Cassie stood in the middle of the room as Mike took a seat next to Shrey up at the front. She had never been on a flight deck this cramped, where she could easily touch all four seats from where she was standing. There was an empty chair to her left, but she didn't take it, not wanting to unwittingly step on any toes.

Helen was already at the right rear station, cycling through various screens. Shrey barely acknowledged Mike's arrival, the pilot looked to be intensely focused on his work. Up on the main display, the ship's status information was being continuously updated.

Helen looked up from her screen, her brow furrowed slightly as she saw Cassie. "Cassie? What are you doing up here?"

Cassie tucked her hands into her spacious pockets. "Um, I didn't know where my station was supposed to be."

"I told her to come up," Mike said, twisting back around. "Thought the greenie should see what those spacer cruisers really look like."

Helen briefly raised an eyebrow at him before he turned his attention back to his console. "Cassie, your station is the engine room with Aqeel."

"Oh, sorry ma'am." Cassie took a step back, her heel on the edge of the doorframe. "I'll head down there right away."

"No, don't bother," Helen told her. "We're almost there. You can stay and watch." A small smile appeared on her face. "Just this time."

Cassie nodded, lingering in the doorway awkwardly.

Helen smile vanished and she turned back to Mike and Shrey. "What's our status?"

"We're looking good," Shrey answered. "Dark generator is at full."

"I'm only picking up the one ship so far," Mike added. "Readings are coming in now."

"What are we dealing with here?" Helen asked.

Mike worked away at his console for a minute before the viewscreen switched, a dark ship against an even darker background taking up less than a quarter of the display.

Everyone's eyes went to the big screen. Everyone except Mike.

Cassie took an unconscious step forwards, squinting at the image. It was nearly impossible to make out that it was even a ship.

"It's Destroyer class." Mike scrolled through the sensor logs, searching them carefully. "Looks like the Horizon Alliance. Holding position. Nothing unusual."

Helen nodded, glancing at the screens of her own workstations. "Log it along with the rest of the scan data. We'll pass everything off to intel later."

Cassie silently sat down on the edge of the free seat. The station's screens flickered to life automatically. She ignored them, her eyes still glued to the image of the rebel spaceship.

"Already done," Mike declared, a little prideful.

"Giving them all this data, we're not exactly proving that we aren't working for intel," Shrey said, mildly annoyed. "If we keep doing this, they'll really start to think of us as one of their damn spy ships."

"Hey, we'd make a great spy ship." Mike flashed a cocky smile. "We're sneaky. We've never gotten caught so far."

Shrey frowned slightly. "I prefer to stay out of the line of fire." 

Helen nodded slightly, her expression unchanged. "How long now?"

Shrey looked at another screen. "Entering the bubble in about two minutes. It'll take us another ten to get out."

Mike and Shrey kept watching their own screens.

Cassie shifted. Her cushion squeaked.

Mike looked behind him, his expression changing as his eyes fell on Cassie. "Come look at this." He gestured forwards as the ship on the screen enlarged. The image blurred in and out as Mike fiddled with the settings.

Cassie got up, stepping up behind Mike's chair, staring up at the blocky, almost cube warship as it snapped into focus. It wasn't even a quarter of the size of the Saint Joan, and probably a lot lighter and a lot faster. They'd never be able to outrun a ship like that.

She instinctively held onto the metal pipe frame behind the seat, feeling the need to hold on to something, anything.

It wasn't cloaked, it wasn't meant to be. Red lights on the ship exterior pulsed slowly, as if anyone could notice them out here. This was the Horizon Alliance staking their claim to the asteroid belt. It was still too far away, too far to be visible to the naked eye, but the camera made it look like they were within spitting distance. Only the digital static kept her from making out the finer details.

The laser cannons underneath the blackish hull were not a fine detail.

Her eyes were drawn to them like a beacon. Five of them, in a neat row, each as big as a shuttle. A newer model, a weapon that could take their whole ship out at it's lowest setting.

They weren't the only modification the ship had.

The huge sensor array jutted out the side, antennae reaching out into the void, casting an unseen net across the sky. A net where every strand was specifically tuned to search for the ton of EL-240 in their fuel stores. If the dark generator failed, even for a fraction of a second, it would have their position instantaneously.

While Earth and Mars had developed the technology, the miners were the ones that knew how to use it. Not that anyone had seen this war coming, on either side. The detectors had been originally created for locating deposits of EL-240 on extraterrestrial bodies, but had proved just as useful at locating ships.

This was the piece of technology that had changed space warfare forever.

Nowadays, the only options were to get up close and dirty as fast as possible, or hide. There were no shields, no armour, no covering fire. That was reality when your enemy could blow you out of the sky from half a million kilometers away.

Cassie swallowed, her mouth unusually dry. "Is that... a spacer ship?" She already knew the answer.

"Yeah," Mike confirmed. "Doesn't look so scary does it?"

Cassie nodded automatically, even though she didn't really agree.

"It can still blow us to pieces," Shrey commented dryly.

"Buzzkill," Mike muttered the retort, so low that Cassie could barely hear the words.

"Sugarcoating the situation isn't going to help anyone," Shrey responded.

"But they're not going to..." Cassie trailed off as she stared at the screen.

"We're going to fly right by them," Helen said confidently. "They won't even see us."

The cockpit feel into silence as they waited. Cassie stayed still, watching Mike and Shrey's screens over their shoulders. No matter what they said, Mike and Helen weren't as relaxed as they pretended to be. All three of them were focused, the situation at hand had their full attention.

Everyone was uneasy.

They were trying to hide it.

Shrey's screen flashed and Cassie peeked over at the map he had on display. "Entering the bubble now," he announced before everyone fell quiet again.

Cassie didn't even realize she'd been holding her breath until her lungs started to burn. She took in a deep breath, trying to relax, but the small space was suddenly feeling even more cramped and close. The feeling that they were being watched wouldn't go away.

Helen was the first to break the silence. "Status?"

Cassie almost flinched. Her grip on the metal frame tightened. Helen had spoken at a normal volume, but it felt like air horn had gone off in the room. Something inside her made her feel like they should be whispering.

Even if there was no logical reason to do so.

"No sign they've spotted us," Shrey replied immediately, speaking normally. "It's holding in standby."

Helen nodded. "Just as expected."

The seconds inched by. The image on the screen stayed exactly the same. The ship was just sitting there.

Dark. Ominous. Still.

"Halfway there," Shrey said quietly.

"How close are they, exactly?" Cassie asked lowly.

Shrey leaned back, looking up at the screen pensively. "If they looked out their windows, they could see us."

Mike snorted. "Maybe if they had a set of binoculars handy."

"Really?" Cassie asked curiously.

Mike shrugged. "Maybe." He looked up at her. "Really. But who says they even have windows?" He gestured at the image on the large screen. "I don't see any on there."

Cassie scanned the image once again. She could barely make out the airlock door on the side, and this was an enhanced video from their own telescopic camera. Even if they could see the Saint Joan with the naked eye, they wouldn't know where to look.

Not while the cloak was running.

"Let's stay sterile," Helen reminded them. "On task conversation only."

"Oh, right." Cassie finally let go of the chair's frame, wiping her sweaty hands off ineffectively on her dirty pants. She quickly brushed off the beads of sweat that had stuck to the metal pipe before sitting back down. The screens came on. She glanced at them briefly. They told exactly what everyone else had, that everything was fine.

They didn't make her feel any better.

"Wait, something's off," Shrey said abruptly, his voice tight.