The Red Admiral, page 21
“There are days I would like to hate you, Jessica,” he said with a long sigh. “Especially when you’re right. I suspect Arlo is another one like that. Driven by duty, more than by desire. By the needs of those who trust him, rely on him, who never ask him what he wants.”
“I doubt that Vo himself knows,” Jessica replied.
“We will have to work on that,” Em opined. “So that’s it, then? Our war with history and humanity is over the freedom to become whoever you want to be, regardless of the world, the people around you, and broader society’s expectations of you?”
“Can you think of a higher calling, Emmerich?”
“No. I cannot, Jessica,” he said. “So I must ask a delicate, painful question. I must be unacceptably rude, and personal, by both Fribourg or Aquitaine standards, because to do anything else right now would be just as evil as anything Buran ever contemplated.”
She watched him from under hooded eyes. This was not the conversation either of them had expected, starting off with strategy so that it could drive tactics. Or perhaps it was. Humans were the most important facet of any plan. They had wandered down into the weeds, but the weeds were people, with feelings and dreams, and not just something that got in the way.
“What should I do with Torsten Wald?” he asked quietly and simply.
“Nothing,” she said without hesitation.
“Nothing?”
“He asked to be here, every step of the way, Em,” Jessica said quietly. “You offered him a chance, and he took it. Did everything right. Torsten could have stayed behind on Ladaux when we left. He could have asked you to evacuate him, although I’m pretty sure he would have fought you instead, had you ordered him home.”
“I took a chance…” Em began.
“And there were days I couldn’t decide whether to hate you, or thank you for that, Em,” Jessica said. “Torsten has turned out to be something I never expected, especially at this stage of my life. I never had children, and don’t expect to. I never took the time to actively search for someone I might share myself with, and I’m at a place now where I didn’t think I could, especially given my duties to three nations. And I only barely survived Warlock’s death with my own sanity intact.”
“And yet, there were sparks,” he said, just as low a whisper as their voices could fade.
“Are sparks,” she countered. “I have to stop and remember to breathe occasionally when I find myself wandering down the impossibilities of happily-ever-after with that man. There is too much to be done today. I have a war to fight, against an enemy more dangerous than you ever imagined yourself to be, because he is an alien creature intent on enslaving all humanity under his eternal yoke.”
“The war will not be over tomorrow, Keller,” Emmerich said. “Have you told him?”
“No,” she replied. “I’m not sure how to ask him to patiently wait a decade, assuming we don’t all end up dead first.”
“My unwelcome advice, Jessica?” he said. “As a friend? Don’t wait. There will always be another mountain ahead of you. That is who you are, and I’ve spent a decade coming to understand at least that much about you. Take the day for yourself. Talk to Torsten. I have no doubt that he would wait a decade if you asked, but it is unnecessary.”
Jessica leaned back, rather than answer. She felt like they were back on his porch on St. Legier, just before the coup. Beyond foes, and attempting to forge a friendship, even as he had tried to kill her any number of times before that.
“I will give it thought,” she finally responded.
“I’m right, and you know it,” he smiled. “This is one of the few times I can say that with utter conviction. The war will be there for the rest of our lives. I’m trying to insure that only Ekke has to fight it, and not his children. Nor Casey’s, wherever they end up being born.”
She nodded. No more would she commit to than that, however much she had considered it.
He was right. They both knew it. Probably all three knew it.
Did she actually have the courage to act on it?
Chapter XXXIV
Date of the Republic March 14, 400 SC Auberon, Intersection Point Kasum
Jessica had cleared most of the flag bridge of people for this meeting. There was only herself and Enej, plus Command Centurion Kanda Lungu from Ballard and First Officer/Science Officer Elzbet Aukley. And Jennifer Glenn of CP-406. The Scout Team.
At the last minute, she had also pulled Casey in, more for the educational aspects than anything, since Casey’s role as Imperial Flag Centurion was only going to really ramp up after they had settled and begun to interact with the Imperial Fleet on a regular basis.
So, the five of them. She could have invited Arott. And Denis, Robbie, Alber’, and Tomas. Tamara. All the command centurions. Any number of experts on any number of topics.
That would happen later. Jessica had a revolution to unleash first.
They all sat at the big round table with the holoprojector at the center. To better make her point, Jessica had dimmed the lighting. Denis had the flag and would handle everything from the bridge if anything happened in the next hour.
She started by projecting an animation Moirrey had prepared. Graphics were the best way to communicate concepts, and Pint-sized was still the best there was at creating them. The projection showed a great emptiness with a rough, golden sphere hovering in the center of a sea of small white dots. Stars representing Fribourg space.
“We are here,” Moirrey’s stage voice narrated, as two other dots appeared at great remove. “St. Legier in purple. Ladaux in azure.”
The image zoomed in, and then rotated as it blasted forward onto the far shores of the Fribourg Empire.
“Osynth B’Udan is Fribourg’s sector capital facing Buran,” the narration continued. A white star appeared, followed a few moments later by a red one at some distance. “Samara is the most heavily-fortified planet across the border, and we believe it to be their sector capital. The Ural Starbase is at least comparable to any orbital fortification Fribourg or Aquitaine has ever built.”
Moirrey had added some piano music quietly in the background, almost too low to hear, but it was just the right piece to convey the grand emptiness; the bleak, black loneliness, married with the hint of impregnable solidity. In the animation, a vast gulf opened, a gap between arms of the galaxy itself. A dark sea with almost no far shore, as stars were sparse and well-separated here.
A green star appeared finally, after a good piano solo.
“Ninagirsu,” Moirrey continued. “Gateway to the Altai sector. Anchor of the defenses on the far side of the gulf and the first step on the highway to Winterhome, homeworld of Buran, the Lord of Winter.”
The animation spun again, driving well up from the galactic ecliptic, until all the stars previously marked were visible again and everyone had a map of the incredible distances involved. It stopped there. The piano faded.
Silence fell.
Jessica powered the projection down and studied the faces around her. The next phase rested on their shoulders.
“I have two problems,” Jessica began. “We will be operating a long way from home, with incredibly difficult supply lines. And Buran is not stopped by the edge of a gravity well as we are.”
Kanda nodded. She had been there at Thuringwell. And had heard all the stories about St. Legier. The others remained quiet. Contemplative.
“There are other problems, as well,” she continued. “Fribourg is still riddled with spies, so anything we do will eventually be leaked, no matter what. That’s part of the reason we are not passing through an Imperial base on our way.”
“What are you looking for in a forward staging area?” Glenn spoke up suddenly. “If we’re going dark, how dark?”
Jessica smiled. Her newest commander had made the kind of intuitive leap they would need.
“Without a star to home in on, navigation gets tricky,” Jessica replied. “Find me a spot in between stars, marked by nothing but a complicated set of vectors from known locations.”
“That’s easy, Fleet Centurion,” Jennifer replied. “What am I missing?”
“How does Buran do it?” Elzbet suddenly piped up. “That’s the rogue element. We know from the records that they can cross vast spaces at impossible speeds. We don’t know how.”
“Correct,” Jessica said. “We can pick a spot at random. Easy enough, but how do we ensure that we aren’t on some autobahn of theirs that accidentally vectors them right through us?”
“JumpDrives and not sails, we know that,” Glenn said. “According to the old records from Alexandria Station, you pick a direction and a distance then throw yourself like a rock. When you arrive, you calculate your current location as a deviation from your intention, determine the correction, and leap again. How do you make that faster?”
“Highway signs,” Enej suddenly said.
“What?” Jessica turned to the man.
“Yes. Middle of nowhere. You need navigation points,” the Elzbet interjected. Enej nodded. “We don’t because we use known gravity wells as signatures. But you could drop a small beacon in the middle of nowhere. Maybe a line of them, each transmitting a different signal. A ship drops out, listens, and can triangulate themselves quickly, maybe immediately, as fast as those ships were supposed to think. We go through systems. They might just go around them, and then turn and drop in on the one they want when they achieve optimal proximity. Galaxy’s mostly a thick pancake, but if you go up or down, the density thins out appreciably, so you could probably perform tremendous ballistic jumps to go even farther. Where there are fewer things in the way to risk hitting, you can go much faster.”
Jessica turned to Kanda.
“When we get approach the place I want to base from, that will be your first task,” she ordered. “Find out if there is anything nearby like that. We’ll have to maintain total comm silence while we set up, just in case, so figure out how to do everything with a series of point-to-point lasers. Then you’ll start a grid and work outwards slowly.”
“And when we find it?” Glenn asked.
“Nothing,” Jessica replied. “If we break their toy, they’ll send someone to fix it eventually, but we’ll need to be prepared to pinpoint it and map it. We’ll also need to roll a long chunk of the network up all at once, if there really is such a thing. Killing one might just be a pothole they can sail around. I want to burn the bridge in front of them. And maybe behind them. You three put your minds on what to look for and how to unravel it. Bring in anybody you need, second priority to Arott and his team setting us up a base.”
“Moirrey?” Kanda asked.
“I’d start with her,” Jessica said. “Tell her to get silly and efficient. Maybe ask Yan, too, since he thinks in small, automated tasks better than anyone.”
“And when we get ready to kill it?” Jennifer asked, as if the thing was already a done deal.
“That’s what I have you and Alber’ for,” Jessica noted.
Explorer
Chapter XXXV
Date of the Republic April 21, 400. CP-406, Planetary System FR-0093416-B
Command Centurion Glenn always sat a daily bridge watch of at least two hours. The regs didn’t require it, and many commanders only did them sporadically. But this was her ship.
It wasn’t her crew yet, but they would be, in another year. She needed to know them at a fundamental level to get there. Not just their professionalism. That was a given, considering the insane level of competition for berths in this squadron.
She needed to know their souls.
The best way to get that feel for them was by interacting on a daily basis. Seeing them in their native element, and letting them see her. Thus, two hours on the bridge every day. And rotating her shift regularly through all the watch sections, so she got to spend time with every crew member that was bridge-certified.
There was nothing metaphysical about it, she knew, watching people go about their business. They had assumed that she was a deeply spiritual person, based on the amount of time she spent daily, meditating and doing yoga.
They were wrong, though. Meditation freed the mind to work. Jennifer had heard all the stories about Keller that floated around. Knew the nearly-unconscious instinct for maneuver and combat that had marked the woman as the very best of an impressive crowd.
But Jennifer knew a special truth about the Fleet Centurion, imparted to her by an instructor from Fleet Command School that had taught a young Jessica Keller, once upon a time. Namely, the immense time Keller spent in preparation. In Keller’s case, gaming out every possible scenario ahead of time and making notes that could be called upon in the middle of a battle.
Glenn hadn’t seen nearly as much combat as Keller, but her last posting had been as First Officer on a light cruiser that spent a lot of time alone on outer borders and random patrols. Out there in the darkness, far from the Fribourg frontiers, you drilled the crew to keep them from growing stale, but you also had to prepare for all sorts of other oddities. Survey work. Piracy patrols. Sudden emergency rescues and evacuations.
It had been good training for her current duties.
Jennifer looked around the compact bridge. She would have said tiny, especially after the spacious bridge on RAN Usken, but everything was in the right place and there wasn’t a cubic centimeter of wasted space. She had heard stories about the designer, Bedrov, but had only ever seen him across the room, and never had a chance to ask him questions.
But her bridge fit her personality. Everyone was facing inward, so she could see their faces as well as they could see hers. Her Flight Deck Commander, the ever-dapper Centurion Rouge, sat next to the Tactical Officer, Takouhi Elouan, who was more of a gym rat, even as voluptuous as the woman was, and their three stations made a compact triangle at the center, with half a dozen other stations around them, separated by a ring aisle for access.
The lights in here were dim, but that was by choice. Jennifer made it a point to randomly alter the light settings from default every time she was here, to get everyone used to change. She also played with the thermostat for the same reason, especially after having to chase a small pirate vessel on a day when the air conditioning system for the bridge had broken down, blowing air heated to nearly 40C onto the bridge, resulting in a pile of sweat-soaked tunics on the deck as people stripped down to undershirts to keep from overheating.
If you were experienced in things going sideways, you were still operational when they did. It was just another day in the fleet.
Plus, running the lights in here down seventeen percent made the room dim and quiet. That helped psychologically with the whole sneaking-around thing.
Focused the mind.
Ballard was out there somewhere, listening. The Survey Cruiser was an expert at that, but she was almost unarmed, and far more valuable than CP-406, so the corvette was slowly closing on the second planet of this system.
Jennifer had purposely kept CP-406 out farther than necessary, but that was to test her crew. To see if her science officer was up to the task of finding a needle hiding in a stack of needles. Buran might be out there, waiting. Centurion Steiner ought to be up to the task, but that was something to find out when the stakes were low, rather than when it was for all the marbles.
She checked the boards again. Nine light minutes out. Nearly a full AU away, astronomical units based on the ancient distance between the Homeworld and the Homestar, as those things were measured, and too far to see anything, even with the best telescope, unless CP-406 made a noise and caused them to look this way.
Far enough away that nobody should be listening, either. Or likely to drop out of a jump on top of them accidentally.
Jennifer had memorized all the available intel on Buran ship-handling, specifically to try to judge these things. As a rule, they would usually come back into RealSpace around thirty or forty light minutes away, there to separate out the Energiya Module, the transport section, from the Buran element, the fighting pieces.
Like drawing a sword from a scabbard, just before a charge.
Fribourg had specifically noted where each secondary detonation occurred, if they managed to kill one of the vessels. The transport section self-immolated as soon as the signal arrived, without fail. Nine minutes was too close, but not so close as to be obvious, if CP-406 kept themselves silent.
“Sciences,” Jennifer said in a voice just a shade above conversational, to get Steiner’s attention without making her jump. “Status?”
Jennifer had spent a lot of time interviewing her principle officers and their assistants. Learning their souls. Reese Steiner was an average-looking brunette physically, with little that drew the eye, at least until she opened her mouth. Inside, the woman was a nerd for communications technology in all forms and historical periods. And one who painted watercolors in her spare time out of physical materials, rather than painting on an electronic easel.
“Basic automated comm traffic, Commander,” the science officer replied without looking up from her sensor readouts. “Navigational, almost. Nobody appears to have noticed us, if there is anyone here.”
About what Jennifer expected. The Navigational Gazette that Fribourg maintained on this frontier was woefully under-detailed for a nation that styled themselves a major power. She suspected that was how Buran had managed to colonize so many worlds on this side of the gulf. Nobody was looking.
Aquitaine was looking now. First Expeditionary was looking. Cockroaches in the cupboards were about to be lit up. But first, it was necessary to establish a safe place to base out of. So the scouting element was here, while the rest of the fleet was six hours by jump away.
Waiting.
“Flight Deck,” Jennifer turned her head another notch. “Three green?”
“Affirmative, sir,” Rouge said, his usual ready smile lighting up an aquiline face dominated by a beak of a nose and a receding widow’s peak slowly fading from skin to brown hair.
“I doubt that Vo himself knows,” Jessica replied.
“We will have to work on that,” Em opined. “So that’s it, then? Our war with history and humanity is over the freedom to become whoever you want to be, regardless of the world, the people around you, and broader society’s expectations of you?”
“Can you think of a higher calling, Emmerich?”
“No. I cannot, Jessica,” he said. “So I must ask a delicate, painful question. I must be unacceptably rude, and personal, by both Fribourg or Aquitaine standards, because to do anything else right now would be just as evil as anything Buran ever contemplated.”
She watched him from under hooded eyes. This was not the conversation either of them had expected, starting off with strategy so that it could drive tactics. Or perhaps it was. Humans were the most important facet of any plan. They had wandered down into the weeds, but the weeds were people, with feelings and dreams, and not just something that got in the way.
“What should I do with Torsten Wald?” he asked quietly and simply.
“Nothing,” she said without hesitation.
“Nothing?”
“He asked to be here, every step of the way, Em,” Jessica said quietly. “You offered him a chance, and he took it. Did everything right. Torsten could have stayed behind on Ladaux when we left. He could have asked you to evacuate him, although I’m pretty sure he would have fought you instead, had you ordered him home.”
“I took a chance…” Em began.
“And there were days I couldn’t decide whether to hate you, or thank you for that, Em,” Jessica said. “Torsten has turned out to be something I never expected, especially at this stage of my life. I never had children, and don’t expect to. I never took the time to actively search for someone I might share myself with, and I’m at a place now where I didn’t think I could, especially given my duties to three nations. And I only barely survived Warlock’s death with my own sanity intact.”
“And yet, there were sparks,” he said, just as low a whisper as their voices could fade.
“Are sparks,” she countered. “I have to stop and remember to breathe occasionally when I find myself wandering down the impossibilities of happily-ever-after with that man. There is too much to be done today. I have a war to fight, against an enemy more dangerous than you ever imagined yourself to be, because he is an alien creature intent on enslaving all humanity under his eternal yoke.”
“The war will not be over tomorrow, Keller,” Emmerich said. “Have you told him?”
“No,” she replied. “I’m not sure how to ask him to patiently wait a decade, assuming we don’t all end up dead first.”
“My unwelcome advice, Jessica?” he said. “As a friend? Don’t wait. There will always be another mountain ahead of you. That is who you are, and I’ve spent a decade coming to understand at least that much about you. Take the day for yourself. Talk to Torsten. I have no doubt that he would wait a decade if you asked, but it is unnecessary.”
Jessica leaned back, rather than answer. She felt like they were back on his porch on St. Legier, just before the coup. Beyond foes, and attempting to forge a friendship, even as he had tried to kill her any number of times before that.
“I will give it thought,” she finally responded.
“I’m right, and you know it,” he smiled. “This is one of the few times I can say that with utter conviction. The war will be there for the rest of our lives. I’m trying to insure that only Ekke has to fight it, and not his children. Nor Casey’s, wherever they end up being born.”
She nodded. No more would she commit to than that, however much she had considered it.
He was right. They both knew it. Probably all three knew it.
Did she actually have the courage to act on it?
Chapter XXXIV
Date of the Republic March 14, 400 SC Auberon, Intersection Point Kasum
Jessica had cleared most of the flag bridge of people for this meeting. There was only herself and Enej, plus Command Centurion Kanda Lungu from Ballard and First Officer/Science Officer Elzbet Aukley. And Jennifer Glenn of CP-406. The Scout Team.
At the last minute, she had also pulled Casey in, more for the educational aspects than anything, since Casey’s role as Imperial Flag Centurion was only going to really ramp up after they had settled and begun to interact with the Imperial Fleet on a regular basis.
So, the five of them. She could have invited Arott. And Denis, Robbie, Alber’, and Tomas. Tamara. All the command centurions. Any number of experts on any number of topics.
That would happen later. Jessica had a revolution to unleash first.
They all sat at the big round table with the holoprojector at the center. To better make her point, Jessica had dimmed the lighting. Denis had the flag and would handle everything from the bridge if anything happened in the next hour.
She started by projecting an animation Moirrey had prepared. Graphics were the best way to communicate concepts, and Pint-sized was still the best there was at creating them. The projection showed a great emptiness with a rough, golden sphere hovering in the center of a sea of small white dots. Stars representing Fribourg space.
“We are here,” Moirrey’s stage voice narrated, as two other dots appeared at great remove. “St. Legier in purple. Ladaux in azure.”
The image zoomed in, and then rotated as it blasted forward onto the far shores of the Fribourg Empire.
“Osynth B’Udan is Fribourg’s sector capital facing Buran,” the narration continued. A white star appeared, followed a few moments later by a red one at some distance. “Samara is the most heavily-fortified planet across the border, and we believe it to be their sector capital. The Ural Starbase is at least comparable to any orbital fortification Fribourg or Aquitaine has ever built.”
Moirrey had added some piano music quietly in the background, almost too low to hear, but it was just the right piece to convey the grand emptiness; the bleak, black loneliness, married with the hint of impregnable solidity. In the animation, a vast gulf opened, a gap between arms of the galaxy itself. A dark sea with almost no far shore, as stars were sparse and well-separated here.
A green star appeared finally, after a good piano solo.
“Ninagirsu,” Moirrey continued. “Gateway to the Altai sector. Anchor of the defenses on the far side of the gulf and the first step on the highway to Winterhome, homeworld of Buran, the Lord of Winter.”
The animation spun again, driving well up from the galactic ecliptic, until all the stars previously marked were visible again and everyone had a map of the incredible distances involved. It stopped there. The piano faded.
Silence fell.
Jessica powered the projection down and studied the faces around her. The next phase rested on their shoulders.
“I have two problems,” Jessica began. “We will be operating a long way from home, with incredibly difficult supply lines. And Buran is not stopped by the edge of a gravity well as we are.”
Kanda nodded. She had been there at Thuringwell. And had heard all the stories about St. Legier. The others remained quiet. Contemplative.
“There are other problems, as well,” she continued. “Fribourg is still riddled with spies, so anything we do will eventually be leaked, no matter what. That’s part of the reason we are not passing through an Imperial base on our way.”
“What are you looking for in a forward staging area?” Glenn spoke up suddenly. “If we’re going dark, how dark?”
Jessica smiled. Her newest commander had made the kind of intuitive leap they would need.
“Without a star to home in on, navigation gets tricky,” Jessica replied. “Find me a spot in between stars, marked by nothing but a complicated set of vectors from known locations.”
“That’s easy, Fleet Centurion,” Jennifer replied. “What am I missing?”
“How does Buran do it?” Elzbet suddenly piped up. “That’s the rogue element. We know from the records that they can cross vast spaces at impossible speeds. We don’t know how.”
“Correct,” Jessica said. “We can pick a spot at random. Easy enough, but how do we ensure that we aren’t on some autobahn of theirs that accidentally vectors them right through us?”
“JumpDrives and not sails, we know that,” Glenn said. “According to the old records from Alexandria Station, you pick a direction and a distance then throw yourself like a rock. When you arrive, you calculate your current location as a deviation from your intention, determine the correction, and leap again. How do you make that faster?”
“Highway signs,” Enej suddenly said.
“What?” Jessica turned to the man.
“Yes. Middle of nowhere. You need navigation points,” the Elzbet interjected. Enej nodded. “We don’t because we use known gravity wells as signatures. But you could drop a small beacon in the middle of nowhere. Maybe a line of them, each transmitting a different signal. A ship drops out, listens, and can triangulate themselves quickly, maybe immediately, as fast as those ships were supposed to think. We go through systems. They might just go around them, and then turn and drop in on the one they want when they achieve optimal proximity. Galaxy’s mostly a thick pancake, but if you go up or down, the density thins out appreciably, so you could probably perform tremendous ballistic jumps to go even farther. Where there are fewer things in the way to risk hitting, you can go much faster.”
Jessica turned to Kanda.
“When we get approach the place I want to base from, that will be your first task,” she ordered. “Find out if there is anything nearby like that. We’ll have to maintain total comm silence while we set up, just in case, so figure out how to do everything with a series of point-to-point lasers. Then you’ll start a grid and work outwards slowly.”
“And when we find it?” Glenn asked.
“Nothing,” Jessica replied. “If we break their toy, they’ll send someone to fix it eventually, but we’ll need to be prepared to pinpoint it and map it. We’ll also need to roll a long chunk of the network up all at once, if there really is such a thing. Killing one might just be a pothole they can sail around. I want to burn the bridge in front of them. And maybe behind them. You three put your minds on what to look for and how to unravel it. Bring in anybody you need, second priority to Arott and his team setting us up a base.”
“Moirrey?” Kanda asked.
“I’d start with her,” Jessica said. “Tell her to get silly and efficient. Maybe ask Yan, too, since he thinks in small, automated tasks better than anyone.”
“And when we get ready to kill it?” Jennifer asked, as if the thing was already a done deal.
“That’s what I have you and Alber’ for,” Jessica noted.
Explorer
Chapter XXXV
Date of the Republic April 21, 400. CP-406, Planetary System FR-0093416-B
Command Centurion Glenn always sat a daily bridge watch of at least two hours. The regs didn’t require it, and many commanders only did them sporadically. But this was her ship.
It wasn’t her crew yet, but they would be, in another year. She needed to know them at a fundamental level to get there. Not just their professionalism. That was a given, considering the insane level of competition for berths in this squadron.
She needed to know their souls.
The best way to get that feel for them was by interacting on a daily basis. Seeing them in their native element, and letting them see her. Thus, two hours on the bridge every day. And rotating her shift regularly through all the watch sections, so she got to spend time with every crew member that was bridge-certified.
There was nothing metaphysical about it, she knew, watching people go about their business. They had assumed that she was a deeply spiritual person, based on the amount of time she spent daily, meditating and doing yoga.
They were wrong, though. Meditation freed the mind to work. Jennifer had heard all the stories about Keller that floated around. Knew the nearly-unconscious instinct for maneuver and combat that had marked the woman as the very best of an impressive crowd.
But Jennifer knew a special truth about the Fleet Centurion, imparted to her by an instructor from Fleet Command School that had taught a young Jessica Keller, once upon a time. Namely, the immense time Keller spent in preparation. In Keller’s case, gaming out every possible scenario ahead of time and making notes that could be called upon in the middle of a battle.
Glenn hadn’t seen nearly as much combat as Keller, but her last posting had been as First Officer on a light cruiser that spent a lot of time alone on outer borders and random patrols. Out there in the darkness, far from the Fribourg frontiers, you drilled the crew to keep them from growing stale, but you also had to prepare for all sorts of other oddities. Survey work. Piracy patrols. Sudden emergency rescues and evacuations.
It had been good training for her current duties.
Jennifer looked around the compact bridge. She would have said tiny, especially after the spacious bridge on RAN Usken, but everything was in the right place and there wasn’t a cubic centimeter of wasted space. She had heard stories about the designer, Bedrov, but had only ever seen him across the room, and never had a chance to ask him questions.
But her bridge fit her personality. Everyone was facing inward, so she could see their faces as well as they could see hers. Her Flight Deck Commander, the ever-dapper Centurion Rouge, sat next to the Tactical Officer, Takouhi Elouan, who was more of a gym rat, even as voluptuous as the woman was, and their three stations made a compact triangle at the center, with half a dozen other stations around them, separated by a ring aisle for access.
The lights in here were dim, but that was by choice. Jennifer made it a point to randomly alter the light settings from default every time she was here, to get everyone used to change. She also played with the thermostat for the same reason, especially after having to chase a small pirate vessel on a day when the air conditioning system for the bridge had broken down, blowing air heated to nearly 40C onto the bridge, resulting in a pile of sweat-soaked tunics on the deck as people stripped down to undershirts to keep from overheating.
If you were experienced in things going sideways, you were still operational when they did. It was just another day in the fleet.
Plus, running the lights in here down seventeen percent made the room dim and quiet. That helped psychologically with the whole sneaking-around thing.
Focused the mind.
Ballard was out there somewhere, listening. The Survey Cruiser was an expert at that, but she was almost unarmed, and far more valuable than CP-406, so the corvette was slowly closing on the second planet of this system.
Jennifer had purposely kept CP-406 out farther than necessary, but that was to test her crew. To see if her science officer was up to the task of finding a needle hiding in a stack of needles. Buran might be out there, waiting. Centurion Steiner ought to be up to the task, but that was something to find out when the stakes were low, rather than when it was for all the marbles.
She checked the boards again. Nine light minutes out. Nearly a full AU away, astronomical units based on the ancient distance between the Homeworld and the Homestar, as those things were measured, and too far to see anything, even with the best telescope, unless CP-406 made a noise and caused them to look this way.
Far enough away that nobody should be listening, either. Or likely to drop out of a jump on top of them accidentally.
Jennifer had memorized all the available intel on Buran ship-handling, specifically to try to judge these things. As a rule, they would usually come back into RealSpace around thirty or forty light minutes away, there to separate out the Energiya Module, the transport section, from the Buran element, the fighting pieces.
Like drawing a sword from a scabbard, just before a charge.
Fribourg had specifically noted where each secondary detonation occurred, if they managed to kill one of the vessels. The transport section self-immolated as soon as the signal arrived, without fail. Nine minutes was too close, but not so close as to be obvious, if CP-406 kept themselves silent.
“Sciences,” Jennifer said in a voice just a shade above conversational, to get Steiner’s attention without making her jump. “Status?”
Jennifer had spent a lot of time interviewing her principle officers and their assistants. Learning their souls. Reese Steiner was an average-looking brunette physically, with little that drew the eye, at least until she opened her mouth. Inside, the woman was a nerd for communications technology in all forms and historical periods. And one who painted watercolors in her spare time out of physical materials, rather than painting on an electronic easel.
“Basic automated comm traffic, Commander,” the science officer replied without looking up from her sensor readouts. “Navigational, almost. Nobody appears to have noticed us, if there is anyone here.”
About what Jennifer expected. The Navigational Gazette that Fribourg maintained on this frontier was woefully under-detailed for a nation that styled themselves a major power. She suspected that was how Buran had managed to colonize so many worlds on this side of the gulf. Nobody was looking.
Aquitaine was looking now. First Expeditionary was looking. Cockroaches in the cupboards were about to be lit up. But first, it was necessary to establish a safe place to base out of. So the scouting element was here, while the rest of the fleet was six hours by jump away.
Waiting.
“Flight Deck,” Jennifer turned her head another notch. “Three green?”
“Affirmative, sir,” Rouge said, his usual ready smile lighting up an aquiline face dominated by a beak of a nose and a receding widow’s peak slowly fading from skin to brown hair.
