Stockton looked around the room. It wasn’t the pilots’ usual officer’s club. Indeed, they weren’t even behind Bulkhead Eight, the traditional partition of a Confederation fighter wing’s territory on a mother ship. Their quarters had been destroyed, everything behind Eight a total loss. Possessions, uniforms, personal items…all gone, incinerated or blown into space. But Stockton didn’t care, not even about the year’s salary worth of poker chips that had been vaporized…or were floating around the Krillus system somewhere. His thoughts were with dead pilots, and one in particular, a man who had been his rival, and who had saved his life.

“The last thing Ice would have wanted would be for you to brood over his death, Jake.” Jamison leaned in, putting his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “We’re pilots…we drink and send off our dead, and then we move on to the next battle.”

They all knew there would be a next battle. Whatever had happened at Santis—and there were all kinds of rumors flying around—there was little doubt that even if the prospect of full scale war with the Alliance had receded, the Union threat remained. War was still imminent, if not here, then on the distant border, where Dauntless had spent ten months patrolling. It would take some time before the ship’s extensive damage could be repaired, but there was little doubt they would find themselves in the middle of the fight again.

Stockton looked at his friend, his expression somber. “You’re right, of course, Kyle, but…”

“No buts, Raptor. The Confederation needs you, it needs all of us. And if Ice were here, he’d be the first one to tell you that. Mourn the dead…but look to the future, to the fight to come.”

Stockton sat still for a moment. Then he nodded gently and raised his mug. “The fight to come.”

*   *   *

“You’re going to make it, Sam…you just have to hang on.” Walt Billings sat in a powered chair at his friend’s side, leaning forward, his hand on Carson’s arm. Billings’ legs were gone at the knee. A regeneration procedure would return the injured engineer to duty, but that would have to wait. Dauntless’s sickbay was as battered as the rest of the vessel, and Billings would have to endure the confines of his chair until they reached Archellia, and the facilities needed to grow him a new pair of legs.

“You’re…good…liar…” Sam Carson’s voice was a barely audible rasp. The engineer had spent the last day doubled over, vomiting incessantly. Doctor Weldon had done everything he could, given Carson every drug available, both to treat his radiation sickness and to alleviate his symptoms.

Barron stood just inside the door, next to Dr. Weldon. He’d watched as Billings spoke to his friend, trying vainly to cheer up the dying man.

“Is there anything else you can do, Stu?”