Three years later

  Asteroid D12, Contested Sarayan Space, Standard Year 403 after founding

  Lieutenant Alanna Summers, hero of the battle of Titan, was sitting in the station command chair. Captain Mace, the actual commanding officer of the station, was taking some… much needed r&r. Getting more comfortable, she placed her feet up on the controls and looked out past the frayed hem of her pants towards the stars beyond. The soft background noise of Madame President Lorelai Achly’s honey sweet voice, talking about Saraya’s successful war efforts and extolling the virtues of service and sacrifice on behalf of the Sarayan people, could be heard in the background. Captain Mace insisted they leave it on at all times. Alanna had smiled politely and turned it down so low, no one could make out the words.

  Without a word, Tom, who was a civilian and her informal second in command, switched to a song they both liked.

  Alanna grinned, tapping her foot against the controls. “Here’s to you, old friend.” She said, raising the last of her water rations for the day towards the views screen. The familiar blue star, so much larger than the others in the darkened sky, twinkled back at her.

  “Been here a long time.” Tom agreed. He was a large, broad man and food ration shortages hit him hard. His cheekbones were gaunt and shadows lay under his eyes.

  “Hell, I’ve been camped out in Tundra’s backyard for half my life it seems.” Alanna said with a laugh. The station she was informally commanding sat on top of D12. Asteroid D12, also known as “home” for the past two and a half standard years, was an 18 mile long shard of diamond. An amazing find in the far regions of their solar system. In the far northern regions of their solar system. Her beautiful green and purple planet of Saraya, faded in with the other stars in the night sky. It was Tundra that dominated the view. As usual, the enemy was close. And getting closer. D12 circled their sun at a slow rate that took well over a standard year. And currently, their orbit was bringing them inescapably closer to Tundra.

  “You know…” Tom shifted in his seat with a yawn of his own. “People don’t like it.”

  “What?” Alanna asked.

  “When you camp out in their back yard.” Tom shook his head. “They don’t like it.”

  “No Tom.” Alanna agreed. “They do not like it at all.”

  “The point that I’m trying to make here” Tom continued, unphased “Is that we’re all gonna die.”

  Alanna shrugged. Obviously, they were all going to die. It just wasn’t the done thing to go around saying so. Ignoring Tom’s gloom and doom attitude, she glanced at her wrist comm to see if any messages had come in. The Tundrans could jam channels of communication during an attack but jamming took massive energy and while they were all sitting here in open space, communication across the solar system remained possible, with time lag based on the inherent speed of radio waves. And the message she received brought a genuine smile to her face.

  Jonno: So the Tundrans are coming? Good. Hijack another ship and come home. If anyone can do it, my sister can.

  Alanna: Might not work out this time. I love you, brother. I’m sorry.

  “What’d he say?” Tom asked, seeing the unexpected grin on her face. He knew the message was from Alanna’s brother. He was the only one she ever talked to.

  “He said to hijack another ship and come home.”

  “Yeah! Let’s do that! One more time, lieutenant.”

  Alanna laughed in spite of herself. “Sorry Tom, I only manage amazing feats of heroism when they’re in direct contradiction of Central Command orders. In the absence of orders to contradict, we’ll all just have to muddle through.”

  “Come on Alanna, all you have to do, is come up with just one more brilliant idea to get all of us home alive. If anyone’s got this, it’s you.”

  Alanna nodded. She’d heard that one before. And she tried. She really did. Only there was no way she could think of, to get them home alive. “We stick to the plan we have.” She said. It was a good plan. It just wasn’t getting them home alive.

  Tom hesitated. “I’m having a baby.” He said somewhat abruptly, a note of surprise in his own voice.

  Alanna looked at him blankly, puzzlement written clearly across her face.

  “My lady back home is having my baby.” Tom clarified, grinning shyly. “Turns out, she couldn’t find anyone better. We’ve been writing each other.”

  “Congratulations Tom, truly. You’re one hell of a lucky man.”

  “That’s true love, Alanna.” His eyes glinted suspiciously, wasting precious water. “I’ll die on this hunk of diamond but she’ll be holding my baby in nine standard months.”

  In a radically unusual gesture, Alanna leaned over and patted him on the back. “Not surprised she checked out all the options and you came out the winner.” She said.

  “Damn right.” He nodded. His eyes strayed back to the light blue planet hanging in the dark sky. “It’s getting closer, isn’t it?”

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  “It is. The distance between D12 and Tundra will be at its shortest point in 2.4 standard days.” Alanna looked at the planet, looming ever closer on the screen. She knew they were coming. She had been following news from back home more closely, following her epic blunder of a military career, and knew that the war continued, unabated. Most of her intel came from her brother Jonno, whose underworld connections got him far better intel than her Sarayan navy officer status.

  “Why do you think they did it?” Tom asked suddenly. “Why’d they attack Titan?”

  Alanna shrugged. Theirs was a crowded solar system. Two goldilocks planets, Saraya and Tundra, orbited their sun at the right distance to support liquid water and life. And even in their crowded system, Tundra and Titan were dangerously close to each other. Titan was a joke of a name for the smallest planet in their solar system. It was so close to Tundra, many theorized that someday it would get captured by the much larger planet’s gravitational pull and become a somewhat oversized moon. Titan, was very close to Tundra. Of course, their entire solar system belonged to Saraya. It was Saraya’s official position that Tundra still rightfully belonged to Saraya. She looked up at the looming ice planet overhead. “I don’t think they want us in their backyard.” Alanna said.

  Tom looked out at the dark, starlit sky filled with billions of stars. “I don’t even want to kill the damn Tundrans. Most of them probably want to go home and go fishing, or whatever the hell it is Tundrans do.”

  “You want to go home and go fishing.” Alanna said, not quite stifling her laughter.

  “Well they probably do it… off a chunk of ice or something.” Tom shrugged. “Who knows? Point is, a whole lot of us are gonna die and I’ll be damned if I understand why.”

  Alanna shrugged. That kind of talk got you sent to Phoenix Penn back on Saraya. The prison terms for sedition kept getting longer, and the definition of sedition kept expanding. But they had all been on D12 a long time, and Saraya seemed very far away. “I don’t think they’ll give us a choice.” She said.

  “Maybe they won’t come.” Tom said hopefully.

  This whole kid thing is playing a real number on him, Alanna thought. Tom wanted to live to see his child. But he wouldn’t. Because even if the Tundarns didn’t come, in another standard year, they would all run out of rations and starve to death. Next time around, the Tundrans could just walk in and take D12, unopposed. Time was all on their side. “How are the turret guns?” She asked.

  “The second starboard gun is going wonky again.” Tom replied readily.

  “I’ll take a look.” Alanna took her feet off the station controls with a definitive thunk.

  Tom smiled tiredly. “I don’t mean to give you a hard time. When the time comes it’s your lead. We all know our parts.”

  Alanna nodded awkwardly, pulling on her space suit. She felt a gnawing sense of guilt. She sensed Tom’s disillusionment. If she had been a better officer, she would have shared just the right words of inspiration and optimism. Maybe she could have quoted something from President Lorelai Achly’s playbook. But it was her third shift and all she really wanted to do was make sure that at least six of the eight turret guns that were D12’s main line of defense against an attack were fully functional, and get some sleep. They had been scavenging the other two guns for parts but at some point, the wrong thing would break and they would run out of replacements.

  The targeting system was off again, and she set off on the menial but vitally important task of recalibrating it based on nearby objects. When the time came, there was no room for errors. Alanna paused and snorted into her helmet. Actually, there was plenty of room for errors. If an attack came, they would all die, no matter what. A badly calibrated targeting system would limit their ability to damage the enemy ship before they all died anyway. Maybe, if the Tundrans were exceptionally incompetent and luck was on their side, a few of them might survive. This was theoretically possible. Maybe a stray asteroid would strike the Tundran ship during their attack on D12 and take care of the problem. This was also theoretically possible. She gritted her teeth, refocused the turret on a nearby asteroid and began the recalibration process.

  She moved on to check the other guns when she felt the vibration of another pair of magnetized boots walking along the hull of the station. Alanna looked up to see Captain Cyrus Mace approaching, his regulation cleaned space suit sparkling in the starlight.

  “Lieutenant.” The captain said coldly into her headset.

  “Captain.” In an effort to maintain the peace, Alanna made a good faith effort at a sharp salute.

  “I wasn’t aware of any scheduled maintenance on the guns, lieutenant.”

  She could have explained Tom’s concerns. She could have explained that regulations didn’t apply to guns subjected to years of patchwork repairs made by a person of limited competence and no engineering background to speak of. She could have explained that once the civilian miners on the station discovered that Captain Mace had been hoarding food rations for himself, it took some effort to convince them that no, the captain was not at imminent risk of having an unfortunate accident. Being tired and well into her third shift by then, she settled for “Yessir, just a bit of overenthusiasm, sir.”

  “You are relieved, lieutenant.”

  “Yessir.” Alanna gave another sharp salute for good measure, her face unreadable underneath her helmet. She went to bed.

  She slept badly, her dreams combining nightmares old and new. Finally giving up on trying to sleep, Alanna sat up in her bunk, her breathing harsh in her own ears, and stared at the wall in front of her. 1.6 standard days until what she privately termed the Tundran Equinox, when the distance between D12 and Tundra would be at its shortest point. She got up. Sleep had lost its appeal.

  There was no water for bathing but theoretically, the dry scrub ritual effectively removed the dirt. She drank her allotted six ounces of water, carefully sealed and double filtered, and stared at the tiny mirror at the foot of her bunk. And then she drank a second ration of water. After a brief hesitation, she took out her allotted supply of ration bars for the day and ate two of those, as well. Two thirds of the day’s rations. Finally, she took out her gun, disassembling and cleaning it on autopilot. Her holster was especially loose around her waist, the limited food rations having their impact. Sometimes waitresses got free food, she thought. And drinks. She could have been a waitress... shaking her head in annoyance, Alanna shoved the gun into her pants pocket. They were so loose it was barely noticeable, other than the weight making them sag to one side. With another shrug of annoyance, Alanna added two more magazines to her other pocket, to balance it out.

  “Morning Tom.” She said.

  “Morning. I tested the gun turrets. All six are in good working order.”

  Alanna nodded, feeling suddenly, intensely grateful. Captain Cyrus Mace may well have been an adequate commander in a standard military operation. He had proven himself grossly unsuitable to the realities of their nonstandard situation. Rather than giving up, the forty civilian miners stationed on D12 stepped up. As the captain continued to drift away, Alanna quietly handed out the weapons they had on board to those who knew how to use them. The miners participated in dozens of military drills, shared their station expertise to help plan their defenses, and finally began to contribute by mining the station with well-placed explosives. “Operation Cherry Pie”, as they all jokingly came to call it, was ready and awaiting activation. Home may not be perfect, but they would all do their best to defend it.