"Probes are away, Captain."

The woman's voice came from immediately beside Jonathan's command chair, transmitted by Stingray One's internal comm system, but he knew the owner of the voice was several meters behind him, at the ship's tech station. He glanced back at the young, dark-skinned Teneian officer, Lieutenant Commander Mila Satra.

"Thank you, Commander. Keep me posted," Jonathan said. "And don't forget to add this to the Patrol's tab."

A smattering of laughter sounded from the bridge officers working close enough to hear their captain's joke. He hoped his poor attempt at humor wasn't the only opportunity the crew had for mirth on this mission to locate the missing Adriassa.

As soon as he heard about the dreadnought's disappearance, he had begun working on how to go about finding it. He decided to start with the assumption that the dreadnought's corridor drive—a faster version of a standard hyperdrive, based on technology taught to the th'Maran by the Om-Mar—had experienced a major malfunction while the vessel was traveling from Catia to Arkana. If the malfunction were minor, they could have reported the incident or called for assistance. The fact that there was no word from the ship suggested that whatever happened to it must have been catastrophic enough to take out not only the ship's corridor drive, but the power plant and/or communication systems as well. Or it had destroyed the ship entirely. But he didn't want to think about that.

If the malfunction occurred with the corridor drive active, the vessel would have returned to normal space at a location determined by the interaction of the gravitational forces of any nearby star systems or other gravity sources. Based on that, Jonathan had given Stingray One's nav computer information on the Adriassa's course, and requested a list of possible emergence points should the dreadnought's drive have failed any time during its voyage. The computer provided a list of eleven possible coordinates.

Jonathan threw out one of the coordinates, as it was within a United Galaxy star system; the unscheduled arrival of a dreadnought would have almost certainly been noticed and reported. Of the remaining ten, he assigned the top three to investigation by Stingray One. Teneian reconnaissance probes would investigate the remaining seven.

The need to relay the probes' findings back to One as quickly as possible was giving Jonathan the opportunity to test a new hyperwave communication system the Confederacy was preparing to put in place.

Hyperwave transceivers needed massive amounts of power, precluding their inclusion on small vessels, probes, satellites, and the like. To enable all such vessels to be able to take advantage of the real-time FTL properties of a hyperwave communication system, the Confederacy was experimenting with a series of hyperwave relays that would reside in hyperspace and query standard comm relays for message packets sent via regular comm systems. In this way, any vessel could send a message to one of the standard relays and have it delivered via hyperwave, or receive messages sent via a hyperspace relay. Gaunis's use of a similar, although localized, system during the Battle of Terra had inspired the idea.

Jonathan thought about how close those relays had come to enabling Gaunis to win the battle—and the war. Hopefully, this similar technology, developed and funded by the Confederacy but intended to be shared freely with all worlds, would help eliminate some of the remaining bitterness caused by that war.

"All probes report successful arrival at initial destinations." Satra's report indicated the relays were working as planned. "Beginning search patterns."

"Very good, Commander." Jonathan signaled the instantaneous transfer drive station. "ITD, prepare our first transfer."

"Ready, sir," the officer reported a moment later.

"Do it," Jonathan said.

They found the remains of the Adriassa within minutes of arriving at the second set of coordinates provided by the nav computer.

Jonathan studied the image on the bridge's main viewscreen, aghast. No malfunction of the vessel's corridor drive would have caused such extensive damage. Not even a complete systems failure could account for the massive holes in the vessel. Many of the gaping wounds still glowed with the energy of whatever had caused them. There were no life signs.

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Once before, Jonathan had witnessed similar devastation. A year and a half earlier, Stingray One had ambushed Admiral Gaunis's flagship, the Kinsa, over Arecia. To this day, Jonathan regretted the necessity of that attack and the loss of life, but it was nothing compared to this. Many, if not most, of the Kinsa's crew members had escaped the doomed dreadnought. From what Stingray One could see of the Adriassa now, all of her bay and lifepod doors remained closed, the vessels still inside.

What could have caused so much damage so suddenly that no one had time to escape?

Stingray One moved closer to the Adriassa and circled the remains of the vessel, collecting information as it went. The ruined form of the dreadnought filled the main screen.

"Captain," the sensor officer called, "it looks like some of the crew managed to escape, but they didn't get far."

One of the bridge's secondary screens focused on a series of empty lifepod bays, their doors standing open. The image panned out across space, switching to high magnification as it went, to center on another scene of destruction.

Several lifeships sat dead in space, their engine compartments torn open, holes blown in their sides.

"Those ships were hit by weapons fire," Jonathan realized aloud.

"Yes, sir. Analysis of the damaged areas indicate Patrol energy signatures."

A Patrol vessel firing on Patrolmen escaping their ruined ship? That didn't make any sense Jonathan could think of. What had happened here? Some kind of illicit rendezvous gone bad? But a rendezvous with who? And why? Whatever it was, they obviously hadn't wanted any survivors.

"Sir, whatever fired on the lifecraft fired on the Adriassa, as well," the sensor post reported. "I'm picking up identical energy signatures."

The screen image shifted to an area on the dreadnought's hull where the damage showed the telltale marks of weapons fire, rather than the ragged tears caused by an explosion.

Jonathan stared at the image, trying to work out what might have happened.

Could the ship that fired on the Adriassa and her lifecraft have been launched from the dreadnought? If not, how had it known the dreadnought would show up so far from its intended destination?

Maybe someone set the Adriassa's corridor drive to return the ship to normal space here, or maybe they shut down the drive at just the right time. Simply turning the drive off would have been dangerous, but if the desired result was the destruction of the Adriassa, did it really matter how the ship was destroyed?

But why destroy a dreadnought and kill its entire crew?

Perhaps the Patrol knew of some internal strife that had been developing within their ranks. They might have asked the Confederacy to search for the Adriassa for that very reason.

But the more Jonathan considered that idea, the less sense it made. Admiral Shaw wouldn't keep something like that from him. Even if it were something Shaw shouldn't be talking about officially, he would have let Jonathan know about it unofficially.

So it probably wasn't internal, which opened it up to almost unlimited possibilities once again.

Unless… A sudden chill shivered through Jonathan, and he looked at the ruin of the Adriassa in a new light.

Unless Gaunis had done it.

Aidan Terling, the military genius who helped the Confederacy win the war against Gaunis and who was, by his own admission, something of an expert on Gaunis's methods, had once told Jonathan that Gaunis never did anything without a purpose or a chance for gain, and he never did anything strictly for revenge. Which meant that if Gaunis had done this—and Jonathan knew that was more of a likelihood than he would like to admit—then there was a purpose behind the Adriassa's destruction, and the very real possibility that they would be seeing more of Gaunis's handiwork in the near future.

Then Jonathan realized something else. The Colliard Gaunis that Terling knew so well, the man he had studied for decades, was the man who had almost single-handedly controlled the entire United Galaxy Patrol. Since losing that control, couldn't Gaunis have changed? Couldn't this be for revenge? The Adriassa was—had been—the flagship of Admiral Darus Byerly, one of the four Patrol admirals who had openly opposed Gaunis. The former High Admiral had every reason to want to get even with him. And after being so thoroughly beaten and surviving a year of exile, anyone—even Gaunis—could begin to desire revenge.

"Communications," Jonathan said, "let the Patrol know we found their missing ship. We'll wait here until their investigators arrive, and then stay and help for as long as they need us."

He returned his attention to the main screen with its devastating image, determined to find out what had happened before anything like it could happen again.

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