“Those guns on Sebka B, they’ll be able to shoot at me during the whole run.” “They’ll be able to shoot at you,” I agreed, but shook my head. “But not the whole run. The threat from A orbit is kinetics and supervelocity missiles, which is why they can target B orbit. But they aren’t going to waste those on …

I stared at Kirkwood like she’d gone insane. “Me and Red? We could never become a couple in the first place!” That confused my XO. She shook her head. “Why not? Red’s  an attractive girl, isn’t she?” “I’m why not,” I told her. “Of course Red’s attractive. She’s the homecoming queen. I’m the loner that girls won’t have anything to …

The Road Kings broke off the pursuit of the Panda scouts and returned once they fell too far behind for their fire to reach Mo, and proceeded to mop up the remaining fighters. But the scouts still followed until their last parasite fighter died. Once that happened, they turned away and disappeared. For nearly a half hour we stayed frosty, …

Just after I spoke, the fiery flare of neutrons streaming from that same whorl set the shields of one of my escorts ablaze. Kirkwood was calling out the vector and the shield damage estimate on ‘Sharktooth’ as Mo’s nose drove ‘upward’. An astute observer with knowledge of physics and no experience in space would argue that you can’t use words …

I countermanded it when Farley started trying to arrange with Red to get his hold patched. He had a specific unloading schedule that required Hold One first, and would have to completely rework his plan. But that was what he would have to do. Spacewalking inside the drive field while in Meta-Space is dangerous, especially when a fight is possible, …

The team that entered the cargo head center lock was a mixed group. Red and Farley, having vac-skin implants, stood with only thermal suits, earplugs and breather masks. One of the quartet of Surface Corps technical specialists did as well, although the fact that she wore a full face mask that plugged the ears and covered the eyes in addition …

To the people who don’t do the driving, ‘Meta-Space’ means some different kind of space where you can move faster than the speed of light. Rather than being a horrible oversimplification, it is actually dead wrong. You cannot move faster than the speed of light, no matter where you are. But, despite the classes during training and continuing study because …

Red’s jetman had the engineering watch when I entered the galley for breakfast, so my engineer was taking her meal as well. I didn’t ‘walk in’. I pulled myself in, because we had hit equilibrium, the point where the resistance of Meta-space and the thrust from our sails equals out, putting us at a constant velocity. Mo’s crew and passengers …

Piloting a Goblin isn’t pressing buttons and wiggling joysticks like in a video game. Between the stress and the gees, high-energy maneuvering is outright hard labor. By the time you get a break, you feel like you’ve been on the outside, pushing the damn thing into space yourself, rather than sitting in the cockpit driving it. From when we launched …

Somewhere outside, stealth gear began operating to stifle the ruckus that Gulf Bay Three was about to make. The nuclear sub guys with their high tech sonar might hear something very muted, but nobody else would hear a thing. At the same time, near our bay floor, valves opened and seawater poured in, first as roaring cascades, then dropping to …