The Ascent

I stood on the bluffs overlooking the Martian colony of New Athens and admired the academy's spire through the colony's clear dome. Looking up, I saw the stars in the sky move. A handful of stars flared into life and began to fall groundward. As I watched, I realized they were missiles launched by Cack warships.

The missiles punched through the dome and lifted it on a fountain of fire. The rock jumped under my feet and a huge blast, thinned by the Martian atmosphere to a mere gale, flung a tidal wave of dust and smoke over me. Darkness blotted out the stars so that I could see nothing. I waited in the black, listening to the sound of my breath echoing in my power suit's helmet.

Doctor Powers, my father, my family, my friends—they were all dead. My father's company, Trans-Luminal Systems, the Academy, they were all gone. My life as a scholar, a future business leader, whatever it might have been, had just ended. Yet as I listened to my breath rasp in my helmet and felt my hands curl in their armored gauntlets, I was still, somehow, alive. I sensed the thrumming power of the suit seemingly for the first time. Looking up through the thinning clouds, I watched the Cack warship leave.

They had killed the old Kenneth Phon, I thought.

I don't think they'll like the new one.

I awoke with a start, lying on my bed in a flight-suit I hadn't taken off in at least twenty-four hours. All around me, the ships of the Solarian fleet drifted, unprepared, not even on alert. It was almost like we were just waiting for theCacks to stroll over and capture and kill us or torture us or sell us into slavery.

Enough of this, I thought and sat up. I stripped off the flight-suit, took a shower, shaved, fixed my hair and put on my best uniform. If I was going to die, at least I was going to look like an officer in the Solarian space force.

I could almost hear my father's voice ask me. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Doing what you always tried to teach me, father. I'm dealing with it."

"Don't fool yourself. You have no combat experience."

"And just who is going to send us a commander now?"

"Besides you're too young. Who is going to follow you?"

"And how old do you think I'll live to if I just hand myself over to the enemy today?"

This seemed to shut him up.

I left my cabin and flew weightlessly down the too quiet corridors. No one had bothered to restart the habitat modules' rotation, but at this point it was too late. We would soon be on alert. A strange peace settled on me as I entered the C&C. I imagined it must be something like the peace of a condemned man who knows all hope is gone. However I wasn't dead yet. I strapped myself into the crash pod, which still smelled of sweat and fear, called up the executive command menus, selected the fleet-wide setting and switched it to FAS Gamma. The alarms sounded painfully loud after the unnatural quiet of defeat.

I watched the bandwidth meters spike upwards as the AIs of the various ships of Phil's combined Solarian/Pentaminc fleet responded. Tossing and turning all night, I had only got about three hours of sleep. Now, as the sensor data began filling my displays and the fleet came alive, I felt fully awake for the first time in a while.

"Fleet Command! What's going on? Is it another attack?" came the frantic requests.

"One moment. Please stand by." I waited, smiling, as the ships checked in. After I had them howling on hold, I backed the alert status down to Delta and conferenced them all. "Gentlemen, it may have slipped your notice, but we are still, technically, in a state of war. Please have your ships form up in a defensive sphere. I'm calling a conference of all SCs in five minutes.