The jump-drive cut out, and it took Jason several seconds to realise that Mark wasn't going to call for them to sound off. He called it himself, to no effect. He might have expected them all to pass out - but he'd really rather they hadn't. The sensor console on this ship was completely different to the one he knew. Dimitri had operated it very efficiently, but Dimitri was now collapsed back in his seat, eyes rolled back, breathing unsteadily and Jason knew from experience there would be no waking him for at least ten minutes.

He checked on Rick, with much the same result, and only then noticed that Paula was struggling to sit up.

"Nice going," he told her, and helped her to upright. "You up to telling Control we're here? Wherever here is."

Paula stared at him in bleary-eyed horror, and croaked, "Don't you know?"

"Only to within a few million klicks. I'm hoping we're close enough for Dimitri to pick the Phoenix up on the scanner. Now, call Control."

Paula did so, and Jason belatedly realised how rough her voice sounded and presented her with half a cup of water, before endeavouring unsuccessfully to rouse the Osprey again.

"Is he okay?" Paula asked, having finished her interchange.

"They're both fine." Jason returned to his seat. "Absolutely normal. It takes forever for the docs to get the implants fine-tuned - until then, you pass out in jump. And then they go out of tune, and you start passing out again, or your recovery time goes way up, and you spend another three hours face down in Medical while they stick needles in your neck. It's great fun. Thank your lucky stars you're not in this line of work." He raised his voice. "Rick?"

There was no reply, and Jason sighed. "And out of the three of you, the one who got lucky is the one who doesn't know how the sensors work. Typical. Still, we may as well tell the Phoenix we're here. Get on the radio and see if you can raise them."


"Us?" Mark leant over her shoulder. "I'm not in the mood for jokes."

"Me neither." She pointed to a set of figures on her screen. "See those? That's a jump-drive signature just like ours, and there's another set which looks just like the remnants of fiery Phoenix. And the size is right." Her eyebrows went up as another set of lights started to blink. "And they're radioing us on our default frequency."

"Put it on speaker." Mark took a deep breath. He had no idea what was going on here - but at least part of him was running through every time travel or alternate universe sci-fi episode he'd ever seen.

"Come in Phoenix, this is Lifeboat, do you read me?"

Princess's jaw dropped visibly. "Paula?"

"Give me that," Mark demanded, grabbing at the microphone. "Lieutenant Arkwright? I want to speak to your commanding officer, right away."

"You don't get rid of me that easily," a familiar voice drawled. "Hey, no radio lag."

"You're two hundred klicks from us, idiot! What do you expect? And what are you flying?"

"Two hundred?" There was a brief pause, as if Jason was considering his next words. "Uh - can you give me a direction? My scanner operator hasn't exactly woken up yet, and these scanner controls are...esoteric."

Tiny chuckled. "Did I hear that right? Tell Jason I'll get him a bearing."

"Bearing on its way," Mark said into the mike. "Condor, who's the rest of your crew? And why are you here at all?"

"Rigan tech can't make that jump. I'm in the P-X with the Kite and the Osprey. Both still out for the count. Unless you're desperate, I'll wait for them to wake up - the Kite's a darn sight better at piloting this crate than I would be, and I take it you want us transfer tube distance away."

"I sure don't want you trying to spacewalk with a drive chamber. Tell me you have a drive chamber?"

"Oh, darn, I knew I'd forgotten something - yes, Commander, I have a drive chamber. And a full set of fuel lines, and more wiring than I knew existed. And a hold full of other stuff Engineering thought should come along for the ride. I - hold on, sleepyheads are stirring."

Mark clicked the microphone off. "Sounds like we got ourselves a breakdown truck. Tiny, we're going to need to open the bottom hatch. Have we got any damage down there?"

The pilot shrugged. "I'll go take a look."


"Back with us?" a voice asked in Rick's ear.

Back where? Nothing seemed to fit - he felt as if he'd gone to sleep by accident and woken up with the worst case of sunburn he'd ever had, but he was sitting up, it was cool in here - and he was in birdstyle? He opened his eyes, but being faced with the P-X's control panel didn't immediately make any sense.

"Okay, Rick. Nap time's over. Talk to me."

"I don't - oh." Memory returned. Going to jump, blazing fire running through every nerve and the horrible realisation that he couldn't fight the waves of unconsciousness sweeping up on him. "Sorry."

"For what? Not your fault nobody ever tuned your implant for jump." Jason turned his head. "Dimitri, if you're going to throw up, at least don't do it on the controls."

"'Mitri?" Rick pushed himself to his feet, looking round for his colleague.

The young Russian groaned. "I feel awful."

"Then show me you can function while feeling awful."

That's harsh, Rick thought, and abruptly realised that it was entirely justified. Not only that, but Jason was equally hard on himself.

He's had to be, to stay on G-Force. I'll have to be, to ever be a serious contender for a second team.

"What do you want me to do?"

Jason pointed to the co-ordinates displayed very prominently in the centre of Rick's screen, and he instantly felt idiotic.

"That's the Phoenix. It's not that far, but we want to end up below her, a maximum of ten feet away, our bubble aligned with her underneath hatch."

"Ten feet?" Rick swallowed. "I'll do my best."

"If your best involves bumping her, I'd rather you didn't. Get us within a hundred yards and Tiny can come over and do it. They don't have power yet, or I'd have them come to dock with us."

If Jason's aim had been to make Rick determined to do it himself, he'd succeeded. Call the Owl over - no way. This was his ship, his chance to show what he could do. He made a very careful check of the thruster system, then gently nudged her along the correct vector. Nothing fancy. No need to hurry. If this took ten minutes, so be it. He'd never even tried this on a simulator before without a strong gravitational field in the picture, and the less momentum he had to counter the happier he'd be.

Rick never noticed Jason sit down alongside him in the co-pilot's seat and activate the override controls. Never saw him program the upper thrusters to fire at maximum capacity at a single touch. His world had narrowed to the controls under his fingertips, the flightpath on the screen, and the stationary target in front of him. Flying was almost too strong a word for it, but they were drifting in, already in the right vertical separation. He didn't want to have to fire the upper thrusters if he could possibly avoid it, not with the Phoenix already damaged.

Two hundred metres. Left a fraction. He overcompensated slightly, came back right again too far. Don't start oscillating. Stay calm. One hundred metres, and he was going to miss by at least ten. Rick hit the front thrusters and took off most of his remaining speed, then twitched the ship back onto the correct course as gently as he could. Fifty metres. Twenty. Slow it right down. The P-X drifted under the Phoenix at barely a metre per second, and slowed to a tenth of that. Still too fast - they were still moving, and he couldn't control it any more finely than this --

"That'll do." Jason's voice.

Rick was vaguely aware that Paula was on the radio with the Phoenix, that at least one member of G-Force was outside fastening grapples. He was still trying to juggle thruster controls which weren't responding to him in any way when Jason took him by both shoulders and pushed him back into the seat.

"That's good enough. Leave it. And you need to learn to stop when you're told - if I hadn't overridden your controls, you'd just have fried Princess."

Rick sagged back into his seat, crestfallen. "Sorry."

"Quit saying that. You did okay. Now I'm hoping one of you two knows how to set up the transfer tube."

Rick's mind blanked, but Dimitri volunteered that yes, he could set it up, and he and Jason headed for the bubble.


"You can take ten minutes to get warm. In fact you can take more than that. Rick, are you up for some repair work?"

Rick swung round to see the whole of G-Force except for G-4 coming onto the flight deck, Eagle and Condor locked in discussion.

"I guess so. Mitri knows more about it than I do, though."

"He's already there. Mark, show some sense. There's only room for three to work in there, and we're fresh."

Fresh? How can Jason even think that? Rick felt as if he'd been to hell and back already today, after a single jump. Jason had made four, and had had a truly rough time in the G-1. His expression must have suggested something similar, because Tiny stopped and looked closely at the Condor's face.

"You're about as fresh as Keyop is. You and Mark have to jump back, and I have to land the Phoenix. Let Princess do it."

Paula cleared her throat. "I'll help."

"You know nothing about the systems," Mark told her bluntly. "I appreciate the offer, but you can get experience on something less critical. This has to be done right."

Paula shrank back into her seat, and Rick made a mental note to be extra nice to her later. She must feel horribly out of her depth - goodness knew he did, and he was allegedly training for this.

He became aware that Princess was waiting in the doorway, not quite tapping her foot impatiently but definitely looking as if she might. Rick hurriedly got to his feet and followed her, trying to ignore the casual way the Eagle and Owl dropped into the two front seats and acquainted themselves with the controls. They already had a ship. This one was his.

It took hours. Hours of meticulously tracing along a damaged wire, checking the location of both ends. Cutting a new piece of the correct thickness, laying it along the path of the old one, replacing both end connections, stripping out the old wire, checking the electrical connection both ends, ticking it off on the apparently endless list. Regardless of what Tiny had said about keeping the jump-pilots fresh, it took all six of them working in shifts, and by the time the end was in sight Rick was sick of the sight of wire. His hands cramped, his shoulders ached, his eyes burned. If Rick had been asked for a definition of hell, right now this would have been well up the list.

It didn't seem real when he made the final connection. He didn't even realise it was the last one, just reached for the reel of wire and only then did his dulled brain register that all the wiring in front of him was bright and new.

"Anyone still going?" Mark's voice.

Rick shook his head, too weary even to answer.

"Time to test it out then." He brought his bracelet up. "G-Force, full systems test. Phoenix flight deck in two."

Tiny unfolded himself from where he'd been making the final connections to the new jump-drive chamber - it hadn't escaped Rick's notice that he'd been put to rewiring the diagnostics, while the G-Force crew were responsible for the control circuits. He couldn't blame them.

"Let's go. Rick, you're on the P-X." And the two of them picked up the cables and tools and left, no tiredness in their voices or postures, not a hint of what they'd been through. None of them had complained, protested, or asked for a break at any point. They'd simply got on with what had to be done, with clinical efficiency. Rick was starting to realise that what made them so feared wasn't simply that at their best they were very, very good. It was that they could maintain that level for hours, days. On duty they were that good all the time. They never gave up.

His dismissal had been very clear. Rick took himself back to the P-X's cockpit and, as expected, found only Dimitri and Paula there.

"They've finished," he said as he dropped into the pilot's seat. "They're running tests now."

"That will take at least an hour," Dimitri said. "Well, them - maybe half an hour?"

"Maybe ten minutes." Rick swivelled in his chair. "'Mitri, what are we doing here? They didn't need us."

"They'd still be wiring if we weren't here," Dimitri pointed out. "They are tired, Rick. They just don't show it. Not to us."

"No, and never will. Paula, tell Control what's going on."

"Right."

That said it all, really. Here he was, technically in command of this ship for the first time, nothing to do, and the only order he'd given got answered with 'right'. At least it hadn't been 'why'. Force Two? He might be sitting in deep space, the senior officer on the P-X, but right now it had never seemed so unlikely to happen.

"Control's asking how long until we jump?" Paula was looking round for confirmation. At him.

"Hold on." Rick hit the bracelet and got Mark.

"G-1. What?"

"Control wants an estimate on how long till we jump."

"Twenty minutes. Out."

Rick started to thank him, and realised the channel had already closed. "Tell them thirty, Paula."

"Twenty -"

"Thirty." Rick half turned and glared at her. "Give them some slack. Mitri's right. They shouldn't be having to pretend they're fine, and they are, because we're here."

"Control, G-Force say thirty minutes."

"No, we said twenty." Jason strode back onto the flight deck and dropped into his seat. "What's going on?"

Paula gave Rick a despairing look, said "Lifeboat out" into the mike and shut the connection.

Rick forced confidence into his expression, and turned to face the Condor. "I figured ten minutes extra before Control started worrying wasn't a bad thing. Sir."

Jason's face was unreadable. "A word of advice, Lieutenant. Second-guessing the Eagle is a very bad idea. Regardless of how good your intentions are." Rick had started to breathe again when he added. "And I already told you how I feel about it. Clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Not to mention that the estimate's now twenty minutes off. Are we ready to go?"

"Comms ready," Paula said, and Rick hastily checked his instruments before confirming.

"Phoenix, we're ready for separation."

Separation was far, far easier than the docking procedure had been. All Rick had to do once the Swan had reported that they were disconnected was touch the upper thrusters and wait for the two ships to drift sufficiently far apart that it was safe to fire the main engines. Then all they could do was sit and listen to the transmissions from the Phoenix, and hope.

"Why are they all still on there?" Dimitri asked. "Would it not have been wise just to have one, in case things - go wrong?"

Jason shook his head tiredly. "We're a team. We do things together." It was all too obvious that he'd have been over there himself if the three junior officers could have flown the P-X home without him.

"Firing main engines in five," came over the radio, and Rick froze, very glad he was facing away from the others. All he could think about was that engineroom, spiderwebbed with bright new wire. If even one of those was connected wrongly, the best they could hope for was that they'd be back to square one and hours more of checking every circuit. If they were unlucky, he'd be watching a fireball on the main viewscreen.

"Firing now."

Rick couldn't watch. He shut his eyes, knowing the others' reactions would tell him what had happened and unsure that he'd be able to control his own if the worst happened.

The silence went on for way too long. No cheers, no gasps of horror from behind him. Nothing until the voice on the radio.

"Well? Aren't you going to congratulate us?"

Rick opened his eyes to the beautiful sight of the Phoenix moving away, both engines blazing steadily.

"Only when the jump-drive works," Jason muttered, apparently to himself, before raising his voice. "Rick, set us on a course back to the jump-point. Phoenix, do you need us to match course?"

"You line it up nice and straight. We'll be just off your port wingtip."

Rick did as instructed, and then gulped at the course and speed of the ship moving in on them. "So how far's 'just off'?"

"About five yards. Hold your course." Jason appeared completely relaxed, and Rick tried to imitate his manner.

"Are you going to tell us why we're doing formation flying to an audience of three particles of spacedust?"

"Because I told you to." He paused, seemed happy at the lack of reaction, and continued. "Two ships, one person who can solve the jump-equations. We take a pass through the jump-point with the Phoenix on our wingtip, I solve the equations for them, they jump, we go around."

"We can't jump together?" Dimitri asked.

"I don't even want to think about two ships going coincidental in jump-space. It's not worth the risk. Sensors on, and I need an open radio channel."

"And what do I do?" Rick asked.

"Nothing. Fly straight, and don't panic when the Phoenix goes fiery. Now quiet." The screens filled with incomprehensible numbers, and Rick did exactly as he'd been told. Hands off the controls, and watch in silence. The Phoenix had matched course and speed with them as if it were a training exercise, and now they were bearing down on the jump-point at high speed, feet apart, with Jason chanting apparently random numbers into the radio and on the speaker, the Eagle counting down seconds. He hit zero, the viewscreen flared to bright orange, and then gradually faded to the black of deep space.

"Osprey, scan down the flightpath for them." Jason was out of his seat, leaning over Dimitri's chair, and Rick was very glad he wasn't the one trying to work with eyes boring into the back of his head. "Increase the resolution."

"It doesn't go any further." Dimitri swivelled round, earnest eyes meeting his commander's. "They are not within range."

"What definition have you got?" Jason moved round to get an even better view of the scanner controls, and there was a quickfire discussion which started off technical and rapidly became incomprehensible.

"Okay, we've done all we can. Let's go home. Rick, bring us round and back through that same point. Paula, tell Control the Phoenix has jumped, and we're jumping."

That same point. Rick knew perfectly well that Jason would be recalculating all his numbers, that it didn't matter to the nearest hundred yards exactly how near he got to the same trajectory. He was also certain that how close he got would be discussed by those considering his future, and compared in detail to how well the Owl would have performed the same manoeuvre. So, play it safe, bring her round wide and slow - or aim to impress, execute a tight power turn and go inertial at the last minute?

It wasn't hard to decide. G-Force weren't the best because they were showy or took unnecessary risks, but because they did the right thing at the right time. Rick set up for a wide circle to get back onto his original trajectory well before the point where he needed to go inertial, and concentrated on getting the simpler flightpath absolutely right.

He had no way of telling whether his commanding officer approved. Glancing round at Jason's set face, he couldn't even tell whether he cared. The Condor had one hand to his head and the other on the jump-controls, leaning forward and squinting at his screen in frowning concentration. Tired, ill, vision playing up? On the verge of collapse? About to make a mistake which would kill them all? Technically, Rick could abort the run and ask Jason to explain himself yet again. Not this time. For now, he'd go with his instincts and trust that G-2 could get them home safely.

Going into jump was every bit as bad as it had been the previous time. Rick had been determined that this time he'd stay conscious, prove that he had what it took. It had been in the back of his mind all the time he'd been doing the rewiring; maintaining the concentration required, ignoring the sensation of being burned alive, keeping his eyes open no matter what. Five seconds into the jump he knew he'd been fooling himself. His mind was being stripped away one conscious thought at a time, and he could either start screaming or he could let go and pass out. He let go.