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interrupted as his harness clicked and began its Datadump, and he heaved a deep sigh. He knew better than to roar in anger, pain, frustration.
    David was dead. He knew other people, but David had been his friend his entire life. He could not yet think of existence without him. Loss . . . emptiness . . . he had no symbols to describe it properly.
    Cap still had a purpose, however, and that would give him strength. But fatigue and exertion and his wounds called to him to rest. He would do that now. Tomorrow he would travel gingerly and painfully back to Home. There, he would be paired with a new friend, and he and that friend would hunt the invaders remorselessly. Perhaps the manhunters from Black Ops would join them. If not, he would teach his new friend what loyalty meant and they would hunt as a pair.
    The humans called it Duty. To him it was simply the way things were.

Time in The Freehold Universe

    One of the issues I’m stuck with is that in Freehold, I developed a local clock and calendar. It’s easy to use, but dissimilar from our own. Of course, for later books, I didn’t always have a chance to reference this in story context—people rarely sit down and talk about the math of clocks, time and dates.
    So I often used “Earth” time in reference, for readers’ ease, or because it was relevant to the story. I’d mention time in seconds. Workarounds are usually possible.
    However, for some of the Freehold universe shorts, it’s not feasible to do either. Characters are going to discuss schedule, using their native clock. So to that end, here it is:
    Grainne’s rotation is 28 hours, 12 minutes, 12.9888 seconds
    So:

    1 Freehold second =1.0153 Earth seconds
    100 seconds = 1 seg
    100 segs = 1 div
    10 divs = 1 day

    The year is 504.2103 local days, which is 592.52291 Earth days.

    There are five weeks per month, of ten days each. There are ten months per year. Each new year, at Solstice, there are four festival days, with a day added on leap years every five years, but not every fiftieth year.

The Brute Force Approach

    Sometimes, appearances in my books are auctioned off for charity. Sometimes, a friend or colleague tickles me in a certain way, and I ask if I can use them as a character.
    My friend Robert “Zig” Hensley appears in here as a hull specialist. Zig was a former Navy diver supporting the SEAL teams (he was always very careful to insist he wasn’t a SEAL himself). After a couple of injuries at depth, he was medically retired, and devoted his life to gunsmithing, good cigars and riding bikes. We never actually met in person, this being the twenty-first century. We talked at length by phone and online about rifles, revolvers, military issues, shooting. We’d make plans to meet at various three-gun matches, but didn’t quite manage to get our schedules to work.
    Then came the news that on his way back from a ride in Stone Mountain, Georgia, someone had changed lanes in a panic and knocked him under a semi. It was two days after this story was published. Given the nature of the story, I almost wish I could rewrite part of it to give him an heroic death.
    However, he did read and comment on the story, a few days before I submitted the final draft for upload. I’m glad he didn’t miss it entirely.
    This story takes place contemporaneously with the early part of Freehold.

    “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! FSS Mammy Blue calling Rescue or any ship!”
    Lieutenant Rick Stadter jerked in his couch at the sound of a real call. That would break up the monotony, and probably by a bit too much.
    Across the bubble from him, Astrogator Robin Vela was already replying. “Orbital Rescue acknowledging FSS Mammy Blue . Dispatching rescue boat, please describe the nature of your mayday.”
    Stadter nodded, checked the grid and synched the blip to the ship’s computer. Three seconds later the computer hit the grapple release. Auburn slipped off the station’s waist, using the centrifugal force as delta V. He brought