"Captain. We've received a message relay from Earth Command. They report that they have two small hive ships still on the loose close in-system, along with several escort types. They are cleaning them up, but cannot spare any more escorts for us. They advise that we not make orbit. Lunar Exit Station Copernicus is fully stocked and we can have all of them that we can get aboard in the available time." Lieutenant Edgar, the communications officer aboard the Happy Hunting Grounds, passed on the recording of the broadcast message that had streamed in on a one-way basis in real time. It had been recorded, as opposed to being listened to, due to the signal lag. Also, at the time, Colonel Jules, the Captain of the Happy Hunting Grounds, had been dealing with the complex hyperspace exit protocols for a Cube ship and its multiple escorts. Task Force Commander Commodore Arthur had already received the message.

"Very well, send an acknowledgement. Tell them I expect that we will do a fly-by extraction."

"Aye aye, Sir."

"Captain Jules to Task Force Command."

"Commodore Arthur here. Go ahead Captain." The Commodore was aboard Happy as well, but he was on the flag bridge. Even though Happy was a Navy Auxiliary ship, it had the room for a Naval task force commander and his staff, and the escorts had become very necessary in the home system during the last several months.

"Sir, I got the relayed message. It appears that we will have to do a fly-by extraction. If so, we will need the sweepers out front. It looks like a Bastille Day fireworks display in the upper atmosphere."

Captain Jules was referring to the large amount of debris from the most recent battles in the area around Earth and Luna. No less than three Swarm medium hive ships and their escorts had recently broken up in the vicinity. Unfortunately, Human losses were high as well. Pieces of ships, bodies and various missiles, ranging in size from grains of sand to fuel-expended two-ton nuclear missiles fired by the Swarm, were hitting the Earth's atmosphere like a chaotic meteor shower. The Moon had several hundred new craters from all the scrap impacting the surface. And, of course, there were large numbers of the same types of items moving on multiple vectors in various locations ranging from the vicinity of Earth all the way to the orbit of Mars.

The first Swarm Hive ship had arrived about two years ago. The accompanying scouts and non-hyper light escorts had been handily dealt with while a small ad-hoc task force centered on the Europa Class Cruisers Zaragosa and Dublin had ignored the escorts and annihilated the Volumna class recon hive ship that had exited in the vicinity of Saturn. No one had wanted word to get out of what awaited the Swarm in this system, so the attack was pressed in a lethal manner. Lethal to the ship and the entire crew of the Nagoya Castle, a newer Castle Class Corvette, which had gone too deep into Saturn's gravity well and had died along with its opponent. Additionally, all but three of the crew had perished aboard the Patrician Class Corvette, Waikiki, which had to be scrapped after the battle. Unfortunately, one hyper capable Sa'arm scout had escaped, so there was at least one group of Swarm out there that had a new entry on their mental maps. "Danger. Here be Humans."

Last year three more hives had come into the system. Two had been destroyed, but one had landed near the shores of Lake Victoria, in Africa. That fight was still going on.

On this trip, as on all recent transits, Happy Hunting Grounds had hypered into the staging area near Jupiter. The Swarm were currently ignoring the gas giants, which let the Navy establish refueling stations and staging areas there. The Swarm would emerge there sooner or later, but for now, they were generally emerging from hyper in the inner system.

Happy had done a 'fast' refuel, which consisted of using transporters to pump reaction mass gasses directly into the incoming fuel chambers, where force fields compressed them into the main storage areas. The method was considered too dangerous to use on a standard basis by the Naval bureaucracy, even though there had never been an accident while doing this and the SOP method of using tanker vessels to ferry the fuel from station to ship, followed by manually pumping from one tank to another had resulted in deaths and even the destruction of one ship. The AIs still did not understand why the bureaucracy did some things the old fashioned way. For their part, the station crews took pleasure in finding ways to declare mechanical breakdowns and downcheck fuel ferries or to find other problems that would allow them to use the safer 'emergency' method.

After fueling, Happy and the reinforced escort had taken a short hyper-speed trip around the Sun to near where the Earth Defense Forces were still finishing their most recent battle. They had been directed to emerge from hyperspace in a designated 'safe zone' over a million kilometers out from the Earth's hyper limit.

No hive ships had come close to being able to land during this skirmish, but a few small landing vessels had put down. Unfortunately for the Swarm, these had landed near Abilene, Texas. The Third Armored Cavalry Regiment from Fort Bliss had not left enough for anyone else to shoot at. Even they had been forced to hurry as every Texan with a rifle had clogged the roads in the vicinity. The 3rd ACR had been forced to settle for knocking down the three small ships as they tried to lift off with short crews. The civilians claimed over three thousand total kills from the three corvettes, but only one hundred bodies were ever located. Somewhat more truthful hunters talked about 'the one that got away'.

The Navy was taking its time with the remaining hive ships, which were sluggish but powerful. Slowly, the fleet was closing in on the hives, leaving no possible way for them to escape. The key thing was to not let them get far enough away from the planet to where they could engage their hyperdrives. If they did that, someone would have to chase them all the way back to where they came from and blast them as they emerged from hyperspace. It could be done, but it was risky. If the ship managed to get to a swarm colony that did not yet know about Humans and Earth then that was another enemy that would start throwing hives our way. The escape of even one Vacuna scout ship with only thirty units aboard might be worse than losing an entire human battle fleet.

There were several non-hyper combat vessels that had undocked from the hives, but they were no real threat to the system as a whole. If the 'Happy' were to get too close to them, though, it could be seriously damaged.

Commodore Arthur thought for a moment. "I agree, I'll notify the escorts. Have Happy pass the course you need to the Task Force."

"Yes Sir."

"Happy, contact Captain Herbert of the escort screen. Notify him that we will do a fly-by due to the hostiles in the area. I want his mine sweepers right in front of us."

{Aye aye, Commodore}

The three minesweepers were specially fitted Africa class destroyers. Currently the fastest ships in the Confederacy fleet, they could rapidly get into position to intersect any scrap on a closing course. Their primary weapons were a variant of a strange particle disrupter beam that had been used by the Confederacy eons ago as a mining tool. Basically they were disintegrators that turned enemy ships to elemental dust, once you got them close enough. The dust could still be lethal at high closing velocities, but the modified versions of the Africa had extremely powerful pressor screens in multiple layers. The dust tended to get diverted or deflected and some energy was imparted to it as well, resulting in the dust moving in another direction, and the unavoidable collision speeds were lower. As well, the Valhalla class ship had excellent screens of its own.

"Happy, give me a plot of hostiles in the area. I need to figure out the course for the maximum time in range of Luna."

The Captain considered and then highlighted areas of his display. "It looks like we can go straight through. If we take this chord here, we should be able to stay in range of the transporters for almost 750,000 kilometers. We are just over one million klicks out of range now, so what's our minimum time in?"

{Four thousand five hundred seventeen seconds at a maximum acceleration of ten Gs will place us just inside transporter range. We will be traveling at four hundred forty two kilometers per second relative to the lunar base. That will give us one thousand six hundred ninety seven seconds in range if we do not accelerate or change course during the transit.}

"Hmmm, twenty eight minutes and twenty seven seconds to transport two hundred fifty thousand colonists. That might be a bit of errr, a brisk pace. We better let everyone know. Pass the course to the task force commander and all ships. XO? Get the crew ready. Lt. Edgar, record this for the Commander of Lunar Exit Station Copernicus. Commander Robert, this is Captain Jules of the Happy Hunting Grounds. Quick trip this time. We are heading in for a fly-by extraction. We will go ballistic though the extraction area at four hundred forty two kilometers per second. I say again: 4, 4, 2 KPS. Extraction duration will be twenty-eight minutes and seventeen seconds. I say again: 1, 6, 9, 7 seconds. We will enter the extraction area in seventy-five minutes and seventeen seconds from my mark. I say again: 4, 5, 1, 7 seconds from our mark. Happy will contact you again as soon as we are moving. End message. Happy, we will send that message out and I want you to send them a timed second message on the tick. Lt. Edgar, send message one. It looks like we have about a minute for the task force to finish realigning. Captain to Crew. Prepare for acceleration. 10 Gs."

{Captain. The task force is ready. Execute command is coming up.}

"Helm, engage upon the task force's execute command."

"Aye, Aye sir. Two seconds. Executing now at 98 meters." (Author's note: 98 meters per second squared of acceleration is equivalent to ten times Earth's Gravity. 10 Gs. The Navy just gives the number in Meters for brevity and clarity.)

"Colonel Isaac. Make sure we have maximum shield power online for the next three hours. If you have any problems down there I want to know about them instantly."

"No problems Captain. We are running cool and even." The Brooklyn-Yiddish accent always sounded strange coming from the Engineering Officer. Many of the crew grumbled that any decent engineer should at least be able to fake a Scottish accent.

"Lasers are still pecking away at Bogey Two, Captain. If he holds steady for another thirty seconds we will have an extreme range solution with the heavy railguns."

"Very well, fire on solution, Guns. Damage Control. How long till those missiles are back on line."

"Ten minutes and we'll have broadside tubes, Captain. Port tubes lost the magazine feed. Thirty minutes and you can have another two shots per tube and then they're done until we get to drydock."

"Make it eight minutes. They're making a break for it."

"Firing Solution!" There was a whine and clunk noise that everyone knew meant the two heavy railguns had just launched a fifty-kilogram projectile apiece at one hundred kilometers per second. At two hundred gigajoules of kinetic energy apiece, they would each hit with the force of a fifty tonne bomb. IF they hit. The gunnery officer counted down the time until the missiles would hit or miss. "Ten seconds to impact! Five! Four! Three! Two! One!" The screen lit with a bright flash. "Impact. Hive Bogey Two is breaking up. Looks like we clipped him on the shields with one and just off center with the other."

"Good shooting Guns. Nav. I want a course to assist with Bogey One."

"Aye, Aye Sir."

{CIC reports Hive Bogey Two breaking up.} (Author's note: Combat Information Center)

"Excellent! Make sure we get somebody's visual feed on that. I'll replay it for the crew later. Is the debris going to impact our course?"

{Negative. The majority will be into translunar space in a few hours. Only a few of the slower fragments will stay in cislunar space. Approximately five thousand tons of smaller debris is expected to impact the Earth in the near future. Forty thousand tons will impact the Moon over the next few weeks. The rest should be collectable by the sweepers, after the battle.}

"Ok. Lt. Edgar, see if we can get a two-way with Copernicus."

"Aye, Aye, Sir." The linkup took about 20 seconds to get set up. The three seconds of signal lag in each direction was a pain, but it could be worked around. Even more difficult was the frequency shift from the Doppler effect. At four hundred forty two KPS, the frequencies during the fly by would be shifted by 0.15 percent. Not a big number, but it was significant. The shifts changed second by second as the speed went up and as the angle changed. The protocol worked out was to be brief and leave off any excess verbiage. The best way was to treat it like an old two-way radio, with 'Over' and 'Out' being used. The AIs recorded and then re-played the messages but, at the proper speed.

"Jules, understand Fly-by in one-and-one-quarter hour. Over."

"Roger, will go ballistic for ease of AI transport calcs. Colony request, 60 percent Navy, 10 Marines, 10 Fleet Aux., 10 nerds, 10 breeders. Over."

"Roger, 60 Navy, 10 each others. Ovv..., What the HELL? STAND BY!"

Jules looked over at his Executive officer, who was doing his best Spock eyebrow impression.

"Coming up on maximum range to Bogey One, sir. We are in extreme powered missile range and we have a solution."

"How close can we get?"

"We're barely moving relative to them. Another one hundred kilometers will be our closest approach. Seventy-five if they maneuver and turn to port."

"Keep closing another fifty kilometers and fire the light rail chaff rounds. One minute's worth of chaff and then launch all four missiles on firing plan Sierra. Then execute disengagement plan three. We'll get out to the perimeter and watch for leakers."

"Aye, aye Sir, twenty seconds to commence rail-guns firing chaff. Missiles will fire one minute later. Disengage plan 3. Coming up, and... firing." The rail-guns used a lot of juice, and someone, someplace had placed visual cues by having the lights dim when they fired. No one could find the code to remove it and the AI said it was not authorized to do so. The flickering lights were the least popular 'feature' of the old Patrician class.

The special chaff rounds were small canisters of metal-coated Mylar ribbons that were accelerated to thirty thousand meters per second before they burst. It took the missiles thirty seconds to match speed with them and then the missiles went into a coasting pattern, still behind the cloud. The Mylar patterns slowly spread, leaving a visible blob on the Swarm's sensors, which were apparently not very good in the first place. Their defensive lasers opened up, but they could barely get an idea of the ship's and missiles' locations and vectors.

After a bit, the mid-course stage of the missiles kicked in, accelerating them through the thinning cloud of ribbons. Now the missiles could see the targets, not only because they were closer, but also because they could detect the lasers firing at the Mylar cloud. The final phase kicked on; thirty seconds with active homing sensors. They were well inside the envelope and would probably not miss, IF they made it that far. For some reason, even with junky sensors, Swarm ships were very good at missile defense. A flurry of lasers and particle accelerators tracked and destroyed the first missile. It was now a cloud of debris that would move close, but not close enough to strike the target. The second missile took a hit that killed the drive but left the missile intact. It would miss, to continue on as a one-ton stray bullet.

The last two missiles avoided the particle accelerators that could gut a missile with a single hit. They avoided the lasers until the last moments, but by then, it was too late.

"Captain. Impacts on Bogey One. Two I think. Definitely one. Sir, they have lost power. Sphere is intact but is no longer under weigh. They have stopped firing as well.

"Missile teams. Well done. We got him." Cheers could be heard from all over the small ship.

"Uhh, ohh!"

"Weapons, 'Uhh, ohh,' is not a valid report. Uhh, ohh, what?"

{Captain, CIC reports Hive Bogey One took a missile and has lost power. Current course is into the area of the Copernicus Crater. Impact speed is estimated at thirteen kilometers per second in seven thousand nine hundred seconds. Mass estimate is one quarter of a million tons. Impact effect will be approximately 21 thousand terajoules. Approximately a 21-megaton impact.}

Before the Captain could acknowledge the report from CIC, Commander Robert recontacted him from the Moon. "Jules. We have a Hive colony sphere dropping right onto our heads. We are half a mile down and the AI THINKS that the force fields will hold. However, I want to get as many people out of here as possible. I have nearly eight hundred thousand on hand. I am going to stuff your ship full and send the rest over to Tycho base. Over."

"Understood. We can take uhmm, four hundred K, half a mil, tops. Use full meat market. Two or three families per pop. Hey, you're dug down deep. Good luck and keep your helmets on. Over."

"Roger. Out."

"Edgar, break it down. All hands! Copernicus has a hive ship crashing on their heads. We are taking up to five hundred thousand on board. I say again. Half a million. Use full meat market mode. Stay out of the hallways and stay out of sight until your neighborhood is full. Cram them into the rooms and keep them there until we are clear. We are in range in less than sixty minutes, out of range twenty-eight minutes later and the Swarm ship crashes forty minutes after that. Happy, open every passenger apartment door, now. Close them after we get about sixteen people in each apartment. I need umm, one thousand, five hundred, sixty-two and a half, ok, fifteen sixty-three people, minimum, per neighborhood. We can sort them into better groups later."

The Valhalla Class Cube ships basically looked, well, like a cube. There were thirty two thousand passenger apartments aboard the Happy Hunting Grounds capable of supporting well over two hundred fifty thousand people in some comfort. The apartments were generally laid out as twenty identical decks. Crew and support decks were interspersed. The bridge and other command areas were deep inside. The engines and fuel were on the bottom. Each passenger deck was a grid of sixteen neighborhoods, laid out four by four, each with a central transporter nexus, several common areas and 'shops' as well as a ten by ten grid of apartments. The only way to get from one neighborhood to another was to have the AI transport you. Of course, the crew had some other ways in and out, but they were all hidden and locked away from the passengers by being inside the walls. Each neighborhood was four blocks of apartments separated by the Nexus in the center, and other amenities forming dividers for the smaller sub-neighborhoods.

In 'full meat market' mode, the passengers would essentially be treated like cattle. Copernicus Station would have their transporter chambers working to send the entire chamber at a time. Upon arrival, force fields would have formed four sides and the floor of a box with the new passengers inside. The box would be lifted by the antigravs, leave the nexus and slide down the hallways, stopping at the last room currently unfilled. One forcewall would drop and the people would be allowed into the open door to the apartment. As soon as they were in, the door would close and those fields would drop. More passenger groups would already be on their way to their apartment. Each of the neighborhood nexi would have to handle nearly four transits per minute to get one hundred rooms filled in twenty-eight minutes. Four transports per minute was the fastest that had ever been tried in drills. Theoretically, zero people in the transport chamber took the same time as a fully stuffed force box. The big problem actually was on the moon, getting them into the transport chambers in sequence. Aboard ship, one person, either crew or passenger, in the way in a hallway could slow an entire neighborhood's loading. Except for loading the transport chambers and unloading into the apartments, everything would be in the hands of the two AIs involved.

Every neighborhood had a steward team assigned. Generally that was one junior NCO, four enlisted men and their five assigned concubines. They would put a face on the otherwise impersonal proceeding. Passenger team R-14 was led by Corporal Capek. Passenger deck R, also known as deck 34, was near the bottom of the Cube. With the ceiling being forward, and the deck being aft, port and starboard didn't work as well, especially with lots of new passengers aboard, so the directions used were Up, Down, North, South, East and West. Up and Down were easy enough, referring to the decks above and below, and all of the maps showed North at the top. R-14 was the 14th neighborhood on the deck, at the South edge of the map. R-13 was to the west, at the southwest corner. Once people figured this floor plan out, someone always panicked because they were in a neighborhood 'on the outside'. The AIs and the stewards were trained to defuse this by showing that lots of other gear was between the apartments and the outer hull.

The one hundred apartments were split up into ten rows of ten on five corridors. The first row backed up to R-10, the second row faced the first across a hallway, the third backed up to the second. The rest of the rows showed the same pattern ending with the tenth row backing up to the outer hull. There was one large North-South access hallway and a large East-West hallway, both of which were filled with various extra rooms and facilities. The transporter nexus was in the very center.

Capek started to organize his people. "Anderson, take First Street." That was the hallway between the first and second row of apartments. "Bujold, you have Second, I'll take both main halls. Weber take Fourth and Vance, you take Fifth. Make a quick run down the halls now and check they are all open. Then get out of sight at one of the central rooms. Watch over your people with a viewer, try to stay in verbal contact and keep them calm. Once they are in the apartment, ignore them. You each have twenty groups to watch and each one is double sized. Have your girl help by watching the people locked up if she can handle it." He looked over at Bujold. "Well, your guy in your case. If he's functional today." Bujold grinned. She was legendary for the things she put her pint-sized stud through. "Ok, people, let's go." The team scattered to do a quick run through of the area. Nothing SHOULD need to be checked in person, but it was better to do one last check before getting under cover. Everything checked out and they all got in their positions; out of the way, out of sight, parked in front of their display screens. Then they waited.

"Thirty minutes!"

"Fifteen minutes!"

"Five minutes!"

"One minute to first transport!"

At the appointed second, a bunch of people appeared on the transport pad in the center of R-14. Some of the people tried to move and found red-tinted force walls holding them in. They had been told what was going to happen but some people never listen. Five or six people started to panic and fight the walls. They set off the children, many too young to understand in the first place. As soon as the transfer had happened, the force box lifted less than an inch and moved north along 'North Avenue'. When it reached 'First Street', it just slid sideways to the west, stopping at the last door. The north face flashed green and the area around the door disappeared. There was a panic at the door and two people actually got trampled for not being fast enough to get inside. As soon as every one was in, the apartment door closed and the box disappeared. By now, one box was at the door on Fifth Street, another on West Way, also known as Third Street, one each on Second and Fourth, and a sixth box was arriving at the intersection of North and First, before starting its slide, to the east this time.

Anderson had his 'girl', Anita, talking to their group two, trying to keep them calm. They weren't as bad as the first one. He had tried shouting them down, but that was not working. There were three family groups. One was calm and had isolated themselves from the others. The second was dealing with three screaming, scared kids and a young lady who had gotten a wrist sprained in the door panic. The kids were hard to calm down because of the third group. The sponsor was screaming at the AI, which was ignoring all passengers due to the transporter intricacies. He was also yelling at the kids to shut up. And of course he was yelling at anyone else in range, demanding they do something. Anderson pushed a button, letting a siren off in the apartment for three seconds. That shut up everyone except the one sponsor. Anderson had no more time to waste on this. He adjusted the cross hairs and stung the idiot.

"All right. Listen up. We are in an emergency mode for another hour or so. The toilets are open. The replicator will make food upon request. I suggest you split up into your families and find a room to sit down in. Parker. You are in charge. The red flashing door has sleep-training pods. It'll do first aid. Put the girl with the arm in there. If anyone else is hurt, do the same, use your discretion. Pick up that noisy idiot and put him in the room with the door with the blue light. Once you walk out, hit the button beside it and it will be locked. I'll deal with him when I get the chance. Take a look around and figure out how you might need to allocate space. Remember, double occupancy, three families in your place. If you are missing anyone or anyone needs medical more than a sprain, type the details on the console. I will look as I get the chance. Panic again and I stun everyone." He cut the room off without listening to replies. He had noticed Parker, the calm sponsor, nodding as he talked. His next box was on the way already. They were just over two minutes into the transit. He turned to look over at Anita's display and this group was handling things much better.

She glanced at him. "Tell them to turn and face the rear, son. That way they will be facing room 1410 when the door opens."

"Yes, Mom." He glanced once more at his mother, collected with him over three years ago at a high school basketball game. She had dropped the excess weight that she had gained for the pregnancy of their son who was now home being cared for and nursed by his best friend's sister. That left him to keep the pumps primed so she would still be able to nurse when they got back next week. He snapped his mind back to work.

"Ok, people. You're doing fine. I want you to turn around and face the way that you are coming from. That will be the door when the box stops. Ok, now you are sliding sideways. Keep facing the same way. Don't stampede when you see the wall go down. We are in emergency mode for another hour or so. The toilets are open. The replicator will make food. I suggest you split up into your families and find a room to sit down in. Take a look around and figure out how you might need to allocate space. Remember, double occupancy. If you are missing anyone or anyone needs urgent medical, type the details at the console. I will look as I get the chance." He watched over them as the wall field dropped and they trooped into the apartment.

Anita was watching the fourth group for their street, facing them to the rear as well. He looked at the monitors for the other areas and passed the facing suggestion on to Vance. Anita was giving group four his spiel as they approached the door. They were behaving, so he concentrated on five. They were acting up a bit, but the sponsors were being firm and mostly responsible. There were only two sponsors in this group, with four concubines each and the same number of kids. He delivered his speech and they went in an orderly manner, if not exactly quietly.

He checked on 1400 again. Parker's group was calm and he had one woman, probably his ex-wife by the way she acted so comfortably around him, getting snacks for them. The other sponsor was trying to get some order, but the women were having little luck with the little kids. One of the mothers was sitting beside the sleep trainer. Ok, probably her daughter. The last group was crying together. Right now, they figured they had a bad sponsor. They were probably right. It would undoubtedly be worse when he woke up. He was scheduled to be in the Navy. Anything but Fleet Auxiliary, Anderson prayed.

In the after action reports, Capek and the others felt good about their performance. R-14 had gotten through without any major crises. Some other decks had not done so well. Four hundred ninety seven thousand two hundred thirteen souls had been transferred aboard. There were thirty-six births in the next five hours, one in the first twenty minutes inside the apartment. There had been fourteen deaths.

One man had just had a quiet heart attack after he had lain down and no one had noticed in time. He had been picked up from Earth that day and had not been scheduled to be on a ship before he had been processed through medical.

Three tramplings had caused fatal injuries, all in children. Seven concubines were killed immediately by a sponsor or afterwards by regulatory mandate for various transgressions. The death of a sponsor was almost one of those transgressions and nearly resulted in another death. In a fit of rage, the sponsor had kicked at a little girl who was trapped in the force walls with him, breaking her neck. Her father, a huge concubine in another family, had rather impressively crushed the sponsor's throat in three seconds flat. No one was happy when the AI wanted to put him down as well, especially his owner, who was also his younger brother. If the father had waited, he could have watched as the Marines killed the man for him. Everyone except the AI understood why he had not. The Captain went round and round with the AI, finally having all of the sponsors in that neighborhood form a jury who watched the entire incident. When the sponsors voted nearly unanimously to spare him, the AI capitulated.

Three more sponsors had attacked a child, a concubine of another family or a sponsor, respectively. One of those was killed for breaking a child's arm. The second was fined the loss of two of his four concubines, who were both turned over to the Sponsor whose ex-wife had been attacked. They were both rather grateful and called the woman their hero for days. The injured sponsor had the satisfaction of seeing his attacker retested and demoted to concubine. He did not make it to the colony.

Corporal Capek had organized several family moves to equalize the number of people in the crowded apartments. Each apartment had from one to four families assigned, but generally it was either two or three. Some families got along. Some didn't. The sponsor in R-1400, whom he had stung at the very beginning of the transfers, had to be transferred three times along with his family. He had tried to start fights with Parker, resisting his authority even when told by Capek and the AI that Parker was in charge. Then he had terrorized the family in the second location. The third time things were rearranged so his family was in a smaller isolated portion of an apartment, with no other occupants. Once there, the incidents lessened, but Capek flagged the guy's file. There was a particular Navy Boot Camp trainer back at their final destination that had a reputation for dealing with troublemakers. She was built like a Marine and her reputation was 'kill or cure'. Literally.

{Leaving Transport Zone in thirty seconds. All scheduled transports complete}

"Excellent. Secure from meat market. Happy Hunting Grounds to Task Force Command. We are secured from transport. One hundred percent completion."

"Well done Happy. Prepare for task force maneuvering. Execute Command, in one minute"

"Aye, Aye Commodore. Helm, execute on the mark. All hands. Well done from Task Force Command and from myself. Prepare for maneuver commands."

"Executing now, sir."

"Very well. Pass the word. We will enter hyper and head straight home. One hour thirty-seven minutes to hyper limit. Keep the prison... err, passengers locked up until we hit hyper. Lt. Edgar?"

"Sir!"

"Don't jog anyone's elbow at Copernicus, but I would appreciate knowing ASAP the status down there when this thing hits."

Aye, aye, Sir. I have taken the liberty of monitoring a couple of telemetry signals that are going out from remote antennae. They should survive the crash and if the signal is still on the air in uhh, thirty-seven more minutes...."

"Excellent. Hmm, send a signal to the Commodore's flag lieutenant. Let him know what you have set up and pass that on to him when the time comes."

Thirty minutes went by uneventfully, before CIC passed on a new update. "Captain, Hive Bogey One has regained some power. It's still going to crash, but we have less idea where now."

Commodore Arthur cut in. "It just goes to show you. Sometimes the movies get it right."

"Sir?"

"Ever see 'Legend of the Lone Ranger'? It's a really bad movie from the eighties. In the beginning there is this ambush in a canyon, which leads to a big firefight and one old Texas Ranger tells the young recruit, 'It's not the bullet that gets you,' Then he shoots some guy about fifty feet up on the canyon wall. The guy pitches down to the bottom of the canyon, screaming as he goes. When the bandit hits, he goes quiet. 'it's the fall,' the old guy concluded."

The bridge crew laughed. They needed the relief.

{One minute to impact. Approximate}

All eyes looked to the displays of the hive sphere heading down into the mountains forming the rays around Copernicus. The same displays were in every apartment. They were being broadcast by a drone high above the base and by a ship in a low lunar orbit. There was a bright flash and a huge eruption of dust and debris. It seemed to fall wrong. Humans were used to watching dust float down, remaining in the air for minutes, or even hours, but there was no atmosphere, so the individual rocks and clumps and even individual specks of dust, even in the lower gravity, just went up, out and down. The trajectories were perfect parabolas, not affected by atmospheric slowing in their travels in any direction. Before the last of the dust had fallen to the surface again, a signal had come through from Copernicus.

"Copernicus Station here. We are still open for business."

Thanks for the editing help from (alphabetically) Brooke, deGaffer, Mulligan, Tomken and the Swarm Writers Group