“I’m in,” she said. “I’ll see the three and raise you five.”

“Ooo, big spender.” Paladin grinned.

“I’m out,” Racer shrugged, slipping her cards from the hose and sending them spinning in front of her.

“It’s you and me, coal baby,” Paladin smirked. “You got the assets to back up your play?”

“You wanna see ’em, you gotta pay the toll.” Samuels smirked.

The deck rumbled around them again, and they all looked up for a moment.

“Those were the secondary thrusters,” Racer said, looking back. “We’re moving again.”

Paladin looked back toward Samuels and tried to gauge her face.

“Screw it,” he muttered. “I fold.”

“I’d say come to Mamma while chortling and grabbing the chips, but…” Jennifer smirked as she flipped her cards back.

Paladin caught them, glancing at them as he tucked the cards back in the deck. His eyes widened. “You were fucking bluffing!”

“Hey! You don’t pay, you don’t peek, boyo!” she growled, stabbing a finger at him.

“Yeah…but!”

“No buts, Paladin. Try that again, you’ll eat the deck,” she told him in no uncertain words.

“Yikes…” Racer grinned. “Don’t wanna mess with this one, Pal. She’s a cardsharp.”

“Yeah. I think she is. Howzabout it, Cardsharp? Another hand?”

Samuels stared for a moment and then smiled as she realized that she’d just been pegged with a call sign. “Deal ’em, Pally.”

“There’s something on the passives, Captain,” Waters said, his voice uncertain.

“What have you got?”

“An intermittent signal—twenty degrees left declination from our course. It’s almost directly on the ecliptic, but I can’t…quite…see it.”

“Visual spectrum?”

“A shadow, sir,” Waters replied. “I keep losing it in the background.”

That could be anything, Weston thought bleakly. Only there was a signal in this direction.

“Adjust our heading to intercept,” he said, making his choice.

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Daniels responded, making the changes in his board.

On the auxiliary bridge, Commander Roberts watched the same displays. His dark eyes narrowed as he tried to fathom the immense game of hide-and-seek they were currently engaged in.

Out there, somewhere in the immensity of space, were five ships trying to annihilate them. Here on the Odyssey, five hundred people turned everything they had to destroying those ships in turn. It was an old game, just being played on a brand-new playground.

“Anything on that bogey yet?” Roberts asked.

“Nothing, sir.” The woman at the tactical slot shook her head. “It’s just a shadow.”

The commander nodded, his eyes boring into the screen as the tension around him became palpable.

It must be what the submariners felt when hunting a surface fleet, or even more so when they hunted one of their own. This feeling of vulnerability that wouldn’t go away, like the only defense they had was a fragile silence that could be pierced at any moment. That, somewhere, there was someone who was watching them, even now.