I felt a familiar sense of panic. The same panic I remembered coming out of foldspace and seeing a livisk station and battle fleet floating there in the inky blackness. Waiting for us.

  Knowing Jacks had fucked up. That I should’ve been a lot more vocal with my objections to his stupid fucking plan to catch them off guard by jumping right on top of the planet.

  I took a deep breath. Calm settled over me. Shit had to get done, and panicking wasn’t going to do a damn bit of good.

  “I can assure you, this is very much the real thing,” I said, taking my seat as Smith stood and made her way to Tactical.

  I noted the Red team stayed on the CIC. Like they thought they might be necessary to take someone’s place here in a few minutes.

  I took a deep breath to calm myself. Now it was time to calm them down a little.

  “It’s probably the fleet sending a ship out to check us for readiness, but that doesn’t mean we won’t react to it as the threat it potentially is.”

  I didn’t believe that for a minute. The CCF wouldn’t waste resources on something like readiness training. Hopefully everybody else in the CIC wouldn’t think of that because they were grasping for any sense of normalcy the same as I was.

  I looked over to Rachel. She hit me with a nervous glance. She knew me too well. She knew I was full of shit and trying to make a crew who wasn’t ready for combat feel better about the situation for a little longer.

  With a little luck, it would be just long enough for them to pull their shit together.

  “This is ridiculous. Why are you all going along with this?” Olsen asked. “He’s going to pull the same thing and we’re all going to look like idiots for believing this. He just got Smith in on it this time because he knows his drills are too predictable. Nothing ever happens out here. If my father knew…”

  “A communications disruption can mean only one thing: trouble,” I said. “And your father might be high enough in the CCF that he can get you a posting where you’re out of danger and you can work on your stock portfolio all day long in relative comfort, but he isn’t on this ship right now.”

  Olsen stared at me. His eyes went wide and his mouth fell open. I figured if ever there as a time to tell it like it is? It was when we were under attack from a strange ship.

  “I expect you to act like an officer of the CCF while you’re under my command, or you’ll get an official reprimand on your record and a recommendation that you be reassigned to a ship closer to the disputed zones or the borderlands.”

  I didn’t think that was likely to happen, even with a strongly worded recommendation. There was a reason he was out here. But a reprimand on his record would at least mean his dad had to go to the trouble of covering it up, and I was banking on him not wanting to annoy dear old dad too much.

  I’d pondered what Olsen was doing here many times. The best I could come up with was his dad didn’t want him in the line of fire in a hot zone. This was a good way for someone to get service on their record without actually being in danger. The sort of thing that looked good if the younger scion of a family wanted to go into politics to help funnel government money to the CCF.

  “Do I make myself clear, Olsen?” I snapped when he didn’t respond.

  It was the angriest I’d ever been with someone in the CIC. Maybe because I knew this was the real thing. Maybe because not everybody was in this nice safe posting because they were getting a favor from dear old dad.

  Olsen shot me an angry look, but he turned back to his console and got to work. At least as much work as he could do considering comms were being jammed.

  Either way, I knew one comms officer who was getting that letter of reprimand on his file regardless of how he performed in the next few minutes. Not noticing comms being jammed was unforgivable.

  Unless you had somebody higher up in the fleet watching out for you. Like Jacks. It was the same damn thing all over again, and that accounted for some of my irritation.

  “What about the fold drive?” I asked. “Any chance of us getting out of here before things heat up?”

  “Afraid not, Captain,” John said from Navigation. “They’re sending out gravimetric pulses that will tear us apart if we try to go into foldspace.”

  “And I don’t suppose anything good is going to happen if we try to run from them,” I said.

  That earned some scandalized looks. I returned those looks. I was surprised that they suddenly seemed so eager to die in the line of duty. Or at the very least to not run away. But that’s what those looks were telling me.

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  Maybe some of that old Terran Navy fighting spirit was coming back to the crew after all. Maybe they still didn’t quite believe this was the real thing.

  “Discretion is the better part of valor,” I said with a shrug. “We’re more use to the fleet alive and able to tell them there’s something hostile lurking out here.”

  That got some nods. I noted Olsen didn’t seem to know whether he should be pissed off at me for practical cowardice or relieved that I was indulging his own inclination towards cowardice. At least I was pretty sure that’s what the complex mix of emotions playing across his face meant.

  “That foldspace jamming is also causing one sequel trilogy of a problem with the foldspace scanners,” Smith said.

  “Is that going to keep you from being able to fire weapons?”

  “Sir?” she said, and it was clear she was insulted I’d doubt her ability.

  “Just checking,” I said, turning and hitting her with a grin.

  “The ship has moved within firing range of our plasma cannons and the railguns, sir,” Smith said, her voice tense. “Shall I fire?”

  “Hold your fire,” I said. “The last thing we want is to fire on a friendly because we’re on edge out here.”

  “Fire on a friendly again,” Rachel muttered from behind me, though her tone said she didn’t think this thing was friendly.

  “You’re right on that score, Commander Keen,” I said, turning and grinning at her. “But I suppose that’s their fault for trying to sneak up on us by doing an impression of a ball of ice.”

  “I suppose it is,” she said.

  “Captain. I ran that ship’s signature through our enemy database to see if there was a known match. It fits the mass and acceleration profile of a Vornask-class battlecruiser,” Smith said.

  Her voice was tense. Everyone looked up at that. It was nice to know something could get their attention.

  “Time until we’re in range of all the weapons on a ship like that?” I asked, trying to keep just how fucked we were out of my voice.

  I thought of the livisk living in my head. Of the feeling I had that she was getting closer. I should’ve reported something before this situation got out of control. I should’ve reported that she was coming for me.

  But even as that thought occurred to me, I wasn’t sure what in the name of Gowron’s crazy eyes I was supposed to report. They’d laugh me out of their offices if I tried to tell someone higher up that I brought my ship in because I had a bad feeling rather than some concrete sensor data that there was an enemy ship moving in on us.

  “We’re already in range of their weapons, Captain. Sorry. I should’ve reported that,” Smith said.

  I could tell she was shaken, but she wasn’t the only one.

  “Should I fire, Captain?” she asked.

  “You’ll fire when I give the order,” I said. “We still don’t know what…”

  Alarms flashed all through the CIC as the words left my mouth. Emergency notifications sounded long and shrill, then were silenced. The holoblock lit up with all kinds of unpleasant information about the ship that’d finally come close enough for the ship’s systems to do a positive ID, and it turns out Smith’s hunch was right on.

  My breath caught as we got confirmation of exactly who was out there closing in on us fast. Not that I had many doubts about who’d be closing in on us fast. Not with that gut feeling she was out there and she was coming for me.

  I realized now, too late, that was the source of the uneasy feeling that’d been building in me lately. She was coming for me. I just hadn’t recognized it for what it was until it was too late.

  That was a livisk cruiser. It looked like an older model that hadn’t gone through some updates, but it was big and it was bristling with weapons. Being a little out of date didn’t matter a damn when I was fighting with a picket ship that wouldn’t stand a chance against them.

  “They’re sending a message,” Olsen said. Then he went on before I could tell him to put it through, and there was a note of panic to his voice. “They’re breaking through our comms, sir!”

  And suddenly there was a face hovering in the holoblock. It was a face I recognized. A face I’d seen in my mind every time I closed my eyes for the past year.

  The livisk woman I’d held captive briefly at the battle that destroyed my reputation and career in one explosive moment. Here in human space staring at me across the holoblock rather than staring at me across the vast distances of space with that mental link that might or might not be a real thing.

  My breath caught. The shock of seeing her hovering in the bridge was almost too much. Her expression radiated a haughty power, and it was doing something to me.

  I leaned forward. My lips parted as I stared at her. She was stunning. She had a lot of exposed skin, too. I wondered if she was doing that for me, or if that was how the livisk always dressed when they were commanding a ship.

  I sensed movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked over to Navigation where John was looking at me. He wore a worried expression. Like he was looking at me looking at the livisk, and he worried I was about to do something stupid because of that mental link.

  And here I was staring at her in the middle of a combat situation. That seemed to be the very definition of doing something stupid because of that mental link.

  I suddenly felt like a boy back at the Academy with a silly crush, and not the captain of an interstellar spacecraft. At least it was interstellar on paper.

  I glanced around and noted she was having the same effect on the other gentlemen on the bridge. Which sent a flash of jealousy running through me. Olsen in particular was leaning forward with his mouth hanging open. Looking at her like she was a space bunny on Central Station up from planetside looking for a Terran Navy person to ride for the night, but they’d be willing to settle for CCF as the night wore on.

  That jealousy brought me back to reality. I wasn’t going to pull an Olsen, damn it. I shook my head and returned my attention to the alien.

  She might be beautiful to the point of distraction. She might’ve lived in my head for the past year. This might be one big coincidence rather than a confirmation I wasn’t going mad, but she was still the enemy.

  I wasn’t going to moon over the enemy. I was going to destroy her, damn it. I’d beat her once, and I could do it again.

  “Livisk commander. You are in violation of Terran space. You will remove your ship from our territory immediately or face…”

  I didn’t get a chance to finish. She spoke, and her voice washed over me. I felt a thrill at that voice. It was a caress. It was a command. She was every bit the leader I tried, and often failed, to be.

  Everyone in the CIC fell silent at her command. Which was something I’d never been able to achieve with this group. Even as a quiet voice in the back of my head was screaming that maybe John was right. Maybe I was a danger to the crew.

  “Quiet, human,” she said. “I am General Varis t’Fal of the Livisk Ascendancy. You will surrender your ship or be destroyed.”