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| Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 |
For the first time in his century-long career, Fleet-Captain Arjen ofClan D'gameh disapproved of a mission he had been given. That hisorders came straight from the Supreme made no difference to hisfeelings, nor did the First Speaker's assurance that the Circle ofLords deemed it vital to the survival of the Traiti race.
It wasn't the goal of the mission that disturbed him, as much as themeans. In the war between the Traiti and the Terran Empire, two thingswere, if not exactly sacred, proprieties that both sides respected.One was hospital ships, and the other was the return of bodies to theirkin. By extension, ships delivering wounded or picking up dead werealso immune, a principle that neither side had violated … yet.
Arjen and his reinforced fleet were about to violate that unwrittentaboo. The Fleet-Captain looked around his flagship's control central,conscious that nobody else aboard the Hermnaen knew of the planneddeceit. He traced the honor-scars on his upper body through the clothof his shirt, wishing he were elsewhere and free of the orders thatseemed so dishonorable—then he told himself sternly to get on with it.
His mission was to deliver one of the Terran Empire's elite, one of thegreen-uniformed Rangers, safely to the Supreme and First Speaker onHomeworld. Although that sounded simple enough, it would take bothfirepower and trickery. Arjen's fleet, now with sixty ships insteadof forty, had firepower enough to overwhelm even a Sovereign-classTerran battle cruiser, the type of ship a Ranger normally used.Fifty-nine of the Traiti warcraft were in positions that englobed apoint in space a quarter-