Tomas woke up with a start as the Bounteous thrummed under him. It had been nearly two weeks since the massive resupply ship had fallen to the aliens. Two weeks since he had become a desperate, hunted fugitive. He could feel the deep rumble of this ship's main engines being accompanied by the delicate staccato of the maneuvering jets.

"It's the Wolverine," he thought to himself with elation. "Finally... escape."

Tomas Loginov had always considered himself a patient, strategic, and intelligent person. As a orphan in New Bratislava dealing with the vicious thugs that plagued his neighborhood, he had learned that sometimes the smartest strategy was to hide his intelligence. Letting the arrogant and powerful gang members underestimate him had enabled Tomas to not only escape them.. he had also been able to satisfy his own visceral need for revenge. His complex plan to rid himself of his tormentors had worked beautifully, but had unfortunately brought him to the attention of a class of criminals who were themselves more patient, strategic, and intelligent than the ones he had defeated. These shadowy figures recognized Tomas' talent and potential, and were soon grooming him for an important new assignment--whether or not he actually wanted it.

Tomas was a quick study, but he had never distinguished himself in his required formal education. Although he had almost certainly read more texts and acquired more skills than almost all of his teachers, they had never been able to capture his interest--and his grades in school reflected that. Nonetheless, thanks to the power and influence of his new employers, New Slovokia's governor officially named him the colony's designated cadet to the Space Fleet Academy. Once he graduated, Tomas would give his employers a resource that had previously eluded them: A spy in the heart of Space Fleet.

Of course, the plan relied on Tomas graduating... which he soon realized was going to be difficult, if not impossible. Nearly all of New Slovakia's prior cadets had washed out of the Academy, and while his bosses' political influence had been sufficient to gain him access, they could not keep him there if he did poorly in his classes. Paradoxically, Tomas now faced the opposite challenge as he'd had in his youth: Once they heard he was from New Slovakia, all of his instructors just assumed that he was unqualified to be in the Academy and he had to convince them he was actually intelligent.

Speaking of intelligence, Tomas found it ironic that his most successful class was the Intelligence Scenarios lab. Beyond his prior experience maintaining deception and manipulating information, Tomas learned that he had a real gift for divining the truth from a morass of complicated, contradictory data: a view that was soon shared by the lab's instructors. After a particularly challenging scenario in which Tomas' analysis had enabled his unit to avoid a deadly pirate ambush, one of the visiting instructors asked Tomas to visit his office to discuss his performance.

When Tomas met the visiting instructor--who asked to call him Billy--in his cramped temporary office, Billy complimented him on his performance in the lab. However, as the conversation continued, Billy began to ask some probing questions about Tomas' background... and especially his history on and continued connections to New Slovakia. In the course of this questioning, it soon became clear to Tomas that the visiting instructor actually knew far more about him than he should.

"Wait, is this some sort of interrogation?" Tomas asked suspiciously. "Why are you asking all of these questions you already know the answer to? If you're going to charge me with something, just let me know and we can do this with a lawyer present. Otherwise, I think we're done here," he said as he stood up.

Billy looked at Tomas approvingly and made a placating gesture for him to sit back down. "If this were an interrogation, believe me when I say you would not have the option to stand up...or leave. Think of this as an interview, not an interrogation."

Tomas faltered, and then slowly sat back down, warily asking, "Interview? Like for your personal vidcast?"

Smiling broadly, Billy answered, "No, a job interview. How would you like to work for me in Space Fleet Intelligence?"

For the first time he could remember, Tomas was shocked speechless. He stared incredulously at Billy, scarcely believing what he was hearing.

Billy took his silence in stride and continued breezily, saying, "Just to be clear, I'd also need for you to keep working for your... associates back on New Slovakia. Or at least, you'd need for them to think you still worked for them."

With Billy's coaching and advice, Tomas received his commission from the Academy and was assigned to the 9th Fleet, which was assigned to patrol and defend the expanding edge of Earth's scattered civilization. While most graduates aimed for command positions on warships, Tomas had requested--and had been granted--a position as the Junior Supply Officer on the Bounteous. When his associates on New Slovakia had initially questioned this decision, he explained to them that a junior officer on a warship could only observe part of the overall strategic picture of the fleet. In contrast, the Bounteous would make regular contact with every ship in the fleet as it resupplied them. As a key officer in the logistics chain for the fleet, he would be informed in advance of any significant deployments or missions as a matter of course.

(Not) coincidentally, the 9th Fleet was Billy's regular posting, serving as the intel officer on a special forces/black ops ship called the Raptor. Tomas had been feeding Billy intel on his associates' pirate activities, which were part of the reason why the 9th Fleet was so active on the frontier. All of this had to be hidden from the crew of the Bounteous, so after conferring with Billy, Tomas had studied the ship's plans to find a void between compartments he could use to tap into the ship's systems. While he and Billy were able to communicate using pre-arranged codewords and embedded messages in logistics messages that went to every ship in the fleet, Tomas relied on the ship's main communication array to piggyback his signal to a hidden pirate courier at pre-arranged intervals.

Coincidentally, one of those scheduled updates was imminent when the Bounteous docked with the flagship for a routine transfer of supplies. Tomas was surprised when the captain and her senior staff (including his boss, the Senior Supply Officer) had been called to the flagship for a briefing upon docking. No offloading could begin without the Senior Supply Officer, so he figured he had a good hour before he would be needed in the cargo hold... more than enough time to sneak into his secret cofferdam lair and send his briefing, assuming nothing had delayed the pirate courier.

The cofferdam was in a fairly noisy section of the ship, so Tomas initially didn't hear when the ship's PA system passed along the captain's order for all remaining officers to check their inbox for new orders. By the time Tomas had finished his transmission and gotten confirmation of receipt from the pirate courier, the situation on the Bounteous had gotten considerably more complicated and confusing.

As he caught up on his missed messages and realized all that had been happening while he was offline, Tomas' sense of unease grew. Some of the messages were being sent by panicked crew members on the all-ship channels; the paranoid and fanciful conspiracy theories that were being bandied about did not worry Tomas as much as the complete absence of any response from the ship's leadership...especially since his personal inbox was filled with a flood of increasingly stern orders from the Captain and the Senior Supply Officer for him to report to the flagship's sick bay immediately. The messages from his boss--who he had gotten to know very well over his deployment and liked to think of as a friend--sounded like they were written by a stranger, and none of the messages gave any explanation for the strange behavior of the ship's leadership since they boarded the flagship. "Something is up. Time to hunker down," Tomas thought to himself as he closed the communication device and peeked through the hidden peephole he had installed in the seam next to his access panel.

After he'd made sure the corridor was deserted, Tomas quickly exited from his cofferdam hideaway and made a beeline to the storage cube holding disaster supply kits. Every time he heard crew members running through the ship, he'd duck out of view... until he knew what was going on, he didn't trust anyone. As he finally neared the access panel, he was startled by a shipwide announcement from the bridge: "ATTENTION: WE HAVE MULTIPLE PRESUMED HOSTILE BREACHING TEAMS IN FED-ISSUE SIG-GEAR HEADING FOR THE CARGO BAY, MID-SHIP, ENGINE ROOM, AND NAV SECTION! PREPARE TO REPEL BOARDERS! ALL PERSONNEL NOT PRESENTLY ON BOARD THIS VESSEL ARE PRESUMED HOSTILE!"

"Wait, WHICH cargo bay? This entire ship is goddamn cargo bays!" Tomas thought with irritation as he dumped his armful of disaster kits through the opening into the cofferdam. Did he risk trying to get more supplies, or should he button up?

Tomas gave an irritated grunt and stepped into his compartment. He didn't like it, but he had not gotten as far in life as he had by being reckless. "Actually," he thought to himself, "If the ship-to-ship network is still active, this might be a good time to try to get some reinforcements."

His communication protocol with Billy was to use his regular fleet-wide supply memos to update him on key events. The two of them had worked out an elaborate code based on the indentation, font choices, and other formatting of the message to convey numeric information that corresponded to a codebook. Billy had also suggested that Tomas conclude each message with an inspirational quote, which corresponded to a series of statuses. The "oh shit" emergency code they had agreed on was from a 19th century minister named Ichabod Spencer: "You must make your choice whether to hold on to something which cannot save you, or let go, and fall into the hands of the Lord."

He wasn't sure how he'd explain the unusual supply memo, but as he reactivated his terminal, he saw that the question was moot: while within-ship messaging still seemed to work, those messages and others from around the ship confirmed that there was some sort of jamming going on and no messages were being passed ship-to-ship via the data net. Tomas wondered if he might be able to use the carrier wave to send another message to the pirate courier, but they might already have moved out of range, and he couldn't very well ask them to re-transmit a message from him to the intelligence chief of the Raptor. Of course, he knew there were probably other agents in the pirate organization, so maybe if he alerted them to the situation, they could...

Tomas was momentarily distracted as he noticed a massive spike in power to the main communications array... hopefully the boost in power would allow them to break through whatever was jamming them. Tomas began to type quickly, but noticed the array was now transmitting something. Switching to monitor that audio, he heard, "... OF THE FLEET! This is the supply ship Bounteous. The flagship..."

Tomas felt a sudden, sharp movement in the deck beneath his feet and nearly fell over. That was then followed by a faint screeching roar. Tomas looked back at his screen and was dismayed to see that the readouts for the main communications array were now returning errors across the board. Whatever that noise was, it had borked the entire system. And he could now hear the dull thump of what sounded like more explosions, alarms, and the sound of people running on the deck nearby. Worse yet, there was screaming and yelling... LOTS of screaming and yelling.

Tomas looked back at the within-ship comm channels and saw a terse message from one of the bridge crew. "Brace for impact & vacuum." His pulse raced as he realized that his little hideout was not in any way an airtight compartment. If the ship were depressurized, he would most certainly die. "Conversely," he thought to himself grimly, "If the Bounteous blasts its cargo and crew into space, Billy might have some sense that things have gone wrong. Saves me the trouble of sending a signal!" He briefly thought about abandoning his position, but the continued muffled explosions and panicked yelling from his comrades persuaded him that he probably wouldn't make the nearest disaster shelter.

Tomas' grim reverie was interrupted by a muffled announcement on the shipwide PA. He flipped to that audio channel on his terminal and it blared, "...HAVE CONFIRMATION THAT THE CREW MEMBERS BOARDING THE BOUNTEOUS ARE FRIENDLY. I REPEAT: THE CREW MEMBERS ARE CONFIRMED GREEN! CEASE ALL HOSTILE ACTION IMMEDIATELY AND REPORT TO THE NEAREST AIRLOCK FOR A POST-ACTION DEBRIEFING FROM OUR CAPTAIN!"

Tomas was confused, and then felt like his blood had turned to ice in his veins. He recognized the voice as the same crew member who had tried to send the warning message to the fleet earlier, and who had warned about the boarding parties in the first place. His voice was completely calm...no, actually, his voice seemed positively cheerful as he delivered the new announcement. Whatever had affected the Captain and his boss was now affecting the bridge crew, making them tell happy lies even as more screams rang out and explosions thumped near Tomas' hiding place.

Tomas prided himself on his intelligence and adaptability...but for the first time in a long time, he had zero clue what was going on, and absolutely no idea what he could do about it.

The first breakthrough for Tomas' understanding occurred a few hours after he hit that low point. In an abundance of caution as the sounds of fighting drew closer, he had decided to take his terminal offline and douse all of the lighting in the cofferdam, plunging it into darkness. As his eyes adjusted, Tomas realized that the peephole lens he'd mounted at the entry was actually making a crude camera obscura, projecting an inverted image of the hallway into the cofferdam. Thinking for a moment, he turned up the lights and fished a survival blanket out of a disaster kit. When he suspended it across from the peephole and doused the lights again, he could see with surprising clarity what was going on outside his compartment.

Which was, for the moment, absolutely nothing. For good or ill, the explosions seemed to have stopped, and there was much less yelling (and none of it seemed to be nearby). He sighed, but noted that ironically this corridor's isolation was one of the reasons he had selected this location for his hideaway. Making the best of the situation, he began to figure out how much food and especially water he had on hand in the disaster kits. Without knowing how long he would need to remain in hiding, it probably made sense for him to begin rationing now.

He was so intent on counting and sorting the supplies in the dim reflected light that he almost missed it when people began to move in the hallway. There were three of them and they were definitely members of the Bounteous' crew: he recognized all of them from the cargo-handling crew. They were carrying lengths of pipe and other improvised weapons, but their body language signaled they were hoping to use stealth to avoid a fight. Even though they were just on the other side of metal wall from Tomas, he had not heard their approach. Soon after, another three-person group passed by with similar caution and stealth, although Tomas didn't really recognize any of these crew members. He was tempted to pop the panel and ask them what was going on, but decided it was more prudent to stay hidden.

Several minutes later, he heard the sound of yelling and a physical altercation nearby, but the sounds were cut off almost immediately. Soon afterward, he could hear several sets of boots marching in sync in the corridor outside. He was initially happy to see the three cargo crew again, looking none the worse for wear. But his initial joy died off as he noticed they were now armed with crowd control stunners and were accompanied by four Marines (apparently from the flagship). But the real shock came when he focused on their faces: Unlike before, when their faces were tense and anxious, their expressions were now completely devoid of worry... or any other emotion, despite being marched in lockstep with potentially hostile Marines.

And more importantly, their eyes were glowing.

Even though Tomas was faced with complicated, contradictory data, he soon reached some basic conclusions.

• A hostile force had taken control of the crew of the flagship before they docked with the Bounteous,

• That same hostile force had now taken control of nearly all (maybe everyone except Tomas) of the Bounteous' crew

• The hostiles appeared to be biological in nature: When Tomas observed the hostile crew's search for stragglers, he had noticed some teams were shirtless, and in addition to their glowing eyes, there were glowing creatures on the hostile crew members' backs positioned directly over their spines.

• Other than an unknown series of explosions the day after the initial boarding, any systematic resistance by the crew appeared to have ceased several days ago, although the hostile crew members had continued random armed patrols.

• The controlled crew members apparently had the ability to suppress the glow from their eyes: he had observed several crew members who were obviously acting in concert with the hostile crew without any glow in their eyes.

• The frequent armed patrols (always in teams of three) made it clear that the hostiles knew that at least one of the crew members had not been converted.

• Given how frequently he observed patrols in his corridor, they had apparently concluded that he was hiding somewhere nearby. There were no security cameras in most of the corridors (the Bounteous was a truly massive ship that normally carried a very small security detachment, so security's main focus had been in monitoring and security the ship's cargo holds), so he guessed they must have rewound the cargo bay footage and seen him pulling disaster supplies, and knew which direction he had been heading.

• He had initially tried monitoring the ship's internal messaging and tried to re-establish his connection to the communication array, but the latter still seemed to be completely offline and the former seemed to be active disinformation targeted at stragglers, not actual communication. He suspected the hostiles were using other channels to communicate and also that they might detect the presence of his terminal on the network, so he powered it down entirely.

• Perhaps most importantly, after a delay, the ship had un-docked with the flagship and was underway. Although there was no definitive way to tell for sure, it seemed to Tomas like the un-docking and ship's current navigation felt... normal? The flagship had maintained the illusion of normal operations prior to their docking, and Bounteous appeared to be doing the same.

• Thus, the hostiles apparently relied on stealth for their operations.

Tomas clung to this feeling of normality like a lifeline... not because he had any illusions about the crew suddenly reverting back to their old selves and laughing off the entire incident as some sort of bizarre prank. No, he took comfort in the ship apparently keeping to its old schedule because Tomas had literally written that schedule. As the Junior Supply Officer, scheduling the timing of the docking and the supplies that would be transferred was his main responsibility. If the Bounteous was really trying to maintain the illusion of normality and keep to that schedule, it meant that--for the first time--he knew with some certainty what the hostile forces would be doing and when, and could plan his escape around that.

When Tomas finally felt the telltale signs of the docking sequence, he grimaced. The delivery was late, which raised uncomfortable questions for him about what else the hostiles might have changed from the original schedule. They certainly seemed to have stepped up their patrols. He wasn't sure exactly how the hostiles had become so certain that he was still alive and on the ship, but he had seen far more patrols in the past day than at any time since the hostiles had seized control.

He had also seen the ship's Chief Engineer and Chief Boatswain's Mate walking slowly down the corridor with a Marine fire team, pointing at various features and quietly conferring. Tomas worried that they had spent an inordinate amount of time right outside his cofferdam. He had deliberately chosen not to use the regular maintenance port for accessing the cofferdam, so he felt somewhat confident that the accumulated corrosion and grime on that port would lead them to conclude that it hadn't been accessed in quite a while and move on.

Tomas carefully tracked the patrols, but was unable to determine what pattern (if any) they were following. As he heard the end of the docking sequence and began to hear the distant sound of cargo handling equipment, he worried he was running out of time. The next cargo transfer wouldn't be for another two days (if they continued to follow his schedule), and it was to a much less formidable warship than Wolverine. The flagship was one of the most heavily-armed ships in the entire fleet, but the hostiles had to know that without any weaponry of its own, the Bounteous was no match for a heavily-armed cruiser like Wolverine. He guessed they planned to sneak some of the creatures on board as part of the cargo transfer, so all he would need to do would be to make it to the Wolverine and warn its crew to space the newly-loaded cargo and then force the Bounteous and the Vanguard (and their crews!) to submit to an inspection.

As yet another patrol went past his peephole, Tomas made his decision: Although the interval between patrols seemed to be random, it wasn't zero. So to make his escape, he would carefully shadow a patrol until he could make it to the ventilation ducts and then make a break for the Wolverine through one of the huge cargo airlocks. He knew that part of the ship as well as anyone, and was pretty confident he could navigate close enough to Wolverine that he could make contact with their crew before being stopped. So it was now or never.

Tomas seamlessly replaced the wall panel that hid his entry to the cofferdam, but was startled by the ship-wide announcement system coming online: "All medical crew report to the port cargo airlocks. Prepare for decontamination. Observe Level 5 isolation protocols."

As Tomas scurried quietly to keep the most recent patrol in view, he wondered if the Wolverine's crew had already discovered the creatures infesting the Bounteous' crew and begun to decontaminate them. But as he watched the deliberate, unhurried pace of the patrol in front of him, he doubted that was true. If the Wolverine Marines had really boarded the ship, surely these Marines would be called upon to defend the hostiles. Tomas wasn't sure what the announcement signified, but was convinced it was not good news.

Speaking of bad news, Tomas chastised himself as he realized that intersecting corridors posed a severe problem for his plan. He was so intent at maintaining his distance from the patrol in front of him that he almost missed the presence of another patrol approaching from a side corridor. Tomas was able to duck into a small vestibule and avoid detection, but concluded that moving to the air distribution system was going to be his only real chance at escaping detection. Once both patrols were out of view, he was able to hoist himself up into one of the main air handler ducts and carefully closed the vent. He was running out of time.

After having to backtrack and reorient himself multiple times, Tomas noted with humility that while he knew the corridors around the cargo bays as well as anyone, the massive air-handling ducts had generally not been his focus, and they did not follow the same paths as the corridors. Finally, he could see one of the cargo hold portside loading aprons ahead, which meant that the Wolverine was less than a football pitch away from him.

"Oh, no," Tomas thought to himself as more of the massive room came into view through the vent at the end of the duct. "Shit shit shit shit!" he spat to himself as he took in the scene in front of him. His first disappointment was the large number of fully-armed Marines (in full environment suits, for some reason) spaced regularly around the perimeter of the entire massive room. Bounteous' security team only had around a dozen Marines, and he had hoped that the frequent patrols and the desire to project "normal operations" meant that he would face few, if any, armed security personnel in the cargo bay. But it looked like Bounteous had taken on a very large contingent of the flagship's Marines, and they were positioned between him and the Wolverine.

As Tomas looked around the rest of the massive room, he realized the Marines were not the only additions the flagship had contributed to the ship's complement: There were also dozens of med techs wearing full biohazard suits, and more impressive, a huge inflatable transparent shelter connected through the cargo airlock to the Wolverine. Some of the med techs were in the vestibule of the inflatable shelter spraying and scrubbing near-naked humans before prompting them to enter the shelter. He couldn't see into the shelter very well, but it looked like there were more than a hundred confused-looking crew members in the shelter, and only a dozen or so still waiting to enter.

Standing behind the waiting crew, Tomas recognized the Bounteous' captain decked out in a full biohazard suit, talking intently to two other officers he didn't recognize. By their uniforms, he assumed he was looking at the captain and first officer of Wolverine. They were in the process of removing their uniforms, but were still in animated discussion with Bounteous' captain. With all the armed and presumably hostile Marines around, Tomas tried to figure out how to get their attention without anyone from the Bounteous noticing. But then again, even if he did succeed in warning the Wolverine's captain, she would have to safely return to her ship before she could take any offensive action. He needed a better plan before he ran out of time.

But as the last of the Wolverine's remaining crew was scrubbed and passed into the shelter, he realized he might already be out of time: inside the shelter, a thin green mist had begun to descend from the ceiling and coat the skin of the crew. Tomas expected there might be panic or confusion at this, but the Wolverine's crew seemed to be expecting it, and the med techs continued to wheel equipment around as if green mist were the most natural thing in the world.

Speaking of calm behavior, when Tomas looked back at the Wolverine's captain and first officer, he noticed that they had both stopped undressing, and were in fact beginning to put their clothing back on as they continued speaking with the Bounteous' captain and watching the shelter intently. Suddenly, they all nodded and smiled and--Oh God, their eyes all began to glow as the watched what was happening in the shelter.

When Tomas followed their gaze, he saw that the thin green mist from the rafters had been replaced with a massive green cloud of vapor that seemed to quickly fill every inch of the shelter. He wondered if some of the crew might try to force their way out of the entrance, but the only movement inside the green cloud seemed to be med techs. Then, as the green cloud began to dissipate, Tomas started to see more and more glowing blue lights appearing as the med techs placed glowing creatures on the immobilized crew members.

Tomas had not wept since he was a child--not once--but tears began to well in his eyes as he realized the magnitude of what he was witnessing. Far from being his salvation, the Wolverine and its entire crew had just joined the enemy forces without a single shot being fired. Even if he wasn't trained as a spy, Tomas could probably have figured out that the enemy forces had gained control of the Wolverine's captain and used the pretext of some sort of contagious disease outbreak in the fleet to trick the crew into meekly being "treated." There was undoubtedly a skeleton crew back on Wolverine, but it would have presumably have been trivial for the captain to assign trusted lackeys to that duty while the remaining free crew members were converted. As the entrance to the shelter opened and the first glowing-eyed members of the newly-hostile Wolverine crew began marching onto the cargo deck, Tomas was horrified to realize this scene would likely be repeated over and over until the hostile forces controlled the entire 9th Fleet.

Even as he stared at the unfolding scene in despair, part of Tomas was forced to acknowledge the exceptional precision and coordination of the hostiles. As they marched in perfect sync with their identical glowing eyes and creatures on their spines, they almost looked like some sort of elaborate parade, and not the death knell for humanity's freedom. "What chance do we have against an enemy that can steal our minds and our strength?" Tomas mused sadly.

But as the hostiles deflated the now-unneeded isolation shelter and began to roll it up, Tomas looked curiously at the hostiles beginning to transfer cargo from the Bounteous onto the Wolverine. "That's not in the replenishment manifest!" he thought to himself. "Those are live Shrike missiles... they are supposed to be loading the training versions..." Tomas trailed off as he saw that the material being transferred was completely unrelated to the requisition he had approved and fulfilled weeks earlier. The fleet was preparing for a massive mock combat exercise in a few weeks, but it now looked like the hostiles had no intention of pulling their punches. If he couldn't figure out a way to warn them, the remaining free humans wouldn't stand a chance.

Tomas allowed himself a final moment to wallow in his overwhelming despair, but then pushed all of that down in the bottomless pit where he kept all of his incapacitating feelings. He would get a warning to the fleet. Failing that, he would make the Bounteous burn.

If he couldn't figure out a way to win, he would at least settle for some suitably violent revenge.