"I'm glad Tolwyn let me take you as my maintenance officer, Janet," he hesitated, "and I'm just glad to have you with me as well."

She looked at him, shrugging a bit awkwardly, and went across the deck, leaving him alone.

He exhaled hard and shook his head.

"Captain?"

"On the flight deck."

"We've got a laser hookup from CVE 6 Normandy."

"Patch it through to flight operations bridge."

He double-timed over to the flight bridge and climbed up into the empty room. The control positions were all empty and it seemed eerie with not a single soul around. He switched on a comm channel and a holo image formed.

"How're you doing, laddie?"

"Little complaining from the decommissioning crowd but we're away and clear."

Paladin smiled.

"Even though those papers are nice and legal like, we are bending a couple of the rules a wee bit," he said with a laugh. "I'm coming up now off your starboard beam, Iwo and Wake and Crete are clear as well. How's Tarawa look?"

"Everything nominal. We got a bonus of four fighters on board her as well. The mothball maintenance seemed pretty damn good, all things considered, but I feel awfully naked without at least one squadron aboard."

"One thing at a time, laddie. I've got to get off the line now, I'm getting a bit swamped here with calls from those peace commission buggers, and even one now from ConFleet. I tell you it'll be right good fun telling an admiral to go to hell. They've got a couple of frigates out at the jump point who might try to stop us, but we've got a dozen lawyers out at headquarters arguing away right now that the sale is legal. Hopefully nobody'll shoot. Hell, by the time they get it resolved we'll be on the other side of the universe. And then what are they going to do, sue us?"

Laughing, he shut down the laser link and the holo screen went dead.

Stepping down from the flight bridge Jason saw the pinpoint of light of Paladin's ship moving against the eternal night of space.

"Captain, this is helm."

"Go ahead."

"Cleared of near Earth orbit, ready to power up to full pulse drive on course heading for jump point 17A."

"Get us out of here, then."

He felt the surge of power rumble through the ship as nearly all reactor power was fed straight into the engines. The ship turned to line up on the jump point and as he walked up to the hangar bay's magnetic airlock, Earth drifted into view, a crescent blue-green ball hanging in the eternal darkness. It gave him a curious sort of feeling. It was, after all, the home world of his entire race, the Russia of his ancestors clearly visible even from half a million clicks out, and yet now, he felt strangely detached from it. He was a product of space, born on a world five hundred light years away. If he had a home, it was this ship, a family, the people aboard her. He knew that this insane adventure he was setting out on was motivated in part by his allegiance to the Confederation and for the protection of the world in front of him, even for the protection of those people who were so ready to reject him and the military that he served. He knew that perhaps that was always the lot of a warrior, to be turned to when trouble loomed, and to be rejected and hidden away when it was believed that peace had returned.

He was fighting for them but he realized as well that if he were fighting for anything it was for his ship, his comrades, and the fleet which they had so loyally served and now faced the most serious crisis in its history, a crisis created not so much by their enemies, but rather by their friends.

In a swirling cloud of dust, Hunter switched off power on his engines, shut down the emergency ejector system, and cracked the canopy open.

A choking swirl of hot dry air rushed into the cockpit, taking his breath away as he unsnapped his helmet.

"Damn, even worse than the outback," he mumbled, standing up to stretch.

A ground crew team strolled over, lazily pushing a ladder as he waited. There was no sense in getting upset by their lackadaisical attitude, this wasn't ConFleet — the base belonged to the Landreich Colonial Air Guard and a crew working in one hundred twenty plus heat had his sympathy.

The crew hooked the ladder against the side of his Sabre and he scrambled down out of the cockpit

"Where's fleet headquarters?" he asked

"Over there," one of the crew announced, trying to be heard above the cacophony of ships landing and taking off, and the sudden sonic boom of a Ferret snapping by overhead, the shockwave causing him to wince and instinctively look for cover.

He looked up and saw the Ferret climbing straight up, standing on its tail. The Ferret punched a hole through the high thin overcast and then he was gone, the ship's vapor trail climbing and then winking out as the Ferret crossed into the far reaches of the upper atmosphere. The crew barely noticed the show and obviously weren't running to combat positions.

"Is there a scramble on?"

"Nay, Charlie Boys just having a little fun."

"Who's Charlie Boy?"

"Why, he's the head of the squadron here."

Ian wanted to comment that at any fleet base punching sonic without a scramble on would have cost Charlie Boy a month's pay and a possible grounding. He had a feeling it was, if anything, a thumbing of the nose at all the outsiders gathering on the base and he started to smile. Hell, he might even like this place after all.

The ground crew looked at him and Ian was suddenly aware his old ConFleet flight suit made him stick out like a sore thumb.

"A lot of you Fleet boys showing up here today," one of the crew drawled.

"The usual gab session," Ian replied. "You know how it is, ConFleet or Colonial, the big wigs always like to have their meetings."

"And I suppose we oughta salute you, is that it, captain?"

Ian laughed and replied with a universal rude gesture.

One of the crew members smiled, reached into a tool box and pulled out a can which was dripping with moisture.

"Have a cold one on us, cap'n."

Ian grinned with delight as he popped the lid. Landreich beer was rated almost as good as the Outback Lager and Fosters of home. He took a long deep pull on the can and then another, draining it off. With a contented sigh he tossed the empty back to his benefactor.

"Ah, thanks, mate, now take care of my ship and by the way, if you don't tell those customs people, you'll find a pint of Vega's best stashed in the carry bag strapped behind my seat and I don't want to find it there when I get back." The crew grinned.

There was nothing like a little gift giving with the locals to make sure that things were taken care of right.

Turning, he started across the landing field, eager to get to the shade. The twin suns of the planet were murder when both were at noon, the red giant and white dwarf combining to cast a strange pattern of colored shadows. He looked around, realizing that this military outpost of the Landreich colonial worlds was definitely at the butt end of the universe. There were a few modern buildings on the base, made of the standard poured plasta-concrete. But most of it, and the small garrison and mining town beyond the base, was made of either adobe or rough sandstone. If it wasn't for the rich titanium deposits underneath the surrounding mountains this world would have been bypassed except for the usual crop of hermits, crazy cults, and freebooters looking for a place to hide. Buford's World they called this place, after the first prospector to land here, but it was more commonly referred to as the Hell Hole. Its inclination of axis was exactly at zero degrees and there was no season except red hot summer with 90 degrees passing as a cool day.

It had but two jump points in the system, one heading away from the demilitarized zone towards the capital world of Landreich, the other leading off on a long lopping pattern through half a dozen uninhabited systems into the flank of the Kilrathi Empire. Both in a strategic and tactical sense it was nothing more than an outpost at the very edge of the war and totally ignored by the main fleets of both sides. Thus space in this region was controlled, if at all, by colonial guards of both sides, and more often by freebooters which, in the eyes of the Confederation, was what the Landreich system was anyhow.