He wouldn’t have been so aware of the issue were it not for the circumstances under which he had been assigned to the Frontier—he wasn’t sure if this boarding mission was a test, or a vote of confidence. He gave his suit one last check, making sure the robust fabric wasn’t pinching him anywhere, then took his helmet and made his way to the hangar, where the Marines and sailors were waiting.
Lieutenant Harper had yet to arrive, but one of his other naval assignees, Petty Officer Vachon, had. He was an engineer. Beyond that, Samson knew nothing about him; he had never actually seen him do anything other than eat in the galley. The final sailor was a rating by the name of Kushnir, a man Samson had not yet met. He wondered why the captain had chosen to send Harper with him. An engineer and a rating would be the norm for boarding a small vessel like this. To send the other junior lieutenant blurred the chain of command, and made him wonder if Captain Stettin expected him to seize this little cargo ship and sail off in mutiny. He wondered where Harper would be pointing her pistol when they got on board, but perhaps that would be a little too obvious an insult to Samson, a man adjudged as innocent. Then again, they did things differently out here on the Frontier.
He had come to the Sidewinder, and the Frontier, against his wishes. Getting sent here was a mark of dissatisfaction from his superiors for something that didn’t warrant official reprimand, but which they weren’t willing to let pass. Samson was given a choice: the Frontier, or kiss goodbye to his naval career. The latter was something he didn’t want to give up on quite yet. There’d been more than one occasion over the past few weeks where he’d wondered if the Frontier had been the right choice, though.
Samson had been on board a capital ship that had mutinied. But he’d been down in a peripheral sensor station in the ship’s bowels, so the whole thing had been over before he’d even known it had started. It was one of the few times he’d been grateful that junior officers were kept out of the loop on pretty much everything.
The fact that he had easy access to a firearm suggested his new captain was giving him a clean slate to prove himself with. He had to be grateful for that. Even so, the mundanity of the work out here, away from the main fleets, made him question if he’d made the right choice.
‘Standard boarding procedure,’ Samson said to the Marine sergeant, a stocky man called Price with whom Samson had little dealing in his three months on the Sidewinder. He had always found that Marines tended to keep their own company when on a ship. That they managed it on one as small as the Sidewinder was impressive. Price had two Marines with him, a man and a woman—Corporals Smit and Féng.
‘We’ll breach and enter, then keep you covered while you do what you have to do,’ Price said.
Samson gave him a nod. He could hear the launch’s coxswain power up the engines as Lieutenant Harper arrived, helmet tucked under one arm as she struggled to tie back her blond hair with her free hand.
‘All aboard,’ Samson said. He counted off each crew member as they got on the launch, then took his seat beside the coxswain at the controls.
‘Ready to launch, Lieutenant,’ the coxswain said.
‘Permission granted.’
The hangar bay doors opened, revealing the dark expanse of space beyond, punctuated by countless stars. Samson wondered how much of it mankind would come to occupy. It seemed humanity was both blessed and cursed to be alone in the universe—all before him was theirs for the taking, but that didn’t make up for the overwhelming sense of loneliness he felt every time he stared out at the stars. The coxswain fired the thrusters and the launch exited the Sidewinder, pulling Samson from his thoughts. Once she was clear, the coxswain rotated the launch on her axis and moved off toward the cargo vessel.
Seeing the Sidewinder from outside again gave Samson a pang of depression. She wasn’t all that different to the cargo vessel: Her hull plates were dirty and tarnished, and bore all the marks of a long and active service. Even her design spoke to an earlier time, when getting ships into active service was the priority, not making sure they left the shipyard in perfect working order. She had been in use long enough to iron out all the kinks, but every few metres, her hull was scarred by a working alteration or repair. An old corvette on the Frontier was where a junior officer’s career went to die. He had heard of others posted to such places when he was at the Academy, and had always wondered what they had done to destroy their careers. He had always felt a certain contempt for people who could make such a mess of things, but now here he was, experiencing it first-hand and hoping he could drag his career out of the ashes. Foolish, perhaps, but like every fool, he thought it might go differently for him.
The cargo vessel came into view as the launch glided past the Sidewinder, coasting along on its initial momentum. Samson looked it over again. If a weapons battery emerged from its hull and shot them out of space, it would be his fault—he was the one who had done the scans and deemed there to be no threat. As confident as he was that he had been correct, he couldn’t shake off the nagging feeling
