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back over to the captain and Adams. “Gods, by the time we get there, there won’t be any station left.”
    “I’m afraid you may be right, Mr. Knox, but I hope you’re wrong. Helm, adjust course for Uritski, full speed. Ms. Adams, apprise Central Command of the situation and send a message to Rusalka Station informing them that our arrival will be delayed. Notify all departments we will be going to General Quarters in approximately two hours thirty-five minutes.” The captain tapped his comm badge. “Ms. Mullenhoff?”
    A moment passed before a voice responded. “Mullenhoff here.”
    “Commander, you and Mr. Huang wouldn’t by any chance still be in the wardroom, would you?”
    “We are, sir.”
    “And the Arimaa board wouldn’t by any chance still have our game intact, would it?”
    “As it happens, Captain, the board’s just as you left it.”
    “Good,” Pettigrew grinned over at Knox, who clearly did not like the direction this was going. “Mr. Knox and I will be down to finish our game. Afterwards, I need to speak to you about something. Pettigrew out.”
    Knox was resigned to his fate. The captain appeared amused and slapped his executive officer on the shoulder. “It’s the best and worst thing about space travel, Mr. Knox,” Pettigrew consoled him. “One has so much time between anything actually happening. Now, let’s go see Commander Mullenhoff and take our medicine.”
    * * *
    One standard hour later, the captain returned to the bridge. He and Knox had taken their Arimaa loss in stride and Pettigrew had addressed an issue with Mullenhoff regarding what might happen upon arrival in the Luoyang system. He spent the next ninety minutes on the bridge reading while addressing a variety of small issues brought to his attention by the crew. He was a model figure in his dark blue uniform, with its epaulets of four gold stripes stitched into each shoulder. Pettigrew could have stayed in his stateroom doing ‘paperwork’ in the lead up to Uritski, but he hoped to be a calming influence on the bridge.
    The Tempest had not been in a full-fledged battle during his tenure as commanding officer. There had been a few skirmishes with pirates, but nothing major. He was sure there would be jitters among the crew, especially having to wait through more than two hours of uncertainty.
    “What are you reading, sir?” Parker Knox asked, breaking Pettigrew’s concentration. The captain had been staring at his bookpad, but in his mind, he had been mentally fighting the ninth or tenth possible scenario of the upcoming battle.
    “Oh, Commander—yes, it’s a book written by a man named F. Scott Fitzgerald called Tender is the Night . Do you know it?” Pettigrew was a prolific reader and the only person Knox knew who read books from antiquity.
    “No, I’m afraid I don’t. Sir, we’re coming up on ten minutes to translation into the Luoyang system and you asked to be informed.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Knox. Bring us to General Quarters.”
    The Sarissan Union was comprised of six colonized worlds in six different star systems: Sarissa in the Artemis system, Arethusa in the Sequoya system, Quijano in the Zavijava system, and Odessa, Tezrina and Rusalka in the Rousseau, Bonaventure, and Hybrias systems respectively. In addition, the Union claimed one more planet onto which they were attempting to place a colony—Uritski. Because such an early settlement like this had a very small population, it was not granted full colonial status, instead being officially designated as an outpost.
    Tempest dropped out of hyperspace about 750,000 kilometers from Uritski Station. Captain Pettigrew wanted enough distance to get the lay of the land before making any decisions—or being shot at. The cylindrical Class I station, a Bernal sphere, hung in orbit above the small desert world. It was designed to house up to three thousand people at a time if needed, as the world-building terraformers struggled to prepare the surface of