Kressa threw her fighter into a rolling, twisting dive that would have been suicidal inside the atmosphere of a planet. The maneuver proved to be nearly as dangerous in open space as it overcame the ability of her fighter's dampers and grav generators to compensate for the sudden change in inertia. Too many gees crushed her into her seat, and she experienced the rushing disorientation and blurred vision of a near blackout, then her surroundings swam back into focus as her fighter leveled out.

She checked her instruments, and then glanced over her shoulder. Her dangerous tactic had shaken loose one of her pursuers, but the pilot she had come to think of as her personal shadow remained doggedly on her tail.

Only moments after launch, Kressa and the other fighters from Stingray One engaged a squadron of Patrol vessels that had broken through the main line of Confederate attackers. Kressa had dispatched her first three attackers in quick succession—one with the timely assistance of Ensign Jaris—but then her newfound shadow and one of their friends came after her. A few quick maneuvers took care of the friend, but Shadow stayed with her throughout her wild flight, even managing to score a few glancing shots. But that was as much of a hold as they could get on her.

For a short time, she suspected that Shadow was toying with her, but the game had gone on too long and the stakes were far too high for her opponent to be anything but deadly earnest.

Her attempts against them had been equally futile, leading her to realize that the two of them were evenly matched—Shadow, a superb pilot with a good ship; she, a good pilot with a superb ship.

For more minutes than she cared to remember, she and Shadow traded shots, positions, and maneuvers, neither able to do more than minor damage to the other's ship.

Now Shadow's current partner, a Patrol pilot who had joined them on their last pass near the main battle, was circling back. Kressa briefly considered calling for assistance, but it was unlikely that help could reach her quickly enough to make a difference.

She was beginning to feel the strain of prolonged concentration, and unless Shadow were superhuman, they would be feeling it, too. Very soon, one of them would make a possibly fatal mistake.

Determined she would not be the one to make that mistake, she checked on the location of Shadow's partner, found them halfway through the wide circle they were navigating to rejoin her and Shadow. She banked into a tight turn, headed straight toward them, her trajectory carrying her farther from where her Confederate counterparts battled and ever closer to Terra's upper atmosphere.

Shadow caught onto her move almost immediately and swept after her, firing as they centered in behind her once again. Their shots flared against her aft shields, but she kept her attention aimed forward as she streaked toward the partner's ship, her fighter's smaller turning radius enabling her to come at them head on.

Her next move depended on whether the pilot she faced had the nerve to hold their present course. They did not.

They fired once, the attack splashed off of her forward shields, and then they dove away.

Shadow continued after her. Their shots broke through a weakened spot in her ship's shield. Her fighter shuddered and dipped to starboard.

Cursing, Kressa fought for control and recovered, but her heads-up display informed her that the hit had damaged some of her ship's precision control systems, robbing her of most of the advantage gained from her Teneian-built fighter's superior maneuverability. A moment later, another note on her HUD reported that there wasn't enough of the system left for her ship's damage recovery computer to reroute the controls.

There was nothing to be done about it now; she would just have to pilot her fighter as skillfully as Shadow piloted theirs.

She caught up to Shadow's partner again, drew in behind them, and fired.

It was her lucky day or, more likely, her opponent's unlucky one. Her first shot struck with enough force to burn into the rear of the fleeing vessel. Her second shot completed the job. The fighter detonated in a burst of fire and bright light.

With both hands on the control stick to overcome the lack of fine controls, she swerved to starboard and watched her rear screen for Shadow's reaction. They rolled with her feint to avoid the dangerous shrapnel of their partner's disintegration. Instantly, Kressa jerked her ship back to port, slowed, and then dove through the edge of the dying explosion. The canopy material around her darkened, keeping the illumination in her cockpit steady despite the blinding light of the explosion that surrounded her ship.

She held tight to the control stick as her fighter bucked from the bombardment of flaming debris and the powerful currents of the detonation, and then she passed through the fireball.

As she hoped, Shadow had skirted the explosion. She rolled hard to starboard to come in behind them. Suddenly, their roles were reversed once again; Shadow's fighter was directly in her sights. Her targeting computer locked on, and she fired. She followed them through a complex evasive maneuver. Her guns tore at their shield, and then at their ship.

At last, one of her shots struck something vital. A bright explosion engulfed Shadow's fighter and it tumbled away, apparently out of control.

With her ship damaged and her concentration beginning to falter from fatigue, Kressa dare not take the chance that Shadow might pull out of their wild roll and come after her again. Almost reluctantly, she leaned on her control stick to follow through with the kill.

Something in her fighter chose that moment to break loose, and the ship lurched into a meteoric dive. She tried desperately to pull out of the trajectory that was taking her too quickly near Terra's atmosphere. A bright flash behind caught her attention, and she glanced frantically over her left shoulder in time to see the fading fire of a distant explosion. Whatever damage she'd done to Shadow's ship had finally reached something vital. She hoped they had the time and foresight to eject.

She returned her attention to her own dilemma, and brought her fighter under partial control with help from an emergency thruster. She slowed, forced her ship into a semblance of even flight, and then scanned around her and checked her instruments for any immediate threats. There were none. She continued to slow, and then tried a gentle nudge on her control stick to begin the climb away from Terra's atmosphere. Her ship reacted sluggishly, but at last it began a slow, climbing turn.

She dared not push her luck any farther. Riding the shallow arc into which she had managed to coax her fighter, she held the vessel steady and ran a maintenance diagnostic, hoping that some of the more important controls could be rerouted, allowing her to return to the battle or at least defend herself should another enemy ship appear. But she knew by the way her fighter was handling what the answer would be.

She was correct; her main control system was fried. There wasn't enough left to reroute.

Nice shot, Shadow.

The only choice now was to limp back to Stingray One and hope the techs could replace the damaged parts quickly. She set her fighter for automatic return on One's homing beacon, and then checked her readouts at the sound of an alert tone.

Stingray One was gone.

She felt a brief flare of panic, and then calmed as she recalled one of the communications she overheard during her battle with Shadow. She had paid little attention to the broadcasts at the time, but her subconscious registered the important ones, ready to call her full attention to any that dealt with her. She remembered the message regarding Stingray One's departure to Mars. She took a moment to wonder at it, and then returned her full attention to her own situation.

Her only option was to make her way to another Confederate vessel able to give her shelter, and stay out of the way of any enemy ships in the process.

The Cheops was the closest ship with a docking bay that could accommodate her fighter. She quickly located the battlecruiser by the action surrounding the vessel.

Terra's defenders were staying well away from the ship, probably in part because their energy weapons would do no damage to the ex-Patrol ship's nelux hull and partly because of the threat of her massive gun emplacements. Also, they'd need to get past Cheops' own fighter wing and the other defending ships to reach her.

Kressa eased her ship into line with the dark silhouette of the far-off cruiser. The blue curve of Terra receded to port as she slowly increased her speed. Her fighter continued to behave, and she relaxed a bit. So long as no enemy vessel showed up, she should be able to reach the cruiser on her own, but procedure dictated she call for an escort. She hailed Commander Alyn.

The reply came after a brief pause. "Alyn here, Bryant. Where the hell are you?" He sounded concerned.

"I'm all right, Commander. I wish I could say the same for my ship. I'm heading for the Cheops, but I'm not sure I can make it there without someone spotting me."

"Acknowledged, Ensign. We're just cleaning up here. Give me your present position, and I'll send an escort. Jaris all right with you?"

"Yes, sir." She transmitted her ship's coordinates and heading.

"Acknowledged. Jaris'll be right there. Alyn out."

Kressa held her fighter steady and tried to relax. She scanned her instruments and surroundings for any sign of trouble as the Cheops continued to enlarge before her. Her course remained clear.

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The adrenaline rush of her battle with Shadow began to fade. She pulled a stimtab from the thigh pocket of her flight suit and swallowed it dry. The drug took effect almost instantly. It banished her fatigue and washed away the numb ache that had invaded her limbs.

Abruptly, the stars around her, the soft blue glow of Terra beside her, and the black shape of the Cheops seemed to wink and shift position. The change was faint, imperceptible if not for its abruptness. She stared in bewilderment, and then blinked hard to be sure her eyes had not played a trick on her. It was as if the universe had been pushed ever so gently toward her, or she had moved ever so slightly—

The stasis field, she remembered.

She checked the power readings on her fighter's systems. They hovered at the extreme low end of the scale; her guess was correct. Something had activated her fighter's stasis field, shielding her from the effects of time's passage for a brief instant.

Perplexed, she put in a call to Jaris.

"I'm on my way, Kressa. Be there in less than a minute."

"Thanks, Jaris. Uh… Did anything strange just happen?"

"What do you mean?"

"My stasis field activated."

"Are you sure?" He sounded skeptical.

"I think so. Everything sort of… blinked, and when I checked my instruments, they were all down to minimum power. That's the result they told us to expect at the briefing, right?"

"Yes, but…" He hesitated. "Stand by, Kressa."

She waited, baffled and more than a little uneasy. Even with Jaris' imminent arrival, she felt uncomfortably vulnerable with only enough power for her fighter's maneuver jets. She struggled to recall everything she could about the newly installed stasis system.

According to the briefing, the field generators were keyed to activate when sensors detected an approaching EMP, yet she had seen no missiles, no massive explosions, nothing to cause the field to come on. Had there been a malfunction, then? She remembered a warning during the briefing that the field was barely out of the experimental stage, yet the stasis system seemed to have worked perfectly; it was the triggering mechanism that had malfunctioned.

"Kressa?" Jaris' voice returned. "I just ran a sensor sweep of the area. There's nothing in the vicinity except a couple of communication satellites."

"Could I have flown through one of the satellite's transmissions?" she wondered aloud, grasping at the only possibility she could see.

"That's not very likely. All the satellites do is bounce signals around the planet. They wouldn't transmit anything powerful enough to trigger your field. Look over your right shoulder."

She glanced back and saw the sleek, dark shape of a Confederate fightercraft streaking toward her. Its forward braking thrusters flared as the ship slowed to match her speed and come in beside her. It was a welcomed sight, but the fact that her ship had not warned her about the other's approach reminded her just how vulnerable she was.

"Maybe that hit you took destroyed part of the field's triggering system," Jaris suggested as he drew up on her starboard side, their cockpits even. "You sure toasted your hull. What'd you do, fly through a det?"

"You guessed it."

"That must have been some fight."

"It was a hell of a fight," she said, experiencing a second wave of regret over Shadow's destruction, "against a hell of a pilot."

* * *

Kressa set her ship down on the floor of the Cheops' brightly lit bay, in line with four Vsunan fightercraft showing evidence of recent damage. She popped her canopy and leaned out.

"Have you heard any news about Stingray One?" she asked the tall, rail-thin soldier who approached her fighter.

"No, sir," he answered in a voice so deep it seemed almost ludicrous coming from his slight form, "but we don't get much news down here." He stepped up to her ship and ran an appraising gaze down its scarred length.

As he continued to examine her ship, Kressa pulled off her helmet and tossed it to the floor at her feet. She ran a hand through her hair, and then climbed down from the cockpit. The soldier put a hand on her arm to steady her as her body readjusted to a stationary, upright position. She smiled gratefully.

"Welcome aboard Cheops," he said once she regained her equilibrium. "Captain Vel would like to see you on the bridge immediately." His tone and the look he gave her indicated he thought it extremely odd that his captain would invite one of Stingray One's sheltering fighter pilots onto her bridge in the midst of a battle.

Kressa returned the surprised look, finding the request odd as well, and then gestured toward the bay entrance.

"Let's go, then."

She fell in beside him, taking three long strides to each of his two, her boots ringing on the hard metal floor. As she followed her guide toward the bridge, she pulled open the tight collar and cuffs of her flight suit, stripped off her gloves, and tucked them into her belt, wondering what Dania wanted.

A single female Vsunan guard waited inside the entrance to the Cheops' bridge. She leaned with one shoulder braced casually against a wall as she watched the action in the chamber beyond, but snapped to attention when Kressa and her escort stepped through the doorway.

"Ensign," she said by way of welcome, and then turned to Kressa's companion for an explanation of their presence.

"Ensign Kressa Bryant to see the captain," the soldier explained. "Captain's orders," he added when the guard's only reaction was a skeptical look.

"I'll check on that." She turned to a comm on the wall beside her.

Kressa used the time to look around what she could see of Dania's bridge. Her recent experience with Teneian ships and gear had accustomed her to streamlined efficiency and the clean use of every available centimeter of space. The Patrol-built Cheops was everything Teneian ships were not, and her bridge showed that in startling clarity. Intense lighting shone on the almost antique-seeming stations that cluttered the large room. The men and women manning the boards kept up a steady drone of activity, their eyes roving from the readouts before them to the dozen or more screens that lined the walls above. On those screens, Kressa could see different views of the battle above Terra, many of them beamed from other ships. She located the compact, confident form of Dania Vel standing at the communications post.

The captain turned and looked toward the bridge entrance. With a final word to the officer manning the station, she started toward where Kressa waited.

"You're clear, Ensign," the guard said.

Kressa stepped onto the bridge and moved toward Captain Vel with a friendly smile.

"Hi, Dani, I—" Her smile melted, and she came to attention and saluted when she saw the expression on the captain's face, reminding her just how quickly Dania Vel's ordinarily good-natured—if somewhat demanding—personality could transform whenever things weren't going precisely her way.

"Ensign Bryant reporting as ordered," she said as Vel came to a halt less than a meter before her.

"What is that captain of yours doing, Bryant?"

"Excuse me, sir?" Kressa asked, perplexed. "What—?"

"Why'd he run off to Mars in the middle of the battle?"

"I don't know, Captain. I was busy staying alive at the time."

Vel gave her a harsh look, and then she shook her head and flashed a wry smile. "That mouth of yours is going to get you into serious trouble, Kressa."

She shrugged and smiled. "Won't be the first time."

Vel started back across the bridge, motioning for Kressa to follow.

"How'd a first-class pilot like you lose it so fast?" Dania asked over her shoulder, her eyes moving constantly to take in everything going on around her. "The bay said you came in on maneuver jets only."

"I met my match," Kressa admitted. "They fried my control systems, and then my stasis field activated and burned up all my ship's energy."

"What caused the activation?"

"I don't know. The triggering system must have malfunctioned."

Dania looked at her. "Why do you say that?"

"The only things out there were a couple of comm satellites. At first I thought I'd flown through one of their transmissions but—" She stopped speaking as Vel turned abruptly to her communications officer.

"Did you hear that?" she asked.

"Yes, sir," the officer answered. "Do you think—?"

"Check on it."

Bewildered by the exchange, Kressa shot a questioning look at Vel. "What was that about?"

"We've been looking for the source of some hyperwave transmissions Westlex picked up. If one of those satellites was a source and you passed close enough as it was transmitting, your stasis field might have been triggered. Where were they?"

"The satellites? I don't know exactly. Ensign Jaris scanned them; he should have the coordinates."

Vel turned to the comm station again. "Get hold of Jaris. And let the fleet know what we suspect."

"Satellites don't have the power to send hyperwave signals," Kressa pointed out.

"Power could be beamed from Terra. Or they might have a new power source developed using th'Maran technology."

"But what would they be transmitting?"

"Coordinates, attack plans, you name it," Vel said.

"Captain," the comm officer said, "we've located the satellite. You were correct about the transmitter. It's being targeted now. We're continuing to scan for others."

Vel turned a self-congratulatory smile on Kressa. "Gaunis is a sneaky bastard, but he's not—"

"Captain! We've got something coming in behind us."

Vel whirled toward the sensor station where the call originated.

"It's the dreadnought Riposa, Captain. It just appeared behind us. Stingray Two reports the Hampton moving in on them. The Esprit's appeared some distance off. The Avanti has also arrived, along with several smaller vessels."

"Reiger. Genen. Gaunis. Estura." Almost to herself, Vel spoke the names of the admirals as her sensor officer announced the arrival of their flagships. "Keep us in good position with the Riposa," she ordered the maneuver-drive station, and then turned to the weapons post. "Keep on anything solid that comes at us and—"

An urgent call from the sensor officer interrupted her. "We've got more ships coming in, Captain. Some of them are right on us, right out of hyperspace. But—they can't be ships, Captain, they're too small."

"ITD!" Vel turned to the Cheops' Teneian-added transfer drive station in the corner of the bridge. "Get us out of— No, belay that. There's too much interference." She glanced at the viewscreen where the image of the newly joined battle against the Riposa was rippling with hyperspatial distortion. "Defense, take out anything that appears in normal space. All available power to shields. Get those reflectors targeted…"

Vel continued to give orders, but Kressa stopped listening. She watched the main screen instead, awestruck by the appearance of so much enemy materiel out of hyperspace, so precisely on target.

Dania must have been right about the satellites. They were transmitting the coordinates of the Confederate ships to the Patrol fleet. But, Kressa feared, the Confederate forces' realization of that had come a moment too late.

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