“Double watch, Lieutenant Commander?” Barrett asked with a slight smile.
“I wasn’t comfortable leaving with the captain absent and alien ships coming uninvited into a Terran system, sir,” Washburn said. Celesta nodded her approval and gestured to the display.
“Can you catch me up on what’s been happening?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Washburn nodded and walked back to where she’d been manipulating the display.
“At 1724 ship’s time we received word from the boundary patrols that five unknown contacts had transitioned in deep within the system and had then disappeared. At 1732, this call came out on the unsecure intrasystem channel—” She reached over and pressed an icon on her display.
“We greet our Terrans friends and severely apologize for this breach of protocol,” the modulated voice came over the speaker, once again giving Celesta a chill down her spine. “There is a large emergency and we must make accelerate our negotiations. We will hold position until we receive word.”
“—and once it was over our com system was overridden by CENTCOM and we’ve only been able to receive general navigation data and instructions direct from New Sierra to hold fast,” Washburn said.
“That’s why we were so surprised when you were able to break through and order us out of orbit,” Barrett said. “We’d been trying to get in touch with you or Ensign Accari, and then when that didn’t work began sending requests directly to New Sierra Platform to have them at least forward you a message.”
“What are our new friends doing?” Celesta asked.
“From what we can tell out here, just sitting there, ma’am,” Washburn continued her briefing. “They’ve activated a position beacon and we can detect com traffic to and from their formation, but the encryption isn’t something our com section is able to crack, at least they don’t have the actual decryption routines. I wasn’t going to order them to try and forcefully break it without your permission.”
“Let’s leave that alone for now,” Celesta said. “Where are we in relation to their formation?”
“They’re parked in a heliocentric trailing orbit behind the sixth planet … here,” Washburn said as the display winked out and then came back up with a representation of the DeLonges System, complete with ranging data. “We’re here”—a green spot winked on deeper in the system from the flashing red dot of the alien formation—“just over two point six billion kilometers away. Their ships are also emitting a bright, rotating laser strobe that we assume is meant to broadcast their position in conjunction with the RF beacon. We’re tracking them with the Icarus’s optical sensors as well as the passive detection grid.”
“And so far no Fleet ships have moved out to meet them?” Celesta asked.
“No, ma’am,” Washburn said. “At least none that we can detect with our passive sensors.”
Celesta drummed her fingers on the edge of the tabletop display, lost in thought for a moment. “Commander Barrett, call the bridge and go dark,” she said after a moment. “I want the Icarus under strict EMSEC protocols, no light pollution, no RF emissions.”
“Aye, ma’am,” Barrett said and stepped away from the table while pulling his comlink.
“Do you think they’re really friendly, Captain?” Washburn said.
“They claim to be, Lieutenant Commander,” Celesta said, resisting the urge to shrug helplessly. “But we know the Darshik sure as hell aren’t and I would bet a year’s pay that this unexpected visit has something to do with them. What I’m more worried about is how the Ushin just happen to show up so deep in Terran controlled space, exactly at the new capital world just as the new government is being ratified.”
“They had to have tracked the Amsterdam and John Arden back from the meeting point,” Barrett said as he walked back up to the table. “Which means they have active trackers they attached to the hulls that are capable of superluminal transmissions or they have a way to track ships while in warp.”
“We know those are at least theoretically possible,” Celesta said. “The Vruahn were able to track us in warp and they had superluminal coms. The Darshik didn’t strike me as that advanced but I know less than nothing about the Ushin other than what CENTCOM has decided I need to know to do my job.”
“I wonder how much they know,” Barrett mused aloud. Celesta resisted the urge to mention what Marcum had divulged along with what Pike had asked her about a certain black project he was trying to track down.
“All idle speculation right now,” she said. “XO, you remain here for a bit and coordinate the flow of data up to the bridge. Lieutenant Commander Washburn, excellent job managing CIC while I was absent. Please call up a relief so that you can get some rest while we’re all just staring at each other across billions of kilometers … if it gets any more interesting than that, I’ll need you fresh and ready.”
“Aye, ma’am,” Washburn sounded relieved that she would be able to go and get some rest.
“I’ll be on the bridge,” Celesta continued. “We’ll maintain split watches for now and maintain our current state of readiness. We won’t go any higher until the Ushin move, we get word from CENTCOM, or the Darshik make a surprise appearance.”
“You think that’s coming, Captain?” Barrett asked.
“Something chased the Ushin all the way to the DeLonges System, Commander.” This time she did shrug. “I doubt it was overwhelming desire to talk to humans again.”
****
“OPS, status,” Celesta said as she walked onto the bridge.
“No change in the Ushin formation,” Accari said. “Ship is still on heightened alert and FMC. We’re also tracking the Amsterdam’s navigation beacon as it moves out to meet the alien formation.”
“We’re still on com lockdown?”
“Partially, ma’am,” Ellison said. “The local area channels have been opened up and Fleet is instructing us to limit all radio calls to essential navigation traffic only. All ships are still being told to hold their current positions … no direct inquiries to us as to why we left orbit over DeLonges yet.”
“Very good.” Celesta sat down in her chair and logged into the terminal by pressing her thumb on the screen for a biometric reading. She had to go through two more security checks before accessing her private server and retrieving a set of codes Pike had given her directly following the Phage War. At first she thought he was trying to gain her favor as he had openly professed his interest in her, but she then learned that he often would pass on the same type of information to Jackson Wolfe if he thought it would be useful.
She then accessed the Icarus’ com array from her terminal and punched in a specific frequency, one that wasn’t normally used in Fleet com protocols. The expected data stream was there, so she applied the CIS decryption codes to it and the stream resolved into a continuous broadcast that her terminal couldn’t decipher.
“OPS, I’m routing a data stream to your station,” she said. “Run it through the grav-detection network’s subroutines and then pipe the results to the main display.”
“Aye, ma’am.” Accari sounded confused but went to work as soon as Celesta included his terminal in the subnetwork she’d created to isolate the highly classified broadcast.
Near the end of the Phage War the researchers at Tsuyo Corp had begun to crack open the vault and release some of the technology they’d been working on, one of which was a detection grid that used six satellites deployed from a starship to detect gravimetric waves and allow them to detect the presence of a Phage combat unit without having to paint it with an active radar signal. It cut the detection time at least by half since all they had to do was wait for the signal from the detection grid as opposed to transmitting a high power radar signal, waiting for the returns, and then waiting further as the computers processed it all.
The downside was that the grid, while accurate, had a relatively small range of detection due to the need for each satellite to be connected to the others via a laser. After the loss of Haven it was decided
that the DeLonges System had to be protected at all costs and the system was implemented on a grand scale, hundreds of individual detection grids set up to cover all the spots that the tracking stations weren’t, basically anywhere there wasn’t a jump point. The data was all sent directly to a discreet new addition to the com drone platform where the information was processed and then rebroadcast as an encrypted data stream. With the former Warsaw Alliance and Asianic Union planets breaking off it was decided to keep the system’s existence classified for the time being.
“I had to make some adjustments, but the feed from the interferometer network you sent me is now live, ma’am,” Accari gestured to the main display where gravimetric anomalies were being displayed and cataloged. “We aren’t able to access the database they’re using to identify known signatures so everything will be coming up as an unknown … I’ll begin filling in what we know from the contacts we know from either passive sensors or nav beacons.”
“Good work, Ensign,” Celesta nodded. “Tactical! While OPS is busy filling in the blanks, I want you watching that feed for any newcomers, specifically someone that appears deep in the system and didn’t come from any known jump point. Alert me the instant you have anything.”
“Aye, ma’am,” the lieutenant, junior grade said from the tactical station. Celesta made a mental note to ask where Lieutenant Commander Adler was since it was still in the middle of first watch. As her crew busied themselves with her orders, she pulled up all the ship’s logs for the time she was on the New Sierra Platform and began reading through all the entries Commander Barrett had submitted. It didn’t take her long to see that not only had Barrett performed well in her absence but the crew had been steadily increasing the readiness of the ship, not just sitting idle in orbit. After reading one of the last entries regarding the reintegration of the reactionless drive system she debated back and forth in her head for a moment before issuing her next order.
“OPS, inform Engineering we’ll be switching over to the RDS,” she said. “Helm, secure main engines from flight mode but do not purge the plasma chambers, just lower the pressure to twenty percent above minimum.”
“Securing main engines, aye,” the helmswoman said. “Purging the plasma overcharge once the RDS comes up green, Captain.”
Celesta felt a twinge of nerves as she watched her ship switch over to the new prototype drive system, but she had complete faith in Commander Graham and his team. If they said they had a way to mitigate the risk from employing the RDS then she would take that as absolute truth.
Now all she had to look forward to was the most despised and inevitable part of space warfare: the interminable waiting.
Chapter 9
“Have you located the Icarus yet?” Admiral Marcum asked as he paced the bridge like a caged animal. He’d tried to locate Celesta Wright when the Ushin showed up, intent on having her with him on the bridge of the Amsterdam to observe Captain Everett and advise him at the unexpected appearance of their new … friends … though he supposed that friendship was tenuous at best.
He wasn’t sure what pissed him off more: the fact he couldn’t find her or the fact he was actually surprised when he’d been told the Icarus was last spotted moving out of orbit and thrusting hard towards the outer system. Marcum wasn’t sure how she’d gotten off New Sierra during the lockdown, but he was certain that little shit, Pike, was instrumental in helping. When he’d confronted the damn spook the man had the gall to stay in character as Wellington’s aide and act like he had no idea what he was talking about, sneering at the admiral in front of the entire staff as he did so. Marcum made a vow to make the weasel pay dearly for that when he had the opportunity.
“No, Admiral,” one of the sensor operators on the big battleship said, almost fearfully. “She’s running dark and the—”
“Just keep at it, son,” Marcum growled before walking up beside Captain Everett and lowering his voice to just above a whisper. “You’re comfortable bringing her out here with all the damage?”
“As I said, Admiral, we’re the only ship that it makes sense to send out,” Everett said. “The New York would have likely taken nearly two days to get back underway. We’ll be okay, sir. She’s still got most of her teeth and an intrasystem skirmish won’t tax our remaining main engine.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” Marcum shook his head. “What in the hell are they doing here?”
“If I were to guess, sir, I’d say that this could only have something to do with the attack during our initial negotiations, not to mention the ambush of our taskforce in the Xi’an System,” Everett said. “I noticed their translations are getting easier to understand.”
“That should help the ambassador,” Marcum muttered. “The most important diplomatic event in the last four centuries and they send an idiot I wouldn’t trust to negotiate my next divorce settlement.”
“I, uh—”
“Forget I said anything,” Marcum said.
“Of course, Admiral,” Everett said with a nod. One of the main reasons Marcum liked Captain Everett was that, in addition to proving to be an extremely capable captain, he was someone who knew how to keep his mouth shut. Marcum was often blowing off steam and saying things that should not be uttered by flag officers about elected politicians or the Commander in Chief while in the presence of a subordinate officer, but in all the time the Amsterdam had been flying his flag not a single one of those comments had been spit back out by the rumor mill. The fact Everett could be trusted to allow his boss to vent without fearing the shipboard gossip kicked him up quite a few notches in Marcum’s esteem.
Captain Wright, however, was another matter. Despite the fact he liked her personally, her tendency to follow in her former commander’s footsteps and buck the chain of command was something he would not tolerate. He had put up with Wolfe all those years because he had been red meat for the bleeding hearts in the Senate and had been put in a place he couldn’t really do any damage: the bridge of an obsolete starship that served as little more than a courier and was crewed by troublemakers and rejects. But, it had been one of the few successes of the Earth Commissioning Program the politicians could wave around and Wolfe himself had been largely ignored by CENTCOM and Fleet Operations until the damn Phage happened to show up in the middle of his patrol route.
Once that happened all Wolfe’s unsavory habits became a constant nuisance. He would habitually disobey direct orders, take Fleet property and personnel wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted on missions that made sense to nobody but him, and the damnable hell of it all was that because he was part lucky, part good, and had killed so many Phage, the civilian oversight of Starfleet would have drummed him out had he even suggested that Wolfe was not only not a hero but should be prosecuted.
Captain Celesta Wright, Wolfe’s former executive officer, seemed to have picked up some of his less-admirable qualities but, like her boss, she was almost untouchable due to her actions near the end of the war. Almost. His blood burned at how casually she had ignored his orders and taken a ship, that had also been ordered to stay put, off to any damn place she pleased and now they had no idea where the Icarus was. For all he knew she’d warped out of the system and was flying off for a vacation. When this was over he’d make sure she never commanded so much as a transfer shuttle for her remaining days in Starfleet.
“Enjoy this last little jaunt, Wright,” he said quietly to himself. “I’ll yank you off the bridge of that ship so fast your head will spin.”
“Sir?”
“It’s nothing, Captain,” Marcum said to Everett. “I’ll get out of your way up here. Let me know if something comes up.”
“Of course, Admiral,” Everett said, almost managing to not look relieved the flag officer was leaving his bridge.
****
“We’re approaching our holding point, boss,” Pike said, leaning back in his seat. “I’m also getting an update that the evacuation of the Senate—sorry, Parliament—is proceeding in an orderly fash
ion. The four Fourth Fleet cruisers are standing by and the shuttles should be landing momentarily.”
“Pike,” Wellington said in a pained voice, “I don’t have an enormous ego, but do you really think it’s appropriate to call the President of the United Terran Federation boss?”
“I thought it was just the Terran Federation.” Pike ignored the question, not wanting to get into a discussion about Wellington’s ego. “When did we get united?”
“Just fly the damn ship.” Wellington was rubbing the bridge of his nose. “When will we be able to break into the Amsterdam’s secure link?”
“I can do that anytime,” Pike said. “But this does beg the question, why did you send Ambassador Cole back out here when you, as President, are in the system?”
“It’s about propriety,” President Augustus Wellington said, slouching in the copilot seat and wearing a suit that Pike knew likely cost more than half a year’s salary for him. “They have arrived in our system uninvited and unwelcomed … a small delegation with a handful of ships and likely led by some unimportant Ushin diplomatic corps lackey, or whatever they call them. It would be inappropriate for the Terran President to come out personally to meet them.”
“I think I get—”
“And to answer your other sarcastic question,” Wellington rolled right over top of Pike’s comment, “we’re now the United Terran Federation because we want to present a unified front to the Eastern Star Alliance. They’ve now cut off all official channels of communication and have sent notice that Fed ships are no longer guaranteed safe passage through their territory.”
“I hadn’t realized it’d gone that far,” Pike said quietly. “Shall I break into the Amsterdam’s secure com array and begin recording?”
“If you please,” Wellington nodded.
Pike reached over and pressed the icon flashing on the large, curved display that would execute a script that would allow the Broadhead II’s intrusion avionics to force their way into the Amsterdam’s secure com array.
New Frontiers (Expansion Wars Trilogy, Book 1) Page 10
