2345 hours CST, June 23rd, 2673; the bridge of TBC-412

Robertson’s boat had launched fifteen minutes after the ordered four-hour launch time, but it was still a record time for the launch of his boat. That was mainly due to his executive officer, Lieutenant Roberta Johnson. Roberta had cursed the day she was assigned as the squadron commander’s executive officer. She had all the responsibility of being the boat’s commander, but none of the rights and privileges. She was the one who had to push the boat’s crew to launch in the four hours while Robertson was away in his quarters, probably catching up on his sleep. For some reason, the junior commander’s attitude and behaviour had rubbed off on the crew of his boat.

For five years she had been stuck in that same role. All of her requests for transfer had been denied, lost or were still pending. She could not prove it, but she was sure that Robertson was doing his best to keep her around, mainly because she was competent and had the figure of a supermodel from a standard gravity world. Or maybe it was because her first name was so close to his surname. She had flaming red hair, and stood 160 centimetres tall, with a strong stance. She kept in shape by both running and weight lifting, and like most redheads, she had a temper. Unlike most, she learned early on to keep it in check and not tell her commanding officer he was a bloody idiot.

She was sitting in the watch officer’s chair and was working with the astrogator to set up the trip to Sigma Delta Four. She kept the discipline on the bridge mainly by fear, the fear of her temper. While she kept the temper under control when Robertson was around, she let it slip, mostly in frustration, when he was away. In this way she acted more like a boson on an old sailing ship than an executive officer.

She was also communicating with the commander of TBC-443, who was also assigned to this new patrol. The commander of 443 had less experience with the torpedo boats than she had, and he recognized the fact and was humble enough to admit it. The course needed to be plotted so the dual transitions would not interfere with each other.

In fact, as was custom in the squadron, TBC-412 would transition fifteen seconds after TBC-443. That fact never did sit well with Lieutenant Johnson. She was still one of the more aggressive torpedo boat drivers in the Clearwater system, despite having been stuck as a boat XO for Robertson for the last five years of her career. Unlike many others who were getting close to being mustered out of service, she was looking forward to it, if only to get away from Robertson.

Lieutenant Johnson had not been on the boat during the last exercise; instead, she was on the station and worked with the umpire. She knew exactly where TBC-473 was at all times and took great pleasure when the rookie commander evaded the skilled squadron commander before the exercise even started. She took large amounts of joy as she reported every miss of the squadron’s weapons.

She really wanted time to confront Murphy when he got back to the station, but there was no time with the emergency launch. She had too many things to do to get the seven boats ready, and Murphy was busy as well. Maybe with him in the squadron, things would become exciting again in the navy.

Her station was the offensive weapons officer’s station. Robertson’s boat had one extra officer, a junior lieutenant who sat at the OWO seat when Johnson was not, or whenever Robertson was not on the boat. It made for nonstandard seating and berthing elsewhere on the boat, as the junior lieutenant did not have a place to sit on the bridge during combat, and there were only three bunks in the junior officer’s quarters.

The night watch was in place right now. The signals officer should have been sitting in the chair she occupied, but Lieutenant Johnson was sitting the watch since they would be making the transition in less than thirty minutes. She always sat the watch when a transition happened, and whenever Robertson was not on the boat, she usually had the boat on a combat watch during a transition as well.

“XO, I have the transition plotted with four-four-three to commence in twenty-three minutes and seventeen seconds. Approach to the Clearwater sun will drain out shields by thirty-two percent. Acceleration is point-eight G.”

Lieutenant Johnson did not hide her shudder at the projected course. What are we, a bulk cargo carrier? “Very well. Signal four-four-three to start the approach. We’ll be fifteen seconds behind them.”

“Aye aye, ma’am.”

The two boats fired up their engines, and the boat built up speed to make the transition to interstellar travel. The higher the speed when the transition was made, the higher the initial speed would be for the shortened trip to the new system.

Ten minutes before the scheduled transition, there was a bright flash of light and a radiation spike.

“Helm! Forty-five degrees to port, one-point-five-G acceleration,” she ordered immediately. “Activate the radar!”

The flash of light and the radiation spike was a sure sign that something had transitioned into the system from somewhere. TBC-443 had broken to the right, the opposite direction that TBC-412 had taken to clear the ingress path. Since they caught the spike and flash of light almost full in the face, it was almost certain that whatever came into the system came from their destination.

“Radar contact small, low acceleration barely enough to pull whatever it is out of the gravity well of the sun. Radio contact now, ma’am. It’s a message beacon from TBC-four-seventy-three.”

* * *

0600 hours CST, June 23rd, 2673; the bridge of the Skate

Morning came early for most of the crew. Even though a good portion of them usually did not sleep through the night watch, most of the crew got some rest. All of them were up at 0600 hours. The mess was busy, but with no gravity, the tables were not the only places that people ate. The morning watch had primary use of the mess, with the afternoon watch filling into any space they could find.

The head was also being used to capacity as crew members got ready for the day. There was a feeling in the recycled air of the boat. Today the commanding officer would take them where no one had gone since the end of the war. Some of them had served on ships and boats that fought off single raiders or small groups of them. None of them had ever been in an environment where their chances of survival were low; none of them had been in an engagement with large number of ships.

None of them, that is, except the three veterans onboard the boat. They had their own worries—not the same worries as the younger crew, but they still had the same fears and worries they had in combat. They knew they could handle the situation and the stress, but they did not know if their younger crewmates could.

All of the crew had friends on the John Charlie, and many of them had friends on the other ships of the Clearwater fleet. The fleet was going to come to this system, either to investigate the lack of word from the torpedo boat, or because the message beacon had arrived in the Clearwater system, and they needed to eliminate a clear threat so close to their home base.

The morning watch reported to their stations, all of them in their space suits. While the lesson they had learned was not as strong as what Murphy had learned during his first call to battle stations, the crew had still learned something in those forty-five minutes. They knew how it felt now to wonder if the coming action was going to put a hole through the hull and expose them to the harsh vacuum of space, and that knowledge brought to the forefront the seriousness of the drills. While the fabric skin suits were a pain to don, it would be worse to be caught in a rapidly venting compartment without one.

The afternoon watch waited around, off duty. They too had donned their space suits and took the warning of potential action seriously this morning. The RSG turret was fully manned, and the lead gunner had time to get into the vacuum surrounding the gun and practise manually loading and unloading the gun. It was not a full drill, but it did remind him of most of the problems he would face if he had to do the task in combat.

Murphy was on the bridge by 0715 hours and took over the watch from Lieutenant Bell. He checked the manning status and saw a number of green lights at the various stations indicating the presence of space suits. Several were not fully functional and showed an amber colour; one was the helmsman. Chief Butler still had not had a chance to sort out the programming for the new suits. No one onboard had the expertise to do the translation coding, so it was left undone.

“All hands,” Murphy said into the ship-wide intercom. “Good morning, and welcome to the day we solve the mystery of Sigma Delta Four. We know there is a large fleet of pirate vessels waiting for something, but what that is, we don’t know. We also know there is something in this general area. We saw a shuttle come through, and we have seen four groups of Javelin fighters. They know we’re in the system, and they may have destroyed our message beacon.

“But they have not found us yet, and I don’t plan on letting them find us until after we’ve left the system. You’ve all done well to get this far. Now we just need to take it the final few steps. The pirate fleet that we’ve found can do a lot of damage to our people in Clearwater if it takes them by surprise. But there is something else here that could be much more dangerous.

“Our duty is clear. We must protect our friends and colleagues in the Clearwater fleet, and the best way to do that is to find out exactly what is here, to face it, and to report back. You all know your jobs and responsibilities. I have no fear we will be successful in our mission. Good luck, bridge out.”

He shut off the ship-wide intercom and called down to engineering to retract the heat sinks from the asteroid. He took one final look at the tactical plot. The paths of the fighter groups were still projected on the display.

“Helm, take us away from the asteroid, point-two-five G only. VSO, make sure you have all contacts logged and reported.”

The torpedo boat lifted off from the asteroid and retracted its landing gear. It crept through the asteroid field, trying to find the origin of the fighter groups they had discovered the night before. It was slow going. Both the commanding officer and the astrogator were being extremely cautious. The minutes changed to hours as the time moved on.

“Uh, sir?” Petty Officer Yosufzai asked from her station near the front of the bridge.

“What is it, VSO?”

“The HHE is reporting an anomaly; it’s reporting nothing out in front of us.”

Murphy thought about that for a moment. “Absolutely nothing, or no signal coming back from the decaying particles?”

“No signal from the particles older than seven seconds.”

Murphy thought about the information, sitting back in his chair as he tried to figure out what the anomaly could mean. It could mean that the HHE was malfunctioning, or…

He flipped on the intercom. “All hands, prepare for high-G stop.”

“Helm, maximum deceleration in fifteen seconds. Bring us to a stop relative to the asteroids around us as fast as possible.”

The boat rolled over end for end and decelerated as quickly as it could, five G. All thoughts of stealth were forgotten. The boat took just under a minute to come to a halt in the asteroid field. Murphy waited for the deceleration to halt before he hit the combat warning alarm.

The only people not at their stations in under a minute were the crew members from the night watch. Those in the night watch reported within five minutes. Like the crew members from the morning and afternoon watch, the crew members from the night watch were wearing their space suits, even when they had climbed into their bunks. They just needed to don their thermal stockings and other pieces of equipment before reporting for duty.

Murphy waited for the crew to be settled in and spoke to them again.

“All hands, the HHE had just detected an anomaly in the area we suspect the fighters originate from. The anomaly could be a very convenient malfunction, or there could be a cloaked area right in front of us.”