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own missiles, or torpedoes, but there was little point. The pirate point defence seemed as capable as our own. Its drive field seemed to be radiating energy as our lasers bit into it, but it wasn't stopping. “Ah…”
     
    I saw the wormhole blossom into existence around the pirate ship. A moment later, it was gone.
     
    “Secure from battle stations,” the Captain said. If he were angry, he hid it well. “Master Sergeant, prepare a team to board the freighter and attempt to locate whatever the pirates were after. Everyone else, good work.”
     
    I glowed. Praise from the Captain was rare. “Ensigns, you are dismissed,” the Captain said. “Report to the Senior Chief for further duties.”
     
    The next hour was largely uneventful. The Senior Chief, as always, had a vast number of tasks that needed doing whenever someone could be spared and I found myself working with Sally on the starship’s main shuttle. I’d flown shuttles back at the Academy, but I hadn’t had a chance to fly once since I’d boarded the starship, even in simulation. I was dimly aware that the Captain would be going down to the surface when we finally made orbit and I rather hoped he’d chose me as his pilot. It was unlikely – flying the shuttles was the Pilot’s other task – but I could dream, couldn’t I? Besides, I’d heard good things about Terra Nova.
     
    “Good enough,” the Senior Chief said, finally. We were, as Ensigns, allowed to refer to him by his first name, but none of us quite dared. “We don’t want the Captain to be put out by the condition of his shuttle, do we?”
     
    “No, Senior Chief,” we said, together. A Senior Chief couldn’t be called ‘sir’ – he’d made that point clear the first time he'd had us as a group – but what else could we call him? His task – bossing the various crewmen around – wasn't an easy one, even though no one in their right mind would have picked a fight with him. He'd once disciplined a drunken crewman by giving him a black eye and a sound thrashing. The crewmen might have called us ‘babies’ when they thought we couldn’t hear, but they wouldn’t dare defy the Senior Chief.
     
    “Of course not,” the Senior Chief agreed. His voice lightened slightly. “It is particularly important when the Captain has decided that the Ensigns who were on the bridge are to accompany him to the surface. You wouldn’t want to be the person responsible for the mess, would you?”
     
    “Lucky you,” Sally said, without heat. If she hadn’t been tired, she would probably have said a great deal more, perhaps even a discussion of my parentage. “Senior Chief, why is the planet called Terra Nova anyway?”
     
    “Officially, because it was the first planet we discovered,” the Senior Chief said. He laughed, as if he were laughing at a very private joke. “Or perhaps it was just a case of someone lacking in imagination at the right time. That said…do you know what the inhabitants call it?”
     
    We shook our heads.
     
    He smiled, with the air of one imparting a great secret.
     
    “Hell,” he said.
     
     
     
    Chapter Four
     
     
     
    The causes of the Terra Nova disaster – although the UN refuses to admit to this day that it was a disaster – are many, but the simplest cause of all remains unspoken. The UN attempted to ensure that every ethnic group on Earth received a ‘fair’ patch of ground on the new world. This might not have led to disaster, if the UN hadn’t then insisted that all groups were to be forced together on one continent, as, according to the latest political-science theories, they would form into a new community. This might have worked…if the UN hadn’t then taken steps to prevent, quite unintentionally, such a community from forming. It took twenty years to develop Terra Nova…
     
    The war started the following year.
     
    -Thomas Anderson. An Unbiased Look at the UNPF. Baen Historical Press, 2500.
     
     
     
    The Captain didn’t allow me