The three of them nodded and mumbled their agreement. Karina looked surprised to be put on maintenance, but also pleased that she was being treated as a full team member now. Molly knew from conversations with Director Bates that in her history working for Carol, Karina had executed an undercover assignment that had given her engineering experience. Time to start capitalizing on it, she reasoned with herself.
Molly looked ready to wrap up, but Giles raised his hand. “Anything we can do?” he asked, signaling to include Arlene and Ben’or in his question.
Molly thought for a moment. “Make sure that Anne is ok. There is a nervous vibe on the base at the moment, and she’s bound to pick up on it. Plus, after all she went through on the last trip, we need to be keeping a close eye on her.”
Arlene nodded as if taking responsibility for her. Her eyes lit up suddenly as if she had a new thought. She glanced quickly at Ben’or, hesitated then spoke. “You know, we could take her back to my place on Estaria if you like… keep her safe there.” She paused. “Or there’s my old cabin here on Gaitune.”
Molly took a moment, considering the options. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. I think Estaria would be more comfortable for her. But the cabin is a good contingency if we need to keep her close and safe, but as a first option, she’s more likely to go stir crazy without any of the modern conveniences.” She paused. “Are you sure you can manage her?”
Arlene hesitated again. Molly was sure she saw a flicker of panic in Arlene’s eyes for a fraction of a second. “Yes,” she confirmed, firmly now. “Yes. She’ll be fine. She’s worked hard, and I believe her powers are under control… even if she becomes emotional.”
Molly nodded. “Ok. Make it so.”
Giles sat back in his seat as if he were irritated by still not having anything to do.
“Ok folks. You know what you need to do. We’re likely going to need some help, however this pans out. I’m going to talk to the Federation about reinforcements just in case the space debris isn’t space debris. Any other questions before we break?”
No more hands went up.
“Ok. Team dismissed,” she said, using Joel’s old hand signal for winding up a meeting and moving out.
The team pushed out of their antigrav chairs and filed out in a quiet mull of activity. Giles stayed put.
He waited until everyone had left, and even signaled to Arlene who had hovered at the door, that he’d catch her up.
Molly played along and waited. “What is it?” she asked, knowing full well his concerns hadn’t changed.
“Forgive me… I know you haven’t set any investigation into whether we might have triggered this event… But I’d like to look into that.”
“Where would you start?” she asked.
“I have no idea. But I’ll do some work on it.”
Molly seemed in a hurry to get him to move on. “Ok,” she said, distracted. “Keep me posted.”
Giles hesitated, fiddling with his glasses again. He wagged a finger. “It’s just, I can’t understand why this Ascension Race would go to all this humongous effort to leave these clues all over the place, to have us figure out how to contact them… only to come and kill us…”
Molly stroked her chin. “You’re right. It doesn’t make sense. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe that if it is indeed them, they’d be coming for malicious reasons. But the problem is, no one in the outside world is going to believe that. Plus, as responsible leaders, we can’t take any chances when it comes to the safety of either our system or the Federation beyond. We have to be sensible in how we proceed.”
Giles lowered his gaze to the table and nodded. “Yes,” he murmured. “I understand your position. But there’s something I just can’t put my finger on. Something else that is niggling me… that we’re missing.”
Molly seemed to relax for a moment, her to-do list forgotten momentarily. “I agree. I have that same feeling too.” She snapped out of it. “If anything comes to you…”
He put his glasses back on, and stood up, straightening his atmosuit. “Of course. You’ll be the first to know.”
“Day or night,” she added.
Giles hesitated, his eyes brighter like he wanted to clarify something. He changed his mind, dismissing the thought that maybe he had a chance with her socially still. “Sure. Thanks,” he said before he headed out of the conference room.
Molly smiled at him as he walked past her.
Oz, can we get a call with the General?
Sure. Lemme find out when his next availability is.
Thanks.
She took another sip of her phyto-shake that had been untouched for the entire meeting.
Department of Cyber Communications, Spire, Estaria
Jennifer was pretty sure her arms were going to break off if she had to carry the box another fifteen feet, but the door to her office was right there. She picked up her pace from a reluctant plod to a labored mosey for the last few strides before she came to a halt.
She even had a door plaque already. Her name, Jennifer Etang, was carved in elegant script.
Carefully, Jennifer tried to shift her box to prop it up against one hip, only to abruptly grapple with it as it tried to make a dive for the floor. She caught it, hugging it awkwardly to her midsection at the last moment. She stood there, both hands wrapped around the sides of the box as she stared at the door’s keypad in consternation. Unfortunately, she failed to manifest any convenient psychic abilities just then.
She didn’t hear the footsteps behind her, nor she did realize she had company.
“Need a hand?” a voice asked.
She nearly leapt out of her skin, hugging the box tighter to her stomach before she could lose her grip on it.
Her attempt to whip around to face him turned into more of an awkward twist, and she found herself face-to-collarbone with another Estarian, roughly around her own age if she had to guess.
He was looking at her expectantly. She shook her head self-consciously, remembering that he had asked her a question. She cleared her throat and jerked her head toward the door, lacking the use of her hands to properly point.
“The door,” she specified. “It kind of requires hands.”
“A very poor design choice,” he agreed cheerfully, stepping around her to enter his own entry code into the keypad. The door slid open and he stepped aside, gesturing her into the room with a flourish.
Jennifer rolled her eyes good-naturedly at herself as she passed and dropped her box on a free spot on the desk. She glanced over her shoulder to see him lingering in the doorway still. She motioned him into the room.
“Andrew,” he offered belatedly once he stepped in enough to let the door close. “How’s the moving-in process going? Finishing up?”
She spread her arms to gesture around at the office. Though it was still undecorated all the supplies on the desk and the shelves were hers. “I just need to empty out this box.”
“Of bricks,” he supplied wryly.
She brought a finger to her lips to hiss conspiratorially. “Shhhh! They’re my secret bricks. No one was supposed to know about them.”
Andrew held his hands up as if in surrender. “Your secret is safe with me. But are your secret bricks there so you can fend anyone off? Since…well, these are quite the shoes you’re filling. Nervous?”
Jennifer shrugged and dropped down into her chair. “A bit, I guess. It’s a big job. Nothing I haven’t been trained for, though. I’ll need to spend some time familiarizing myself with the servers and relays to see what sort of maintenance they need and bone up on the public communication regulations, but…” She trailed off with an unconcerned shrug and shifted in her seat to get comfortable.
“I meant because— “ He cut himself off, mouth twisting to one side as he thought better of whatever he planned on saying.
“I already know what happened to Dorota,” she assured him. “They told me about it after my first int
erview for the job. So don’t worry, you’re not going to scare me by bringing it up.”
Andrew rubbed the back of his head and leaned back against the door. His hands fell to his sides and he drummed his fingers against the door. “You don’t seem too worried about it.”
Jennifer waved it off with a loose motion of one hand before she let it fall back to the arm of her chair. “I won’t say I don’t care that it happened,” she explained carefully after a moment. “But I’m not Dorota Carpe.” She pulled the front of her jacket to the side to show off the gun holstered at her side. Andrew tried to recoil a startled step, only to come up short when he almost clocked the back of his head against the door.
“I can take care of myself,” Jennifer informed him. She let her jacket fall closed again, and her tone turned slightly smug as she added. “If someone wants to shoot me, I’m going to shoot them first.”
Andrew arched one eyebrow dubiously, his gaze returning slowly to her face from where the gun hid beneath her coat. “You think that peashooter will keep you safe from a sniper?”
She was quiet for a few seconds, her expression going blank at first before her eyes drifted thoughtfully up and to the side.
“I can take care of myself,” she repeated, slow and assured as she folded her arms over her chest and straightened up in her seat. “You don’t need to worry about anything like that; I’ll be fine.”
Andrew couldn’t tell if she was just trying to reassure herself at this point. He pushed himself away from the door. “Love the confidence,” he remarked, turning to let the door slide open again. “I’ll leave you to your box of bricks, then.” He could take a hint, after all, and that had sounded an awful lot like a dismissal.
“Looking forward to working with you,” he called over his shoulder as he left, only just remembering that some form of politeness would probably not go amiss. “Just holler for me if you need anything.”
“Will do,” Jennifer acknowledged, already sounding distracted as she said it. She stared past the door as it closed, not truly seeing it as her thoughts wandered.
“I’ve got nothing to worry about,” she assured herself, murmuring the words under her breath once she was on her own again. After all, she could take care of herself. She would be fine.
Chapter 3
Base Conference room, Gaitune-67
Molly sat in the quiet conference room waiting for Lance to show up. Oz had arranged the call for a time that fortuitously allowed her to go and find some food and grab a shower before her presence was required.
It took several minutes for the General to finally show up. Molly checked the time on her holo. She could do with getting some sleep in as soon as they had the Federation pieces of the puzzle. At least then she could sleep on the new intel and formulate a plan in the hours it normally took her to drift off.
The screen illuminated from the central box and then unfolded, forming itself against the wall opposite her. The General was already seated, reading the brief on his holo.
“Ah. Ms. Bates. There you are.”
“Here I am, Sir,” she agreed, shuffling in her chair and trying to sit a bit straighter.
He continued to scan the update. “I see we have a potential crisis on our hands.”
She pressed her lips together. “It would seem so, sir.”
“You have a radar blip in the outer system.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is it verified as being hostile?”
“Sir, at this point it isn’t even verified as coming in our direction.”
He eyed her carefully from his side of the screen. “So your reason for involving me?”
“Sir, whatever it is, it’s going to cause problems on Estaria. They’re going to want to launch a war fleet preemptively.”
He nodded. “Understandable. I suppose, given the speed of their ships…”
“Right. But I think that was the point all along. They just want to put the planet on a war footing. But even putting that aside, if we take it as a credible threat, the Ogg-Estarian alliance would have absolutely no chance against a fleet that is clearly capable of coming out of deep space, beyond where we can see.”
Lance rubbed his chin, his eyes fixed on his holo. “I see,” he said slowly. “So you’re expecting…”
“I was hoping we might have some support from the Federation—in the form of ships. To help protect the system.”
Lance Reynolds took a very deep breath and sat back, his eyes still lowered. After a moment he looked up at his camera. Molly didn’t like where this was going. It was clearly not happening in her favor.
“Molly, I don’t know how much you know about the situation within the Federation but we have a number of obstacles. The first being, that the Sark System isn’t even an official member of the Federation.”
Molly waited for him to expand on the others.
“This being the case,” he continued. “Even if we did have the spare ships to send, as soon as we start moving fleet ships, we’re going to cause a disruption amongst our members. The Leath are already nervous. The Noel-li have a very tenuous relationship with the rest of the Federation, and goodness knows how the Yollin factions might react. There are tensions that still exist. Tensions that we’ve all worked very hard to dispel over the last several decades, by disbanding certain elements of our forces. To parade them out of the system would only serve to reignite tensions and potentially cause civil war.” He paused, his eyes still on Molly. “I can’t take that chance.”
Molly shifted in her seat again. “I… I understand. I don’t quite know where that leaves us.”
“Well, if there is anything else I can do, of course I will. We can send you all the supplies you’ll need for the ships you have of course. And anything else. If you need some people, I can have a team dispatched. But they would have to be undercover. I can’t have Federation uniforms outside of the Federation.”
Molly nodded. “Ok. I need to think.” Her eyes drifted off for a second and then she snapped her gaze back to him as if a new thought had entered her mind. “General, could you tell me please… have you got any campaigns happening external to the Federation.”
He frowned immediately. “You know if that were the case it would be classified.”
She bobbed her head from side to side, trying to think of how to ask the specific question she needed an answer to. “Sorry, Sir. No, I was meaning, if this is a fleet heading toward us, might you know who it was? I’m assuming that they’re not federation ships?”
Lance’s face softened. “You’re correct. They’re not Federation, and I don’t have any reason to believe they are known entities that we, the Federation, already have relationships with.”
Another thought seemed to occur to her. “And you can’t think of anyone who might try targeting us, or perhaps want to ally with us, as a result of the Federation?”
The General inched back in his seat, leaning back a little. “No. I can’t think of anyone who would be coming from the direction of deep space who would want to do that. There was a time when I thought the Zhyn might partner with the Estarians… for cultural reasons more than defensive ones. But when our people looked into it closely it seemed they saw more differences than similarities.”
Molly smirked at the thought. “Yeah, I heard from Giles and Arlene they’re a very proud species. And proud of their uniqueness. Apparently, they didn’t take kindly to Giles’s theory of them sharing a seed race and so much DNA with the Estarians.”
Lance smiled. “Well, you know. We’ve seen this time and again. Even amongst the humans.” He rolled his eyes. “Anyway, if there is anything that I can do, please let me know.”
“Thank you, General. I will.” She tried a half-smile, but her mind was so distracted it barely translated into a visible physical gesture.
The camera clicked off, and the holoscreen folded itself up and back into the projector box in the center of the table.
Moll
y sat in the half-light and the quiet of the early morning thinking before she eventually stood up wearily and headed out of the conference room.
Ekk’s Office, Senate House, Spire
Richard Ekks read over the message carefully. Then a second time. Not that there really were very many details, but he wasn’t going to fault himself for not being thorough.
He shifted in his seat and scratched his head.
Something had been detected in the outer perimeter of the system. Just…something. The data had come from both teams on Ogg and Estaria, so there was no doubt that something was there. They just couldn’t figure out what.
He brought up his holoscreen and got comfortable in his console chair. He punched a call into the device and waited for it to be answered. As he waited, he picked at lint on his uniform.
He was contemplating canceling the call and trying again later when, at last, it was answered. Ekks was greeted by the sight of Garet Beaufort staring back at him expectantly. His jacket was draped over the back of his chair and he looked as if he had been interrupted in the middle of taking dinner as he worked.
“Commander,” Beaufort greeted mildly, folding his hands on his desk and leaning his weight on his forearms. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Ekks cleared his throat and leaned back in his seat. “Considering the update I just received, I thought it seemed prudent to check in and see if you’re aware of the anomaly that the satellites in the outer system picked up.”
Beaufort’s eyebrows rose, his expression turning faintly bemused. “This is the Department of Near Space Communications,” he pointed out, his tone laced with good humor. Even so, there was an undercurrent of expectation that made it clear he didn’t think that was truly the only reason for the call. “Our satellites won’t pick it up unless it drifts into the inner system; we don’t know any more about the outer system than your average civilian.”
The Ascension Myth Box Set Page 212