The dreamlike euphoria I’d felt during my arrival here had now completely subsided—replaced with a cocktail of confusion, uncertainty, and most of all, doom.
When I passed through the security doors leading into the Crystal Palace command center, the two guards at the entrance seemed to know who I was and what I was doing there. In fact, it seemed as if everyone who saw me fixed me with a withering glare. But I glared back at each of them defiantly.
When I finally reached Admiral Vance’s office, I paused outside in the corridor and practiced saluting a few times, mimicking the way I’d seen soldiers do it in the movies. Then I took a deep breath and pressed my hand to the scanner plate on the wall. A tone sounded and the doors slid open. With some effort, I stepped inside, and the doors hissed shut again behind me.
Admiral Vance was sitting behind his desk, but he stood up when I walked in. I halted just inside the entrance and gave him the amateur salute I’d just finished rehearsing.
He surprised me by straightening his posture and returning it, raising a rigid right hand to his brow in a blur, then dropping it like the blade of a guillotine a half-second later. That was when I noticed the sidearm on his right hip. An old fashioned nine-millimeter Beretta. I was pretty sure he hadn’t been wearing it earlier in the briefing auditorium.
I lowered my salute, but made sure to remain at rigid attention, while doing my best to avoid making direct eye contact with the admiral—which was surprisingly difficult, considering he was only rocking one eye. The admiral let the silence wear on, and I realized that he was waiting for me to speak first.
“Lieutenant Zack Lightman,” I said, clearing my throat. “Reporting as ordered … sir.”
“At ease, Lieutenant,” the admiral replied, sounding surprisingly calm. “Sit.”
He motioned to a metal chair beside his desk. As he took his own seat, the admiral reached over to shut off one of the computer monitors arrayed around his desk in a semicircle, but just before the screen went dark, I caught a glimpse of what was displayed on it—the same mug shot that was on my EDA security badge was clearly visible at the top, along with my senior yearbook photo and a lot of densely packed text—all of my private information, including my school records. Before I’d walked in to his office, the admiral had been skimming my entire life story—and he’d made no effort to conceal this from me.
“You had quite a first day, Mr. Lightman,” he said. “You’re going to be the first recruit in EDA history to be court-martialed less than an hour after they enlisted.” He smiled. “You might make The Guinness World Records, provided it still exists after tomorrow.”
“Admiral, sir—I’m still not even sure what it was I did wrong,” I said, and that was mostly true. “I was trying to stop that ship from getting inside the base before it self-destructed! What did you expect me to do?”
“To follow orders, Lieutenant,” the admiral said, and I thought I finally detected a hint of anger in his voice. He tapped a key on his computer, and his display screen lit up. He clicked his mouse a few times and my Interceptor appeared on the monitor, turning into a steep dive to pursue the last remaining Glaive Fighter as it streaked down into the open mouth of the drone launch tunnel while the admiral shouted over the comlink: “Disengage and cease fire! Do not attempt to pursue that ship into the launch tunnels! I repeat, disengage and cease fire!”
The clip cut to another camera angle, which showed the last Glaive Fighter as it emerged from the opposite end of the drone launch tunnel and entered the hangar, with my ship close on its tail, still firing at it. The admiral paused the footage again.
“I issued that order for a good reason, Lieutenant,” he said calmly. “If you’d followed it and broken off your pursuit, an armored safety blockade would have locked into place over that launch tunnel at both ends, preventing the enemy ship from flying into it. Like this—see?”
On another monitor, the admiral pointed to an animated wire-frame graphic that showed a Glaive Fighter approaching the launch tunnel’s open mouth. But just before it got there, a thick circular disc slammed into place, covering the launch tunnel’s entrance. A second later the enemy ship crashed into it and exploded in a simulated fireball.
“But that’s not what happened, is it?” the admiral said. “Because you ignored my order and continued to pursue the enemy ship at close range, the transponder inside your Interceptor disabled the tunnel’s safety blockades to allow it safe passage. Unfortunately, this also allowed the Glaive Fighter you were chasing to do the very same thing. Thanks to you, it was able to breach our defenses and enter our drone hangar, where it promptly detonated its reactor core.”