The twelve ships were traversing the final wormhole, and Cole was speaking to his senior staff. He hadn’t wanted to do it on the bridge, which was too public, and his staff wouldn’t fit in his cramped office, so he had commandeered the mess hall, tossed everyone out, and locked the doors when the meeting began. In the room with him were Jacovic, Christine Mboya, Val, Sharon Blacksmith, and Mustapha Odom.

"Well, Mr. Odom," Cole was saying, "you were designing the defenses before this little encounter. How much is actually done?"

"Maybe a third of it," replied Odom. "Most of the weaponry was supplied by black marketers who ply their trade there, and they view it as a business expense."

"But only a third is done," repeated Cole. "Where is the station most vulnerable?"

"That depends on the nature of the ships that are docked at any given time," said Odom.

"Explain, please."

"If they’re heavily armed ships like the Teddy R and that of the Octopus, then the most vulnerable place is the lowest of the three alien levels of Singapore Station."

"The bottom of the station," clarified Cole.

"Top and bottom are meaningless in space," said Odom.

"Skip the nitpicking," said Cole. "You know what I mean."

"To continue," said the engineer, "if the docks aren’t currently home to heavily armed vessels, then of course they are the most vulnerable area."

"I know we’ve installed some powerful thumpers and burners around the station," said Cole. "What about defenses—shields and screens and the like?"

"Impractical," replied Odom. "The station is seven miles long. The longest ship in the Navy is a quarter of a mile, and the power drain for its shields is enormous."

"How many Level 4 and Level 5 cannons has the station got in place?"

"There were quite a few left over from your battle with Csonti last year," said Odom. "Given them, and what we just added, I’d say eighty, maybe eighty-five."

"That many?" said Cole, surprised.

"That number is misleading," continued Odom. "The station was not built at once, but was pieced together from literally hundreds of small stations. The exterior is not a consistent line, and the cannons are positioned in such a way that they cannot be brought into play against an attack on certain portions of the station."

"Thank you, Mr. Odom. Christine, have we got any communication channels that the Navy doesn’t know about?"

"I doubt it, sir," she replied. "After all, this is a Navy ship."

"Any scramble codes that the Duke can read that the Navy can’t break?"

"I don’t think so, sir. We’ve never felt the need to carry on secret communications with the Platinum Duke or with Singapore Station, so we’ve never programmed his computers with our codes."

"So we’re out of luck?" said Val.

"Not necessarily," said Cole.

"But if they can read all our transmissions …"

"We’ll just have to feed them some transmissions we want them to read."

"If you mislead them, you’ll also mislead the Duke," said Val.

"Which is more important?" asked Cole. "Misleading the Navy, or not misleading the Duke?"

"Okay," acknowledged Val. "Good point."

Cole turned to Jacovic. "We’ve got a thousand ships defending the station. Or at least that’s what we have before the Navy gets there. I’ve commanded a fleet once, a year ago, and the enemy broke and ran. You did it for years. Once we get there and appraise the situation, I’m going to depend heavily on your expertise."

"Knowing how to use them is one thing," said Jacovic. "Having them act like a cohesive unit when they have never practiced together is another. They will not know how to organize into offensive and defensive formations, they will not know—"

"I’m sure you could write a book on all the things they don’t know," interrupted Cole. "We’ll just have to improvise, but I still want you right next to me when I start issuing orders to what’s left of them."

"How much damage do you think the Navy can do before we get there?" asked Sharon.

"I don’t know," said Cole. "It won’t be a surprise attack; the Duke knew they were on their way. And hopefully someone will take charge of the ships that we left behind."

"Lafferty, perhaps?" suggested Jacovic.

Cole shook his head. "I don’t think he’s military, just political. We can’t worry about who will take command against the first assault; we’ll just assume someone will."

"I think we can expect pretty heavy casualties in the initial attack," said Jacovic.

"Probably," agreed Cole. "But we do outnumber them a little better than three-to-one, and the Duke had time to put crews on those cannons. We won’t be the only side to take some serious losses."

"An awful lot of our ships don’t exactly classify as warships," noted Sharon.

"They’re ships, they’re armed, and this is a war," said Cole. "That makes them warships." He turned to the Valkyrie. "Val, if we can possibly get close enough for you to make the transfer safely, I want you on the station."

"I’m supposed to be on the ship with you," she said.

"Bull can handle Gunnery, and I’ll have Jack-in-the-Box to help him. But sooner or later—probably sooner—the Navy’s going to land some men on the station and try to disrupt whatever we’re doing. That’s where you can be the most use to us."

Suddenly a smile spread across her face. "Yeah, I wouldn’t mind that at all."

"Somehow I’m not surprised," said Cole dryly. "If we can land a shuttle close enough on one of the dock arms we will. But it might work better and attract less attention if you just climbed into a space suit and used a jet pack. We’ll decide when we see the situation." He frowned. "And speaking of seeing the situation, just how much longer before we get there?"

Christine activated her communicator. "Mr. Wxakgini, what is our ETA?"

"We emerged from the wormhole twelve minutes ago. Our ETA is seven minutes and fourteen seconds."

"All right, meeting’s over," said Cole. "Get back to your stations. Jacovic, stay close to me once we get there. Val, get a suit and pack handy in case that’s the way we decided to get you there." He opened the doors. "Let’s go."

Odom returned to his engine room, Sharon to her monitoring station in Security, Val to the shuttle bay to pick up a space suit, and the others to the bridge, where Christine replaced Rachel at the main computer console.

"Can you pull any images up on your screen yet, Mr. Briggs?" asked Cole.

"Not yet, sir," responded Briggs. "There’s a lot of shooting going on, and the station’s taken some hits, but I won’t have any clear images for another minute or two."

"Christine, try to contact the Duke and see what the situation is."

"No response, sir," she said. "I think they may have taken out his transmitter."

Cole shook his head. "I doubt it. He’s got transmitters all over the damned station. He’s probably just deactivated them. The ships won’t take their orders from him, and he doesn’t want the Navy to hear what he’s saying to his own men, so he’s probably using a bunch of two-way communicators."

Val returned to the bridge, carrying a suit and a pack. "How’s it going?" she asked.

"Ask him" said Cole, indicating Briggs.

"It’s hard to tell," replied Briggs. "Both sides are still firing. The ships are all clustered so close to the station that I can’t tell which are out of commission and which are still fighting."

"We’d better start coordinating our plans," said Cole. "Christine, put me through to the Octopus and the rest of the ships in our party."

"Are you sure you want to break radio silence, sir?" she asked.

"If our instruments can see them, theirs can see us," replied Cole. "And if some of them want to break away from attacking the station and come after us, so much the better."

"You are connected, sir."

"This is Cole," he said. "I trust you can all see what’s happening at the station. I’m going to turn you over to Commander Jacovic, who will explain our strategy to you."

"Thank you, Captain," said Jacovic. "There is no sense splitting up and getting into a bunch of what you know as dogfights. We have a thousand other ships to do that. Between our twelve ships we have enough Level 4 pulse and laser cannons to pierce through the defenses of any ship below dreadnaught level, and there are no dreadnaughts in this conflict. As we select each target, we will transmit its location and image to you, and then we will attack it in unison. We haven’t worked as a unit, so there is no sense attempting any complex maneuvers. We will have our greatest success massing our firepower against one major target at a time."

Cole studied Briggs’s computer screen. "There’s a class-M ship, name the Jolly Roger, registration number 38259 and the rest is illegible. He’s our first target."

The twelve ships homed in on the Jolly Roger, and it soon became apparent why it had been chosen. It was at the outskirts of the battle, obviously hanging back to spot and shoot down any of Cole’s and Lafferty’s ships that broke formation and tried to flee. But that meant it wasn’t surrounded by other Navy ships, and was relatively easy to approach.

Vladimir Sokolov’s ship was the first to reach it, followed by the Octopus. By the time the Teddy R got there, the Jolly Roger had taken four major hits from pulse cannons. Its side was caved in and it was losing air.

"He’s dead, sir," said Dan Moyer’s voice. "What’s our next target."

"Finish this one off," said Cole. "It only takes one man with a space suit to work a laser cannon when you leave it for dead and don’t defend against it as you fly by."

Jacovic nodded his agreement. "You heard your captain," he said.

Moyer fired two more energy pulses into the ship, and finally it exploded in a brief flare of light. Cole immediately picked their next target.

Val walked over to Cole. "There’s no way the shuttle can leave the ship and dock safely. I think it’s time for me to climb into the suit and jet over to the station."

"There’s too much action and stray fire," said Cole. "Wait until both sides are thinned out a bit."

"If they land first, I don’t want to run into any reception committees."

"If I tell you to wait, you’re just going to come up to me every minute or two and ask if you can leave yet, right?"

"Probably," she said.

"All right, leave," said Cole.

"I’m on my way!" she yelled over her shoulder as she raced to the airlift.

"Get me Gunnery," said Cole.

Bull Pampas’s image popped into view.

"Bull, your redheaded sparring partner is about to don a space suit and use a jet pack to get to the station. Forget whatever Jacovic has targeted; we have eleven ships to take care of business. I want you to ride shotgun for Val. Any ship that even looks like it might be getting her in their sites, start firing until they drop or you’re out of power."

"Yes, sir."

Cole turned to a viewscreen. For a moment all he could see was ships firing at each other. Then a tiny figure shot into the picture, making a beeline toward a hatch at the top level of the station.

"That’s her!" said Briggs.

"I know. Bull damned well better be protecting her ass."

A small Navy ship approached her, and was suddenly bombarded with energy pulses. It took five, six, seven consecutive hits before it simply disintegrated.

"Mr. Lafferty’s signaling us, sir," announced Christine.

"Put him through."

Lafferty’s image appeared. "Welcome back. I take it we have you to thank for all this?"

"We didn’t want you to feel neglected," said Cole. "What’s the situation?"

"I’ve lost about a hundred ships, you’ve lost maybe seventy."

"What about the Republic?"

"Maybe forty."

"Have any of them made it into the station yet?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"We’ll have Val there in another minute," said Cole. "If any of your people sees a boarding party getting through, have them contact her and tell her where the breach occurred."

"I don’t know any Val."

"That’s right, you don’t," said Cole, surprised that anyone, didn’t know the legendary Valkyrie. "Then signal us and we’ll pass it on to her. How’s your ammunition holding out?"

"No problem. My guess is that the Navy will run out first."

"Try picking out a ship and have twelve or thirteen ships attack it in unison," said Cole. "I don’t think you’ve got the ships to win any dogfights."

"I’ve got five hundred cantankerous individuals," said Lafferty. "This is a hell of a time to teach them to work as a unit."

"They can work as a unit or die as cantankerous individuals," said Cole.

"Perfect."

"What are you talking about?"

"I just captured that comment," said Lafferty. "I’m going to transmit it to all my men."

"Whatever works," said Cole. Suddenly the Teddy R shuddered. "Got to sign off. We’re under attack."

"Our shields are up, sir," said Briggs.

"Mr. Odom, any damage to the engines?"

"None," said Odom.

"Do we still have our structural integrity?"

"So far so good," said Odom. The ship shuddered twice more.

Cole looked up at the viewscreen. All he could see were Navy ships, closing in on him from all directions.

"I think," said Sharon’s voice, "that they’ve figured out who we are."

As if to emphasize her point, the Teddy R shuddered from three more pulse blasts.

"Mr. Odom, how are our shields holding up?"

"So far so good," said Odom. The ship shuddered again. "But I won’t vouch for them if we take another dozen full-force blasts from Level 4 cannons."

"At the rate they’re coming," said Cole, "that gives us about forty-five seconds to think of something."

Two more explosions followed in quick succession. "Make that forty," he muttered.