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face. A spray of blood streaked across the chair back and overhead as the edge sliced across her forehead.
    Janet nearly blacked out but managed to hold onto the cord a few precious seconds before the fanatic pulled it out of her grasp. She shifted her grip, grabbing him around the neck and wrist. He twisted and pulled forward, lifting the lightweight midshipman from her feet and tripping the chief who was still trying to grab her from the aisle. Janet’s right foot slid down between the chief’s legs, jammed under the bench and twisted. She could feel the bone snap as the bosun collapsed on top of her. The professor brought his elbow down on her temple sending a lightning bolt of pain seared through her brain.
    The shuttle cabin around Midshipman Janet Derik spun as she stared through haze-covered eyes. Head wildly spinning, Janet helplessly saw the fanatic slide the connector into the tablet. Black, delirious eyes widened into saucers and a string of blood-red drool trickled down from the corner of his mouth. His lips were moving but she couldn’t hear the scream above the ringing in her head.
    *~~*~~*~~*
    Ice-blue eyes intently watched from their vantage on the Skyport as the shuttle turned into its final approach. Colonel Daniel Drake knew this would be the last supply run.
    The gravitonic drive field of the vehicle laid the sub-electron graviton particles of every atom within it bare to the cosmos, intimately linking them with the massive waves of gravity permeating our universe. Every electron in every object of the shuttle was in a high-energy state.
    A second gravitonic field blossomed within this tiny but very unusual pocket of the universe. In less than one-millionth of a second, this new field attempted to energize every already excited electron on the shuttle ripping the sub-electron particles from their quantum states and releasing the tremendous energy within.
    In the next millionth of a second, the sudden release of raw gravitonic energy ripped the fabric of the local continuum. The materials of the shuttle, once solid matter, became a neo-ionized cloud of antimatter known as dark energy and they punched a deadly hole in the fabric of the universe. The hole existed for only a moment before collapsing and erupting waves of gravity outward like a cherry bomb thrown into a pond.
    The reaction that began inside the cabin was a relatively small one because the fanatic’s coil interacted poorly with the field of the shuttle but it progressed so rapidly Drake’s eyes never saw the explosion. Violent waves of distorted gravity crashed into the still distant Skyport, slamming it back on its tethers as an archer pulls back a bowstring. A hundred thirty miles below the Skyport, an elevator of supplies was rising up the tether when the sudden tug jolted it free to begin a fiery, uncontrolled final descent into the atmosphere.
    The Skyport lurched like a bobber in a stream before settling back into orbit, throwing Drake across the corridor to leave him sprawled across the floor. He was dazed and couldn’t understand the bright after-images that persisted in his memory. Alarms blared throughout the station as he crawled back to the bulkhead to stare outside at the glowing, formless cloud of hot particles that filled the space recently occupied by the shuttle.
    Reason soon returned but the colonel’s face showed no expression. It held a stare that any front-line veteran would have recognized; a look of final, fatal acceptance framed by the words he first heard from a sergeant so many years ago. They badgered his soul for years and now returned anew, haunting him but somehow providing that last bit of strength needed to push on, There is still much to do. Life goes on. It doesn’t really matter; it means nothing. Push on.
    *~~*~~*~~*
    Colonel Daniel Drake was in a dark mood, a foul mood. He was short tempered, sharp and ornery and his aide, Lieutenant Thrumbold, was thoroughly pleased to see him like this.
    Under normal