The SNV Cobra swung hard to port, its burnished, brass-metal hull glinting against the far light of the system's blue giant star. A Belisarius-Class cataphract, the warship measured a full kilometre from bow to stern, with a bulky cuboid of a body, narrowing at the front to a shovel-like nose, and with a clump of powerful atomic engines boiling in the rear housing.

It cleared the storm-skied, charcoal sphere of Crassus IV, and the gun batteries along both flanks bristled into life, torpedo bays sliding open on the lower bombardment decks. Sleek sensor clusters dotted along the heavily armoured exterior reached out into the void, scanning for threats. Its engines flared with an acceleration burn, hurling the Cobra into the heart of the system.

On the bridge, Lt. Commander Wraia Clay watched the manoeuvres unfold.

She sat in the command chair, her throne, her place of complete power and responsibility. Legs crossed, elbows propped against the armrests and with her fingers steepled, she let the gaze of her crystal-grey eyes shift from position to position around the bridge. Her Sol Navy Uniform of steel blue jacket and trousers was immaculately pressed, fitted with military precision to her slim frame, and a crisp ponytail of brown hair protruded from beneath her high-peaked cap.

The view screen ahead of her showed a lot of darkness, a sea of glittering lights, and the distant, boiling globe of the star, Crassus. A tactical overlay of searing blue marked out waypoints, planetary bodies, asteroids, and comets with distance counters as the vessel turned, hard and fast enough to let Wraia feel it through the Cobra's inertial syncs.

In front of the main screen a twin-control station formed a broad arc, with the tall, demur Lieutenant Ratcliffe manning the pilot's chair and a younger officer, Ensign Scarrath, at navigation, her nimble fingers moving gracefully across the controls, tracking their course and rekeying vectors as they moved.

"Bring starboard thrusters down ten percent," she ordered quietly. "Bring us around on bearing 323°. Sensors, full spread and mark targets as they come. Forward batteries, check?"

"All forward batteries show green," replied Lieutenant Gallagher, the ship's XO and master gunner. "Gunnery decks three through six primed for point defence salvos, decks six through ten standing by for command. Bombardment decks show all port and starboard tubes loaded and torpedoes armed."

Big and broad, he was three years her senior at the age of thirty-two, but if he held any resentment about being passed over for command by a younger officer, he didn't show it. Gallagher was a consummate professional, with a bristling black moustache and a shaven head beneath his cap. He nodded to her as a series of red indicators began to flash up on the main view screen.

"Hostile targets," barked Ensign Hooper from the tactical module to the left of her command chair. The stern-faced officer keyed fresh sensor sweeps as she spoke, sending her data out to the Cobra's bridge crew, where it could be converted into actions of deadly precision. "I read seven – strike that – nine enemy signatures closing on our position at attack speed."

Making a mental note to pull up Hooper on the erroneous information, Wraia nodded. "Composition?"

"A.I. paints them as a Traussican picket, ma'am. Six gunboats, two corvettes and a frigate – Espandor Pattern."

"Mr. Briar," she snapped to the young man at the communications station. "Signal red alert. All hands to battle stations."

The tactical console bleeped a warning, and Hooper glanced across. "They're locking weapons, ma'am."

"Adjust heading to intercept." Wraia straightened in her seat and cast her eyes down at the smaller command display built into the side of her chair. "Three quarter speed, straight into their teeth, Mr. Ratcliffe."

"Aye, ma'am."

"Bring forward barriers to full and lock torpedoes on the frigate," she continued, running through the engagement manuals in her mind, following the steps as she'd been taught to do. "Point defence and primary gun decks, hold until we reach close quarters, then engage the smaller vessels at will. Keep their ordnance off our hull as we make our attack run."

Exhaling slowly, Wraia nodded. "Take us in."

The Cobra accelerated hard into the enemy formation. The red indicators swelled on the main screen, outlining the enemy as they closed in. Then a rumble shook the decks.

"Receiving fire," Hooper warned. "Forward barriers are holding."

"Steady as she goes, helm."

The distance counters dropped and dropped and dropped, until they were only a few thousand kilometres distant – spitting distance by interstellar standards. More simulated hits thundered across the Cobra's barriers, and Wraia counted down silent seconds.

"Enemy torpedoes inbound!"

"Standard evasive patterns, Ms. Scarrath," she snapped.

"Breaking course, keyed," Scarrath chirped back, feeding fresh courses into Ratcliffe's console as the enemy ordnance came searing across the void towards them. The display picked out trails of a dozen torpedoes locked on their trajectory.

Then the Cobra's counter batteries came to life, the short range defences spewing a blizzard of solid-state munitions into the local volume. Three quarters of the incoming torpedoes were swatted from the sky by Gallagher's efficient gunnery teams, the rest left to blaze harmlessly off into nothingness as Ratcliffe executed a savage evasive manoeuvre, twisting the cataphract at the last moment to break the targeting lock. It was a dicey thing to time, she knew, but after several training runs, Wraia had gotten a feel for the range.

Weathering the storm, the Cobra lurched back onto its original heading. Four of the Traussican gunboats went up in theoretical fireballs, and a corvette on the right flank sputtered out of formation, engines crippled by a broadside of mag-cannon shots from the cataphract's main guns.

"Torpedoes locked," Gallagher barked. "Firing."

Four green indicators emerged on the tactical display from the bow of the ship, spitting across the empty space with fearsome speed. Two of them were intercepted, but the others struck home, obliterating the enemy frigate.

"Enemy force is breaking off," Hooper announced a moment later. "Six enemy ships destroyed, one heavily damaged." She allowed herself a smile as she looked across at Wraia. "We're in the clear, ma'am."

Wraia felt a surge of smugness as the "EXERCISE TERMINATED" message flashed up on the main display. An array of performance indicators spilled down both sides of the screen, showing efficiency ratings and tactical assessments of each department of the vessel – boiled down to a percentage by the Cobra's onboard AI.

To her immense satisfaction, virtually all of them soared into the high nineties. She had a lot to prove right now, with a young crew and a ship command that she knew a lot of people thought she didn't deserve.

And that meant perfection was always her goal.

"Ms. Hooper?"

"Ma'am?"

"Next time make sure you check your screens properly before confirming a target count."

Hooper's cheeks flushed and she saluted. "Aye, ma'am. It won't happen again."

"See that it doesn't." Wraia swivelled away, letting the impressive test numbers imprint on her brain for a moment, before logging them away. "Good work, everyone, but there are still a few extra percentage points I think are well within our reach. Let's run it again." She nodded to Lieutenant Ratcliffe. "Helm, 165° starboard. Lay in course for Crassus IV, steady as she goes."

"Steady as she goes, aye," Ratcliffe answered, a wry smile on his face as set the Cobra in motion again.

"Ma'am!" Ensign Briar called suddenly from the comms station. "We have an incoming message – emergency flash traffic."

"Countermand that!" Wraia barked, snapping out a hand towards the pilot and turning her head towards Briar. "Communications?"

"Receiving unscheduled comm burst across all frequencies," the ensign continued, a hand pressed to his earpiece. "Flagged as Everest Priority – ID stamp C4F-357-92B."

Wraia's spine stiffened, and she suppressed the tide of surprise that rose up inside her. An Everest Priority message was not something an officer expected to receive on a training mission.

Suppressing the butterflies in her stomach, she nodded to him. "Alright, let's have it, Mr. Briar."

"I..." A moment passed, and Briar shook his head. "It's a disaster beacon, ma'am."

"Automated?"

"Yes, ma'am. And it was a narrow burst. We only caught it for a couple of seconds." Briar swivelled in his chair, a nervous expression flashing across his angular features. "It's gone now. Like it was cut off, or the transmission was broken."

"Cut off," Wraia repeated, her eyes narrowing. "Who does that ID stamp belong to?"

Briar flashed a hand over his console. "Registered to a colonial transponder at... Myrr Idol."

"Myrr?" Lieutenant Gallagher raised a bemused eyebrow. "That's way the hell and gone to nowhere, isn't it?"

"It's long-belt colony," Wraia replied, nodding as she tried to remember exactly where the colony was located. "Dreamers taking a grip of the unknown."

"And sending out disaster beacons is part of the dream, eh?"

She cast a disapproving glance at her weapons officer, before turning her attention to Ensign Briar. "There's no accompanying message?"

"No, ma'am." He shook his head. "Just a burst from the beacon then nothing."

Wraia clasped her hands together again and swung the command chair back to face the main screen, looking out over the expanse of the Crassus system. She closed her eyes for a moment, dredging up the maps of colonised space from her classes at the Naval Academy.

"Ensign Scarreth," she said, opening her eyes and speaking firmly. "Bring up our current position."

The navigator keyed in the command, and a moment later the view from the Cobra's forward cameras was replaced by a sector chart. A pulsing white dot showed their position, far from the settled heart of human-claimed space in the sparsely populated Crassus system. A down to the left more human colonies were clustered, and beyond the current screen she knew there was a sprawling, ovoid blob of systems that emanated out from Sol.

In other direction, beyond Crassus, however, it was a different story. There was a large tract of unexplored, unclaimed space there, beyond the 'belt' of colonial influence. On the other side of that neutral void lay the straggled border of the Narvorian Planetary Republic, and Wraia couldn't suppress a twinge of suspicion. The war with the Narvorians had been fought long before her time, but that didn't mean anyone trusted them – peace or no peace.

"Bring up the position of Myrr Idol," she ordered.

The map zoomed out slightly, and another pulsing dot appeared deep in the dark space between the jaws of the two interstellar powers. Beyond it was just more unclaimed territory, places known only by astrographic maps.

"Really took a jump out there, didn't they?" Ratcliffe muttered.

"Mr. Briar, at this distance what's our time delay on receiving that beacon burst?"

"Two hours, ma'am."

"Alright. Open a direct SLC channel to their control hub."

Briar raised a hand. "Channel open. Go ahead, ma'am."

Wraia clicked the transmit button on her command console and spoke into the receiver.

"This is Lt. Commander Wraia Clay, commanding the Sol Navy Vessel Cobra," she said, keeping her voice as crisp and calm as possible. "Calling colony Myrr Idol. We have received your beacon burst. If you have communications capacity, please respond to this message and outline the nature of your emergency."

She waited. Several seconds passed and Briar shook his head. She repeated the message twice more, but nothing but silence crackled on the other end of the channel. Wraia tapped a finger against the arm of the command chair, unease creeping into the back of her mind.

"Keep trying, ensign," she said after a moment.

"You think you'll get an answer?" Gallagher asked dubiously.

"No, I don't," she replied. "But it is best practice to explore all options, lieutenant. If they can reply, they will." Wraia looked down at her command display, lips pursed tightly as she considered her options.

A disaster beacon cut off, from a colony out in the middle of nowhere. It didn't take a leap of logic to know that something had happened, and probably something bad.

"Ensign Scarrath, plot a course for Myrr Idol," she ordered. "And standby. Mr. Briar, forward the flash traffic to Davian Naval Command and tell them I am requesting permission to deploy the Cobra to assist the colony in any way necessary."

"Aye, ma'am. Message-," Briar broke off, his brow furrowing in surprise. Then he turned to her, a nervous smile on his face. "Looks like we weren't the only ones who caught that disaster beacon, ma'am. I've got Davian on the line – SLC vid-comm live and they want to talk to you."

Wraia bit her lip and twisted back to face the main screen. "Put it up."

In an instant the tactical display disappeared, replaced by the image of a spartan-furnished office on board the Davian Naval Command station. A rotund man with whispy grey hair and a bristling beard to match sat at a desk in a high-backed chair, the wall behind him emblazoned with the interlocked S and N motif of the Sol Navy.

At the sight of the rank bars on his chest, Wraia shot up out of her chair and saluted, standing ramrod stiff.

"Sir." She held the salute, holding the stare of the officer.

"At ease," he rumbled with a wave of his hand. "This is Commodore Forrest, Davian Naval Command. I suspect you already know why I'm contacting you."

"Myrr Idol," Wraia confirmed, clasping her hands behind her back, chin held high as she stood to attention. "We received a disaster beacon burst while out on our manoeuvres."

"You and half the sector," Forrest replied. "That burst was carried across every colonial frequency before it cut out. We've swept the area, but our long range sensors and SLC comms are getting scrambled by some kind of interference at Myrr Idol and most of the surrounding systems – that whole sector's been turned into some kind of dead zone. I think it's safe to assume that something has gone very wrong there."

She swallowed hard. "I agree, sir."

"Good, because your training deployment is officially over, Lt. Commander. Myrr might be outside colonial borders, but Sol Navy has an obligation to assist and protect any and all human colonial interests in the event of an incident."

"Yes, sir!" Wraia nodded firmly, trying to ignore the quickening of her heart.

"We don't have a lot of ships out near the long-belt, so we're scrambling anyone within striking distance. The SNV Merlin and SNV Manticore are already on their way. Your orders are to make best speed to Myrr Idol, rendezvous with Captain Ackerman of the Manticore and assess the situation. Report back all findings directly to me, and then assist the colonists in any way you can."

"I understand, sir." Wraia saluted again, hoping fervently that no-one on the bridge crew could see her shaking hand. Adrenaline was pumping through her veins – excitement and fear vying for dominance at the responsibility that had just been thrust upon her.

"Very good." Forrest gave her a salute of his own. "Fly safe, Lt. Commander, and good hunting. Forrest out."