Strength and Honor by R.M. Meluch

of war, big ships never docked directly with the main station of Fort Eisenhower. And displacement in or out of the station had never been permitted. Jammers made sure it never happened.
    Fort Eisenhower encompassed an assemblage of space stations in a volume of space roughly the size of a small planet. Lights refracted off the exhaust gases from ships and stations, turning the fortress into a manmade nebula, colorful and shining.
    At the heart of it, heavily protected, sat one terminus of the Shotgun. Either end of the Fort Roosevelt/Fort Eisenhower Shotgun was a prime target in wartime.
    Smuggling Gaius out of Fort Ike required a balance between secrecy and the need not to be mistaken for a bogey by the trigger-happy fortress defenses.
    The plan called for a small craft to ferry Gaius Americanus from the main station out of Fort Eisenhower to Calli’s heavily armed ship, Wolfhound. Wolfhound would then carry him to the meeting site.
    Calli Carmel came into the main station in person to collect Gaius. Calli was one of few people permitted to carry a sidearm here. She escorted the Roman Senator to the dock.
    She wanted to tell Gaius that Augustus lived. But giving information to the enemy was the act of a traitor. Gaius was Roman. She was American. They were at war.
    Let Numa tell him.
    Security had cleared the corridors of all extraneous personnel. No tourists, no workers, no military personnel except those who needed to be there were there. They had cleared the receptacles of all confiscated goods, emptied the trash, chased off the vendors. Military dogs gave the path a good sniff, then security cleared away the dogs.
    Calli and Gaius were scanned and analyzed and verified one more time.
    They walked through a semirigid tunnel to the hatch of the Space Patrol Torpedo boat—SPT or Spit boat, as it was known in the Navy.
    Gaius halted, looked inside the craft, suddenly wary. “Where is the pilot?”
    “I’m the pilot,” said Calli. Saw his face. “What? You don’t trust me?”
    “They used to call you Crash Carmel.”
    “They still do,” said Calli.
    “Is there a reason for that?”
    “I wrinkled a couple of ships,” Calli admitted. “There was some shooting and fire involved.” Gaius looked hesitant, which was fine with Calli. She offered, hopeful, “You can still call this off.” Gaius stepped through the hatch to board the Spit boat. This was the weakest link of the journey. Calli told him, “If we get hit, it will be here.”
    Gaius nodded. He strapped himself into the copilot’s seat beside Calli.
    The Spit boat had a rhino hull. Most ships relied on their energy fields rather than their physical hulls to keep the vacuum out. A rhino hull could survive in space even without a distortion shell around it.
    “No weaponry?” Gaius noted.
    “We’ll be inside a hook for all but a few seconds,” said Calli. “Inside the hook, we wouldn’t be able to launch a torpedo even if we had one.”
    Fort Ike was secure, but it hung in the ocean of infinity. Wolfhound waited, as close as she was allowed.
    A treacherous gulf stretched between them.
    Calli was not even really piloting the boat. The Spit boat would be first pushed by the station hook, then pulled by Wolfhound’s hook.
    There would be a precarious instant in which the station gave up its hook and Wolfhound replaced it with its own force field.
    Calli heard the controllers exchanging messages over the com. The instruction came from Wolfhound to the station, “Cut hook, Ike.”
    The instruction resonated on the proper harmonic. Calli recognized the voice and inflection of her lieutenant, Amina Patel, on Wolfhound.
    Fort Eisenhower responded, “Cutting hook, aye. Your boat, Wolfhound”
    The Spit boat was now naked to the stars.
    In the next instant the boat was surrounded by a new energy bubble. Wolfhound had thrown out a hook, bringing the Spit boat into her protection.
    Wolfhound commenced reeling the craft in. Calli sat back in her seat and