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of wounded crewmen all tied to seats. She nodded to them before reaching a particular stretcher.
    In front of her, her friend Anton Shenks lay strapped against a medical stretcher. The stretcher itself was tied against the seats surrounding it. The medical crews had ceased to work on him, as the environment was impossible. All everyone could do was think about getting out of the system alive.
    He had bandages all around his body. His blue-black captain’s uniform was covered in blood.
    “Anton,” Vier whispered. “We’re still alive. Can you hear me?”
    Shenks grunted.
    “We’re going to make it out of here. We’re pulling as many G’s as we can.”
    A moment’s pause. “You’re lying,” he groaned. “I always know when you’re lying.”
    Vier smiled. “You’re right, Anton. It doesn’t look good at all. In fifteen minutes, we’re going to be hit by some type of missile. I don’t know what’s going to happen to us after that.”
    Shenks grinned, too. His smile flexed his bandages. “Just meet it and find out. It can’t be worse than what I’m in.”
    Vier fell into the seat behind him. She fastened herself to the seat straps. “This might be the last time we’ll have an honest talk. You would think I’ve said everything I wanted to say...” Vier suddenly felt a funny feeling in her eyes. When she touched them, she surprisingly found tears. It was odd. The last time she cried was when she had been a kid, when her mother had died. She sat there, beside Shenks, for five minutes, which was a near eternity to her. It was the type of silence that only true friends could share, the type of silence that only occurred between two bonded souls.
    When it was over, she said, “I’ll see you later, Anton.”
    When she returned to the cockpit, the shuttle chief was busy talking to someone on the tachyon channels. “Yes, sir. The admiral is on board.”
    Vier buckled herself in the seat beside the pilot and eyed the minimap, again. The cockpit was filled with electronic chatter. “What’s happening, chief?”
    The pilot looked at Vier with a glimpse of hope. “The captain of the cruiser Dartmouth has decided to alter course to intercept the missile. He’ll use his entire missile countermeasure suit to take down that one missile!”
    “Why is he doing this?”
    “Because he wants to save you, ma’am!”
    Vier nodded. What could she say? No, don’t? She wanted to live damn it, and if that meant accepting the help of another officer, she was glad to accept it. “Tell him ‘thank you’.”
    “I will, ma’am.”
    As the alien missile slowly crept up to her shuttle, she watched on the minimap display as the much bigger fast-attack human cruiser Dartmouth accelerated into position in between the missile and herself.
    “The Dartmouth is firing its ECMs and counter missile gravitrons.”
    Vier nodded. Gravitron darts had little effect against a wave of alien missiles but against one alien missile, who knew? If all the gravitron darts from a human warship concentrated onto an alien missile, just by luck the missile could be taken out.
    Just then, the missile on the minimap blinked away. It was gone.
    Suddenly, the com chatter in the cockpit rose to a new level. Despite the shuttle chief’s exaltation, Vier couldn’t help but feel something was not entirely right. Then, she heard it.
    The captain of the cruiser Dartmouth, which was 40,000 kilometers away, was shouting in the com channels, “God, throw me a bike! That EMP blast, or whatever it was, just smacked our main computer. It’s—it is doing something weird! But thank god for fail safes! Someone reboot the damn thing, reboot it and get us out of here! All our electronics are fuzzing in and out.”
    “Total damage?” Vier asked.
    “Damage to our systems was minor, admiral,” the captain responded. “We have to thank our cruiser-level grav shields for that.”
    “Thank you for everything, Captain.”
    “No problem, Admiral.” Then she heard