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Kenji and also the four pilots who flew the Marine Darts. Piloting was a unique profession and every pilot on board the Lepanto knew every other pilot, no matter the deck or rank or gender. She left active the alien ship holo and her overhead screen image of the Bridge and the people on it, then looked left as the three friends came toward the command seats that filled the middle of the Bridge. What would Jacob ask of them?
     
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    Jacob gave thanks the vacsuit’s flexible helmet could be lifted up and hang against his upper back. It allowed him to breath ship air and hear every squeak, rustle or low word spoken by the nine Bridge crew who occupied the function posts in front of him and Daisy. Seeing him do that had resulted in the crew doing the same. Course, once they entered active combat, everyone would seal up. And cross their fingers that the outer hull’s ablative coating and adaptive optics mirrors would deflect away or absorb the worst of any laser hit. Straight on laser hits would cut through the ablative coating that lay under the mirrors, but the two meters of titanium-nickel-steel armor that was the outer hull would resist any laser strike that did not stay focused for long minutes. Below the armor was a level of water, with the inner hull further below. Thousands of tons of water filled the space between the inner and outer hulls. The water gave them further shielding from stellar radiation that penetrated the outer hull. At the rear, the fuel tanks of tritium and deuterium isotopes gave further shielding to the crew folks working on Engines Deck, which filled the back half of Command Deck. Below the inner hull lay the seven decks stacked like a layer cake, with pressure hatches breaking every hallway and every gravlift shaft into spaces where air could be contained in case of a hull rupture. Course, if a beam or a deep penetrating missile hit the three fusion reactors that filled the central core of the ship, then life on the Lepanto would come to a quick end. The hiss of the Bridge entry hatch diverted him from the recorded imagery of the last moments at the meeting site. His friends had arrived. He looked left.
    Lori led the group, followed by Carlos and Quincy. They faced him and saluted.
    “Ensigns reporting as ordered,” Lori said over her vacsuit’s comlink. Seeing his helmet pushed back, she copied him. As did the two young men.
    His three friends watched him carefully. Jacob sitting in the admiral’s seat had quickly told them he was in command on the Bridge. But beyond that, and the ship status change, they knew nothing. He saluted them back.
    “Thank you each for coming.” Jacob gestured at the front wallscreen with its image of the opposite side of planet four. “We have lost contact with the admiral, our captain and our XO. The other ships have also lost contact with their captains and XOs. Using the ship status change code shared with me by the admiral, I changed our status to Alert Unknown Enemy.” He pointed at the spysat image of the black lightning storm that still swirled above the meeting site. “A massive electrical storm happened forty minutes ago, right after the arrival of a second alien shuttle. I had Tactical launch a Cloud Skimmer to give us a direct eyes-on view of the meeting site.” He focused back on his three friends. “The loss of tablet contact with everyone at the meeting site raises the chance this is due to enemy action. Presumably by the aliens on the far side of this world. We have radar painted the meeting site using a spysat, but it showed only the presence of eleven shuttles. Our nine and two alien. The enemy ships have not changed their geosync orbital attitude. I called you three here to get your thoughts.” He fixed on black-haired Lori, who wore an NWU Type I uniform like Daisy. In fact, all of them wore the camo uniforms. No one wore dress blues unless ordered to do so. The Russian woman, a graduate of some exobiology institute in