The surviving fleet units fought for control and altitude. No targets appeared for him to lock weapons onto. As he cleared five hundred thousand meters, his Spacefire’s systems snapped back to normal. Telisan craned his head around to glare at Enshar, the deathworld that had reached out and claimed most of his squadron and the Flamme.
“We are not done,” he swore to the looming world. “We are not done.”
“All Black Diamonds,” Telisan keyed his mike, “return to the carrier.” The surviving four ships answered his call.
Chapter Two
Robert Fenaday sat alone in dark wood and leather of Luchow’s Marsport bar, trying to get drunk. He wasn’t much of a drinker, another of his father’s several disappointments in him, but a man had to be somewhere. But tonight was the fifth anniversary of the day the young officer had come to his door bearing a flag and condolences that Lisa was missing, presumed dead along with her ship.
Here’s to you Dad, he thought, too bad you aren’t here to share it with me.
The bartender walked over to Fenaday’s corner table. “You gonna nurse that all night, spaceman?” It was early, and the bar was far from full, but Fenaday had a prime table to himself.
Fenaday barely glanced up from the glass. “Put another one down,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes.
“Sure,” the bartender said, giving him a frankly curious look, as if he somehow sensed Fenaday was not the usual freighter officer.
Fenaday was used to the scrutiny. His uniform was not standard military, but the black leather jacket held a captain’s bar. Like most things on his ship the jacket was second hand, its name badge being newer than the jacket’s old, worn leather.
I probably look as worn as the jacket tonight, he thought.
The bartender walked off, to return with another glass of amber liquid. “Drinking Olde Henley, huh?” he asked. “That stuff will kill you.”
“I’m not that lucky,” Fenaday said.
A couple of businessmen came in. The bartender, apparently smelling better tips, moved off, leaving Fenaday to his drink. He lifted the glass and held it at eye level, studying its shifting amber color in the low light of the bar, but didn’t raise it to his lips. It wasn’t alcohol he wanted; it was distance and numbness. Distance from the memories of a lost home and a lost love. Thoughts of Lisa crowded close and jagged tonight, and the traditional medicine of the Irish wasn’t helping him. Maybe the ancient spirits of the island he knew only from books were having fun at his expense. The Sidhe loved tragedy and the struggle of mortals.
They must love me, he thought, a lost man searching all of space for his wife. Show’s over, he thought to the spirits. His ship, the Sidhe, sat in dock, probably never to fly again. The end of the Conchirri war and the bounties it generated made it impossible to run a private warship. Backers in the syndicate that financed the privateer dropped off. Sidhe had made port on Mars with barely enough to pay off her crew.
Fenaday had spent the last few days looking for work in the bars and haunts of the huge spaceport, refusing to give up. Now he found himself alone in a Marsport bar, staring at the turgid liquor.
People began to fill in, office workers and maybe more prosperous spacers. Fenaday had posed as one of those more prosperous. The deception had failed. His last hope had just left. The shipping agent for a small firm plying part of the Fringe Star sector had expressed her regrets. With the war over and the navy free to patrol again, her company no longer needed a privateer escort.
God, he thought, putting the glass back down, there has to be some way. Pick yourself up, man. Find something. Think.
Nothing came to him. A warship or exploring service would not take him on as a passenger. He was only thirty, but there were hundreds of younger regular navy captains looking for berths in the rapidly contracting Confederate Space Force. Merchants rarely traveled in the Fringe Stars, and then only to the settled worlds he’d already searched for any sign of Lisa or her ship, the Blackbird. Sidhe was the only instrument for his search. Now he and the ship lay useless on Mars.
Fenaday dropped his head on the table so no one could see his face. “You can’t cry,” he whispered. “You can’t start; you’re a tough pirate captain.” It didn’t help. Hot tears slid