Lieutenant Commander Gahst was doing fantastic work, thought Rieven. He knew how difficult it is to avoid destroying an enemy while avoiding or enduring their continued assault. He could see the results of her efforts; on one wall he was viewing the readouts the lieutenant commander had access to, and the other wall was partitioned into several sections, each showing the status of the various ships which were presenting signs of growing dead zones. Three of those vessels had been liberated and their reality anchors had been actuated. Five more remained.

  The other ships in the Fourth weren’t being idle. He’d issued orders for all of them. Four destroyers were circling the Exile’s Retribution, attempting to get line of sight on its external sensors for their railguns to target, a simple method for disabling a starship, especially so far from home when they wanted to use the ship and not destroy it; those parts could be printed in a fabricator quickly and installed within half a standard day. The rest of the navy was backing up in formations to provide the space necessary to resolve the conflict. Rieven wasn’t taking any chances though, each of those ships had a sergeant and two squads on the bridge and in engineering, with the rest patrolling the corridors. All non-essential personnel had been confined to bunker rooms or their own bunks. There would be no repeats, and no new dead zones.

  One portion of the wall was dedicated to his Silent Stalkers. They were digging deep, spiking as many SI’s as they could get their hands on and sifting through the resultant data. No malicious code was found yet, but they hadn’t entered that stage, they were still in the ‘sifting the data stage’. What they had found, however, were several unauthorised connections between backup servers in the four ships that had been anchored. It looked like those connections terminated nowhere. How odd.

  He brought up major Halfson on the wall. He was the commander of the Silent Stalkers. He saluted Rieven. “Sir.”

  “Major, I’m reviewing the summary you sent and I have questions.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “What do you mean that the unauthorised connections terminated nowhere?”

  “It means, sir, that those connections were not routed through any data centre in the Operatic Empire. They were direct connections. Either from another ship in the Fourth, or from somewhere else. As far as we can determine, no such connection exists for any ship in the Fourth. The thing that would make the most sense is now impossible. It wasn’t us. If we find any information to the contrary, I’ll inform you immediately, but the connection signatures do not match anything we have.

  “In attempting to follow the route the signals took, we end up nowhere, they just seem to originate from the void somewhere, which doesn’t work, based on the type of connections they are. They are short-range connections. They couldn’t form without the point of signal origin being within fifty klicks of them. To make matters less comprehensible, each of those connections were established only after you left for the Rite of Ritual Combat. We just don’t know sir.”

  “That’s not a pretty picture major. Anyone suspect yet?”

  “No sir. I don’t want to get into that until we have each of the five remaining SI’s spiked.”

  “Very well. I’ll make sure the marines keep everyone out of the pool until you are ready to play major.”

  Halfson laughed. “Thank you sir.”

  Rieven closed the connection. The ship banked hard to his front and he was thrown forward into his harness, losing some of the wind in his lungs. He wheezed out his next breath. Breathing in these things was no fun, but it sure beat flying into the wall. He looked at the other wall and saw that they still had ten minutes on the clock to meet Big Red’s deadline. His eyes shifted to the dead zones. Three more were stabilised. On the other side, the Exile’s Revenge was simply drifting, pieces of her external sensors trailing behind her. There would be no more trouble from the weapons on that ship.

  He saw the live feed from sergeant Marchioness’ squad. There was a surprisingly competent woman. She hated everyone and everything and made herself and everyone else miserable, but that was when she did her best work. Case in point: they had taken engineering, shut off the engines, and had chief engineer Bauldric apprehended. He was now half-made of cooling glass. There would be no learning what had occurred through him. That was a frustrating circumstance. The entire engineering crew had melted into the ship, to various degrees. The Guild of the Imperial Engineer was going to be a pain over this. Truly, it was a miracle that the engines didn’t explode and didn’t melt, and could be shut off in the first place.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  He looked to the feeds from the marines on the Exile’s Retribution. It looked like he had timed his attention perfectly to see the storming of the bridge. He breathed out heavily when he saw the state of things; the entire room was a swirled strain of metal, glass, and stone. It was as if the room had been tie-dyed in stone and glass. It hadn’t warped, merely suffered a change of materials.

  The bodies, however, were not so lucky. Each of them were screaming in torment and twisted into odd shapes. Some were inside out while others were crushed, like some giant held them in the palm of his hand and then squeezed tightly. Others had only parts of their bodies crushed, as if they had been surrounded by a great snake at the time of death. There was no evidence of what had caused the harm, but such was the nature of dead zones. Interestingly, commander Greeves was missing. He heard Ono’s voice directing the squads to split to cover the remaining two bridges.

  Several alert tones sounded from another window. The last dead zones had fallen. How was the Exile’s Retribution dead zone warped? There hadn’t been a dead zone on it? That was not good. That was very not good. He sent a message to Werner. If there were one man who was an expert on the subject of dead zones, it would be him. I’ll wait to hear back before I decide anything, he thought, there’s no sense in being theoretical before I am in possession of all of the facts.

  He checked the countdown clock again. Three minutes to go. He looked at the feed from the marines on the Exile’s Retribution again. The secondary bridge had been empty, and they had gathered outside of the third, readying to storm in. This had better be the end of things, he thought, I’m in no mood to resume hostilities with the dragons, nor do I think we could successfully execute that action. It would be disastrous at this point. We need rest, we need to recover, and we need to consolidate. I need us out of here in two weeks. It should take twelve, but I refuse to recover in such a hostile environment. Two weeks should be the absolute minimum that they would be tolerated by the dragons. Engineers would probably have an estimated minimum three times that amount. Well, he would recover. We all had our little disappointments in life, he supposed.

  The reinforced door to the tertiary bridge opened as sergeant Sliphook entered the override. As the door opened, they saw shadows moving inside. Private Jank threw a flashbang inside and they flooded the room. The inside was neat and untouched by any dead zone changing. Commander Greeves fired his lasgun at the incoming marines.

  When the flashbang detonated, it did so directly at his feet. The tertiary bridge was tiny. It was thought that if it was ever needed, the ship would have suffered such a dramatic reduction of crew that very few would be available to run things. It was only four metres square. The standard issue imperial flashbang was designed to be detonated within a room twelve metres square. The commander had been entirely unprepared for the door to be overridden, not having supposed that the commandant’s override code would be used, nor that any of the marines would have escaped. He was both blinded and disorientated, as his eardrums had blown from the detonation. His shot went wide, three into the wall.

  The marines had him on the floor and stripped of all clothing and possessions in moments. He was hiding nothing. They ran a scan stick over him and it came up clean. He had no foreign matter in his system, even of an axiomatic nature.

  Rieven checked the countdown clock, one minute. He breathed in silent relief. He put a hailing request through to Big Red. When he appeared on the screen, he said, “Death’s Wind, I commend you on the speed and nature of your success. Thank you for resolving this quickly and without lasting damage.”

  “I appreciate that you were willing to allow me to close the dead zones. I know this is your territory, and you were under no obligation to do so.”

  “I will keep my fleets here for twenty-four hours. If there is no fallout from the events that occurred here, I shall command the greater part of the fleets to depart. That which remains shall guard your navy and escort you to the bounds of our empire when you are ready to depart.”

  “That is appreciated Heat Death.” Reiven replied. Big Red cut the link and the screen darkened. He sent a message to lieutenant commander Gahst, informing her that all military action was concluded and unlikely to pick up again.

  Her voice soon came over the ship: Now hear this: Hostile action has concluded. All hands to resume their duty. Then the red corners flicked off and the white corners resumed. Rieven unbuckled his harness but remained seated. This bunker room was just as good as any other for him to work from. He brought master sergeant Ono up on a screen. “Ono, how are things looking?”

  “Well sir, they are swell as can be given the state that jackhole left us in. He’s being transported now to the Hidden Dagger, along with every crew member not locked up. That’s three by the way, chief engineer Gunther, lieutenant Hamper, and spaceman second class Elssy, sir. All three have been stripped and scanned. They’ll be dyed and paddocked with the others. From what my boys and girls tell me, those eight other ships were not unusual at all. It appears that the command to run sublight engines and FTL engines concurrently was not entered manually, and they can’t find anything wrong with the SI’s, though your stalkers’ll sort that out right quick, I’m sure.

  “Also, there seems to be an unusually high rang on these dead zones. Not only were they active so quickly, but they reached far and above where they should have. None of us have seen this happen before. I don’t like dead zones, but I ‘specially don’t like ‘em when they get stronger for no reason I get.”

  “Thank you Ono. I want your marines stationed on all ships to rotate duties and not allow anyone on any bridge or in any part of engineering. All crew aboard those ships are to be quarantined. Keep an eye on the SI ports as well.”

  “Sir. Already done. I’ll see you shortly, unless there’s anything more?”

  “No, thank you.”

  He closed the link, and the window faded to black. He began thinking. What did we have? We have remote created dead zones, commands being put through without authorization, originating from who knew where, commanded by who knew what, and a mutiny. Connected? I’m not sure, it’s too soon to tell. Highly likely though. Unconnected? I sincerely hope not. Just as likely though, as sergeant Marchioness melted a dream-octopus tentacle. That couldn’t be coincidence.

  He sighed. He was feeling tired again, and worn out besides. There was still more to do, and the court-marshals hadn’t even happened yet. They would be delayed a period of twelve hours, he decided. That gives us time to get the scope of things and add more charges as well as more accused if necessary.

  He laughed then, the sort of laugh that springs surprised from a cynical person when they are genuinely delighted with a surprise. “Jackhole,” he said to himself, “I’ve not heard that term in ages!” He just laughed all the stress away, before going back to work.