressed the blinking circle and watched as a status bar zoomed by and a confirmation box flashed.

"Load confirmed," Jackson said.

"Here we go," Pike said. "You ready to commit over thirty-six punishable offences with the push of a single button?"

"That's why I came, myself." Jackson grinned. "Let's do it."

Pike made a grandiose gesture to the hooded switch labeled "WARNING: Master Override."

Jackson reached over, broke the soft copper wire securing the hood down, and flipped up the spring-loaded switch, until a loud klaxon began sounding throughout the platform before releasing it.

"That should do it," Pike said even as the echoes of com drones being fired out of the launch tubes reached their ears all the way down in the bowels of the platform. "Now we run. Or... move carefully until we get to a wider corridor. Then we run."

Jackson realized he was well past the point of no return as the rate of drone launches began to slow down. Either his plan would bear fruit or he'd be tried and likely incarcerated in disgrace-or both.

Chapter 17.

The TCS Brooklands had been flying a slow, lazy arc through the Alpha Centauri System for the last three weeks. She'd been refueled and rearmed at Jericho Station, and then Captain Lee had been ordered into a holding pattern far out in the system. He'd begun to wonder if CENTCOM had forgotten they were still out here, waiting for a destination.

The missile cruiser had been held up at Jericho with no explanation given until they received word that their replenishment had been cleared and then, in a mad rush, her magazines and launch tubes had been stuffed with the newest generation Shrike missiles. During all the frantic activity, the missile cruiser also had a team of engineers swarming through the avionics bays. They updated the software and hardware required to use the new munitions before they were towed out of dock and ordered into one of the boundary orbits far out of the way of all the increased traffic over Haven.

Lee had assumed with the near-panicked nature of the munitions loading that they'd be immediately sent to the Frontier to shore up the defenses of Nuovo Patria, but every inquiry they sent to Jericho came back with the same answer: maintain course and speed, and standby for further orders.

"Captain, we have an incoming transmission," the Brooklands's com officer said with some hesitation.

Lee noticed the Lieutenant's trepidation. "And there's something about that you dislike?"

"It's coming in on a reserved, priority channel, sir," the com officer said. "Encryption routine flags it as an emergency message."

"Put it through," Lee said. "If it isn't addressed specifically, play it on the main display."

"Aye, sir."

"This is Senior Captain Jackson Wolfe aboard the TCS Ares," the instantly recognizable face on the display said. "This message will be brief, and in the spirit of fairness, I'm going to tell you that it's also being illegally transmitted to every Fleet ship within range of the com drone network. While I hope every CO this message finds will at least listen to it, I won't hold it against anyone who deletes it before CENTCOM and Tsuyo Corporation manage to purge it from the buffers."

Over the next ninety minutes, the destroyer captain laid out a case against ranking members of the Confederate government and senior Fleet personnel that chilled Lee to his core. Although people weren't named specifically in the broadcast, the proof was irrefutable. Secret colony worlds, orders to let populated planets face the wrath of the Phage alone... It was all so much to take in. Accompanying the incredible narrative were videos, images, and sensor logs that corroborated everything Wolfe was saying.

There was also a treasure trove of information on the Phage themselves that had apparently been suppressed, though Wolfe never specified why that was. What made Lee's blood boil was that the data included things like behavioral profiles and predictive models that would have allowed them to devise much more effective strategies and tactics. He wasn't sure how Wolfe got his hands on it, but he was well aware of the man's uncanny success against the Phage, even when seriously outnumbered. Lee sincerely hoped the infamous captain hadn't been sitting on the information himself and was now simply trying to clear his conscience after the loss of Podere.

"As you can see, our leadership is broken. Fear has caused them to turn their backs on entire worlds while they cower under the questionable safety provided by a planet they hope the Phage can't find. On top of this, we've been deceived, possibly from the very beginning, about what's being done to combat this new threat. There isn't a new miracle-weapon coming out of Tsuyo R&D that will allow us to sit back on our bridges and eradicate Phage ships without even scratching our hull finish. If we're going to make a difference, it will be down in the trenches." Lee looked around the bridge and noted the angry set to jaws, the narrowed eyes, and the few who were nodding along with everything the Senior Captain said.

"I don't have the authority to ask you to disregard your orders, but I would remind you that we all swore the same oath when we accepted our commissions. I will be upholding that oath to the best of my ability when I stand between the gathering Phage armada and the planet of Nuovo Patria in the Warsaw Alliance enclave. I hope I won't be alone. Ares out."

Captain Edward Lee sat back in the command chair after the video portion of the transmission stopped and only the emblem of the TCS Ares remained on the main display. He could feel the uneasy stares from his bridge crew and could hear the strident alerts coming from the com station. No doubt CENTCOM dispatching its own fleet-wide broadcast to minimize the damage and call for Wolfe's head.

He didn't dismiss the possibility that Wolfe was playing the same games as those he accused, but his actions on the Frontier while commanding the Blue Jacket earned him a lot of credit, whereas Lee had little doubt the vermin infesting the halls of power on Haven wouldn't hesitate to abandon them all to save their own skin.

"Captain?"

But was Lee ready to throw away everything he'd worked for to follow Jackson Wolfe, a captain whose previous claim to fame had been an almost obsessive compulsion to buck against CENTCOM's senior leadership?

"Captain... we're getting a priority one-alpha transmission from CENTCOM demanding that we update them with our status," the com officer said.

"Demanding?" Lee let out a short laugh that surprised his XO. "More likely they want to know if we watched the transmission from the Ares and, if we did, what we intend to do."

"What do we intend to do, Captain?"

Lee debated asking for opinions from everyone on the bridge. He debated giving the rest of the crew aboard the Brooklands an opportunity to voice their concerns on the ship-wide network. He even debated replying to CENTCOM just to buy himself a little time to think. But the thing that stayed his tongue, the thing that kept rattling around in his head, was the message he'd gotten from Fleet Admiral Pitt concerning his candidacy for the captain's chair of the Icarus.

"We don't feel like now is the right time to put you on the bridge of a destroyer."

He had no illusions as to what that meant. As far as Wolfe and Pitt were concerned, he was proficient enough of a CO to drive his missile truck into a system and fire his payload from a distance while the computer tracked and targeted everything, but he hadn't shown the sort of boldness or decisiveness that made them want him commanding a destroyer, down in the thick of it, fighting it out at close range with the enemy.

"Coms, inform Engineering I want the mains hot and the warp drive charged and ready," Lee said calmly. "Ignore all further com requests from Jericho Station. Nav, plot a transition course for the Nuovo Patria jump point. When they write of this moment in history, they will not be able to say that when millions of people were in mortal danger, the Brooklands and her crew did nothing."

Lee couldn't hear the confirmation of his orders over the cheering and applause of the rest of the bridge crew.

"I'm receiving beacon data from all four Ninth Squadron ships, Captain," Lieutenant Keller said.

The Ares had entered the Nuovo Patria System after running the warp drive as hard as Singh dared to allow, all the way from Columbiana, after Jackson had uploaded his pre-recorded message onto the com drone network.

"Good, good," Jackson said absently. "Message the Icarus, and tell them I want their gravimetric detection network deployed to the coordinates I'm sending you now. Have all four ships form up on us."

"Aye, sir."

"OPS! I'm sending you the same coordinates," Jackson said. "I want you to plot a location on the opposite side of the system and send our detection grid to set up there. What other ships are in the system?"

"I'm getting a lot of com traffic, sir," Keller said. "Sorting through it now."

"It looks like the entirety of what's left of Third Fleet is in formation in the outer system, and I have two full squadrons from Fifth Fleet and all three operational battlegroups from the Eighth," Lieutenant Commander Barrett answered before Keller could begin counting up transponders. "The tactical computer has been tracking them as data becomes available."

"And the Phage?" Lieutenant Davis asked.

"The Delphi reports that half a dozen Alphas and an indeterminate number of Bravos have begun massing beyond the system's outer debris field," Keller said. "The Icarus is reporting in that both Black Fleet battlegroups are inbound. They sent a com drone ahead of them with their status and armament."

"That makes the Columbiana debacle not a complete waste," Jackson muttered. "Any CIS presence making itself known?"

"Not that anyone has reported, sir," Keller said.

"Tactical, you're clear to run the active sensors," Jackson said. "Standard power for now. Establish the Link with the other ships in the system as quickly as you can. Hopefully everyone has the correct key codes loaded."

Over the next twelve hours, Jackson concentrated on getting their early warning detection systems operational and negotiating with the other captains to determine how they would coordinate the coming battle. It was a contentious argument, but in the end, the holdouts grudgingly conceded operational authority within the Nuovo Patria system to Jackson and agreed that the Ares would fly the flag.

Once that little bit of politics was set aside, Jackson began looking over the haphazard formations floating through the system and immediately started issuing orders to get them in position. There was some balking at the fact he was breaking up battlegroups, which spawned a whole other series of discussions to smooth over egos and get them all moving in the right direction again.

He was splitting up the existing formations to best utilize each individual ship by its type and capabilities rather than just keeping them randomly grouped for convenience. At least that was half of the truth that he told the pouty captains. He also wanted to break up existing chains of command that could compromise his ability to have orders instantly obeyed when issued. He couldn't have a Third Fleet frigate CO calling up to the heavy cruiser in their formation to confirm what they'd been ordered to do.

All while this was going on, and the system was awash in thermal flares of starships firing their main engines to get into position, the Phage continued to amass outside the boundary. They were up to eight Alphas, and there was no way they would attack such a fortified human position with so few of their heavyweights. But there were already dozens of Bravos that could be detected zipping around. If they sent in a few waves of the smaller ships first, Jackson was worried about his total number of available missiles being depleted before the real battle even started. That may be where the Starwolf-class ships came in, their superior speed and acceleration allowing them to get in close enough for laser fire and auto-mag rounds.

"It's a shame we don't have any starfighters," Barrett remarked at one of the impromptu planning sessions at the back of the bridge.

"There aren't any starfighters even operational. Not for many, many years now," Jackson said.

"That seems a little shortsighted, all things considered," Barrett said.

"They were never an effective platform," Jackson said. "Couldn't carry enough fuel or firepower to make them worthwhile. They were relegated to orbital defense once starships became fast enough to render them obsolete, but better surface-to-orbit weapons were the last nail in their coffin."

"Well, it'd be better to have something small and quick against those Bravos," Barrett insisted. "Something other than a missile we can't get back once it's fired."

"Let's focus on what we actually do have on hand, Lieutenant Commander." Jackson didn't bother to hide his irritation.

"Yes, sir."

"It's eerie to watch them just sit out there," Davis said. "Waiting and planning, just like us."

"But unlike us, they're gaining intelligence with every unit added and can operate using a single, unified consciousness, and they don't get tired," Jackson said. "That's why I'm debating ordering a preemptive strike now, before they get too many Alphas to risk getting close and before the Charlies show up."

"Captain, the Ares is requesting a two-way com channel with you," the Brooklands's com officer said.

The missile cruiser had been pushed as hard as Lee had dared in order to get to Nuovo Patria in time to be of help. He was more than a little surprised at the sheer amount of Fleet ships within the system. Once they'd established their Link, he was equally shocked to see that the Phage appeared to be simply bunching up outside the system and making no overt signs they intended to attack.

"Put it through," Lee said. "Main display."

Senior Captain Jackson Wolfe's face appeared on the screen. "Captain Lee, I'll try to be brief." He, too, was sitting on his bridge and surrounded by spacers and officers frantically moving about in the background. "First of all, thank you for coming. Your load of Shrikes may prove to be invaluable."

"Anything we can do to be of service, Captain," Lee said.

"It seems we may have a use for the Brooklands sooner rather than later, but there is some risk," Jackson said. "So far, the Phage seem to be more than happy to hang back and wait while their forces trickle in. I'm operating under the assumption that once the Charlies appear, they'll attempt to clear a path down to Nuovo Patria."

"A logical assumption," Lee agreed. "What's our mission, sir?"

"I want to kick the hornet's nest and try to elicit a reaction while they're not yet at full strength," Jackson said. "There are still less than a dozen Alphas, so I feel that now is the perfect time to strike, but it will require flying the Brooklands quite close to where they're currently sitting."

"And we're not fast enough to outrun them if the reaction we get is a flat out counter-offensive." Lee nodded. "We're here to work, Captain, not spectate. Where do you want us?"

"Form up with Ninth Squadron, and I'll send you the mission parameters en route," Jackson said.

"Confirmed that we're joining formation with the Ares." Lee glanced at his display. "We'll be underway momentarily."

"Very good, Captain," Jackson said. "Ares out."

"Looks like we're to be the first sacrificial lamb in this battle," the XO said with obvious bitterness.

"Stow that garbage, Mister," Lee said. "The Senior Captain does not throw away lives needlessly. We came here to do a job, and we're going to do it, understood?"

"Understood, sir," the XO replied.

"Nav, plot a course to the trailing edge of Ninth Squadron's formation," Lee said. "Best possible speed. Coms, let Engineering know we're about to fire the mains." He looked around at the fearful faces of his bridge crew and let out a slow breath.

"We've been afforded a great honor," he told them. "The Brooklands will fire the opening shots in what will likely be a long and bloody defensive war against a terrible enemy. We will be the ones to punch them in the eye first and stand defiantly. Let's make certain that when the name Brooklands is uttered for years to come, it's done so with reverence."

"Yes, sir!" a senior specialist shouted out from the back of the bridge, breaking the silence and causing others to follow suit. The decks began to rumble and vibrate as the Brooklands got underway and, despite what he'd just said to the crew, his stomach knotted in fear as he flew the ship and crew to their doom.

"Data coming in from the gravimetric sensor net confirms that the Phage are still milling just outside the system, moving in relation to the primary star," Davis reported.

Since he didn't really need an XO on the bridge for the new class of ship, Jackson moved her back to OPS so she and Hayashi could split shifts and stay fresh.

"Have the Icarus and Brooklands completed their maneuvers?" Jackson asked.

"Icarus is in position. Brooklands is moving up and will be tucked in within the next few minutes," Barrett reported.

"Coms, release the Brooklands," Jackson said. "I want her accelerating full bore along the course we've designated. Inform Captain Lee that the Ares and the Icarus will overtake him before they're anywhere near the target area."

"Aye, sir."