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it has led me to dark places. It shames me even to acknowledge in this journal, which no one will ever read, that I have considered the alternative to taking the risk of stopping to grow food. How would I handle things, I asked myself, if we had only half enough food to sustain us? Would I simply allow everyone to subsist on half-rations, until no one had the strength to man their battle positions? No, that would be a gift to the enemy…when they finally find us.
    Would I have a lottery, let chance decide who lives or dies? No, for I would have to ensure the fleet retained the experts and veterans on which its survival depends. So it would come down to me, like some dark god, decreeing from on high who lives and who dies. I can hardly imagine a nightmare so dark, a horror so maddening…far more terrible than any enemy I have faced. Worse, I would have to have them all killed—murdered. I couldn’t risk the resistance of slowly dying men and women, the desperate rebellions and mutinies by those chosen to die. Nor the effect it would have on the others, as they watched friends and comrades driven mad with hunger and fear.
    Perhaps I could do it, perpetrate such a monstrous crime, if we were stranded somewhere, if there was no other way…if the only alternative was certain death for all. But never when there was an alternative. No, I would see us all destroyed in the attempt to survive together before I let myself—all of us—become that . Better to take the risk, to do what must be done and fight for survival together.
    Still, I would hear the words from you, for it would bolster my own failing strength. Yet I know what you would say, what you would do. And I will take your counsel, though you are a thousand light years distant and unable to give it.
     
     
    X48 System
    Approximately 14,000,000 kilometers from AS Midway
    The Fleet: 144 ships, 32,808 crew
     
    “Let’s take a closer look at planet two. It’s the only one that looks worth checking out.” Mariko Fujin sat in the fighter’s command chair, looking out over the other four members of the ship’s crew. Her eyes paused as they passed over the pilot’s station, and she felt a touch of wistfulness. That was her place, had been her place, at least…but no longer. She hadn’t lost her spot due to failure or disgrace, indeed, she was one of the best fighter jocks in the fleet. But success had its costs too, and rank brought obligation and loss along with privilege. She’d managed to juggle flying her own bird with commanding the squadron, but now Admiral Hurley had pinned a commander’s insignia on her collar—and put her in charge of an entire strike wing.
    She still wasn’t used to the weight of so much responsibility. Eighteen ships. Eighteen crews…ninety men and women, all looking to her to lead them. It had hurt her deeply to relinquish the pilot’s chair, but she had done it without argument. She understood duty, and her responsibility to the crews under her. And they deserved a commander who was one hundred percent focused on leading them, not clinging to the adrenalin rush of flying a single bird in combat.
    She flipped the commandwide com switch. “Alright, listen up. We’re going to do a sweep of planet two. The Gold Dragons and Wildcats will do a scanning run at fifty thousand klicks. The Whirlwinds will maintain a defensive formation at five hundred thousand klicks…just in case we missed anything.”
    “Wildcats leader, acknowledge.”
    “Whirlwinds, acknowledge.”
    Gold Dragons, acknowledge , she thought to herself. Admiral Hurley had gently suggested—not ordered—that she assign one of her people as squadron commander, but Fujin had quietly ignored the advice. The Dragons were hers…indeed, she was the only survivor of the original squadron, and she just couldn’t let them go. It was bad enough sitting like a useless lump while somebody else flew her fighter. But give up the Dragons? No. Not unless Hurley or Compton gave her a