“You just can’t help yourself, can you?” Stephanos slipped into step with Weston as he headed for the ship’s lift.

“What are you talking about, Steph?” Weston asked, knowing damn well what the younger man was complaining about.

“Christ on a crutch, Cap. Do you realize that half the Angels out there went weapons hot when they heard you were taking a shuttle out yourself? I had to hold them back from cleansing the entire sector! Though, frankly, I almost gave the okay.”

Weston glanced over at his ex-wingman. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I was hardly defenseless. The Angels were on station, and the area was pacified.”

Stephanos snorted as they stepped into the lift. “Pacified? Hell, we just arrived on the scene. We had no way of knowing what types of ordnances were still floating around out there. You know how many people we lost in the Bering, after the battle was over? Remember Clarke? He made it all the way back to base only to have an unexploded shell take him out on landing approach!”

Weston looked over at his friend, a wry grin playing across his mouth. “I was expecting Roberts to bring this up, not you, Steph. It was a calculated risk. Besides, the Angels and the Odyssey were in the area to cover me.”

Stephanos just muttered something under his breath, the words lost as the lift’s doors separated and they stepped out into the forward habitat section. Weston split away from Stephanos, heading straight for the bridge.

“You watch yourself, Cap!” the younger pilot said as a parting shot. “This isn’t the Angels, and you aren’t flying solo anymore.”

Weston sighed as he watched him turn a corner and vanish from sight. He shook his head and continued to the bridge. He knew Steph was right. Things had changed from the early days of the war. When the Angels were first fielded, they barely had enough warm bodies to put a dozen planes in the air, let alone three times that required in tasking on an average day. Old habits and bad ones—they both died hard and, as often as not, killed you if you couldn’t put them away. He was the captain of the NACS Odyssey now, and there was more to it than just flying like a bat out of hell without a thought to the future.

Command sucks.

Commander Roberts was examining accumulated data on the debris field when Captain Weston stepped onto the bridge. Weston walked over and glanced at the data over the commander’s shoulder for a brief second before speaking.

“How much is there?” Weston asked. Even before he had gone outside, Samuels had been forced to alter course no less than five times on the short trip; he knew the debris field was extraordinarily dense.

Roberts twisted in the chair to look up at Weston. “A lot, Captain; between ten and fifteen ships at the very least. The scary part is that they all appear to have been of the same origins, design, materials, and markings. Looks like some type of internal conflict, maybe a civil war, or they tangled with one nasty group of Tangos.”