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Hammett noted. The ship's AI would have been fine-tuning the focus and finding ways to enhance the image.
    Sanjari zoomed in until the edge of the planet was a vertical black wall and the orbiting object was a palm-sized blob. The blob moved past the wall, and details began to appear. The object became a crisp silhouette.
    "It doesn't match any ships or stations that should be in the system," Sanjari said.
    Hammett didn't need the clarification. He knew what he was seeing. It was an amalgamated vessel, a collection of Hive ships.
    Kaur said, "Well, that's disappointing, but hardly surprising."
    Hammett nodded. "We need to figure out its period of rotation. We'll jump to the far side of Ariadne from the colony. We need to keep the planet between us and that ship."
    "Calculating," said Benson.
    "The Bayonet will stay here and deploy the Gate," Hammett said. " Tomahawk and Achilles will jump in."
    He saw Kaur and Touhami exchange glances, though neither of them spoke. The Bayonet carried a replacement Gate ready to connect to Earth. It would allow instant transport between the two systems. Deploying the Gate would bring them reinforcements, but it would involve risk, as well. Powering up the gate would require a fantastic amount of energy. The gate would glow like a beacon as it formed a connection to the matching Gate in the Sol system, twelve long light-years away. In the vastness of space it might go unnoticed by the Hive. Or it might draw in every Hive ship in the system.
    And the Gate would have to blaze away for more than three hours before it could make a connection.
    "We can jump in twenty-six minutes," Bennett announced.
    Hammett nodded and steepled his fingers, doing his best to appear calm. The next jump would take them very close to the planet. In all likelihood they would be spotted immediately, no matter what precautions they took. Even if they arrived undetected, they couldn't stay hidden for long.
    In a very short time – probably just over twenty-six minutes – they would be fighting for their lives.
     

Chapter 6 – Janice
    Early afternoon sunshine slanted through the trees in Veterans Memorial Park. Janice Ling sat on a bench under an oak tree, soaking in the serene beauty of the scene. Lush grass surrounded her. Like the oak, it could never have survived in the parched Baja Peninsula without human intervention. The whole park, with its flower beds and shade trees and shrubs, existed on artificially enriched soil and had to be extensively irrigated.
    The park, she reflected, was as artificial and fragile as the sense of tranquility she stubbornly clung to. There was nothing tranquil about her life these days. She lived in a maelstrom, and her mini-vacation was about to end. She had to step back into the storm.
    Her gaze strayed from the dappled pattern of leaf shadows on the grass, rising in spite of her. She looked across the Boulevard of Heroes at the long fused-sand wall of a block of row houses on the far side. Her apartment was in that block, and it had been her haven in a bustling city, her oasis of peace in a chaotic world.
    Not any longer. Now the apartment felt like a prison, a dangerous trap. Too many people knew where she lived. It had never bothered her, before.
    But she'd never been infamous before.
    With a reluctant sigh she tilted her head and brought up a menu on her implants. Getting her implanted electronics restored had been painful and tedious, but completely worth it. She already couldn't remember how she'd coped without functioning implants for all those long weeks on the Alexander .
    A flashing light in the corner of her eye told her she had messages waiting – dozens of them. The temptation to ignore it all and go back to enjoying the park was strong. She suppressed it.
    Most of it was from strangers. She was tempted to filter out everything that wasn't from someone she knew, but that would eventually cost her priceless story leads. She sighed again and resigned herself to slogging