The screen went dead. I tipped my face to the ceiling and let fly a stream of profanity that would have stopped Alva Clay in her tracks. When the verbal cascade had run dry, I noticed Laura staring at me. I jerked my thumb at the black mirror of the blank screen.

“I’m sorry, he’s just…” I didn’t need to complete the sentence.

“Yes.” A smile broke through the lines of fatigue on her face. “He certainly is.”

I slumped back in my chair and exhaled. “I wish I’d put Preston ashore when I had the chance.”

She laughed. “Would that have helped the situation, do you think?”

“No, but it would have given me a little satisfaction.” I tapped my fingers against my chin. “Do you think you could reason with him?” I asked.

Laura stopped smiling. “No.” She brushed imaginary dust from the surface of her console. “And you’re probably better off not mentioning me at all. If he finds out who I am, it’ll give him all the excuse he needs to board this ship.”

“He wouldn’t dare.”

“To capture an agent of Outward Intelligence?” She raised her eyebrows. “You bet your life he would.”

I sat back and squeezed my fist in the palm of my other hand. “There must be something we can do to get away from him. Do you know of any weaknesses the Scimitar has that we can exploit?”

She shook her head. “Not at this range. Even if you pushed the engines to their theoretical maximum, his torpedoes would catch you before you were going fast enough for a hypervoid jump.”

“So, we’re stuck?”

“Unless you can think of anything?” She looked hopeful.

I gave a frustrated sigh. “I was a medical frigate’s commander. Battle tactics were never a big part of my role.”

To tell the truth, I felt a little punch drunk. Up until today, I’d managed to avoid front line combat. I’d only participated in a handful of defensive actions against minor craft. And now here I was, commanding a ship that had already downed one military vessel and was currently squaring up to two more. I had joined the House of Reclamation to get away from the aftermath of the last war, only to find myself now sitting at the flashpoint of the next. On my shoulders, I could feel the weight of a thousand unwritten histories. Floating here in the sights of the Conglomeration Navy, with the representatives of several other navies bearing down on us from the hypervoid, I knew with almost unbearable clarity that my next actions—if poorly chosen—had the potential to trigger an interspecies conflict that would make the horrors of the Archipelago War seem like a bar brawl in comparison.