The dark of the sky was clear, stars twinkling cheerfully above them as Eric looked out through the cockpit of the heavy lifter. He was seated in the copilot’s seat, having temporarily ejected the junior officer so he could get a little stick time while he had the chance. He normally wouldn’t have done that, but then normally he’d have gotten enough hours on a Double A to keep his qualifications.

Granted, he had other matters to concern himself with now, so losing his pilot qualification was a lesser issue than it normally would be to him. But Eric knew bureaucracy too well, and as such he was well aware that if he didn’t record the hours someone would kill his qual, no matter what he was doing in the meantime.

A transporter was a far cry from an Archangel fighter, that was true, but it was stick time and Eric couldn’t sleep, so he was going to take what he could.

“Quiet night,” he heard the pilot say as the man slipped back into his own seat with a cup of coffee in hand.

Eric nodded. “Yeah.”

“Figured you for some sleep, if you don’t mind my saying, sir.”

Eric smiled, adjusting the flight controls as the Doppler radar reported turbulence ahead. “I’m a flyer by choice, Colonel. Give me a choice between sleep and flying, and you know, it’s not even a contest.”

The colonel chuckled. “I know the feeling. Tell me, is it much different up there, in space?”

“The black sky?” Eric asked with a hint of a smile. “It’s . . . like flying in a dream. No up, no down, just an endless black sky. If there’s a heaven, that’s where you’ll find me after I check out.”

The colonel nodded. “I’d applied for a position on one of the new ships before all this, but . . .”

“Yeah,” Eric said quietly.

The coming of the Drasin had put a stop to a lot of careers and dreams, turning survival into the only ambition that could be tolerated. The alien beasts had a lot to answer for, in his opinion, though Eric reserved a fair piece of the blame for himself. He doubted that he would ever forgive himself for exposing the Earth to the Drasin, even if it was merely hurrying the inevitable.

He turned his focus back to the controls, though honestly the computer handled the job better than he could most of the time.

“You’ll get your chance, Colonel,” he said. “We’re not done yet.”

The pilot nodded, eyes looking out over the dark sky and darker ground below.

“I hope you’re right, Captain.”