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spotted his error: gold had a rabbit on the sixth rank. He needed to block that and failed to do so. Unless a miracle happened, Mullenhoff and Huang were very shortly going to win this match. In addition, Knox arrived at one other conclusion: a game of fourhanded Arimaa was complicated enough, without the added pressure of having your commanding officer as your partner.
    “Thanks, Commander,” Mullenhoff gloated. “I’ve waited a long time to beat the captain at Arimaa and I couldn’t have done it without you.” The blonde-haired woman reached for a piece to make her next step when a chime came over the shipwide address system.
    “Captain to the bridge,” summoned a voice.
    Mullenhoff froze, with her arm extended over the playing board, winching as the captain spoke. “Terribly bad timing, but duty calls. So sorry we didn’t get to finish the game. Commander, Lieutenant,” the captain nodded to his opponents as he quickly made for the wardroom hatchway. “XO, you’re with me.”
    Tempest’s Chief Engineer Mullenhoff remained frozen for a moment after the departure of Pettigrew and Knox, and then looked over at Huang. “I both love and despise that man,” she said.
    As per SUSF etiquette, the captain didn’t usually spend much time in the officer’s wardroom, but he had been invited by Knox and Mullenhoff for this game. Chaz Pettigrew did a lot of things other captains didn’t do, and was known to be something of an eccentric in space force circles. At the same time, his reputation as an effective tactician had been well established in the People’s Rebellion and his officers loved to test their commanding officer’s tactical skills on the Arimaa board.
    Parker Knox shifted uncomfortably in the turbolift as he and Pettigrew made their way to the bridge. “Sorry about that move, Captain. I should have noticed that rabbit,” he said.
    “It was just a game, Park, but learn from your mistakes. You tend to get bogged down in the details of the battle and forget about the big picture,” Pettigrew replied, trying to set his exec’s mind at ease. “Besides, we pulled off the best move of the match.”
    “We did?”
    “Yes. We escaped Commander Mullenhoff’s wrath. She’s probably still sitting there, fuming at the board,” he joked as the lift doors opened.
    “Captain on the bridge” a computer voice announced as the tall black man strode off the turbolift and moved to the command chair. He had a handsome, rectangular face and an attractive smile, which he used more often than most commanding officers might. Chaz Pettigrew had been captain of the heavy cruiser Tempest for almost a standard year. Most of the crew felt he was a strong but fair CO, and he had worked hard to keep the Tempest one of the finest warships in the Union fleet.
    “What’s the good word, Commander?” asked Pettigrew, addressing the officer of the deck, Taylin Adams, as she handed him a datatab with the ship’s status on it. The Tempest bridge crew continued about their duties, but several of them snuck a look the captain’s way to gauge his reaction to the news.
    “Receiving a distress signal from our outpost on planet Uritski in the Luoyang system, sir,” Adams reported. “They’re under attack by a single vessel of unknown silhouette and origin. The station is reporting that their two garrison frigates have both taken severe damage.”
    Pettigrew finished scanning the datatab before he responded. “How long for us to arrive at Uritski under full speed, Ms. Adams?”
    “Approximately two hours forty-five minutes standard, sir. We are relatively close to the Luoyang system now and most probably the closest Union warship.”
    The captain did some mental calculations. “The time stamp on this message from Uritski Station is ten forty-seven standard. That means by the time we get there, they will have been under attack for how long? About six hours?”
    Knox had initially reported to his bridge station, but had wandered