"How are the preparations for the admiral's ship going? And the repairs on the gravity generator?"

Hart didn't answer him for a moment-he was too busy barking at one of his troops. When he finished his colorful encouragement, Rogers could hear him punching at some computer terminal or other.

"Admiral Klein should be ready to go in a few minutes. He can make his way down to the docking platform. Took us a while to find a pilot, though. Not many people for hire this far out in the system. The gravity generator-not there, you G.o.d-d.a.m.n moron! There! The gravity generator will be done in another week or so. We need to wait on some parts to come in now that our comms have been restored."

"Good work," Rogers said.

"Don't give me that s.h.i.t," Hart said. "Just because you're a captain now doesn't mean I need your G.o.d-d.a.m.n approval. You're still just a bad card player."

Rogers cleared his throat and cut the communications. "Admiral?"

"I'm ready," Klein said. "I want to thank you, Captain Rogers."

He'd promoted Rogers to captain-the only one on the whole FlagshipI-and proceeded to take up the job of full-time jaw-jacker in the form of a motivational speaker. Since Klein was departing, that meant Rogers was, in effect, the admiral of the fleet unless they transferred someone from another ship. And that was kind of scary.

"If I hadn't caused multiple executive officers to hang themselves and hadn't met you, I wouldn't have realized what real duty was. When I talked down that droid in the hallway, I realized I had another calling in life. When I saved the ship with that speech right before the AGG went out-"

"You were late with your speech," Rogers said. "And it didn't change anything. If you haven't learned that fancy speeches aren't all that makes an admiral, I haven't done you any favors."

"There are other people that need to hear what I have to say."

Not really, Rogers thought. The people that have been hearing what you have to say just need a break.

"Good luck to you," Rogers said, extending his hand.

Klein shook it. "Your global agility and critical battles.p.a.ce effects-"

"Just go," Rogers said.

As soon as he left the bridge, Rogers felt a huge weight lift off his shoulders. He turned to watch the empty s.p.a.ce outside, broken occasionally by a low-relative-speed asteroid floating by with different orbital parameters from the Flagship. They could have blasted them out of s.p.a.ce, of course, but having a couple of large rocks in their orbit was preferable to having millions of small ones.

Rogers looked at the communication tech. "Any reports from the other ships in the fleet?"

"No, sir. They all checked in after you gave the order for them to dismantle their droid inventory and haven't reported any problems. We're still piecing back together the sensor array after the droids corrupted all the data."

Nodding, Rogers turned over to a video display, where he called up a screen in the infirmary that he'd been looking at pretty constantly for the last couple of weeks.

"Get that off of me!" the Viking screamed, backhanding one of the medical techs, who was attempting to attach part of a vital-reading machine. "I'm fine. You people have kept me cooped up in here for two weeks. I need to get back to shooting things or I am going to go out of my mind."

She must have noticed that her local vidscreen had turned on, for she locked eyes through the camera with Rogers.

"Rogers!" she said. "Get me the h.e.l.l out of here, will you?"

Rogers grinned at her. "How does the shoulder feel?"

"Like someone shot it with a disruptor rifle two weeks ago. How do you think it feels?"

"I wanted to let you know we're getting ready to see the admiral off and perform the funeral ritual for McSchmidt. I've asked the comm tech to tune in your vid display so that you can watch from there."

"Fine," the Viking said. "Fine. But when that's over, I want you to come down here and tell these doctors to stop poking me with things before I poke them with something they don't want to be poked with."

Rogers swallowed the comment that was in his head, opted to say nothing at all, and switched off the display.

"Alright," he said. "Let's send McSchmidt off."

Using the outboard cameras to give him a panoramic view, Rogers watched as a small capsule slowly floated away from the Flagship. From the chaos of war to the quiet, silent peace of s.p.a.ce, McSchmidt's casket gently drifted away, leaving behind the people he'd worked with and the memories he'd shared with them. It was a time for silence, for respect, for contemplation. A time for- "Fire," Rogers said.

A plasma cannon blast turned McSchmidt into s.p.a.ce debris.

"a.s.ses to ashes," Rogers said ceremonially. "And good riddance."

"Good riddance," intoned everyone on the bridge before going back to work as though absolutely nothing interesting had happened.

"Captain," the communications tech said. "I've got a request for launch clearance coming from hangar 17. Should I patch it through?"

"Go ahead."

"This is the FSS Craven, requesting permission to take off from hangar 17. Transmitting the projected course now."

Boy, that voice sounds familiar, Rogers thought. "Approved. Put it on the screen."

A civilian ship came out of hangar 17, floating gently away from the ship before engaging its engines. It made a hard bank and blasted off toward the nearest Un-s.p.a.ce point between a couple of asteroids large enough to have noticeable gravity.

"Farewell, valiant warriors!" Klein said over the radio.

"Hey," the pilot said, somewhat shakily. "There aren't any pirates where we're going, are there? I don't like pirates."

Frowning, Rogers keyed in the code for engineering.

"Hey, Hart," he said. "What's the name of the pilot you hired for Klein?"

"The name?" Hart said. Rogers heard some typing. "Dorsey. He was the only one who answered the ad."

"Dorsey!" Rogers screamed.

"Rogers!" Dorsey screamed back over the radio. "Aahhh!"

The ship took an erratic turn, then another, starting to zigzag all over s.p.a.ce, which, as it turned out, was not the way to carefully navigate through a pair of large asteroids. The Craven slammed into the side of one of them and vanished in a small cloud of dust.

Rogers blinked, staring at the spot where the Craven had crashed. What in the world had just happened?

"Um," Rogers said. "Can we maybe get a rescue crew out there?"

"Not right now, sir," came the voice of one of the techs. Rogers turned to see him pointing at his screen, but the display was too far away for Rogers to make out.

"Why not?"

"We've got bigger problems."

Rogers frowned. "Put it on the big screen."

The screen blipped for a moment, and then all of a sudden Rogers found himself staring at a fleet of ships that was definitely not Meridan. They had all just come out of the other Un-s.p.a.ce point and were now, according to the display, visible on both optical and radar sensors. There was no spoofing that.

"That's the Thelicosan fleet, isn't it?" Rogers said weakly.

"Yes, sir," the tech said. "They've dispatched a message."

Rogers swallowed, gripping the nearest piece of equipment as tightly as he could.

"Read it."

"Um," the tech said. "It says, 'We're invading.'"

"EXPLETIVE," Deet said.

THE [EXPLETIVE] END.

I. Please see Meridan Rank and Organization Regulation MR-613 for information as to why, even though Captain Alsinbury is a captain, she's not a captain. Or ask your local Meridan Navy service member why they can't keep their G.o.d-d.a.m.n ranks straight between the navy and the marines.

Acknowledgments.

Before you write a book, you're pretty sure that the process of publishing one mostly consists of throwing a copy of your ma.n.u.script into a high-rise New York City building and someone throwing a bag of money back out the window at you. Well, I've got news for you: it's all true.

I lied. This wouldn't have been possible without my enterprising agent, Sam, who quite literally stole me from his boss Joshua's pile of ma.n.u.scripts. Nor would it have been possible without the editorial faith, prowess, and perseverance of Joe Monti at Saga, my dutiful copy editor Richard Shealy, and Caffe Amouri in Vienna, VA, who graciously provided me with some of the best coffee I've ever had while I wrote this book.

Perhaps most of all, I would both thank and profusely apologize to the United States Armed Forces for this book. I have the utmost respect for all of those who are serving and who have served. Without daily access to the largest bureaucratic/professionally violent organization on the face of the earth for nearly ten years, I never would have had any material for this trilogy.

JOE ZIEJA is an author with a long history of doing things that have almost nothing to do with writing at all. A graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, Joe dedicated more than a decade of his life to wearing The Uniform, marching around in circles, and shouting commands at people while in turn having commands shouted at him. It was both a great deal of fun and a great nuisance, and he wouldn't have had it any other way.

Joe's also a commercial voiceover artist and a composer of fine music for video games and commercials. He's probably interrupted your Spotify playlist at least once to encourage you to click on the banner below, and he isn't the least bit upset that you ignored him.

ALSO BY JOE ZIEJA.

Forthcoming:.

Communication Failure.

We hope you enjoyed reading this Saga Press eBook.

end.