I took a deep breath. I needed to get control of this situation before it spiraled out of control.

  Okay, I needed to get control of this situation before it spiraled even more out of control than it already was.

  "The Terran Navy and the Combined Corporate Fleet won't stand for this," I said, forcing my attention back to the livisk. I forced some of that backbone I wasn't feeling in that moment, because this was all wrong. None of this was supposed to be happening. "Even now, they'll be launching ships to come to our aid. Leave now and save yourself."

  I had a couple of reasons for telling her to save herself. The first was simply that the whole point of a good bluff was you needed to project confidence. I figured a good bluff was better than nothing.

  The second was far more selfish. I felt bad about it, but at the same time…

  Well, I was worried if something did happen to her then it would end in me going mad. Isn't that what everybody said would happen?

  "Those would be dangerous words if I wasn't jamming all communications between you and your home world, your fold drive, and I didn't have targeting solutions on your engines that I'll execute the moment you show a hint of trying to escape," she said.

  Her mouth turned up in the barest hint of a smile. It was a smile I remembered from so many times seeing her when I closed my eyes.

  The more I looked at her live and in the flesh, or maybe it would be more accurate to say I was looking at her live and in the holoblock, the more I figured this whole thing wasn't me going crazy.

  “So we’re going to die together?” I asked.

  "I admire your dedication to your duty, human, but surrender now and I can assure you that you and yours will be spared."

  Why didn't I listen to my gut feeling? Why didn't I go back to Earth where none of this would be happening? The brass might think I was crazy, but we’d be alive.

  I looked at everybody gathered around me in the CIC. They all looked terrified. No doubt because they were looking at either being killed or sent to work one of the numerous mining operations the livisk supposedly operated with prisoners they took.

  There was no coming back from being imprisoned by the livisk. There was no coming back from being executed by the livisk, for that matter, but if what the intel pukes and propaganda people said was true then being executed would be the better alternative.

  "Spared to be slaves to you and yours," I said. "No thank you. I know exactly what you do to humans you capture."

  I turned to Olsen. "Could you please do something about this?"

  Olsen stared at me. His mouth worked, but nothing came out. He was frozen in the moment.

  Okay then. Maybe he wasn't here because his dad was trying to keep him out of the line of fire. Maybe he was here because he was genuinely useless when it came time to fight. Just what I needed in the middle of a combat situation.

  I pulled up the communications station on my own screen. I tapped it once, and nothing happened. The livisk was burning through our own jamming.

  Hardly a surprise. The jammers they had on their ship were probably way more powerful than anything we had on a picket ship. Which was ridiculous considering the whole reason for our ship existing was to be able to get a communication off. I’d think they’d want to have some good antennas on this thing.

  But that would cost money, and that was the ultimate consideration in the CCF. These ships weren't an early warning system so much as they were an early retirement system meant to get otherwise undesirable candidates out of the fleet's hair.

  I switched off the entire communication system instead, and the livisk blinked out of existence.

  "Is she gone?" I asked, looking around and breathing a sigh of relief.

  That was for show. I wasn't sure I was relieved she was gone. I wanted to see more of her, but I wasn't going to let on to the bridge crew that I wanted to see more of her.

  "Olsen, are you going to do your job, or do I need to take care of business myself?"

  I looked over to Olsen, but he was sitting there frozen. He had one hand over the comms station, but I noted it was over the controls he used when he was checking out his market accounts. Not the controls he’d be using if he was trying to manipulate communications or burn through their jamming with our woefully inadequate transmitters.

  Damn it. It looked like he was well and truly out of it.

  "Fine, I'll do it myself," I said, pulling up the miniature comms panel on my chair and looking at it. "Looks like she's telling the truth about jamming all foldspace communications."

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  I turned over to Smith. "Do you have a scan on what they're doing with their weapons systems?"

  "I do, sir," Smith said. "It looks like she was telling the truth. They’re bristling with weapons and ready to use them.”

  "And all that stuff about targeting our engines?" I asked.

  "That wasn't an empty threat," Smith said. "We can raise our shields, sure, but they'll be able to blast through them and disable us before we get away."

  “I was afraid you’d say something like that. So much for bluffing," I said.

  I looked at the outline of the Vornask class cruiser floating at out there at a good distance. It wasn't like an entertainment where two ships lined up on the same plane within spitting distance. Or close enough that both of them would fit on a screen for a dramatically appropriate shot.

  No, you didn't need to be within spitting distance for your weapons to deliver a really bad day to whoever was on the other side.

  "No matter, Lieutenant Smith," I said. "Shields up. We're going to introduce them to all the fun things we can do with the weapons on this ship, and we're going to introduce them to what a crack shot you are with those weapons."

  "Yes, sir," she said, though she sounded a little terrified at the idea of being in a real-time combat situation.

  "Come on, everybody," I said, clapping my hands and rubbing them together. "This is what we trained for. It's time for us to get a message off to the fleet. That's what a picket ship is all about."

  Everybody reacted in their own way. John looked like he was still worried about me. No doubt worried about my performance now that there were livisk in the area and me being a sleeper agent went from being an academic problem to a very real threat. Rachel looked like she was going to do her duty, which, of course, I totally knew she was always going to do.

  Olsen looked like he was about to lose the spaghetti we just had for dinner. Smith was moving her fingers all along her targeting display, and I could see little reticles appearing all over the Vornask cruiser in the holoblock where she was targeting its systems. She looked like she was doing a pretty good job of it, too. Like she was hitting all the major systems I would've been hitting if I was trying to take them out.

  We were definitely going to give them something to think about. We were still going to die, but we’d give a good accounting of ourselves on the way out.

  The ship's hum changed as power was diverted to the shields, and not a moment too soon. The ship rocked as we were hit with a salvo from the livisk ship. A salvo we couldn't hope to stand up against for very long.

  There was a ratcheting and humming sound followed by clunks that rattled all through the hull. The noise carried through the hull, but in the depths of space small circles would open silently all around the ship as point defense cannons popped out of the hull and started firing at missiles the livisk were firing at us.

  Those missiles weren't hitting us at the moment, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before they started seriously doing some damage. We only had so much ammunition on a picket ship like this, after all.

  "Okay, let's get at this like we mean it," I said, looking around at everyone in the CIC. "I want you to launch foldspace comm drones in a spread along with the first torpedo salvo.”

  “About that, Captain. Won't that waste valuable weapon space we need to fire at them?" Smith asked.

  I gritted my teeth. This would be so much easier if I wasn't stuck with a crew made up of a mix of people with connections avoiding combat and people on their way out who couldn't be bothered to give a fuck.

  But Smith should know better. At least I'd told myself time and again that she should know better.

  "Just do it, Smith. Nothing we fire at this livisk is going to hurt her ship enough to get us out of this. Those comm drones getting past their jamming is our only hope right about now."

  The ship continued to rock under the blasts. I could only hope one of those drones would get through the jamming to the fleet in time for them to send help.

  Otherwise? We were fucked, and not in the fun way that jumped to mind as I thought of the livisk commander trying her best to kill me.

  "Aye, Captain. I'm working on it right now," Smith said.

  I could hear her fingers dancing across the tactical display behind me. I took comfort from the knowledge she was a wizard at what she did. She might not be entirely sure about what I was doing here, but it was all a balancing act.

  Hope. A little bit of hope was worth something in a fight like this. Especially when it looked utterly hopeless.

  And getting those foldspace drones off would be the best way for us to add a little bit of hope. It would still take time for the fleet to get spooled up and get out here, assuming they decided to even come out here and investigate before we were blown from the stars.

  It also occurred to me that this would be a really damn convenient way for Harris to finally get rid of me. A little footnote in one of his electronic ledgers he'd been worrying about for a couple of years now gone in a puff of atmosphere. He had made that promise that I’d return to command, after all.

  Allowing me to bite the big one out here because the fleet he sent to rescue us arrived just a moment too late to do anything would be the perfect way to take care of that lingering problem.

  The torpedoes started to go off. A couple of them went for the livisk ship, and then the third went in the opposite direction. Back towards Sol.

  A star that looked pretty much like any other star all the way out here. Funny how a little bit of distance was all it took to make home look like another cold point of light in the night.

  Normally I’d think warmer thoughts about the stars looking down on me, but when I was in the middle of combat? They were cold and unfeeling witnesses to the horrors we were about to endure out here in the cold void. We weren't even inside the heliopause, damn it.

  The livisk ship took evasive action as our torpedoes moved in. Meanwhile, I looked over at John.

  "What are you waiting for? Punch it."

  He blinked and shook his head. Again, I was reminded that this was a crew of people who knew how to do their damn jobs, but it’d been so long since they'd had to actually do those damn jobs that a lot of them were out of practice. We were still shaking out some of the collective cobwebs and getting back into fighting shape.

  But then he hit it and we started to maneuver away. The livisk ship was still targeting us and their missiles were still coming in. There was no amount of maneuvering that could get around those. Not with a ship our size. We just had to rely on countermeasures until we ran out of them and hope we could last long enough for the fleet to get here.

  I noticed Smith was mixing it up with those foldspace torpedoes. She’d send a different number of regular torpedoes flying out, then send one of the foldspace enabled comm drones.

  The livisk seemed to realize what we were doing. Some of those blasts started targeting those foldspace comm drones. Damn it.

  I gritted my teeth watching the drama playing out in the holoblock in front of me.

  "Come on, baby," I muttered. "You just need to get beyond those gravimetric waves.”