“How much longer do we let that stinking warship trail us?” snarled Ikora, the first mate of the Oshakati, a Corsair class ship from the Da’a’shori First Expeditionary Force. More commonly referred to as the Interlopers galaxy wide.

  The captain, small even among Da’a’shori women, did not look up from her data-pad where she was reviewing the ship’s status. She had become immune to Ikora’s outbursts. They were becoming as innocuous as the constant background hum of the engines. They both started on the Oshakati at the same time and subsequently rose through the ranks together.

  “When the Forsetti notifies us that our contact has made it aboard, and they made it to safety.” There was a pause before the mild rebuke came. “You know what we’re doing out here, Ikora.”

  The first mate grunted acknowledgment. Just because she knew the plan didn’t mean she had to like that they allowed the enemy ship to detect their presence and track them. As the first mate, it was her job to see to the safety of the captain and crew. She glanced back down to her terminal, where she had the scans of the enemy ship, the Rishi. She had pored over the information, looking for any weakness they could exploit when the time came.

  “Zirenna," Akandi called from Communications. “Message coming in from the Forsetti. Their contact is aboard. They’re close to finishing repairs and should be Traveling to their destination within the hour.”

  “About time!” Ikora said as she turned from where she had been standing beside the captain’s chair, heading to Communications to see the message for herself.

  In contrast to her first mate, Zirenna nodded to acknowledge the message but continued to work on her data-pad. The unspoken fact of being a captain was the amount of reports she was required to read and sign off on. She knew if there were anything more to report, Akandi would have let her know.

  “Zirenna!” Ikora called out a moment later, her rising excitement grating on Zirenna’s nerves.

  Putting her data-pad down, the captain permitted herself a small sigh. Ikora was approaching her chair, shaking with energy. Corsair crews were closer to family than crew, as their missions took years to complete. Isolated from the main Da’a’shori fleet, they relied on their wits and ingenuity to complete their assignments. This isolation caused some bending of military roles. Still, Zirenna had to admit that Ikora needed a reminder of the proper decorum expected from a first mate.

  Ever since their last mission, the one which caused their old captain to retire, Ikora’s emotions were less in check. Zirenna suspected the injuries her friend had incurred had taken a toll mentally, but had not reported her first mate and friend. She had thought that what her friend needed was the focus of a mission again. However, as their current circumstances went on, with the complexities this system held, Ikora had gotten worse. Zirenna knew it was too late to replace her now, and she spent a fair amount of her time keeping her first mate in line.

  “Ikora,” Zirenna said, holding up a hand to forestall anything her first mate wanted to say. “Let Engineering know I’ll be ordering that radiation leak contained at any time. I want it bottled up the moment I call for it, and they better be ready.”

  Ikora looked at her captain, frustration showing through her excitement.

  “Shouldn’t we go to full battle stations and attack the Rishi now? We could easily evade their scans by shutting off that leak. We could get in position behind the Rishi, striking them where they least expect it. I’ve done the calculations...”

  “Enough, Ikora.” Zirenna’s tone, while quiet enough not to carry to the rest of the bridge crew, was cold and hard.

  Ikora clamped her mouth shut, recognizing that she had yet again allowed her enthusiasm to best her. The woman knew something wasn’t right with her. She could feel it wriggle around in her mind like a worm, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t best her emotions. Red tinged her cheeks as she stood in front of the captain, who seemed to evaluate her.

  “We have a good plan, Ikora, and it hasn’t changed. We’ll continue to be the bait until the Traveler can get the Forsetti out of this sector. Then he’ll need to make his way back to us so we can Travel and meet our sister ship at our destination. I don’t want to attack the Rishi; Our reports detail that Delta class cruisers are better shielded and have far more armaments than we do. I also suspect that she has a good crew. I’d prefer to continue to play cat and mouse and then disappear on our own timetable.”

  “But...” Ikora said, falling silent at another hard look from her captain.

  I really need to speak to her. This is getting out of hand.

  “We’ll wait, Ikora. We can’t afford any mistakes. It’s unfortunate that the Forsetti became damaged and was in the Rishi’s path. We’ll continue to lead her captain on a chase until she’s safely away. One corsair ship is an anomaly. I’m sure two would scream of more sinister intentions. I’d rather keep the Rishi’s captain merely concerned than alarmed.”

  The two women, one sitting, the other standing, looked at each other for a long moment. Zirenna could see Ikora struggling to get her emotions in check. That had always been her biggest weakness, even before her injuries. She had a passion, a deep zeal, wholeheartedly believing in the divine right of the Da’a’shori to bring Light and Truth to the galaxy, no matter the cost. The strength of her convictions, however, clouded her judgment. It was why she didn’t have a ship of her own by now and probably why she never would.

  Finally, Ikora nodded in acquiescence, receiving a small smile from her friend and captain.

  “Please see to my request for Engineering, Ikora.”

  “On my way, captain.” The first mate replied, turning to leave the bridge.

  “Ikora,” Zirenna said, stopping the other woman, who glanced back over her shoulder. “Before you go, send me your battle plans. Just in case.”

  Ikora smiled, gratitude plain on her face.

  “Will do.”

  Zirenna watched her friend make her way off the bridge after stopping by her own station to send the requested plans. There was a bounce in her step. Managing Ikora was an increasing tenuous balancing act. The captain needed her first mate energized and passionate but composed enough to do her job appropriately. It was tiring, but Zirenna was used to it, having taken command of the Oshakati when the previous captain, Zurita, had retired five years ago. The old woman had announced her retirement after their last mission, which had been one disaster after another. Zirenna had spent the previous ten years as first mate to the older woman who taught her all she knew. Zurita had spent a lot of time showing her how to manage the other nineteen crew members who called the Oshakati home.

  “Zirenna. Another update from the Forsetti.”

  “I’ll be right there, Akandi,” Zirenna said, putting her data-pad down and getting up from her command chair.

  This won’t be good. They shouldn’t have contacted us so soon, not unless there was another problem.

  As she came to her feet, she gave a slow stretch, her arms reaching behind her and up, twisting her back this way and that. She had been in the chair too long, and her back was acting up. It had given her problems since their last mission, where a misunderstanding had caused the Oshakati to take some heavy fire while her shields were still down. The impact had caught her unawares and threw her halfway across the deck, where she landed awkwardly atop the bridge’s Long Range Scanning console. The dent from her impact was still visible on the side of the station, a constant reminder to stay vigilant.

  Zirenna grimaced as she completed her stretch. It accomplished little, but it would have to do for now. She needed the ship’s doctor to redo the nerve stimulation, but that required a low level of sedation, and she wanted her mind clear for this part of the mission.

  She made her way over to Akandi, taking the few steps it took on the cramped but efficient bridge, to look over the shoulders of her crew. Everyone was working away diligently, as she expected. Before being considered for a crew slot, each applicant had to pass a battery of physical and neurological tests. Their jobs required living with intense stress and no support for months and sometimes years. Each crew member knew they were on their own when they departed on a mission with only the other people on board to count on.

  Her crew was the best; the Oshakati always received the most challenging deployments from High Command. They took great pride in that fact and could stay focused no matter the demands of an assignment.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “What do you have for me, Akandi?” Zirenna asked as she reached the specialist’s station, placing a hand on the other woman’s shoulder and leaning in to look at the screen.

  Akandi glanced back to the captain, then, turning to her terminal, maximized a window containing the Forsetti’s message. The communications specialist leaned off to one side, so the captain had a better view of the screen.

  “Forsetti’s key systems repaired. Linkage between ship’s systems and specialized circuitry for Traveling is non-operational. Contact is attempting to repair. Will require Oshakati to keep Solvonus navy occupied until otherwise advised.”

  “Va’resh,” Zirenna said, resignation clear in her tone.

  “Yeah. Ikora won’t be happy with this, captain,” Akandi responded.

  Has everyone noticed how she’s become? May the shadows claim her name.

  “No, she won’t, but let me worry about Ikora,” Zirenna said, squeezing the specialist’s shoulder in consolation before straightening. “Acknowledge receipt of the message and that Oshakati will continue to play the bait ... hold on.”

  Zirenna stepped away from the communications station, moving starboard, where Yaziri sat at the helm.

  “Yaziri, where are we currently? We were supposed to be joined by the Traveler in the Belt. Isn’t there some sort of navigation hazard forming on our current route?”

  The pilot punched a command into her terminal. The main screen on her station changed to show the star map for this sector.

  “This is us,” Yaziri said, pointing to a small pulsing dot in the center of the map.

  “And those are the Forsetti and Rishi, respectively?” Zirenna leaned over her pilot’s shoulder and pointed at the two other dots. A dashed triangle surrounded the Rishi, marking an enemy vessel.

  “Correct,” Yaziri said as she punched in a new command.

  The map expanded to show Ikalitek and its surrounding moons. The map also highlighted the three ships’ projected routes. Their contact had provided the Rishi’s patrol pattern, marked by a yellow line, which brought it perilously close to the Forsetti’s position. A blue line split from the yellow one, showing when the Rishi noticed the Oshakati and altered her route, mistaking them for their disabled sister ship.

  The Oshakati’s current course, caused by the need to draw the Rishi away from the second Da’a’shori ship, brought them close to the ninth planet in the Solvonus system, Ikalitek.

  “Show me the hazard.”

  Yaziri adjusted the map, focusing on the area around the planet and its moons.

  “Where is it, Yaziri?”

  “That is the hazard. The entire planet, its moon. All of it.”

  Yaziri glanced back at the captain and saw that she didn’t comprehend. The pilot understood how Zirenna felt. It still made her head hurt to think about what would happen and she had been studying the complex inter-play of the orbits since they had received the information packet from their local contact.

  “Give me a second, Zirenna,” Yaziri said, pulling a new window on her main screen and opening a program.

  Zirenna stood back up, twisting her back, trying to find a stretch that would loosen the muscles.

  I really need to see the doc.

  As the captain stretched, waiting for Yaziri’s program to load, she looked at her crew. She saw the side glances, everyone trying to figure out what the captain was thinking, but they didn’t let it distract them. An enemy vessel was still tracking them, after all.

  Zirenna caught Akandi’s eye, back at communications, and held a hand up, index finger raised, letting her know to wait another minute.

  “Captain.”

  Zirenna turned back to Yaziri’s station and saw that her program was ready.

  “What are we looking at, Yaziri?”

  “This is what the locals call an Orbital Cluster. Each planet has one, and they happen like clockwork.”

  “Show me.”

  Yaziri clicked a button, and the simulation on her screen played, showing the celestial bodies in their orbit around Ikalitek. It differed from what Zirenna was used to seeing, and she had been in countless systems throughout the galaxy. The planet had fifty-nine bodies, ranging from small moons to planetoids. The orbits ignored the ecliptic plane of the solar system, cocooning Ikalitek in a complicated weave that seemed to enshroud the planet entirely.

  “Ok, it doesn’t look bad so far. Complicated orbits, but I don’t see a real problem.”

  “This is the planet and the orbits of its moons at present. Let me show you what will happen in about fifteen hours and then last just over ten days.” Yaziri said, typing in another command causing the celestial dance on the screen to become chaotic.

  It was hard for Zirenna to track individual orbits, each speeding up, the complexity increasing exponentially. As the two women watched the simulation, a pattern emerged from the chaos. The simulation zoomed out until it showed the Barrier on the edges of the screen, with Ikalitek in the center. The orbits synced, falling in line, no longer crisscrossing.

  Zirenna, seeing the simulation for the first time, watched in stunned silence. The orbits of the fifty-nine celestial bodies seemed to form a vortex, centered on the planet but perpendicular to the system’s ecliptic plane, spreading out like a disk. The Barrier itself inexplicably bent inward, towards the forming vortex, closing off the vastness of space around the planet and the forming Cluster.

  She glanced at the information tab for the simulation playing on the screen, and her mind had a hard time comprehending the numbers she was seeing. Those planets, when their orbits spun up, completely blocked their passage through this area of space.

  “Slow down to real-time, if you wouldn’t mind, Yaziri,” Zirenna said while intently studying the screen.

  “It already is, Zirenna. When this ... pinwheel ... forms, the orbits all speed up significantly.”

  “Are you sure you entered the right parameters? What you’re showing me is impossible.”

  “Zirenna, this isn’t my program. I lifted it off the system-wide net; it’s an educational program that they teach their children at school. As far as I can figure out, this is common knowledge that all citizens grow up knowing.”

  “Va’resh,” Zirenna said again after a long moment.

  “Indeed,” Yaziri said. “Let me show you why it’s a navigational hazard, if that’s not already clear.”

  A few more commands and the Oshakati’s route appeared on the screen while the orbits reset back to their starting position. Yaziri hit a button restarting the simulation in a compressed timeframe.

  “Here’s the Oshakati, on our current path,” Yaziri pointed to the pulsing dot on the screen. “As we get closer to the planet, this Orbital Cluster forms. The speed of the orbits and their proximity to the planet, and each other, cause intense electromagnetic and gravitational fields. I don’t know how, but the planet and its bodies aren’t affected; they should be ripped apart, but they aren’t. Those forces mix with the Barrier’s exotic radiation and create an almost impenetrable wall.”

  “How long does it last?” Zirenna said, trying to ignore the impossibility of what she was seeing, accepting it as fact and trying to factor it into her plans.

  Yaziri pulled up another window on her terminal.

  “Is that a textbook, Yaziri?” Zirenna asked with some incredulity.

  “It came with the simulation of the Orbital Cluster,” she said, while scanning the text in front of her. “The Ikalitek Orbital Cluster, or I.O.C. as it’s known, lasts ten days. It’s the longest in the system. It’s also the most complicated to navigate. However, it’s possible with the use of navigational markers. They’ve even included the application required to interface with those buoys.”

  “Have you installed it yet?” Zirenna asked.

  “No, I’ve kept everything I grabbed on an isolated core.”

  “Does it scan clean?”

  “It did.”

  “Install it, Yaziri. I think we may end up needing it. How long until we are at … the cluster?”

  “Fifteen hours, Captain.”

  “Ok, good work, Yaziri,” Zirenna said, patting the pilot on her shoulder and stepping back to Communications.

  “Akandi. Ask how long the contact is estimating for repairs. Inform Forsetti that we have a hard time restraint of fifteen hours, no more. After that, our position becomes untenable, and we’ll need to either go through the cluster, and possibly face capture, or turn back towards the Belt and risk discovery.”

  The communication specialist nodded, already typing out the message.

  Zirenna turned and walked back to her command chair, looking aft as the hatch hissed open. Ikora stepped onto the bridge and nodded to the captain.

  “Engineering is ready for my order, Ikora?” Zirenna asked as she reached her chair. She eyed it dubiously, unsure if she was ready to sit back down. Deciding she wasn’t, Zirenna walked around to the back of the chair and leaned on it, trying to take the pressure off her aching muscles.

  “They are,” Ikora said, eyeing her friend and captain and giving her a quizzical glance. She had been with Zirenna a long time and knew her moods. It was clear something was bothering her, and not just her back.

  Zirenna motioned to the first mate to join her at her command chair with a tilt of her head. She needed to get the woman up to speed.

  “Zirenna! I have multiple launches from the Rishi!” Delemi said from her seat, where she monitored the Oshakati’s scanners.

  What the hell?

  The captain and first mate shared a look before Ikora stepped quickly back to her own station, where she started pulling up information on her screens. Zirenna sighed and, after only a slight hesitation, stepped back to the front of her chair, slowly lowering herself into the seat with her arms.

  “Show me what you got.”

  A second later, the telemetry from Delemi's station appeared on the captain’s own screens. Zirenna, adept with every system on board her ship, interpreted the complex information.

  “Class?” she asked Delemi

  “Unknown. They don’t match any regular Solvonus ships in our database. From our scans, I’d guess they are drones of some kind.”

  “What's their heading?” Zirenna asked, keying her console to show the star map for their immediate location, with the Oshakati in the center.

  It showed the Rishi on the outer edge of the map, and she zoomed in on that ship; detail being added as she did until she could see markings denoting the drones. They were leaving the Rishi’s established picket lines, heading in the Oshakati’s general direction.

  “They're heading this way, Zirenna. They’ll reach us in under four hours.” Delemi said, updating the captain as she continued to fine tune her scopes.

  “Orders?” Ikora asked, excitement coloring her voice

  “Do nothing for the moment.” Zirenna said, while watching the information unfold on her screens.

  “But...?”

  A hard stare from Zirenna silenced the first mate, who had the good sense to notice it for once.

  “They can’t know we’re aware that they're tailing us. We need to keep up the pretense of trying to keep a low profile while the Forsetti affects repairs. Until then, we continue to play the mouse and let them continue their little games. However, if they breach our close perimeter, please remove them from the equation. We aren’t the Faithless after all.” Zirenna said, mollifying her first mate’s objections.

  “With pleasure.”

  Zirenna could see that her first mate was just waiting for those drones to cross the Oshakati’s proximity perimeter, defined as a twenty-five-thousand-kilometer bubble around the vessel.

  “Not a second before, Ikora.” said Zirenna, waiting for her friend’s reluctant nod before turning back to her console and the job of running her ship.

  She let her crew work, not interfering. She knew she had the best of the best with her, and they would not let her down.