1025 hours CST, June 24th, 2673; flag bridge of the TRFS Glasgow

The forward capsule of the message pod was in pieces on the table in the electronics lab. The fleet was still manoeuvring to the transition point; the acceleration did provide some force for keeping the pieces in place. The outer panels of the beacon were scorched, pitted, and full of holes. They had been discarded after they had been removed and were secured to the floor in the corner of the lab.

The storage computer had taken damage from something. The technicians would take some time to identify the damage. It could have been from a rail gun round or a micrometeoroid or even shrapnel flying at high speed from a flak shell. The technicians had other priorities and would get to the analysis when they had a chance. Most of the storage chips had taken some damage and had lost their information.

They were able to pull logs from up until TBC-473 made the transition into Sigma Delta Four, and they were able to pull some personal messages that were included in the message beacon to fill up the space left over from official traffic. Forces policy dictated that any available space in a message beacon be filled up with personal mail; it helped keep morale high and saved on expenses.

The official logs were sent to fleet command, but they did not contain anything relevant to SD-Four. They were sent on to the tender and then the squadron, where they were ignored. The personal messages went through regular channels and landed in the message queue for the automated censors and for fleet signals to deal with.

Anna was on duty on the flag bridge when the messages were extracted from the message beacon. They were mostly partial messages. Thirty-eight messages had been loaded onto the message beacon. Only two of them were complete. She found two messages from Murphy, one for Commodore Brown and one for her.

A few of the other messages were dated several hours after the transition to SD-Four. The messages were mostly fragmented, but a few passages were readable and caught Anna’s interest.

…made it into the new system. I’m sorry I can’t tell you which because it would get censored. It was exciting coming in, the Skipper made the transition as if it he was expecting trouble. I don’t know if the sensors had cleared before he forced us into a counter orbit but he ordered hard acceleration away from the most likely course…

…fighters went looking for us, and they went the wrong way and lost us…

…was interesting, but the Skipper isn’t satisfied, something is wrong with them…

…following the shuttle we detected to see where it goes. I don’t know what Lieutenant Murphy is expecting to find. The crew is nervous, haven’t we found enough to go running for the fleet yet?…

The messages were not enough to go with. If she went to her superiors in the SSB with information like this, she would probably get laughed right out of the room. The fragments were scrub messages. Nothing in there would be worth risking the fleet over, but as a senior lieutenant in charge of fleet signals, she might get away with presenting them.

Phillip was a focused individual. He would have sent the message beacon on time if he had found nothing in the system. Admiral Hirlay did not know Phil, but did she know Anna well enough to trust her assessment of her boyfriend? It probably would have been easier if Anna had been able to manoeuvre Phillip around to proposing while they were on leave together.

Commodore knew the rookie torpedo boat commander, which may have been why he had fought so hard against Robertson’s attempt at character assassination. He might draw the same conclusions as Anna did about why the message beacon was late—that Phil had found something that needed investigation, and he only had a limited number of beacons to send and didn’t want to waste one with incomplete information.

She also knew that Commodore Brown and Admiral Hirlay did not get along. They worked together despite their personal animosity. The dreadnought squadron commander’s aggressiveness was moderated by the fleet admiral’s conservatism and focus on the bottom line. The commodore’s attitude also affected the admiral and pushed her to levels of boldness she would never attempt on her own. The balance between the two kept the fleet competent if not stellar in its yearly ratings.

Anna opened a private channel to TRS Rapier, Commodore Brown’s flagship. It was not common procedure for the fleet’s signals officer to personally deliver a message, but it happened in the past usually when Anna was delivering a message from Admiral Hirlay.

“Commodore Brown here.” The connection was audio only.

“Fleet Signals Officer Senior Lieutenant Li calling, sir. Good morning, Commodore.”

“Good morning, Lieutenant. Do you have a message from the admiral?”

“No sir, there was a personal message for you in the message beacon that arrived from Sigma Delta Four. It’s from the commander of TBC-four-seventy-three. I thought I would deliver it with the warning that it is highly fragmented. Can you open a data channel for delivery, sir?”

She heard the clatter of keys from the other end of the audio channel, and then two green lights lit on her console to show that the data channel was open and that it was encrypted. She smiled as she saw that the faith she had in the commodore wasn’t misplaced. He could tell something was up. Anna keyed in the commands to send the fragmented message buffer, “accidentally” sending the entire message buffer.

Anna kept the channel open, allegedly to get the acknowledgement that the transmission had been received. It did not take Brown long to find out that he had more messages than just the one from Phillip.

“Lieutenant, I think”—his voice trailed off as he scanned the other message—“that you’re doing a good job.” The voice channel was encrypted, but he still chose his words with care.

“I’ve always wondered what you people in signals think of the messages that go through your stations. After all, you handle all the censorship of the personal messages, ensuring that our communications are accurate and secure. What do you think of the messages and the beacon being late?”

“We’re trained not to analyze the messages; that’s for intelligence to handle, sir. We just handle the technical side of things for the most part. But Phil, er, Lieutenant Murphy seems like a very focused individual who is trying to do a good job. He doesn’t seem like the type of commanding officer who would forget to send a message, unless there was something extremely important going on. Also, his signals officer, Lieutenant Sinkovich, would have reminded him that he would need to send the message beacon.”

“That’s what I thought, Lieutenant. We’re due to meet about the message beacon at eleven hundred hours. I suggest you pass around all the relevant messages, personal and official, to the admiral and the other flag officers.”

* * *

The admiral still had not made a decision when Anna forwarded a call to her from the commodore just before the meeting. There was no way she could put off the commodore, no matter how much she did not like him.

“You wanted to talk to me, Commodore?” she asked after she opened the audio channel. Her voice was harsher than she intended.

“Yes, Admiral,” he said, his voice deep and firm. The admiral was thankful she did not accept the video connection; the commodore had a gaze that always made her hesitate. Why had the old war dog not retired after the war with the majority of the veterans? The peacetime Navy of Terrace did not need them anymore.

“You have something I need, and I have something you want,” he started simply and bluntly. The bluntness took the admiral back; the commodore had always been blunt but never this blunt with her. He also never offered a deal, and he had always had to be offered one before he would start any sort of negotiation.

“What would that be, Commodore?” she asked. Her voice was veiled but hints of curiosity still came out. One thing the admiral could never resist was a chance to make a deal that could further her career. She was always willing to talk about a deal even if she did not agree with the terms.

“I have a request from Terrace that I transfer back to take over the Design Development Department.”

Admiral Hirlay was doubly glad she did not accept a video connection for this call. There was no way she could keep her face straight at the news.

“I have not accepted it yet. We both know there are pirates and raiders in Sigma Delta Four, and it is our duty to wipe them out. I will accept the transfer back to Terrace after we wipe the pirates out of SD-Four with the entire fleet.”

It took her a moment to get her voice under control before she responded to the Commodore. She made some thoughtful noises to help buy her some time.

“That’s an interesting offer, Commodore, but what if there aren’t any pirates in SD-Four? We’ll have wasted all that fuel and the resources to make the trip.”

“I will still go back to Terrace and take over the DDD,” he said simply.

“So if we take the fleet to SD-Four, you’ll take over the DDD?” she asked. She did her best to keep the purr out of her voice.

“Yes, Admiral, I will.”

“Very well, Commodore, accept the position, and I’ll take the fleet to SD-Four. Admiral Hirlay out.” She killed the connection to the Commodore’s flagship.

She looked down at her console and entered the orders to move the fleet to the transition point to SD-Four. She was not going to rush the fleet into doing so; she did not believe there was anything worth worrying over in SD-Four. If anything, there was one raider that had a small ship. If anything was there, it should be long gone before the fleet showed up.

A few moments later, the fleet astrogator called her with the course and estimated time for the transition. The fleet would be in position to start the transition at 1910 hours, and the transition would take twelve hours. Multiship transitions always took longer to ensure that the bulk of the ships arrived at the same time. The transition was also done at the speed of the slowest ship.

* * *

1140 hours CST, June 24th, 2673; the flag bridge of TRFS Glasgow

The staff meeting had not gone well for the admiral. Commodore Brown was all for taking the fleet to Sigma Delta Four, based on the passages from the messages about the fighters, the shuttle, and the “something wrong” that had delayed the commander of TBC-473 from sending the message beacon on schedule. The other section heads were not all in favour of going to SD-Four and leaving Clearwater virtually undefended.

The electronics lab had finally confirmed that the damage to the message beacon had been caused by shrapnel; the beacon was in its transition to interstellar travel, which meant it survived the near miss with relatively minor but annoying damage. Part of the damage involved the engine, which had been dealt a mortal blow on the transition back to normal space when it entered the Clearwater system.

Robertson had used the official logs, specifically the logs of TBC-473’s transition out of the system, to argue that Lieutenant Murphy was incompetent and could not control his crew. He had spent at least ten minutes arguing that, and Hirlay knew he had some valid points, but he was still blowing hot air for the most part. After the rookie commanding officer beat him and almost the entire squadron, Robertson was doing his best to make up for it. Brown let Robertson say his peace and then trounced the argument with a single question:

“Has anyone called you skipper, like the crew of TBC-four-seventy-three is calling Lieutenant Murphy?”

Admiral Hirlay was honest enough with herself that the only reason she wanted to take the fleet through was to get rid of Commodore Brown. If he was not such a disciplined and experienced officer, she suspected he would have already taken his squadron and gone himself.