“Aye, ma’am.”
“Cora, how quickly can we get to the system that Mezner mentioned as the most probable destination?” Sara asked.
“I could get us there in less than three hours. It’s only a few hundred light years away.”
“Let’s do it. I’m marking the warp location now. Have we received a response from the Elif flagship?”
Mezner shook her head. “No, ma’am.”
“Alright, it looks like the Elif have this well in hand. Let’s go see what our horned friends are all in a tizzy about. Cora—”
Sara was cut off by Mezner. “Ma’am, we are being hailed by the Catagain.”
“Fuck,” Sara muttered, then louder, “Put it onscreen.”
Captain Rodgers appeared, but the view of the bridge around him was gone, replaced with open space. Sara could see Elif and Teifen ships, moving together in battle behind him, and she realized she was seeing the inside of his viewing bubble.
“Captain, what is this I’m hearing, about you abandoning your post? The admiral wanted me to contact you.” His face a mask of annoyance.
Sara needed to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from emitting a long string of curses.
“We are not ‘abandoning’ our post. We are scouting the enemy while they are otherwise engaged. We will find out their destination, and return with the intel. That is what this ship was designed for, after all.”
Rodgers’ eyes shifted as he tracked an enemy, and it was obvious he was only half paying attention to the current conversation. “The UHFC ordered us to help with the battle here. You can’t just ignore a direct command,” he told her.
Sara closed her eyes in frustration before saying in an overly polite voice, “I am following my orders, which are to protect my Elif battle group. There is a reason the Teifen are abandoning this system, and I think it’s pretty important to find out what it is.”
Rodgers considered that for a moment. “Alright, be sure to come back right away, though. Would hate for something to happen to you while you’re out chasing ghosts.”
The last was said as he stared into the camera, sending a shudder down Sara’s spine that she didn’t like.
“We’ll be safe. Sonders out,” she said simply, then cut the channel. “Cora, get us out of here.”
“Ma’am, we are receiving a second transmission from the Catagain. It looks like… Oh, wait. I’m sorry, it must have been an echo of the first,” Mezner said, her face a little red.
“That’s probably for the best; I really didn’t want to speak with that… person right now, anyway. Cora?”
“Warp in three, two, one.”
The view smashed down to a pinprick of light.
19
Sara sat in her room, eating a light meal of salad with grilled chicken on top. She didn’t really taste it, instead she mechanically took one bite after another while she thought about the possibilities of what they would find.
She was trying to imagine what would make a Teifen fleet abandon their prize and rush off to a system that, by all accounts, held no real military advantage. The system was inside Teifen controlled space.
When she brought it up on a star map, she could see that it was closer to the galactic rim than she had originally thought, but still well within their domain.
She took another bite of salad and chewed as she stared off into her mind’s eye, until her door slid open and Baxter stepped in.
“Hello, you,” he said with a bright white smile as he came over to the table and sat across from her.
“Hey,” she said, her mouth still half-full of greens. “Why would you give up a valuable position even before you were being attacked?” she asked after swallowing.
He leaned back and ran a hand over his short-cropped, white hair. “Okay, we can talk about tactics.” He laughed, but still crossed his arms and gave it some serious thought. “Well, it could be that the position is no longer valuable. It could be that the position is no longer worth the cost to keep it, or that there has been word that the enemy is about to sink considerable resources into taking it back.”
“What about needing to send reinforcements somewhere else? Would you be ordered to give ground to keep other ground?” Sara asked, taking another bite.
“Again, that would depend on the value of the position, and the position that needed the reinforcements. War is all about balancing a spreadsheet. If you do the calculation, and your number is bigger than the enemy’s at the end, you win,” he said with a grim smile. “Why?”
“I’m trying to figure out the Teifen’s motives. They have been pushing to take Effrit for years; why the sudden lack of interest in keeping it?”
Baxter scratched at his hair again, thinking. “That’s a good question. What do you know about the system we’re headed to?”
Sara shrugged. “Not much. The Elif haven’t had a successful scan of the place in years. Last they saw, it was a one-world system mostly filled with civilians. There was a military presence, but no huge bases or anything.”
“Could they be leaving to swear in a new governor?” Baxter asked doubtfully.
“There is no way they would sacrifice thousands—no, hundreds of thousands—of troops and ships just to make it to a ceremony,” she said, shaking her head. “Though that does bring up a good point. Who is in command of the Teifen fleet? Maybe they have a different mindset from the old governor. If the Elif hadn’t jumped the gun on the attack, the Teifen would have been out of the system completely by the time we showed up.”
“That’s true,” Baxter said, pinching his chin in thought. “Let’s say you’re in command of the Teifen fleet. What would make you give up your old boss’s prize? What would make you leave?”
She blew out a breath, making her cheeks puff out. “Shit, anything. The thing is, there is no real reason for the Teifen to want to conquer the Elif. It’s not like they need resources the Elif are using… There’s a whole galaxy of empty planets to exploit. The governor took over the Elif in a bid to win favor from the higher-ups, and become emperor himself. If I were left in charge after he died, I would find any reason to get out of there. History has taught us time and again, it’s never worth occupying hostile territory. Not in the long run.”
“Okay, so what happens to give you the excuse to abandon the system and not lose face?” Baxter asked.
Sara thought about it and then her face lit up. “My people are being attacked. I need to get to them to save lives.”
Baxter nodded. “It’s not us, and I doubt the Elif have another armada stashed away for a sneak attack, so it has to be the Galvox.”
Sara considered this. “That’s pretty far from the Galvox territories for an attack. It would be a suicide mission, unless they are more powerful than we think.”
“Or they have a weapon that we don’t know about.”
Sara let out an overly dramatic sigh, and rubbed her face in her hands. “I don’t know. I’m so tired, I can’t think straight. Grimms sent me to bed. He said I was falling asleep in my chair.”
“You’ve been going pretty hard for a full day. Just this morning, you were blowing shit up in the Arctic Circle,” Baxter reminded her as he stood to help her to her feet.
He began to guide her toward the bed.
“Let’s get you out of that battlesuit.”
20
Sara yawned into the back of her hand, then blinked and took a gulp of hot coffee, savoring the bitter brew. She leaned back in her captain’s chair, watching the view screen begin its final expansion, heralding their arrival in the Teifen system.
“How many of the Teifen armada from Effrit should we expect in the system when we get there?” Sara asked Grimms, who was sitting beside her in his own command chair.
“We will be arriving a few hours ahead of the first ships. Our travel time is a magnitude faster than their fleet can obtain.” He checked his tablet before continuing. “The Elif reported that the first large battle group left nearly two days ago, and it co
ntained their capital ship and a good ten percent of the Teifen fleet. We should have time to settle in and enable Cora’s cloaking ability to wait for their arrival.”
Sara nodded, taking another gulp of the coffee. Alister sat on the ample chair beside her, watching the view screen along with everyone else. She reached down and gave him a pet before saying, “That’s good. It will give us a chance to get a handle on what’s happening. Cora, are you good on cloaking us right out of warp?”
“I am. It will be easier, now that I have Nyx to help. My precision has gone up twentyfold,” Cora said through Sara’s and Grimms’ comms. “I also have a few tricks up my sleeve. I’ve been going through the core and looking at what the ship is actually capable of, now that I’m a War Mage myself. The list is pretty long, but I obviously have not had time to try anything. I was really hoping I would have more than a day and a half to get used to working with Nyx before we were thrown back into the fire.”
“Yeah, sorry about that, but to tell the truth, you two seem to be working together really well,” Sara said, looking over at the fennec sitting on the arm of Grimms’ chair. The normally severe man and the slightly standoffish fox were getting along like the consummate professionals they both were.
Nyx glanced over at Sara and gave her a smile that somehow made the tiny fox look fierce. Sara smiled back and reached over to scratch her behind one of her too large ears. Nyx stiffened at first, then leaned into the scratch and closed her eyes in enjoyment.
“We really are,” Cora agreed. “She is so interesting, with her vast knowledge. I’m really learning a lot from her. By the way, she really likes that,” she said with a smile in her voice.
Nyx gave a sort of purring chirp that made Alister jump a little, and look over at the fox with wide eyes.
“Don’t be a hater, bro,” Sara laughed to him, and scratched him between his ears.
“Sixty seconds to end warp, ma’am,” Connors reported, breaking up the Familiar lovefest.
“Thank you, Connors,” Sara acknowledged, standing from her chair and stepping into the control ring. She powered it up, and her view showed the same expanding image on the screen.
Grimms stepped around the control ring and bellied up to the holo table. He turned on the gravity anchor used to keep him in place during engagements, and turned his comm on to its ship-wide reach.
“Attention,” he began. “We are heading into an unknown situation. Get to your battlestations.”
The announcement rang through the ship, and the lighting turned an amber color around the ceiling, indicating the caution alert.
“Cora, are you ready?” Sara asked, setting her shoulders for the unknown.
“Ready. Preparing the gravitic drives for cloak,” she said, and Sara saw the engines come online.
They spooled up, but at very low power, sending a slight tremor through the deck.
“You can run the engines while in warp? I thought that would disrupt the warp field,” Sara voiced with concern.
“That’s true of a normal controller, but I am far from your normal controller,” her sister said mirthfully. “The core we have is old, and knows a few tricks it’s picked up over the millennia. Now that I’m with Nyx, I can actually do some of them. I have to say, I’m glad you and the commander convinced me to do this.”
Sara recognized the pure joy emanating from her twin, and smiled in response.
“Ten seconds to end warp,” Connors updated.
“Hon, as soon as we are out, charge up the gauss cannons. I want to be ready in case we need to use them. Everyone, we need to be on our toes, here. No mistakes,” Sara said, gripping the command ring with white knuckles.
“Aye, ma’am,” Connors, Mezner, and Hon chorused.
“Exit in three, two, one,” Cora counted down.
The view screen and Sara’s viewing bubble both flashed with blue Aetheric light.
“Cloak engaged,” Cora reported, her voice all business now that they had arrived. Even Nyx seemed to be more focused than usual.
“Mezner, give me a passive scan of the area. Let’s keep our transmissions to a minimum. No need to let them know we’ve arrived. Cora, give me a low level Aetheric scan,” Sara commanded.
“Passive data is coming in, ma’am, but were pretty far out, so we won’t get any planetary data for a few hours,” Mezner said.
The holo table suddenly populated with Cora’s Aetheric scan. Only gravitational elements and life signs were shown. The computer extrapolated the data and gave a rough estimate of the size and shape of the objects in the system. It displayed what objects were there, but showed none of the capabilities of those objects.
The system was a wreck. Literally. There were broken ships and space stations littering every corner. It looked like a battle had raged here for a thousand years. Most ships were in pieces, spinning lazily in clusters, and the planet’s surface was pocked with craters large enough to see from space.
“Ma’am, I’m not getting any life signs,” Mezner said, hollowly.
“You’re not getting life signs from where?” Sara asked quietly, already knowing the answer.
“From anywhere. The entire system is dead, ma’am.”
Sara was quiet for a moment as they stared at the massive destruction. “Can we move in and keep the ship cloaked, Cora?”
“Yes, though we can’t make fast movements, or I won’t be able to compensate. We can jump without problems, though,” she said.
Sara sniffed and marked a location close to a relatively tight formation of wreckage. “Jump us here. I want to get some scans, and see if we can’t figure out who did this.”
“Jump in three, two, one,” Cora counted down.
The view in her bubble changed, and Sara was able to see that they had jumped half a million kilometers and now hung motionless in the midst of a spinning ballet of scrap.
As she watched, the view of the closest wreckage began to fill with technical details as the sensors picked up the information on the objects at the snail’s pace of light waves.
“I’m picking up a lot of Teifen tech in the ships. I’m also getting Galvox signatures, ma’am,” Mezner said her face close to her console.
“Well, that confirms it. Galvox are pushing in from the other side of Teifen space. It makes sense that the Teifen would abandon the Elif conquest if they need to fight off a force that can do this,” Grimms said, leaning into the holo table.
“Where are the survivors? There should be someone left,” Sara reasoned.
“Maybe they took off after the battle. Moved on to a new system,” Connors guessed.
Sara shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. They would have left someone behind, even if only to warn the others that they were being followed. This looks like two forces met and fought each other to the death, but the probability of both sides killing everyone defies logic.”
“True. If a force came to invade, they would have brought superior numbers, to assure victory. If they were losing, they would pull out, but that would mean there was some of the enemy left,” Grimms mused, rubbing a thumb under his chin while he tried to work it out. “If they stayed and fought, that would mean that they were going to win, and there would be some of the Galvox left. The Galvox could have left and moved on, but armada of the size it would take to do this kind of damage would need to be constantly outfitted with more weapons, and that would mean a supply line, which means there should be someone left. This makes no sense in any scenario.”
Sara nodded. “Why would the Galvox come here, anyway? This system was not a military threat, and it’s pretty deep in Teifen territory to just be a hit-and-run target.”
The bridge crew was silent while they each tried to come up with a reason for the attack. The silence stretched on for what seemed like several minutes before Hon finally broke it.
“Ma’am, my targeting array is picking up an odd signature,” he said, sending the data to her viewing bubble and the holo table.
“I saw it
, too, but I thought it was another piece of wreckage,” Mezner said. “But passive scan is identifying the mass as a ship locked onto a larger piece of debris.”
Sara spun the image around to get a better look at it. The ship was boxy and compact, but had an impressive array of engines on it that she didn’t recognize by design. It looked like it was bristling with weapons, but they were of such odd design she wasn’t sure of their exact function.
“Are we getting any life signs?”
“No, ma’am, it’s dark. I’m not getting any power signatures either, but that could be due to superior shielding,” Mezner said.
“Cora, can you give me a deeper Aetheric scan? I want to see if the shielding is hiding life signs.”
“Give me a second. I’m going to try something the core suggested,” she responded.
“Okay, be careful,” Sara said, biting her lip.
“Well, that’s interesting,” Cora said a moment later.
The holo display popped up with a 3D rendering of a small room.
“What are we looking at here, Cora?” Sara asked, zooming in on the room in question.
“It’s an Aetheric scan of the inside of that ship. I think it’s the engine room, but I can’t tell.”
“How did you get this?” Sara asked in amazement.
“I combined the jump ability with the scan ability, and opened a tiny hole inside the ship that I could take a peek through. It only lasted for a picosecond, but this is what I got,” she said proudly.
The interior of the ship was not like any design Sara had ever seen. It didn’t look like it would be easy to move around in, due to the close quarters, and how much stuff was jammed into the small area. Nothing was familiar; there was not one component that seemed recognizable.
“How would the crew be able to do any maintenance? It doesn’t look like they could even crawl through some of those openings,” Grimms commented.
“Did you get any life signs on your scan?” Sara asked Cora.
“Nothing. It’s as dead as the rest of these heaps.”
Sara bit her lip again, then rechecked that there were no life signs in the entire system. She didn’t want to reveal the Raven’s presence, but she needed more info about this strange ship. She took a breath and looked down to Alister standing at her feet.
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