As the Broadhead pushed away from the Pontiac, Pike was overcome with a moment of nostalgia as he saw the big Raptor-class destroyer swallowed back up by the black as the floodlights shut back off. He sat for a moment as the ship came about on its new course, remembering the same man, but a different, although identical ship. Or was it the same man? Jackson Wolfe, the legendary starship captain that defeated the Phage practically singlehandedly, a man who despised politics in any form, now looked and sounded like any other government bureaucrat. To be fair his project was a lot more important and useful than ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the paper pushers out there, but he was still just a project administrator now … filing reports while the scientists and engineers did the heavy lifting. That bothered Pike more than anything else he’d seen on the Pontiac.

When you stripped away all the specialized training and all the toys, he was a soldier. He followed orders, mostly, and wasn’t prone to fits of introspection or existential thinking, but the Cube bothered him. He’d spent five days on the Pontiac, talking to the Cube, talking to the staff, and trying to formulate a conclusion that made sense. Jackson had asked him not to divulge the details of the project to Wellington, but that wasn’t something Pike felt he could decide. No matter what the eggheads had told him the Cube was still a piece of Vruahn tech that had interfaced directly with the Phage and had now blossomed into a fully sentient intelligence by random chance. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if he believed that basic premise.

Jackson had surprised him again by refusing to give him the exact location of Barclays’ new shipyard, and although he had provided detailed specs for each new class of ship he had unwittingly forced Pike’s hand in relation to his first request. The agent would now have to use his credentials as Aston Lynch to bring pressure to bear upon the Britannic government to cough up the yard location and it was unlikely he’d be able to do that without Wellington’s approval. To get that he was going to have to tell his boss everything about Project Prometheus and trust him to do what he thought was best.

“Damn you, Wolfe,” Pike said aloud. “Computer, set course back to New Sierra and execute … max performance.”

“Acknowledged.”

By the time the second generation Broadhead transitioned out of the Arcadia System, Pike was already sound asleep in his seat. The computer analyzed his breathing and reclined the seat back until his labored snoring subsided, then it dimmed the lights and shut down the curved control panel. The adaptive software had become accustomed to the agent falling asleep on the flight deck and had developed a set of responses to make its sole occupant more comfortable.

****

“Secure connection established, ma’am,” Ellison said.