Marcan Rayger looked at the dangerous-looking fighter appreciatively. Although he had sometimes wondered why the Federation focused so much on small and fragile fighters, Saker Mk III seemed threatening enough to scare off most pirates from the space lanes with its mere appearance. Its two sharp wings edged forward on both sides of the dagger sharp nose of the craft where the cockpit was located, and the X-shape of the small fins at the back completed the spiked mien. Anyone who saw five of them approaching should know better than to try to fight back.

And that was exactly what he hoped would happen in his next mission that was going to take him and his wingmen to a nearby system that was infested with pirates. He was to lead the four other pilots in a patrol flight and raid the nest of pirates that endangered the secret nature of their military base. It was suspected that it was a small pirate clan, hoping to find a safe base for their operations, and they would have been left alone if the system were not too close to the military base. As such, it had to be removed.

Marcan Rayger was a tall - only slightly under the Federal Military regulations for fighter pilots - and thin man. His face was gaunt and he had short pale blond hair, and darker eyebrows above his curiously green eyes. He was not an attractive man by any count and he was not one to even remotely attract all the women in pilots’ lounges and bars but he had learned to live with it.

He glanced at the pilot standing next to him. Corporal Sheila Rasche was one of the four other pilots who were going to accompany him, all of them under his command and his students. But, unlike many of his students, Sheila had become a close friend of his during the years that they had been in the same fighter wing. She was a bit over 180 centimetres tall, slender but athletic, and had a short-cut blond hair. She, like he, wore her federal uniform and held her datapad in her hands. She had pulled hers open and studied the luminescent screen with care. Her sharp nose flared with displeasure.

She noticed him looking and said, "Sergeant, we’ll jump in about 6 AUs from the asteroid belt. They'll have well enough time to prepare to welcome us if they have already installed proper systems scanners."

Marcan nodded. It was a basic fact in space battle; the one attacking into a system could never stay hidden from the defenders. "Hopefully they will just bolt and flee," he said.

"If they don't we'll know for sure that they are strong enough to pose a threat to us. I wish Trevor had acquired better data on his reconnaissance mission."

Marcan nodded again. Trevor Leeds had entered the system a day earlier in a freight ship and left immediately, appearing to have used it just as a simple intermediate jump point on a journey to another system. "Well, he couldn't risk staying any longer," he said.

"I know that," Sheila declared, "but the mission briefing was totally useless without even some hard data! There is no way of telling how many ships there are hiding in that asteroid belt. They could just have said that we are going in there blind, but that we are not allowed to pull back unless we are already dead!"

Marcan saw that Sheila was very angry. He shared the feeling of discomfort for their vague mission, but found it useless to fume for it. The data was always bad. There was no way around it, unless they wanted to warn the enemies that they were coming. And their attack should look like a normal patrol flight, not an all out attack, or the pirates would surely suspect that there was a secret base nearby. He and Lt. Commander Turman had discussed it and informed the other pilots in the briefing, but the good old military reasoning did not make the mission any more attractive.

"Get some rest before we leave, Corporal," he said and turned to leave the hangar, having also decided to go and rest before the mission. He walked through corridors that had been dug through the solid stone of the little planetoid where the military base had been built. They were not exactly secret, but not too many outsiders knew about them, and that was why they wanted to get rid of the pirates as soon as possible. If they had time to build a nest in to the neighbouring system, it was not going be too long until they came to theirs, if only to investigate.

He walked by the pilots' lounge and saw that it was as full as usual. He did not bother to go in, but he had time to notice that Trevor Leeds was there with the two privates who were to join them, Jarod Hoods and Xavier Boyle. They were both good pilots and had reached Above Average in the records of the Elite Federation. Corporal Leeds was their better, though, if only by one grade, as was Corporal Rasche. Marcan himself was well on his way towards Dangerous, but he kept quiet about it. He saw nothing to be proud about in the fact that he had killed so many people, even if they had been his enemies and pirates.

Only five years earlier he had felt differently, and he knew that back then he would have joined the other pilots in the lounge to brag about his past missions and future successes, but then something had happened that had completely shifted the taste of the battle for him. When he reached his private quarters and hit the bunk with his clothes on, he found himself thinking about the events that had changed his attitude towards Elite ratings and space fights.

It had been one of his first missions in the Federal Military. He had been only one Eagle I pilot in a squadron of over twenty, attacking Imperial forces in one of the many border skirmishes that had been going on at the time. It had not grown to an all-out war politically, but to individual pilots it had been the real thing. Especially to the ones who died. And to their friends.

Marcan Rayger's best friends had been in the same wing with him, led by their trusted Sergeant Troy. He had led them through many missions before that, even some against the Imperials, and thus his betrayal had been a shocking surprise to all of them.

The young pilots had followed Troy into the left flank of the enemy forces and right into a trap. Suddenly four Imperial Couriers had powered up their nuclear plants only a few clicks away from them. The ships had been almost invisible in their military scanners before they started up and the mere horror of finding such devastating ships in their flank had confused the young pilots enough for the imperials to wreak havoc amongst them. Marcan and the others had been routed in short order, but not before it had become clear that Sergeant Troy had betrayed them. He had actually turned around and killed one of his own students, adding to the horror that the youngsters felt.

The whole battle had been lost due to that betrayal. Marcan had seen how the Eagles of his friends and wing mates, Louis, Daniel and Mikael had tried to escape the slaughter but exploded when the 20mw beam lasers had cut through the frail hulls of their small ships. He could not remember what had happened afterwards, but upon returning home he had been promoted and recordings of the battle had been shown to him in which he had turned and shot a missile at Sergeant Troy before following the remnants of his wing in their escape to witchspace.

Over the years the events he had viewed in the recordings had become more real than his own memories of the battle. It was those recordings that he saw in his minds eye now and he observed how the missile he had shot had steered towards Sergeant Troy's Eagle and destroyed it. It had been a close range shot and none of the combatants had had time to hit E.C.M. to destroy it before it hit. The flash of the exploding ship was the last scene of that part of the battle in the recorded material he had ever seen.

"Sergeant Rayger, my mapper identifies two Python traders and at least five Kraits and three Mambas. There are probably more further in the asteroid belt," Corporal Rasche reported. Her Saker was the only one with a radar mapper, as the other fighters used the space for other important equipment.

"Corporal Leeds, take Boyle and Hoods with you and enter the asteroid field. And be careful, there might be proximity mines in there as well as those fighters," Marcan said and turned his ship out of the vector that would get him into the asteroid field as well. Corporal Rasche followed him as they attempted to circle around the heaviest defences to get to the big Pythons without interference.

They had entered the system over a day ago. Their first action had been to accelerate their ships towards the asteroid belt and shut down their engines and all other unnecessary systems. That way, they had been able to approach the suspected pirate nest almost invisible. But when they had got nearer they had had to power up their engines again for deceleration. Soon after that they had spotted the largest two ships and headed towards them. Now that they had been identified as Pythons, Marcan suspected that there were mining machines at work on the surface of the small planetoid that they were circling, or perhaps even a construction team building up a underground base for the pirates.

The pirate ships had not left the cover of the asteroid field to attack them or to escape as Marcan had hoped, and they had not answered their demands of identification. Instead of a fast and furious attack, they had to approach the base slowly, high approach velocities made hazardous by the presence of the asteroids.

Then the alarms in the cockpit of Marcan's Saker started screaming and he knew that the closest enemies were only 50 kilometres away. He gave his scanner screen a brief look and turned to face the two Kraits and a Mamba that were closing in on him. They had not been able to get around all the defences, after all.

As he set the Krait as his own battle target, he ordered Corporal Leeds to engage the other fighters in the asteroid field but avoid the Pythons and the large asteroid. The big ships were the risk factor in the assault; they could only hope that they were used mainly as storage hulks. They could hold firepower and shields strong enough to turn the battle against them, as if it was not dangerous enough with only the one-man fighters. But their mission was to rid the system of pirates and the military base had no more fighter pilots to spare at this time, so they were on their own.

But then he had to stop thinking and start acting. The enemies were inside missile range and soon they were going to either fire some or wait until they were able to fire their lasers. Marcan himself had to bypass the option for missiles until he was sure that the Pythons were not a big threat. All the missiles they had to spare were going be needed to destroy them. He kept the painted Krait in the crosshairs and waited until she was close enough.

The pirates fired first, impatiently, and the red beam lasers shot way past Marcan and Sheila. Marcan grimaced and waited a few more seconds before squeezing the trigger of his own weapons. His 5mw laser pulses sheared the space around the enemy fighter until a couple of them hit dead on and the enemy exploded in a brilliant flash. He did not waste time but turned his ship quickly towards the next target.

First in his scanner and then amongst the asteroids outside he saw Corporal Rasche in a dogfight with one of the Mambas while the other was closing in from above. For a second Marcan considered firing a missile, but realised immediately that they would be unreliable with so many asteroids around. Still, if he got close enough, that would not be a problem. With a direct aim and fly vector, the LV111 smart missiles would not miss.

Then Corporal Leeds interrupted him. "Sergeant! We are outgunned here. One of the Pythons launched four more Mambas at us and Jarod's fighter is incapacitated!"

Marcan cursed. He should have suspected that at least one of the Pythons was used as a fighter carrier. "Rasche! Can you handle it here?" he asked quickly.

Almost as soon as he had asked the question, he saw one of the Mambas blow up and Sheila's fighter fly trough her debris. "I certainly can, Sergeant!" her answer came through soon after.

Marcan turned his attention to the other dogfight seventy kilometres away. To get there quickly, he had to leave the safety of the asteroid belt and accelerate with the full power of his main thrusters. He hoped that neither of the Pythons would see him as he presented a clear target to their laser and missile fire. He kept communication silence until he was close enough and dove back into the asteroid field, not wanting to push his luck with the unknown weaponry of the Pythons.

"Private Hoods, what is your situation?" he asked.

"Sergeant, my hull is at 8 percent and I've lost my laser," answered a hopeless voice.

The ship was then practically useless, except for the missiles, which was why Marcan did not order the private to pull back and escape. Instead, he told the man to stay out of the fight until he was called back.

According to his scanner there were seven enemy fighters in the space around them. They were more than enough to handle to the two remaining military fighters until he got there. He flew between the small rocks and asteroids as fast as he dared to get to help his men in time, and listened worriedly to their transmissions.

"Sergeant, I'm coming in also!" came suddenly Sheila Rasche's voice through the communication system.

Marcan glanced at his scanner, "Be careful! One of the Pythons is moving to a position above the asteroid field. You'll have to stay in!"

Apparently the captain of the Python had noticed Marcan's daring approach and decided to make sure that the other Saker Mk III was not going to get there to help the others as easily. The second Python stayed back, moving only slowly away from the large asteroid. The boulder was apparently important enough to keep protected.

Mambas were in their own element among the asteroids. They were highly manoeuvrable and fast and in the hands of an experienced pilot they could become deadly weapons even with less powerful lasers. But Sakers were almost their equal and at the moment in the hands of better pilots, as far as Marcan rated them.

His thoughts were proven true only moments later when he saw one of the Mambas crash into an asteroid. He saw another Mamba nearby the dwindling ball of flame and painted it as his target.

"Can't keep away. Need help!" the communications link burst suddenly with Hoods' voice.

Marcan checked his scanner and identified one of the dots as Hoods' Saker. The private had backed away from the main fight, but there were two fighters closing in on the easy target. There were too many dots between them, both fighters and asteroids, for him to get there quickly. He concentrated briefly onto his own target and with the help of years of experience he shot down the Mamba. Probably even before the pirate had had time to notice a new dot in the scanner.

Then, knowing that he was probably going to be too late, he let the others know that he was going for a rescue. He could not leave the thick mass of asteroids to fly faster to where Hoods was, knowing that the Python out there was prepared for just such a manoeuvre. He had to navigate through the many asteroids to get there.

He flew on the edge of his flying skills, skimming the bodies of rock as close as he dared. His fighter shot right through a laser fight between Boyle, Leeds and the pirates and his shields registered a light hit, rending them down to 20%. That made his skimming even more hazardous, since he had no more margin for slight errors.

He cursed aloud in the lonely cockpit, "Hoods, can you use your missiles?"

There was no answer.

Sergeant Marcan Rayger repeated the question, feeling the dread building up in his stomach. Still, there was no answer to his call. He took a brief moment to check his scanner and it proved his fears true. Private Hoods had been killed. There was nothing more than asteroids and two pirate fighters where he was headed now.

Maddened, he watched as they left the asteroid field and started returning towards the main fight. He slowed down, engaging his powerful retro thrusters and tried to decide what to do. The Mamba and the Krait were safe where they were, unless one was ready to make a suicidal attack to get them. For a second he considered his options, forgetting for the moment the death of the member of his team.

Then, when the two fighters passed his position in the asteroid field, he returned to full acceleration and shot out of the field right behind the two pirates. They were now almost between him and the Python and if the captain of the Python was not ready to endanger his own pilots, he would not shoot.

Before the pirate pilots had time to react to his sudden attack, he tagged the Mamba, and flying through the debris he was already targeting the Krait. Coolly, he followed her back into the asteroid field as the pilot tried to get away from him, but in both speed and in manoeuvrability the Saker was superior. Then the Krait attempted a move the pilot was not good enough to pull off and a nearby asteroid received a small push and an increase to its momentum as the fighter crashed into it.

Marcan released his finger from the trigger and dove back into the cover of the asteroids. He noticed the missile that the Python had shot at him only when it exploded into another rock behind him. With a quick glance at the cluttered-up view of the scanner he saw that the number of enemy fighters was down to three. Against the four of them, they were not going to have a chance.

He targeted the Python hovering outside the asteroid field and opened the communication channel. "Federal Military attack wing calling the pirate ships. Shut down your weapons systems and surrender or we will have to destroy you."

There was no immediate answer and meanwhile Marcan saw how the last three pirate fighters escaped the Sakers into the safety of the larger ships. He contacted his pilots, "If they do not answer soon, I want you all to attack that Python by the large asteroid. Just lock your missiles and let'em do the job. Corporal Rasche, how well shielded are those Pythons?"

Sheila answered almost immediately, reading the figures on her radar mapper, "Not very. They do not seem to be equipped for a fight."

"Good," Marcan stated and decided to wait for a little while longer. He had lost one of his pilots, but he was not going to risk the others in an unnecessary attack if he could avoid it. A minute went by but nothing happened. Then, suddenly, Marcan realised what was going on. His scanner did not reveal them yet, but when the turned around he could see small dots in the distance and his navigation computer labelled them with registration numbers.

"Rasche, identify the ships coming in!"

Surprised, but always competent, Corporal Rasche brought about her fighter and searched the space for the approaching enemy. From her position the ships were harder to spot, but then, from between the asteroids she saw some of them. Quickly she targeted them one by one, reporting the results her radar mapper gave. "An Asp Explorer, strongly shielded... A Constrictor... Cobra Mk I... Another Cobra... Can't see others... no wait! An Imperial Courier! Heavy shields and an energy bomb mounted!"

Marcan cursed. The pirates were getting help. The ships Rasche had identified were all medium or heavy fighters, and combined, they were a deadly threat to the light Sakers. Their mission data had not informed them about more ships in the system, but he had known the risks when coming in. It seemed that there already were functioning pirate bases in the larger asteroids around the field. Their scanners had not been able to detect them so they had to be well shielded.

He brought his Saker around again and considered the two Pythons. "Rasche, Leeds, Boyle. We have to leave the system quickly. Use the previously agreed on hyperspace targets. I expect you all back at the base in 15 days. Use the time in between to throw off any followers. But now, before we go, we are going to take out that Python with the fighter launcher. Target her, and prepare your missiles. Fly at her following different vectors and pull out and jump to hyperspace if her lasers come too close. Try to fire your missiles before leaving. If she is destroyed, go for the second Python and the construction machines on the asteroid."

He gave them five seconds to get prepared before he ordered the attack. He did not follow them. Instead he went straight for the other Python, his purpose to draw her attention away from the easy targets the other fighters posed as they attacked their target.

Their attack was a veritable surprise to the crews in the Pythons, since they had expected the military pilots to scram the minute they spotted the arriving help. Still, Marcan saw that they were quick to react. Already the Python he was flying towards was firing its manoeuvring thrusters in an attempt to turn to face him. But with competence more than equal to his Elite Federation ranking he guided his small fighter out of the reach of the fore and aft laser mounts, using to his advantage the fact that Pythons did not have mountings for freely turning laser turrets. That did not save him from missiles though, but he did have an E.C.M system for them.

What he was going to do was something he could not ask from his fighter pilots. That was why he had ordered them to leave the system as soon as they could. He flew towards the Python, armed his missiles but did not let them go until he was less than a kilometre away. For the moment he ignored the single enemy fighter that sought to stop his advance. He punched his E.C.M. to destroy the three missiles coming for him. Then, at the last possible moment, he let his missiles go and sent his own fighter into a loop that took him back towards the direction he had come from.

His missiles hit their target moments before the space around the Python spewed up with the contorting energy of her own E.C.M. system. But it was too late. The missiles had depleted her shields and most of her hull as well. On the top of his loop, Marcan spotted the Mamba that had attempted to stop him and quickly targeted her and turned his fighter towards it. They both fired their lasers at the same moment, the Mamba her 1mw beam laser and Marcan his 5mw pulse laser. The red beam hit his frail shields and depleted them quickly, but also his fire hit its target and soon the source of the deadly beam was gone.

He finished the momentarily interrupted loop and was once again facing the Python. With quick order he fired his lasers again. He let them burn the hull of the large trader, not bothering to escape her front laser anymore. The Python never had time to finish her turn and defend herself properly.

He took one last glance at his scanner, and saw that the other Python was also gone. But so were the other military pilots. Marcan hoped that they had got away safely. Then he looked grimly at the approaching ships. There was much cleaning up in this system still to be done, but that would require a larger attack force. And that was probably neither his fight nor his decision to make. Then he punched the large button that engaged his hyperspace engine and the space around him distorted into dull grey colours.

"Welcome back, Sergeant," said Lt. Commander Turman as he stepped into her office. Marcan Rayger nodded in greeting and walked to stand exactly one and a half metres from her desk.

"Sit down, Sergeant," the dark haired woman said and indicated at a chair. She was dark skinned and her lips were full. Several years Marcan's senior in the Federal Military she had still been quick to advance to her present rank. And from what Marcan had heard, she was heading still higher. "I've read your report," Turman said and watched him straight in the eye.

Marcan kept his head, knowing Turman well enough not to suffer from discomfiture under her gaze. Not even when he had failed in his mission. "Yes, Mam," he said.

"So you suspect that the system was already settled by pirates and this was just another construction yard that we detected?"

"Yes, Mam. There is no other place where those other ships could have come from so quickly. There had to be other bases already in place."

"Why do you think there were no more smaller fighters coming towards your position?" Turman asked casually.

Marcan nodded, "There probably were, but they were small enough to move safely in the asteroid field and stay hidden from us."

The Lt. Commander touched her datapad and nodded. "You are probably correct, Sergant. But I did not call you here to discuss your mission."

Marcan's eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he managed to keep it out of his voice, "You didn't, Mam?"

"No," she said and then handed her datapad to him, "Do you recognise this ship type?"

Marcan took the datapad and took a look at the screen. It was not one of the ship types he knew well, but he had seen such ships on a rare occasion. "Yes. That's rather a rare ship, but I know it. It's Wolf Mk II, a highly manoeuvrable and fast heavy fighter. Too expensive to build to have become a commercial success and its manufacture was ceased a few years ago."

It was Turman's turn to raise her eyebrows in surprise, "You know your ships, Sergeant Rayger. Yes, the Wolf Mk II was a dangerous ship, but too expensive for most clients. And yes, its manufacture was officially discontinued ten years ago."

Sergeant Marcan's green eyes flashed, "But not really?"

"No. Since the Asp Mk II was made commercially available as Asp Explorer, the military heavy fighter pilots no longer had the edge they had once had over civilians and pirates. And after the development of Imperial Couriers there has been a dire need for a new Military ship. The Wolf Mk II was seen as a quick solution to the problem until the Research Directorate could come up with a new design to completely replace old Asps. So the company that had produced the Wolves was incorporated to our own forces. Like the Asps, the Wolves are equipped with special secret equipment that should not fall into anyone else's hands, and are thus superior to those few remaining original Wolf Mk II fighters out there."

Marcan's brow wrinkled, "So, where do I come into the picture, Mam?"

"I know that your present rank does not give you privileges to some of the information involved in this, but we have a problem with one of the Wolves and you might just be our best man to solve it, Sergeant." She reached for a drawer set behind her big chair and pulled out a thin binder. She placed it on top of her desk where Marcan could see it. "I cannot tell you more about the mission I'm going to give you unless you accept your transfer into another unit. In this dossier are complete papers which will transfer you into Federal Military Intelligence and promotion papers to the rank of Sergeant Major."

Marcan stared at the binder. FMI was not something he had ever considered a possibility in his career. It was not something he would have aimed for on his own, since he liked the close contact he had with common soldiers as a fighter pilot, but he did not any reason why he could not join them. Besides, what Lt. Commander Turman had told him was intriguing. "But there is a two year training period one has to take to enter the FMI," he hesitated.

"We have no time for that. You will be given training material that you can read during your mission."

Marcan was still baffled by the situation, but he did not let it show or slow himself down. "I'll accept the transfer," he said.

"Good, Sgt. Major," Turman said and handed the binder over to him. "Inside you will find what I promised as well as a datapad card with further information on what I'm now going to tell you."

Marcan took the binder and opened it, seeing his name on the transfer papers as well as on a brand new black identification card with a hologram picture of him and the symbol of the FMI. The card meant immunity from almost all police forces in Federal space and with it he had a clearance to enter most restricted systems in Federal space. On the other hand, any imperialists were going to be that much happier to shoot at him. He stared at the card for a moment, wondering what he had stepped into. Then he looked up at the Lt. Commander who waited for him patiently. Marcan suspected that the thrill he felt for the promotion and transfer was soon going to get blasted into smithereens by her. And he was right.

Four hours later he was sitting in the passenger cabin of an Asp Mk II on his way out of the frontier military base. He had barely had time to take part in the services held for Private Hoods and wish the rest of his pilots good luck. He had sent forward a recommendation to get Corporal Rasche a promotion, but had no way of knowing whether she was going to receive it. He promised himself to look into it later.

But he had gone through those last hours at the base in a kind of haze. He had not been able to concentrate on anything and all he could hear in his mind were Turman's words. Emic Troy was alive. The man who had been his sergeant on that fatal mission and whom he had believed dead for the past six years.

Now he had inserted the data card Turman had given him into his new, secure datapad, and watched the final moments of the battle unfold on the small screen as they had really happened. The battle went on as he remembered until the very last moments which he had only seen on battle recordings. Then, at the point where he had been told he had fired a missile that killed Sergeant Troy everything changed. There was a missile fired by him, and the renegade Eagle blew up, but there was also an escape pod that emerged from the flames of the destroyed craft. After that, there were only the escaping Federal Military fighters jumping into hyperspace with him amongst them.

Lt. Commander Turman had explained to him that Sergeant Troy's betrayal would have been too embarrassing for the Federation if it had come out. It was better if he was merely reported dead in action. Marcan looked at the small screen bitterly. This new knowledge only worsened the mood he always had when he thought about the failed mission. Until now he had always been able to find some gratification from the knowledge that he had killed the traitor. But now he knew that the man he had trusted his own life with, and who had betrayed that trust, was still alive somewhere.

But that was not all Turman had told him. What had followed had been even worse. She had told him that he was now the last one of Troy's old students, the rest had been killed in action or murdered otherwise. It appeared that Troy or his employers did not what anyone around on the federal side who knew him personally. It was because of this fact that Marcan had been chosen for the mission. He had been trained by the traitor and so it would be fitting if he were the one to avenge the betrayal and the lives of the other fighter pilots.

That was his true mission: to find and kill the former sergeant. Everything else was just a cover for other field agents. He had been sent to the construction corporation that had been commissioned to build military Wolf Mk II fighters to investigate the theft of one such ship. Since as of yet he really had no investigation skills, this mission was meant only to give cover to the undercover agents already on the scene. The military did not want anyone to know the identity of their agents at the corporation and his appearance would dissolve any suspicions the corporation managers might have.

He removed the data card from his datapad and turned to look at the large computer screen that showed their position on the star map. The Asp Mk II acting as a military personnel transport was going to have to stop at some systems to refuel to get him to his destination. As such, the travel was going to take almost three weeks. He had all that time to himself.

He grimaced and looked at the small box of data cards he was supposed to study in that time. They contained everything from guides on FMI conduct to information retrieval techniques. He laughed at the idea that he should learn it all in just three weeks of travel time, but which was much less when considering the days that were jumped over every time they jumped to hyperspace. In truth, he had only a little over a week to study.

Luyten 789-6 was a faint type M red star and the planet closest to it, de Gaul's Hole, was just what its name suggested: a rocky planet with thin atmosphere. Marcan grimaced as he looked at the planet in the view screen as the pilot was guiding the ship into the atmosphere. There was no sign of life anywhere except under the greenery domes here and there around the capitol, Nakasone. The single commercial space port on the planet was located there, but that was not where they were headed.

The system was filled with heavy manufacturing and mining companies and it was the private space port of one of those manufacturing companies that was their target. The Amaliel Corporation was only a small company, but reputed to be loyal to the Federation. They had been commissioned to modify old Wolf Mk II heavy fighters bought by the military from their previous owners for their new purpose. The commission was a closely held secret and therefore it had been a disaster when one of the newly modified ships had been stolen.

The data cards Marcan had been given had not contained any further information about the ship or the theft. Only one thing he knew from what Turman had told him. Troy had been identified as one of the strange men seen around the manufacturing plant facility a few days before the event.

The Asp settled down with a final thumb, barely felt as it was softened by the inertia damping systems. Marcan rose from his seat and walked down the exit ramp to meet one of the corporation managers. He was wearing his new black FMI uniform and the startled reaction of the middle-aged woman was very visible.

"Welcome to our facilities, Sergeant Major. I'm Eva Coroma, the director of Amaliel Corporation," she managed to say.

Marcan momentarily forgot the teachings of the data card on FMI conduct and failed to add an air of indifference in his voice. Instead, he answered casually, "Greetings, Mam. My name is Marcan Rayger. What have you ready for me?"

Now, taken aback by more than his uniform, the woman stumbled over her words in an attempt to guide him towards the door of the landing bay. Marcan followed her through it and through many other doors and sterile and clean corridors on their way to the mediation room where Coroma said there were others waiting for them. He decided to leave his questions for the moment and kept quiet until they arrived to their destination.

The mediation room was a large round room with a round table, built around a complicated machinery which Marcan guessed was more than a simple hologram displayer. There were two people waiting for him and they stepped towards him to greet him. The first was a greying middle-aged man with alarmingly bulging eyes and the second was a smartly dressed young man with almost black hair and dark features. They introduced themselves as Dan Jamison, the project manager, and Theo Gurlain, the chief of security.

Marcan sat down on the chair he was offered and looked at the two data cards that had been left on the table for him. The first one of them was labelled as surveillance footage with the date of the theft included and the second one was marked as top secret. He presumed that it contained details of the stolen heavy fighter. He left them alone, knowing that they were meant as a future reference of the present meeting.

Ms. Coroma sat beside her colleagues and pushed a button on a control panel in front of her. The machinery in front of them hummed and soon the space above it was distorted with the image of a construction bay. There were three Wolf Mk II ships there, two of them surrounded with construction scaffolds and one on the side, hooked to a plethora of computers. The bay was dimly lit and devoid of humans.

Ms. Coroma studied the image for a full minute before turning to Marcan, "That's what our security cameras recorded for the whole night. Only in the morning did the work crew find out about the theft. The only finished ship was that one on the side and it was unhooked from the analysing equipment and towed out of the bay. The built-in cloaking device made sure that its departure was never noticed on either planetary or system scanners."

"But you do know who was behind the theft?" Marcan asked, waiting to hear about Troy.

It was the young man who answered, "We have photographs of four suspicious people who appeared on our surveillance footage." The view of the construction bay was replaced by four images taken from a distance, each representing a group of pedestrians passing along a street. Then the images zoomed in and each of them focused on one person.

"Thanks to our state of the art recording systems we got clear close-ups of each of them. They were all moving in a way that revealed their inexperience with the low G and they appeared in the area around our facilities 2.3 - 3.2 times more frequently than an average local citizen and 8.6 times more often than an average tourist," the Chief of Security related.

"We don't get many tourists here," the Project Manager Jamison inserted.

Marcan nodded and smiled slightly. Then he turned his attention back to the pictures. He recognised Troy in one of them but did not let the others see it, "Who are they?"

One of the standing 3-D figures was suddenly removed from the city scene and started turning around slowly on a small round pedestal, which gloved in red. It was a figure of a well-proportioned long haired blonde woman in her thirties. Her facial features were soft and round.

"This is Commander Alana Vera, a rather well known mercenary pilot, but currently non-fugitive. She's been known to work for some rather shady figures in the past," Theo said.

"The next one is known as Emic Troy, who was believed a walking corpse until your people cleared that mess out," he said, giving a meaningful glance at Marcan, who studied the picture of his old teacher with interest and tried to hold back the memories that attempted to surface. Troy was just as he remembered him, a man of normal build, slightly less than two metres tall, with greyish brown hair and blue eyes.

"The third and the fourth one are both unknown to us and the Military database did not help us either. Neither of them appear in any of the passenger lists into, or out of, the planet nor the system. In short, we have no idea who they are."

Marcan looked at the two last figures. They were both young and fit men and as common looking as one could be. He knew that they had to be Imperials since Troy had worked for them. And if they were, there was no way of finding out more about them. He waved at the pictures, indicating that he had seen enough of them. "How about the theft itself? How could it be done?" he asked.

The Chief of Security twisted his hands nervously, "We don't know. The state of the art security systems were circumvented from the control room itself, but the guards who were on duty do not remember anything unusual about that night. And we have interrogated them with care."

Marcan nodded. During the weeks aboard the Asp he had read much about the brainwave research and brainwashing techniques of the Imperials and it seemed probable that some such means had been used here as well. In that light, there was a chance that none of the workers at the corporation had cooperated with the thieves during the night of the robbery, at least willingly, but he considered it unlikely. Somewhere there was a leak or the Imperials would never have found out about the Wolf Mk IIs until they were in service and it was highly unlikely that the Imperials would otherwise have considered such a small corporation worth spying on.

"How well are your workers screened?" he asked.

"They are thoroughly checked out and especially the workers on this project have been under close scrutiny since the beginning," Jamison said, blinking nervously.

Marcan knew that the military commission must be very important to a corporation that small and that they were never going to admit that any of their staff were to blame for the theft. Hence he decided to drop the subject, "Is there any sign of where the stolen ship was taken?"

It was the director, Coroma, who answered, "As we mentioned, the ship has a cloaking device and as such it is impossible to track. However, the system scanners detected a hyperspace departure cloud in the vicinity of the planet in a location that no spaceship should have been in."

"At what time was this?" Marcan asked.

The director checked her papers, "Just two hours before the sun rises where we are right now, that is about 2:30 standard time. The tonnage of the ship that passed matched the specifics of one of our Wolves."

"And the destination was?"

"The ship jumped to the system of Faexess. We sent a fighter after it but no further sign of it was evident at the destination. We suspect that the pilot must have intentionally misjumped," Eva Coroma said grimly.

Marcan raised his eyebrows. To intentionally cause a hyperspace drive to misjump was a dangerous procedure that could take the ship anywhere in the galaxy and might very well destroy the drive itself, but it was exactly the kind of thing Troy might do. He had always been rash in his actions and that had brought him fame amongst the other pilots. The rash were usually also dangerous and therefore hated by pilots who wished to stay alive, but Troy had never failed as far as Marcan had known or heard about, and had gained respect.

"I take it that the ship had a military drive?" Marcan asked.

"Yes, class 3," Dan Jamison said.

"Fuel?"

"The ship had only one tonne and the internal tank was only half full, but 15 tonnes were stolen from the warehouse."

"So, the first jump to Faexess took 9 tonnes, and supposing that the misjump did not take him too far from the destination, they had to refuel no more than 25 light years away," the Chief of Security concluded.

"What is that ship's maximum jump range?" Marcan asked, trying to count the figures in his head.

"With the specified drive, it is 16.23 light years," the Project Manager said.

"That's a lot of systems to cover and that was three weeks ago," Marcan mused. "What about the rest of the specifics of the ship?"

Dan Jamison reached for the control panel and pushed a few buttons. The images of the four suspected thieves were substituted with the bulky form of the Wolf Mk II, turning slowly around. The space right beside it was filled with numerical information and Marcan whistled as he saw the numbers. He had always known that the Wolves had been superior to many other standard ships, but now boosted with the best the Federal Military had to offer, it was truly amazing. He realised that in his old Saker Mk III the best course of action upon meeting one of these bastards would be to run like hell. No light or medium fighter was going to be safe with one of the Wolves around. Especially with the cloaking device.

"What is it with that Military Laser?" he asked when he saw the mention of the universally banned weapon.

Dan Jamison grinned, "That's the novelty of this ship, a laser that can shoot anywhere in a five degree radius of where the nose of the ship is pointed. All one has to do is to look at the target when it is within the firing sector and squeeze the trigger and... No more Mr. Bad Guy!"

Marcan's face reddened with anger, "What if the bad guy is the one squeezing the trigger, what then?"

The Project Manager did not answer to that. His eyes bulged and Marcan half expected them to explode. Jamison's enthusiastic grin was replaced by a sickly one. He did not dare to point out that it had been the Military who had provided the weapon, not their corporation.

Marcan calmed down as he looked at the displayed data for a little longer, "How much better is this ship really if compared to a similarly equipped Asp Mk II?" he asked at last.

"Well, its hull strength is almost 17 % better, and the increased cargo capacity gives the room needed for the cloaking device. Also its manoeuvrability is about equal to light fighters and that of Viper Mk II, the new and improved GalCop Space Policing ship from Faulcon DeLacy corporation. In right hands it will be the most devastating Federal Military ship ever built," Jamison said, cheering up again.

"Except that the original version was not built by us. We only modified it," Coroma corrected. Then she looked at Marcan straight in the eye, "I would like to know what exactly is your part in this investigation?"

Marcan looked back at her blankly before answering, "I'm here to find the leak and after I have done that, I'll go and find the stolen ship and destroy it."

"How are you going to find the leak, if there is one?" Coroma asked.

Marcan attempted to appear certain as he answered, "Wrong-doers always leave tracks to follow. It's only a question of how hard one is willing to look. And believe me, I have the means and the will to look very hard indeed. First, I need access to all of your computer systems and then it is just a matter of time."

He received the access codes to all the levels of security of the computer network later that day, but he knew that he could never use them for anything good. Therefore, he played around in the system at a console in a private room that had been arranged for him. He accessed virtually every file of any possible interest that he could find, downloaded them into the secure memory of his datapad, but deleted them immediately afterwards. To all probe programs and people it was going to look as if he was really investigating the corporation and its employees in an attempt to find the leak. But, in fact, he was only waiting for the local undercover agents to contact him and tell him what they had already found out and then return to their cover jobs.

The wait for the first agent to contact him was not long, but he had time to get bored with the fake investigation and he started to actually read through some of the files and run them through analysis programs just in case he might find something. He had just stumbled upon some surprising information about non-human employees at the corporation when the doorbell chimed.

He pushed a button on the control board beside the computer console and leaned back on his soft chair to watch as a nondescript brown haired man entered the room through the opened doorway and looked around curiously. Then he looked at Marcan and walked to one of the chairs at the only table in the room.

"I'm sorry if you had to wait, Sergeant Major, but it took us a while to turn off the surveillance cameras in this part of the office floor. It was necessary to keep my identity secret."

Marcan nodded, "I understand..." he left his sentence hanging, waiting for the other man to identify himself. He did not, and Marcan assumed that he had to be of higher rank than himself. So, he decided to go on, "The secret of your identity was exactly the reason I was sent here in the fist place."

"I know," the other man began, his blue eyes appearing cold, "It was told to me that I should give you all the information I have found out and that you were going to make the necessary arrests."

Marcan nodded again, "Then you have found out something incriminating?"

The other man smiled slightly, or at least it appeared to be a smile. "Yes, although they managed to keep this plan secret from many, including me, before it was carried out, it was easy enough to catch those responsible afterwards." He looked at the terminal Marcan had been accessing, "Any files you find in the systems are useless. You have to know how to access people's private datapads to find out the real secrets."

Marcan had to nod again, and he knew that the agent he was facing knew about his sudden transfer and promotion. Otherwise he would not have attempted to educate him in the matters of investigation. But he did not mind that, he was glad to receive help and information anywhere he could get it. He praised himself for not being set in his own ways yet, like so many others in the military who did not seem to see anything but their own navel. "Yes," he admitted, "I was just trying to see if I could use these analysis programs and find something out with them." He indicated the open small plastic box that held some of the data cards he had received from Turman.

The unknown agent reached to the table and took the box. He examined the labels on the cards, nodding now and then, but mostly frowning. At last he put the box away and looked at Marcan again, "You've got a nice collection there, but it is mostly worthless. The computer analysis programmes are in general at most as capable as the people who programmed them and as such they are useless in tougher cases. You can use those programs to learn and experiment, but the best way you can go is to analyse those programs themselves, look how they are built, what line of logic they follow and learn from there. That way, you'll learn to analyse the data yourself and can see discrepancies that the programs are not equipped to handle."

"I see your point," Marcan replied.

"Yes, well, back to the case in hand," the undercover agent said, opening a folder that he had brought with him. "I have here papers that include the names of the traitors as well as the proof of their actions. Of course, most of the proof has been taken illegally from their private datapads, but there is enough circumstantial evidence to give you the legal right to examine their data cards and everything else they own to find it out anyway. As it stands, none of them have any idea that they have been caught, and if you move quickly, you will get them all. We will work in the background to shut down the space port and other means of transportation so none of them will have a chance to escape even if they do get a word of warning."

Marcan looked at the papers, surprised to see so many names there. With a quick count he reached as many as thirteen names. It was much more than he had expected, considering that the thieves themselves were outsiders, not corporation employees. "This many? Were these all involved in the theft? I thought that the guards that were on duty that night had already been inspected and found not guilty?"

The agent sitting on the chair opposite him looked at him coldly, "Consider this, Sergeant Major. They were on guard that night and they claim that they remember nothing unusual. Now, we know that the surveillance equipment is controlled from a room in which guards are always present. How do you propose the equipment could have been tampered with without any of the guards seeing anything?"

Marcan shrugged, "Perhaps an advanced technique of brainwashing...?"

"Do you believe in it strongly enough to go and trust those guards?" the agent said grimly.

Marcan's green eyes flashed with realisation, "So, even if they are not guilty, they can no longer be trusted by us."

"Yes. Even if the Amaliel Corporation is ready to believe them, and even if they are innocent, the military cannot take the chance. If interrogations should later vindicate them, very good, but because of the chance of the opposite, we have to get them away from this project immediately."

"I understand fully," Marcan Rayger said, "I will arrange the arrests of these people immediately with the local military police."

"You do that," the agent said getting up from his chair, "I'll take care that none of them have a chance of escape. You'll find my recommendation about the course of action to be taken with these suspects in the folder as well."

Marcan nodded and stood up as the agent left the room. Then he looked at the folder he had left after him and sighed. He could not remember anything he had done in his life having been as useless as what he was just doing; working as a smoke screen for the men who did the real work. He was used again, just as he had been used in the scam of Troy's supposed death for the past years.

Trying to push the thought out of his mind, he sat down and leafed through the folder until he found the list of people he had to contact to make the arrests. It had all been prepared for him, all he had to do was to follow the steps. It was not so complicated than a simple monkey could not have done it in his stead.

The rest of the day was a simple routine for him. All he had to do was to appear at certain locations at certain times and oversee the arrests. The people at the company and the local military police were seeing him as a master investigator who had solved the crime in mere hours after he had landed on the planet. Only the undercover agents at the scene and his superiors knew the truth. When the arrests were done and he had ordered the local investigators to send him any information that was uncovered in the following interrogations, he went to see the corporation director, Ms. Eva Coroma again.

The corridors outside her office were spotless in their cleanness and her personal assistant was a young man of ancient Spanish descent. Marcan could see that he was very muscular under his dark grey suit, and smiled. He knew that those muscles were next to worthless to the man in real melee combat if one did not know how to use them. In fact, too much musculature worked against someone who had not been properly trained. The military preferred soldiers with lean bodies of steel hard strength, not hormone-stuffed pillows.

He was surprised at his own dislike of the young personal assistant. He knew that it was not like him to judge people by appearance, but he found himself already regarding the young man with distaste. And his voice was colder than ice when he requested to meet Ms. Coroma. As he followed the assistant to the director's office, he shuddered as he realised that he was venting his anger towards the people who used him on the young innocent man before him. It was the detest that had built up inside him all through the step-by-step procedure of the arrests that was now seeping through.

He was glad that he had understood what was happening to him before he himself became like those who used him; before he turned into someone who would hate every single person that came on his way and see in them only a potential tool that could be used. He would hate them because they were more free than he was.

Shaking his head, he entered the office past the young assistant, making himself to nod to him kindly. He was going to fight for his soul. He was not going become like so many other FMI agents. He was going to be an efficient agent, but as himself. Those were his promises to himself.

"Good evening, Sergeant Major," Eva Coroma said as she moved away from behind her desk. "I must admit that you took me by surprise when you made arrests so soon after you came in."

Marcan shook hands with her and followed he back to the table. "Well, Mam, it was not that hard really. I simply arrested everyone who could have had something to do with the theft. There will be further interrogations and some of the people I arrested may yet be released." He said, sitting down on the chair that Coroma had not offered him.

Ms. Coroma looked coldly back at him and sat down also. With some doing, she managed to keep her voice polite, "How long will that take? You arrested some key people from the construction and design teams and we'd like to get them back as soon as possible."

Marcan looked back at her, trying to overcome his desire to apologise for sitting down as if he owned the place. He realised that he had made a mistake, but it had been simply because he had felt exhausted by the strain being a puppet inflicted on him. Then he forced his head clear and answered the question, "I don't know. It may take a few days, but no longer."

Coroma nodded and moved on, "And did you find out why the ship was stolen, and for whom?"

"I suspect it was the imperials, trying to find out what we will be throwing at them. The ship is probably already at some secret camp somewhere, being studied."

"And you will go there and destroy that camp and the ship with it?" Coroma asked, her voice slightly shaky.

Marcan Rayger raised his eyebrow in surprise, "How did you come to that conclusion?"

Ms. Coroma looked back at him and there was a small smile on her lips now, "So, you didn't know yet?"

"Know what?" Marcan asked, all the more mystified.

"We received an order to prepare a ship for you, equipped with two nuclear missiles," she answered, her voice rising in pitch when she mentioned the horrible weapons. "That can only mean that you will be sent to destroy something big and well-defended."

"Two missiles? What kind of a ship?" Marcan asked, wondering what he was going to need two missiles for. Did someone suspect that he might miss with the first one?

"One of the Wolf Mk II heavy fighters. Actually it is the third we have finished thus far. We will need your handprint and retina scan for the ship's security system. Unlike the ship that was stolen, this one will be programmed to accept only you and your co-pilot on the pilot's seat."

Marcan nodded. The sudden preparation of the ship must mean either that the base where the stolen Wolf was studied had been identified or that it had been spotted in some other system. The fact that he was going to have nuclear missiles on his ship was a strong indication that the first choice was the more probable.

Later, when he had left Ms. Coroma's office and visited the factory floor to get his hand and eye scanned, he got a word from the local Federal base that he was expected there for a debriefing. Marcan felt his moods elevating as he thought that he was once again going to get to pilot a ship through the dark space with no one to tell him what to do.

Of course, it would be a mission flight but that was something that Marcan was used to. It did not matter to him that the missions came from above, he only wanted to make his own choices on how he carried those missions out. And that was now again possible for him. The only thing that worried him was that when piloting a Wolf Mk II he needed to have a co-pilot in the ship as well.

He arrived to the Amaliel Corporation's space port where the Asp that had brought him there was waiting for him. He walked up the ramp and entered the ship, where his pilot was waiting for him. Marcan wondered if he was the one who was going to be his co-pilot in the next ship as well. That would not be too bad, since the man was as unobtrusive as one could be. They had spoken with each other on their way to the system, of course, when Marcan had not spent his time with the data cards, but neither of them felt any kind of necessity to talk when they were in the same cabin. As with almost all pilots, they were a lonely lot who preferred peace and quiet of the space, not bustling cities. The bars at space ports were nice breaks now and then, where one could exchange stories and brag about past successes.

The short flight to the Federal base space port went uneventfully as Marcan spent the time packing his travel satchel with his spare clothing and other belongings that were still in the vacuum stores of the Asp.

As the Asp landed again, he threw the satchel onto the bed and prepared for the debriefing that was to follow. When the ship had been lowered into the underground hangar, he stepped out, still wearing his black uniform. There was no one to meet him but a common soldier who guided him out of the hangar and into the nearby pilots' lounge. The room was empty and Marcan looked around the tables and neatly ordered lines of chairs, wondering whether anyone was ever let in. It was too clean to have seen much use.

Soon a door at the back of the room opened and an inconspicuous middle-aged man walked towards him. He had brown hair and eyes and he wore a pair of archaic glasses on his nose that made him seem like a mole which had suddenly been brought under bright lights.

"Welcome, Sergeant Major Rayger!" the short man exclaimed when he was close enough to peer at his uniform. "I'm Miller and I'm here to briefly tell you about your mission."

Because the man had no insignias to mark his rank, Marcan simply offered his hand in greeting. The little man jumped away from the gesture and walked to a nearby chair, where he found safety. Marcan wondered at his behaviour and followed his suit, finding a chair for himself as well. He checked if the chair was clean and safe to sit on, but saw that, like the whole room, the chair was as clean as if it had just been decontaminated with the worst possible liquids.

When he had sat down, the little man looked around the room appreciatively. Then he turned to look at Marcan, "This is my private lounge, Sergeant Major, if you were wondering. They hold me in quite an esteem around here."

"I can see that, sir," Marcan said.

"You are the FMI agent sent to find and destroy the stolen starcraft," Miller pointed out, and without expecting any kind of an answer, he continued, "It was your old trainer and sergeant, a man called Troy, who was involved with that theft. He took the ship without anyone noticing and with the help of three others, one a known mercenary and two unidentified young males. In addition, he received help from at least three people from inside the corporation."

When Marcan had digested the last bit of information, he realised who, or rather, what the little man was. He was a trained interrogator and probably the man who was in charge of getting the last bit of information out of the thirteen arrested people from the Amaliel Corporation. Marcan looked at the man with new appreciation and fear, for despite his frail appearance that man was a master at inflicting pain to his victims and getting them to spill out all but their guts.

"The interrogation of the prisoners is going well, then?" Marcan asked.

Miller looked at him and wrinkled his nose briefly to lift his glasses higher, "Yes, you might say that. I have already found out that four of them are innocent. You people were hasty to make such fool arrests so quickly. You caused those innocent people much discomfiture."

Marcan did not want to think what the discomfiture involved precisely. He had some idea of the investigation methods from the data cards he had studied on his way to the system, but even that little had made him feel sick. He wanted to rely on his brains only, to deduce the facts, not to inflict pain to get them. But he realised that it was not always enough, especially when one was in a hurry to get things done.

Then the mole-man continued, "The statements from the prisoners verified that all four of the strangers seen in the surveillance footage were involved in the theft and that they all left the planet with the Wolf Mk II that they stole. Troy and the female mercenary left aboard the stolen ship, whereas the two men left in another cloaked craft, probably the one in which they had all entered the system in the first place."

Marcan nodded, "That they had access to a cloaking device suggests that they were indeed imperials."

"Yes," Miller agreed, "that is true. Now, listen to me as I read you the mission information."

To Marcan's surprise the other man did not produce a datapad to view and read the information to him. Instead, he saw a faint glimmer in the glasses that the man wore and realised that there was a computer installed in them. They were not so archaic glasses, after all. With them on, the man could record and review any event that he witnessed and he probably used the built-in computer to go through witness testimonies over and over. Marcan wondered if he had been recording their conversation as well.

"An agent in the field reported that the stolen craft entered the imperial system of Exioce a week ago and landed on the sixth planet where it is known that there is a military base. There is also a military defence satellite orbiting the planet, and it has to be destroyed before the base can be attacked. You need one nuclear missile to destroy the satellite, and another to destroy the base itself.

"As you enter the system, you will be immediately informed if the stolen ship has left the base, but if you do not receive such message, you are to proceed to the sixth planet in the system where the base is located."

The man read through the mission description in a dry and droning voice that made it difficult to follow what he was saying, but Marcan made out the necessary facts. He knew something what the description did not say, and that was the obvious fact that there would be a fleet of fighters protecting the base.

"Is the mission clear to you, Sergeant Major Rayger?" Miller asked.

"Yes, sir, it is. When do I leave?"

"Immediately. The sooner you get there and destroy the base, the better chance there is that they have not yet had time to learn everything they can from it. Also, the chance that Troy is there at the base as well is greater the sooner you leave."

"Who will be my co-pilot?" Marcan asked, remembering his earlier worrying.

The small man did not answer that. Instead he stood up and turned to go. Marcan was about to repeat the question when a new voice behind him stopped him.

"I think that will be me."

Marcan recognised the voice immediately and he turned around to greet Sheila Rasche who had just entered the lounge. She was as he remembered her, but then again, he had only left her a few weeks earlier. There was a smile on her thin lips and her sharp nose twitched as she looked back at him.

"Sheila! How did you come here?"

The woman shrugged and it was then that Marcan noticed the chevron in the sleeve of her pilot's uniform. She had been promoted to the rank of sergeant according to his wishes. "Only a few days after you had left, I got orders to jump into my Saker and head here. I did not know that I was going to work with you until this very moment."

Marcan fell silent for a few brief seconds. In a Saker Mk III Sheila had reached the system much earlier than him, perhaps even a week, as the smaller craft travelled faster through the hyperspace than the larger ships. "How long have you been here?" He asked.

"Over a week. They have been training me on the specifics of this fabulous new heavy fighter, Wolf Mk II, for all that time."

"You have flown it?" Marcan exclaimed.

"Only in a simulator, but it's like a dream to handle for that big a ship! I can't wait to get to pilot one of those."

"Well, it seems that you don't have to wait for long. We've got to go."

Sheila walked beside him through the corridors back to the hangar. As they got into the Asp, she told him how after he had left, an attack fleet had been formed and the pirate infested neighbour system had been attacked. There had been two finished bases in the asteroid field, complete with hangars and repair facilities for the ships. It had been from that battle against pirates that Sheila had been called away and sent on this new mission.

As their ship transported them back towards the Amaliel Corporation's landing bay Marcan explained their mission to his new co-pilot as well as he knew it himself. When he mentioned that they would have to use the cloaking device of the Wolf Mk II to get to the close proximity of the base relatively safely, Sheila interrupted him.

"Cloaking device? We have a cloaking device in the ship?"

Marcan realised that although she had had lessons with the Wolf, she had not been revealed the full array of special equipment the heavy fighter had. "Yes," he said, "a cloaking device and a military laser among other things."

The mention of the military laser brought another gasp from the sergeant and Marcan took out his datapad and inserted the data card with the specifics of the ship in it. When the screen filled up with data, he handed the pad over to her and observed her reactions to the new info. She already knew what the ship could do when it came to manoeuvrability and speed, but much of the specialised equipment was a surprise to her.

"This is more impressive than the stats of the Asp Mk II!" she said when she had read the list. The military scanner and radar mapper in themselves were a welcome improvement to any pilot, linked together, so that the pilot could bring out a radar display of the ships in the space around him, rated according to their threat value on basis of the equipment installed and the accuracy and rate of fire.

The Project Manager Dan Jamison greeted them as they settled down on the landing strip. As they walked out, they could see that a Wolf Mk II had already been brought out in the open, ready to go.

"Sergeant Major Rayger," Dan greeted and nodded towards Sheila, "Sergeant." Then he waved his right arm towards the ship that settled near to the Asp was clearly the more intimidating ship. But Marcan did not know if it was only because he knew what it was capable of. It was almost double in height, compared to the sleek form of the Asp Mk II, but lost some in width and was about equal in length.

There were on the vast hull big letters that gave FW-003 as its registration number. Marcan presumed that it was because it was the third finished Wolf Mk II. Also, there was the Federal Military insignia painted beside the white letters.

"It is ready for you," Dan said, "in addition to the two nuclear missiles, we gave you one naval missile as well. The eight shield generators should be more than enough for you and the rest of the space is filled with military fuel, 23 tons of it. Also the internal tanks are full."

"How about the weapon in the top turret?" Marcan asked, pointing at the bulky shape on the top of the ship as they got nearer to it.

"It's a light military laser, about fourth of the power of the main laser, but handy when you have two pilots."

"I guess that will be my territory," Sheila inserted, giving a wide grin to both Dan and Marcan. The Project Manager's eyes bulged with pleasure.

Then Marcan walked up the ramp into the air lock of the ship with Sheila and positioned his eye in front of the retina scanner. The scanner hummed and the access door beside it slid aside, its hydraulics hissing soundly. Marcan turned to wave his hand to Dan in thanks and then they entered through the doorway and the access ramp folded up, sealing them in their brand new ship.

The first place they came to was the main bridge, equipped with two pilot seats in front of the main systems consoles and monitors, and a wide bench behind those seats, against the back wall. It seemed comfortable enough to catch a few hours of sleep if necessary. The descent well to the living quarters was on the other side of the bench and for a moment Marcan considered going there. But instead, he threw his satchel on the bench and sat on the pilot's seat. Sheila followed his suit and sat down on the seat on his right side.

"Better that we get going as quickly as possible," he explained to Sheila. Then he punched the buttons on the Map Panel and scrolled the map to show the sector where the Exioce system was. The computer indicated that the distance was 25,9 light years from where they were at the moment. It was too far for the ship, the maximum range of which was a little over 16 light years. Marcan scrolled the map towards the nearer systems and decided that the best place for them to use as a midway point was Delta Pavonis system, only 15,55 light years away. They might not have to stop there to refuel since they had plenty enough onboard, but in case they decided to, Delta Pavonis would be a good system for it.

But he did not have to decide such things yet. Instead, he started up the interplanetary drives and locked the hyperspace computer on Delta Pavonis. Then he made a launch request and as soon as approval came, he picked the ship up and turned the nose of the craft towards the sky. Hitting the acceleration to full power he took them to 12 kilometres as quickly as he could and engaged the hyperspace engine.

Only seconds later they were 15.55 light years from where they had been only moments before and the yellow sun of the system appeared on their viewscreen along with the orbiting planets.

"It's 10.66 light years from here to Exioce," he said after viewing the navigation computer again. "We have enough fuel left to jump there and back and do our mission."

"But," Sheila inserted, "we might need more fuel than that if the stolen craft escapes the system before we reach the base. I suggest that we make a stop here and refuel."

"You are correct, Sergeant." Marcan said, realising the wisdom in her words. He then turned to the autopilot systems and punched a key. The main viewscreen was filled with the names of the commercial starports that they could pick as its target. Marcan decided to leave out all the bigger stations and picked out a small orbital trading post, Hooper Relay, that orbited around the second planet of the system, Suzuki Reward, a rocky planet with thin atmosphere as the system information labelled it. When he punched on the autopilot, the ship turned around by itself and headed towards the selected target, about 8.4 AUs away.

"That will take about three days," Sheila said.

Marcan had to agree. That gave them a little less than three days to spend before they reached the trading post. Even though the travel through hyperspace, or witchspace as it was often called, took almost no time at all from the pilots' perspective to travel, the in-system travel was still slow, even with a ship with a main thruster acceleration of over 22 Gs.

That kind of acceleration would have killed the pilots very soon, if the ships were not equipped with inertia damping systems that protected those travelling inside. The hull of the ship had to be built strongly, though, to endure such forces. The inertia damping system, or IDS as it was usually called, did not negate the inertia completely, as such a thing was still beyond the current science, but it lessened it's effect to some degree. In the Wolf Mk II, Marcan and Sheila felt the 22G acceleration as only a little over 1G, and it felt almost as if they were planetside.

Some pilots, especially in smaller crafts which had no living quarters, used various trance inducing systems that rendered them in to a kind of sleep to speed up the observed travel time. Marcan and most other real pilots did not like such systems, though, and even in his old Saker Mk III he had often remained fully awake for long periods of time, enjoying the vast velvet of the space around him. He did not like the idea of sleeping through the most part of his life and he and Sheila were not going to do so now, either. Especially since they had not yet seen all of the ship.

Of course, some of the pilots who were for the stardreamer, the common name for all trance inducing systems, said that it was a minor payment for the fact that they practically jumped over several days of real time on each of their hyperspace jumps. Since they did not age at all during those days, and slept most of the travel to the next base, they actually lived only when fighting for their life against space pirates or when visiting the various starports, which were all the same, when one thought about it. It was the jumping over days while in hyperspace that was supposed to be the great thing about being a pilot. That way one had to experience only about a half of each month, supposing that one made four rather long jumps each month, and one lived for at least twice as long as other people, which was over a hundred years these days. One got to see the development of the human kind from a perspective no planet dweller ever could.

Marcan did not see it like that though. He had heard the argument for many times, but he always stayed on his opinion that the pilots did not really experience life as long as they did not mingle with normal people, or actually took part in the development of the human kind. That was the reason he had originally joined the military. He had wanted to be there, out in the frontier and elsewhere, helping the pioneers start on new planets with no worry of pirates or other enemies. That was the difference between him and an ordinary trader pilot: he wanted to be a part of the humanity, not just make a profit out of it. And, being a pilot, alone in space, had always been his dream.

Marcan stood up from his pilot's seat and looked around the bridge as the autopilot continued accelerating the craft towards the far away planet. It was small, just high enough for them to stand up straight, although it was easier to Sheila with her shorter stature. Marcan picked up his satchel again and headed towards the descent well.

"I think I'll change to something more comfortable and take a look around this ship before we start examining the special equipment." He was in a dire need to get out of the dark FMI uniform. It reminded him too much of the way that he had been used thus far in his new job.

"Oh, I think I'll do the same," Sheila said, "I wonder what kind of a shower one can get here. I hope it isn't one of those awful sand-wash types!"

Marcan grinned. He rather enjoyed the raw feeling one's skin had after it was bombarded with millions of tiny sand particles, but he understood Sheila's dislike. "I doubt it. After all, this ship is supposed to replace the Asp Mk II as a high status military personnel transport. In the Asp that I travelled on, they had a real water shower, at least in the passenger's cabin."

"I've got a feeling that this particular ship doesn't have passenger cabins," Sheila mused aloud as she followed him down the ladder.

She was proved to be correct only moments later when they reached the living quarters, but then again Marcan had expected her to be. As almost all the ships in service were just hulls with a drive and thrusters fitted in, and all other equipment were standardised pieces fitted in at various shipyards around the known space. The passenger cabins were easy enough to remove to increase the room left for cargo. And in this particular mission they needed as much cargo space for fuel as they could get and thus the passenger cabins had been left out completely.

But they were lucky with the shower, after all. A water shower had been installed into the pilots' quarters as well and Sheila announced that she would be the one taking the very first shower ever on this ship. Marcan happily agreed, preferring to look around the small quarters where there were only two bunks and lockers for the pilots with no possibility for privacy whatsoever. Then again, one of them usually had to stay up on the bridge, so they could have that privacy, after all.

Marcan opened one of the lockers and saw that the pilot's suits inside were too small for him. Then he went to the other locker and found what he wanted. The military base had sent an additional FMI uniform for him, but also some more casual clothing. He opened his satchel and took out the data cards and the datapad and put them into the locker. Then he dug out some of his other clothes and put them in as well. He had left most of his personal stuff in his locker at his own military base and so he did not have much to unpack.

He turned around and went to the computer panel at the only table in the room and clicked it on. He checked the newspaper catalogue and noticed that there was no newspapers in the computers memory. He cursed. One of his favourite pass time activities was taken away from him because someone had forgot to upload the latest papers.

Then he noticed that in an emergency one could control some of the functions of the ship directly from the living quarters, but because the chair was not a proper pilot's seat, it would be an uncomfortable experience. He hoped that they would not have to try it out on the present mission.

Marcan left the computer on, but stood up again looking around for something to do. He knew that they would have to check the navigation computer's database about Exioce to prepare for their attack, but he thought that they should do it together. And besides, they had almost three days to do it.

Then he realised that when Sheila came from the shower she was probably going to pick something else to wear, and in that case he should get out of the living quarters. It would not do to get her mad at him this soon into their mission. He went to the ladder and climbed back to the bridge. Immediately he took a look at the big main monitor, which gave a view of what was outside. The planet had not yet grown in size at all, but the number indicating the remaining distance had dropped slightly.

He walked to the control panel and punched a key that brought up on the monitor labels for every large identifiable body. The planets on the screen immediately got their names attached to them, as did the sun, but he also spotted two registration numbers on the screen, belonging to other nearby ships. The Wolf Mk II would show up on their monitors as FW-003, that stood for Federal Wolf number tree, as far as Marcan could deduce. He wondered if the other pilots had ever seen a Wolf before in their careers and if they knew how dangerous it was. They could have no idea that it was a military craft unless they opened up communications with them and Marcan answered truthfully. Still, he hoped that they were wise enough pilots not to consider attacking them in hopes of precious cargo.

He did not exactly want to know what the military lasers were capable of until they reached Exioce, but he knew that Delta Pavonis was not the safest system when it came to pirates. Only a few systems, like the old Sol, were under such a heavy military control that no pirate could survive there for long. Many other Core Systems suffered of more or less pirate activity.

He did not sit down on the pilot's seat, but turned to the co-pilot's control panel and filled the other monitor with the view from the top turret, calling up text labels for that monitor as well. Then he turned the turret around and observed the monitor carefully. They did not have a bottom turret and thus he was not able to check what was on that side, but what he could see on the 180° half sphere that the turret covered, showed no more spaceships in the vicinity.

Then he noticed the unfamiliar piece of equipment on the control table. It was a pair of black plastic glasses. He took them in his hands and looked at them. They were not exactly glasses; only frames with a couple of small cameras attached to the front part of the stems. Instead of pointing forwards they were aimed where eyes were to be when they were put on. He did just that, suspecting already what they were meant for. Nothing happened until he sat down on the pilot's seat and looked at the monitor in front of him. Then the red crosshairs appeared on the monitor, moving around the other crosshairs that indicated their current direction of travel and attitude. As Marcan moved his eyes, the red crosshairs moved here and there, refusing to cross a certain reach from the other crosshairs. It was the crosshairs of the military laser, following his eyes and ready to shoot at anything inside five degree radius of their current heading.

Marcan took the glasses off and stood up again, glancing at the control board and seeing the distinctively blue button, labelled 'cloaking device'. He did not know much about how those devices worked, except that they hid the ship from all scanners, even the best possible system scanners available. He made a mental note of reading the manuals that were probably stashed in some of the small lockers on the left side of the pilot's seat. Similar lockers were also on the right side of the co-pilot's seat.

Then he heard Sheila coming up the descent well and turned to see what she had decided to wear, hoping that his wish to change into something more comfortable would not be only his wish. But Sheila was wearing the blue military issue off duty attire that seemed so comfortable to Marcan that he wanted to take off his FMI uniform immediately.

"How was the shower?" he asked.

"It was great! You must try it also," she exclaimed.

"Do I smell that bad, sergeant?" Marcan joked and walked towards the well. "While I'm gone, try to figure out what we need to know about this ship. And read the manuals on the cloaking device and find out how it works," he said and disappeared from the bridge.

When he got to the living quarters, he took of his uniform and put it into the locker beside the other one. Then he took out the off-duty clothes and placed them on the bed. He looked at the clothes for a moment, wondering what he would do if he was in a position that he should pick his own clothes to wear. The military had provided him clothes for as long as he remembered and he knew next to nothing about the current trends. Then he shook his head, driving away the alien thoughts. He wondered why he had even thought about such things as he went to the almost virgin shower room.

"It seems that we will not be able to use the cloaking device to its full effect in an atmosphere," Sheila said when he came back to the bridge, refreshed by the shower and wearing the comfortable off-duty clothes.

"What do you mean?" Marcan asked, "They stole the craft exactly by using that very system to escape notice!"

"Yes, scanners are still unable to detect the ship, but visual detection is possible there. It seems that too dense mass around the ship disrupts the cloaking effect so that total cloaking is impossible."

"Ok. How about the rest of the equipment?"

"Nothing very special, except for the main weapon which seems to be custom built for this ship," Sheila reported. "Everything else is the way it was in the simulator I practised with. The scanner has a zoom option from 100 k to 25 k, with the 50 k as the normal setting. The radar mapper is one of the nicest features I have seen in any ship, with the feature of ranking the enemies according to their threat estimate."

"Yes, I heard about that one already," Marcan interrupted. "I think I'll try docking this manually when we get to the trading post so that I get some practice on how this ship handles. That take-off I did was not even nearly enough."

"I think that you will be pleased with the manoeuvrability. I suggest that you take the autopilot offline and try it even before we get near to the planets."

Marcan nodded, "I might do that. But we should think about the attack to the military base at Exioce. The system scanners will of course spot our hyperspace entry cloud days before we actually arrive. That should not be too dangerous since there are dozens of ships coming in each day, but we should be ready in case there is a welcoming committee waiting for us with their beam lasers burning."

"So, we'll rely on the cloaking device right from the start?"

"Yes, as soon as we can turn it on after entering the system. Then we'll head towards the sixth planet. It will probably be at least a two day flight before we get near to it. If we get there unnoticed, as we should, that will pass as soon as we have destroyed the military satellite orbiting the planet. From that point on, we'll have to expect trouble even with the cloaking device on."

"Because that device won't work properly in the atmosphere, we'll have to enter it far away from the target area," Sheila said. "Flying low, we can hope to evade detection long enough to get a distance of about 600 k before they will inevitably detect us, depending on the landscape and how well we can use it to hide."

Marcan nodded, the sergeant's figures sounded plausible enough to him, although we would not rely on them completely. There was always that possibility that something would go wrong.

For the rest of the flight towards Hooper Relay trading post, they discussed the plan and made some modifications to it, but they also spent time testing the ship and once they even turned on the cloaking device. Nothing seemed to happen on the computer screen, but the bridge lights were hooked to the system so that they turned red, giving the bridge a strange new shade.

While Sheila spent her free time writing her personal journal and reading various books from data cards that she had bought before the mission, Marcan spent his time going through the training data cards. As he went through the cards and lessons, he began to wonder more and more why he had ever agreed to join the FMI. Flying was what he enjoyed the most and the life of investigation, spying and bribery did not attract him as much as he had thought at first. He believed that if he could have made the choice again now, he would decline the offer. But, then again, what Lt. Commander Turman had told him just before the offer had been too intriguing to let it just go. And when he had found out the truth about Troy he had been completely hooked to the mission that was then given him.

Except that now he could not imagine continuing as a FMI agent after the current mission. No other mission would be personal to him and thus they would mean nothing to him. And there was no way they were going to let him return to his earlier position, either. For the first time he tried sleeping on his new bed, he had nightmares about his future life, spying and arresting people, as an unfeeling and uncaring tool of the Federation. During the second night, he saw equally bad nightmares about Sergeant Troy betraying his own and shooting Marcan's fighter into a ball of fire. He woke up drenched with sweat on both mornings.

Of course the mornings were not real mornings, since there was no sun rising above the horizon, only the beeping of the clock that said that, according to the Galactic Standard Time, it was now morning.

On that second morning, the last morning before they would dock to the Hooper Relay trading post, Marcan went to the bridge after taking a shower, and looked at the main display. Sheila was there, sitting on the pilot's seat when he came in.

"Anything happened?" Marcan asked, expecting to hear about at least one pirate attack.

"No," Sheila answered, "there's been nothing new. I watched a couple of movies and wrote my journal when I got bored watching that distance indicator. I even took a nap on that couch of ours."

Marcan laughed. Watching the main display and waiting for the AUs to change into kilometres and then kilometres passing by was the most hopeless pass-time activity that he could imagine. But then, he thought, so was reading through hundreds of volumes of training material, which was what he did mostly on his free time. But now, as he looked at the main display he noticed that they had actually got nearer to their destination. The yellow type G sun of Delta Pavonis had moved out of the screen and the planet Suzuki Reward was now getting bigger by the hour.

Not that the planet offered anything to look at. They had flown past the orbit of the only garden world of the system and Suzuki Reward was just another rocky brown planet with a thin atmosphere, the way de Gaul's Hole at Luyten 789-6 had been. In fact, Marcan could not spot any difference between the two, except that the local sun gave the planet a slightly different colour than the type M red star had given to the planet where Amaliel Corporation was based. And he suspected that he imagined even that small difference, since the colour ratings of the stars indicated differences in colour mostly undetectable to a naked eye.

"I wonder why no pirates attacked us on the way?" Marcan said, not really meaning it as a question.

"I have wondered the same thing, myself," Sheila answered glancing at the main display. "This system should not be this safe to travel in. The few ships that have come near enough to us to identify have been innocent traders, no more."

Marcan grimaced as he felt a strange feeling of dread coming over him. He could not put his finger to it, but he felt like he was being used again, or baited into a trap. Someone had to be out there, making sure that he reached Exioce 6 without trouble, and they did not trust that he could fight even a few pirates away by himself. But then he shook his head. That thought was absurd. He had been sent to destroy the military base and kill Troy and that was what he was going to do.

"What is it?" Sheila asked.

"Nothing, just thinking about finally meeting up with Troy."

"Yes, you told that he betrayed you in battle. That he killed some of your friends. Was that why they sent you to do this mission?"

"That's what they said," Marcan answered, realising that he had begun to wonder it himself. "I don't know really. It appears that I'm the only one alive of Troy's old team and they want me to revenge the murders of all the others." And that included many Marcan's old friends and all the other pilots who had survived from that fight in which Troy's true allegiance had been revealed. There were so many names and faces that he remembered, but who were all dead now.

"Did Troy really kill them all?" Sheila asked.

"I guess some of them died in normal battle, but I checked the files and it seems that many died in suspicious circumstances and some were outright murdered in public bars and at civilian space ports. It may have been Troy, but it may also be the imperials making sure that he has no friends on our side."

"To make sure that he sticks with them?"

Marcan shrugged. He did not know really. It was all guessing on his part, based on the few files that he had had time to access since the promotion and transfer. He had heard of some of the deaths earlier, of course, through his old friends, but he had not made the connection until he had been told that Troy was still alive.

"How come you are still alive?" Sheila asked.

Marcan frowned, "I don't know. Just luck, I guess."

"There is no luck," Sheila answered, looking at him weirdly, almost suspiciously. "There has to be a reason."

Marcan did not like the turn the conversation had taken. The suspicion he had banished only a few moments earlier came back now, but he still resisted believing it. "I haven't been outside the military camp that much. Perhaps they just did not have a chance to get to me," he said.

"They got all the others. It may be simple chance that you are still alive, but then this whole business of making you the avenger is rather stupid."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because the Imperials have surely been keeping an eye on you and they may already know that you are going to Exioce now!"

There it was again. The notion that he was being used to lure out Troy more than sent to find him. "So they are using me as a bait," he admitted finally.

"Either that, or they sent you away because they were not sure that you could be trusted anymore," Sheila said.

Marcan looked at her, wondering where she had got so twisted a mind and why she was not a FMI agent instead of him. She seemed to have the brain for it. He understood what she meant by the lack of trust. No one would trust him if he was the only one left of the spy's old team members. That marked him as a possible spy as well. But why when had they sent Sheila with him? And why had they given him the state of the art heavy fighter?

"Why would they have given their best new ship to a man they suspected a traitor?" he asked.

"Well, perhaps they are just using you as a bait, then." She finished, turning back to the control table. She had moved from the pilot's seat to her own seat and he was now preparing to dock their ship manually with the trading post.

But she had said too much and suspicions did not leave Marcan alone now. Perhaps the second reason could still be true, even if he had been given the Wolf Mk II. As long as they had a way to control him and make sure that he did not steal the ship. He glanced at Sheila. Perhaps she was the spy, and had always been the spy in his team. Perhaps they had sent her to find out if he could be trusted and perhaps she was ready to take him out if he did something that he should not do. Perhaps she was the real FMI agent onboard the ship right now.

But he knew himself to be honest, so he should not be worried about all this. But he was bothered by the lack of trust the military seemed to have on him. Had not he served them well for the past several years? Had he not been the one to teach many of their best fighter pilots? But then, so had Troy. Then he cursed that name again, wishing that the man had never crossed his path.

Then he cleared his mind of the suspicions and new realisations and concentrated on flying. He had switched off the autopilot and used the retrothrusters to slow down the craft for the rendezvous with the trading post. Hooper Relay was now the object in their main screen that grew the fastest. The planet ruled the view whenever they turned towards it in their manoeuvres to get to that side of the station where the docking bay entrance was, but it did not grown in size anymore.

Marcan marvelled at the ease and speed that the ship answered to every single one of his wishes. It seemed that he could have turned the ship around on a laser spot if he had had to. The powerful manoeuvring thrusters were fast to respond to every command he gave them and it was easy to align the ship with the big space trading post. Marcan pushed the buttons on the Comm Panel and requested a landing clearance.

The trading post was shaped as a huge wheel, turning slowly around to provide gravity to those inside. The midpoint of the single axle of the wheel was the place they were headed. There was located the small, slowly turning entrance to the docking bay. When they got nearer the Wolf started to rotate automatically in synch with the entrance door and as they approached it with a speed of mere 30 km/h, it grew slowly larger and larger until it swallowed them whole. Then the automatic docking sequence took over and the ship was transported to one of the many single ship hangars located at the midpoint of the great axle.

They did not even leave their ship at the trading post. Marcan connected directly to the local Stock Market and paid for the unloading of the radioactive waste from their ship and bought new military fuel to replace it. Meanwhile Sheila connected to the Bulletin Boards and searched for newspaper articles to download to their computer, as well as entertainment programs and whatever else they had agreed on acquiring.

It did not take long for the loading robots to carry out Marcan's commissions and for Sheila to finish her business and so Marcan made a request for a launch clearance immediately. It had occurred to them that they might have visited the local pilots' lounge or bars to have a drink or two, but it would have been that much later when they arrived to the Exioce system. Besides, if they had wanted to spend time, it would have been better to head for the third planet of the system, which was a garden planet, and the big cities down there, or the big space station orbiting that planet.

Their entry to the Exioce system was uneventful. Their hyperspace entry cloud had not been paid any more attention than to the multitudinous others that appeared to the space at the target system at the exact moment that the hyperspace engine was engaged in the departure system. Although the trip felt at most like a few seconds to the pilots, those clouds stayed visible at the both ends for as many days as the trip took in real time. Thus it was possible to analyse departure clouds and find out the name of the target system and arrival time, as well as the tonnage of the ship that made the jump. That was how the ship Troy had stolen had been known to have jumped to Faexess. Except that Troy had intentionally caused a misjump and had not actually arrived to the target system.

Almost as soon as they had entered the Exioce space, Marcan pushed the blue button and turned on the cloaking device. They had waited only for long enough for any message to reach them to inform them if the Wolf Mk II had left the system already. After engaging the cloaking device, Marvan turned them to head towards the sixth planet of the system, which was once again a rocky planet with thin atmosphere, according to the system data screen. He tagged the planet as their destination and turned on the autopilot once again. The main systems monitor showed that they were over 10 AUs from the planet. They both grimaced at that. It meant three more days spending their time with nothing special to do. They had already planned their attack as well as they could without actually seeing the place with their own eyes.

Marcan knew that it would have been different if Sheila had not been there with him. He would have enjoyed the solitude with all his heart. But now the suspicion that Sheila was there to keep an eye on him and their mission was just a test of his loyalty, or a test whether Troy would try to kill him, ruined it almost totally for him.

But at least they now had newspapers on their computer that they could read. Marcan almost laughed aloud when he noticed that Sheila had ordered the RIG, Random Intergalactic Gossip, that seldom had anything worthwhile to say. Marcan turned to the other monthly newspapers, which were Federal Times and Universal Scientist and quickly scanned their cover stories from the past couple of months. Then he started reading them more fully, interested as always of the ways people succeeded in getting into trouble with each other and the new progress in colonisation efforts.

As he was absorbed with the news stories, Sheila searched the surrounding space visually from the top turret viewscreen. When she was happy with what she saw she turned and stood up from the co-pilot's seat and went down the descent well to their living quarters. Marcan glanced over his shoulder as she disappeared and then turned back to the news stories. Soon, he knew, Sheila would be asleep. He decided to wait for a while longer.

When he knew that Sheila would be asleep he stood up from his seat and sat down on hers. He opened all the small lockers on the right of the chair, trying to find something to prove his suspicions about her part in the mission. But he found nothing except her hand weapon, a rather small but powerful laser pistol. That was not much proof since he carried a military issue side arm as well. The fact that Sheila had decided to go with something other than the standard issue, was not really a proof of anything yet.

But he remembered the advice of the undercover agent about having to find a way to access someone's personal datapad to find the dirty secrets. But he had no knowledge of how to gain access to a datapad without a password. He had never had to do such a thing as he had never forgot his own passwords.

But he had a great source of knowledge in the FMI training data cards that he was supposed to study through. He remembered that the analysis program data cards had included some intruder programs as well, and there had to be a data card that explained about such things in more detail. So, he once again pulled out his new FMI issue datapad and started studying, but this time his motivation was on quite another level.

For a moment he forgot the news, but a couple of hours into reading he needed something lighter again and remembered the RIGs that he had ignored before. He called them to the screen and started reading, eyeing quickly through the personal adds that seemed to be the life blood of the paper and less than concentrated on the articles about famous stars and wild rumours about new technologies and secret operations. Only when he saw his own name in the paper, did he pay more attention.

Marcan cursed. It was clear now that everyone knew what he was doing. That story was surely not an accident, somebody had intentionally leaked it to the paper. And it confirmed at least one of his fears: he was being used. Now the people behind that article would sit back and see if Troy and he would kill each other or if he was revealed a traitor as well. A gossip paper was a nice finishing touch. Federal Times would have raised suspicions, but a story on RIG might in this particular case seem more believable to Troy and the Empire.

He felt quite miserable for a couple of hours after reading the article. He did not like being used, but even less he liked knowing that he was not trusted by the people he worked for. It was unfair and wrong for them to think that he would betray them, and the way they handled the problem was even more despicable. To send him in danger just to see what happened was not a way a just government should work.

But once he got over the initial shock, he was more resolved than ever to find out the truth about Sheila. He read the instruction manuals and studied the working parameters of the intruder programs that he had like the undercover agent had instructed him to do. By the end of Sheila's sleep shift he had made some progress, but had not even been able to break into his own datapad yet without using his password and fingerprint. And he knew that if Sheila really was an agent, her datapad would be at least as well protected as his, if not better.

However, he did learn how to protect his datapad better than he had with certain programs that monitored his habits of using it and that made some information unavailable if he did not access certain programs in the correct order after turning it on. He hoped that Sheila was not as exited to protect her datapad as he now was his.

His eyes were sore as he greeted Sheila who came to the bridge after taking a shower. She did not even have to ask if anything had happened while she had been sleeping since their ship was cloaked and undetectable to everyone, including pirates. But he did show her the article he had found in RIG and she read it with interest.

She hummed before she said, "It seems that you are now a celebrity."

Marcan grumbled out, "This just about confirms that I'm being used by our own side! They throw me to the wolves just to see what happens."

"Have you thought that this could actually be an accident? Perhaps this really is a leak and not an evil plan to take your head," Sheila said, walking around the small bridge, not wanting to sit down immediately after having slept.

Perhaps if Marcan had not been as certain as he was that Sheila was an agent he might have taken what she said seriously. But in the light of his suspicions, her words sounded even more of a proof that she was not genuinely on his side.

"Perhaps," he said and stood up from his seat. "I'll hit the bunk now, if you don't mind," he said as he left the bridge to her.

"Ok, I'll try to keep us from hitting any stray planets," Sheila said lightly.

For the rest of the journey towards the planet Marcan tried to learn about circumventing security programs and equipment while Sheila wrote her journal and read the papers and the books. They joined once and a while to watch Dream Ware movies, but mostly they kept to themselves.

It was not like their relationship had been back at the military base, where they had both enjoyed each other's company and discussed the pilot's life together and with other pilots. It had never grown to anything more, but that was how they had liked it. Now, Marcan knew that Sheila had noticed that something in him had changed and their relationship was on a break. He was grateful that she did not push him to know what was wrong. He would not have liked to tell her that he was suspicious of her. He let her understand that his bad moods were because of the fact that he was being used, which was not that far from the mark.

Of course it was only a few hours they had to spend together since one of them was always awake when the other was sleeping and as such the situation did not have a chance to grow worse. They had things to do, both of them, and they still discussed lightly now and then, even though it felt harder to Marcan to laugh at her pranks than it had earlier.

Then Exioce 6 loomed in front of them. A small brown, rocky planet. They looked at it, knowing that if Troy was there, he knew that they were coming. There could be dozens of fighter pilots on the military base, ready to launch immediately. And the military satellite orbited the planet, now only 6000 kilometres from them.

"As soon as we destroy that satellite, all the alarms down there will go off and all the ships will be launched to find and destroy us," Shaila said grimly as Marcan guided the ship nearer to the satellite.

The satellite was a necessary target, though. If they did not destroy it and still entered the atmosphere of the planet, everyone would see where they were and would know where to find them, because the cloaking device was useless in that thick an atmosphere and the satellite would be able to track them. Or, that was what the manuals said. If the satellite was destroyed, they might be able to get as near as 500 kilometres from the base before they were found, depending on how many ships the base had ready to sweep the area.

"I know," Marcan said, "use the turret view and tell me how many of them are coming. I'll try to keep the ship aligned so that you have a good view."

Sheila was already turning the top turret to face the planet. She had to keep correcting its position as Marcan manoeuvred to get near to the satellite.

"Look at that!" Marcan exclaimed. "If we were not cloaked that satellite would have fried us already!"

They were now near enough to see the large weapons emplacement on top of the satellite. It seemed large enough to contain missiles and laser weapons. It was clear to them now that this was an important military base to be protected that well. And that had to mean that the stolen Wolf Mk II was really studied at this base. There was no certain way to find that out, of course. They could not attack the base and enter it to see if it was there and neither could they get there after destroying it with the missile, since the radioactive fallout would be deadly to them. They had to trust the intelligence that said that the ship was still at the base, since they had not received a message saying otherwise when they had entered the system.

Of course, the ship could have been removed after they had entered the system. And because they had travelled the whole distance with the cloaking device on, they could not have received any later messages since no one could have found them to send it in the first place.

"Get ready," Marcan said, inching his finger towards the missile launch button.

"I'm already ready," Sheila answered, looking intently at her monitor view.

Then Marcan launched the missile and turned the Wolf away from the satellite which was now only six kilometres away from them. He flew directly towards the planet first and then turned to face the atmosphere in a more gentle angle. Then the flash of the nuclear missile exploding lit the space behind them and he could even see the shadows on the planet gaining in intensity. The first explosion was immediately followed by another one as the whole satellite blew up. The heat sensors of the Wolf's hull rose only by a fraction of a degree though, since there was no matter in the vacuum between the ship and the explosion to transfer heat. The radiation was another matter, though, and the sensors beeped furiously, warning against anyone going outside the ship.

But inside the ship Marcan and Sheila were perfectly safe and Sheila was already reporting all the ships that she saw leaving the military base. They were too far to see the actual launching, but it was clear from the several small spots rising towards space that the enemy was coming.

"We'd better get into the atmosphere before that lot arrives here," Shaila said. "If they see whatever there is to see of us when we enter, we'll be an easy target."

Marcan nodded grimly, "I'll get us down as fast as I can."

"Be careful, I'd like to postpone my career as a crispy stick for a while longer," Sheila said, in a futile attempt to be funny. Her own voice betrayed that she was very nervous.

Marcan flew towards the upper reaches of the atmosphere as fast as he dared, trying to calculate exactly how fast he could go into an atmosphere as thin as this was. Then the colour of the space changed around them, from the normal black towards slightly blue and then finally it got a brownish tint as they got nearer to the hard crust of the planet.

He had marked the base as a target earlier and he now turned to face the direction that would quickest take them near to it. The base was a quarter of the planet away from them, about 3000 kilometres now. Marcan took the ship as low as he dared, trying to follow the contours of the surface and stay between the extremely high mountain ranges. As the planet had only a quarter of the standard G, the mountains were a lot higher than one could realise, some of them reaching above the atmosphere itself.

Marcan kept the velocity of the ship at a steady 1500 kilometres an hour for the first part of the journey, but let it soon start dropping steadily as the atmosphere slowed them down. He did not wish to waste fuel for a few saved minutes.

"At least seven ships on low orbit," Sheila reported. "Try to stay low so that their scanners wont detect us."

Marcan resisted snapping that that was exactly what he was doing. It was only then that he had time to notice the strange rippling of the atmosphere around the ship. It seemed as if they were charged electrically, or as if they had passed through a thunder cloud.

He coughed and asked quietly, "What exactly did that manual say about keeping the cloaking device on in an atmosphere?"

Sheila looked back at him, then again at their monitors. It took a moment for the realisation to hit her, and then she shouted, "Turn it off, now!"

But she was slightly too late. The energy field of the cloaking device around the ship had built up enough charge and now it acted as a thunder cloud would have: it searched for a place with an opposite charge, and the closest such thing was the planet under them. The air around the ship disintegrated as the lightning struck the ground below them. Almost every single piece of equipment aboard failed momentarily and Marcan lost the control of the ship.

The Wolf Mk II plummeted from the sky, towards the surface of the planet, that had not been far away to begin with, as Marcan fought with the controls. The ship did not have wings like an ordinary aircraft would have, and it relied solely on the several thrusters around the hull of the ship to keep it away from the planet. Now those thrusters barely worked, and when they did, they worked against him, pushing them even faster towards the planet.

"Shields are now at 15 %, the autopilot is wrecked, all thrusters seem to be failing," Sheila reported.

Marcan realised that the shields had been depleted completely in the sudden discharge of energy. The autopilot did not matter at the moment, but the thrusters did. They were now plummeting towards the ground at 150 km/h, over 50 km/h faster than the landing gear could compensate for even if he managed to turn the ship into the correct angle.

That brief thought reminded him to try to lower the landing gear, and to his amazement it actually worked. The gear lowered down to its position with a hum of the hydraulics, that was almost indistinct in the frenzy at the bridge.

"Shields at 20 %," Sheila said just before they hit the ground with loud screeching noises.

A few seconds later, Marcan dared to open his eyes. The monitor in front of him was blank as were almost all the other monitors and lights in the bridge. There was no sound of the engine in evidence. He looked towards the co-pilot's seat, but in the dim light he could not make out if Sheila was unconscious or dead. The seat should have saved her, but one could never be sure.

At that moment Marcan forgot his suspicions of the woman and remembered with complete clarity the times they had talked and laughed with each other, and the times when they had trusted their lives to each other's hands in their patrol flights. He had to admit that she had always been his favourite student, and whatever her true identity was, it could do nothing about that friendship.

"Sheila," he called quietly. A moment later he repeated the call, but there was no answer.

Marcan forced back the tears that tried to flow form his eyes and he stilled his already shaking body. He tried to reorient himself to their new situation. The ship was still intact, and there were some lights on. He felt around the dark control console, trying to find the buttons to restart the engines. He found them and pushed them and heard a promising sound, but that was all.

Frustrated, he almost let his emotions take over, but he forced himself to continue. The next step was to turn off all the engines, even the batteries that kept the few emergency lights on, and try a complete restart. He had to do it all in pitch black darkness, but he managed. Slowly but surely he turned on an engine after an engine and watched as the lights on the control board became alive again. Some of them did not come back on, but most did. Finally he tried turning on the main systems monitor to see if he could see outside. With a reassuring click, it turned on as did all the other monitors around it. Even the scanner lit up again. The hum of the main engine was once again reassuringly in the background.

Then he forgot the computer systems for a while and turned again to look at Sheila. She was still unconscious, but breathed steadily. He decided to leave her that way and see if they had a chance to escape death yet. He did not want to wake her up only to die a second time a few brief moments later.

He checked the rest of the systems and the computer reported that they had not lost any vital systems, although the ship had suffered a lot of collateral damage. The hull was down to 89 %, the autopilot was dead, as was the combat computer and the auto targetter. The shields were powering up again, though, and the weapons systems were functional. And through the monitors Marcan could see that they had landed on the landing gear after all.

When it seemed that the lift-off was a realistic possibility, Marcan turned to see to his co-pilot and old friend again. He reached with his right hand and shook her shoulder slightly. She woke up almost immediately and started groaning and complaining about her neck. It had apparently suffered a mild whiplash injury in the crash. The back of the seat should have prevented anything like it happening, but somehow it had happened anyway.

"What's our condition?" Sheila asked when she had recovered almost completely. She kept holding her neck with her left hand.

"We survived the crash pretty well. We lost only some secondary equipment. The shields are now powering up again and we can soon attempt a lift-off," Marcan explained.

"Many ships coming this way?"

Marcan knew also that their crash and play with lightning bolts could not have gone unnoticed. The looked at the scanner, at its best zoom-out, but saw no dots indicating ships nearby. Then he turned to the turret view and inspected the nearby sky. There were several dots in the sky, descending