Everything had been arranged as best as we possibly could. With Luna’s gear stowed away beneath Ellie, which was the last piece of the puzzle that I could think of.

Nothing remained but to spend the last couple of days on board of the ship getting everything in order. Which meant a lot of cleaning duty for most of the crew. But since most of that work was done by maintenance bots, it quickly meant that we just had a lot of people with nothing much to do. Space in the immediate vicinity of Earth was quiet after all.

While the days went by, we got more detailed information about our escorts. It would consist of a set of five destroyers. The UFS De Ruyter, UFS Fletcher, UFS Granatiere, UFS Louzhou and last but not least the UFS Glowworm. That really showed how fast Earth had been expanding its space faring navy in the time we were gone, as none of those ships even sounded vaguely familiar to me.

The message of the intergalactic threats we’d sent back had presumably sent them into ship building frenzy. Building small destroyers like that, purely to safeguard Earth, was pretty cost and time efficient. Especially in the automated shipyards they’d built.

Not a doubt passed in my mind that they’d soon be building even bigger ships, this time to go forth and safeguard the new colony site we’d discovered.

Besides that, I was pretty happy to see I recognized the name of the leader of the squadron, at the same time also the Commanding Officer of the UFS Glowworm. Lieutenant Commander Blackwall. She’s someone who I met during basic training back in the day. She was going for ship borne position back then as even during wartime, the Federation still needed to protect our space assets around Mars and Jupiter. I remembered her as a very principled person with her heart in the right place. We’d become pretty good friends in the short time we spent together. Sadly, I didn’t have much contact with her since then. The deployment in the war effort and then later my injuries had a big part to play in that. Although I did get a congratulation from her by mail when I got promoted to Commander.

As soon as I had read myself into the report, I was called back to work to resume the final preparations to our return to the solar system, mainly involving going over procedure for hours on end. Not the most interesting part of the job, but incredibly important, especially because of our current predicament about getting detained.

-Some days later. One FTL jump away from Earth.-

With the ship spick and span, apart from the outside paint of course, we got into our best uniforms for our return to the solar system. We were just a few hours away from reaching our home system once more. And as the old officer back at officer training said. “If you ever find yourself in the position of being court-marshalled or the likes, make sure you are wearing your best clothes. It’s always best to go down in the history books while neatly dressed.”

While it was definitely not my intention to ‘go down in the history books’ being court-marshalled and stripped of my function. Good style does make a way better impression, doesn’t it.

This rather absurd thought made me chuckle into the mirror, which in turn pulled the attention of Luna. She’d opted to go with a skirt instead of her uniform pants. My eyes didn’t dislike that decision.

“What are you laughing about?” She asked as she straightened her buttoned up uniform jacket.

“Nothing, just thought you were looking mighty fine.”

Luna blushed and rolled her eyes. “Don’t make me blush in front of the soldiers, okay?”

“I will try to behave myself.” I joked.

“You better. I won’t be visiting you in jail, you know.”

“Really? Why not?” I pouted.

“...Okay… Maybe I will anyway…”

“Yes!” I pulled my tie straight and then turned towards Luna once more. “Could you check if my tie is straight enough.”

She shook her head and approached me. Putting her hands on my tie. “Looks fine to me.”

This of course was a ruse so I could hug her close to me. Which I promptly did.

Luna started giggling. “Couldn’t you be a bit more serious right now?”

“Nah.” I gave her a kiss. “Things will be plenty serious in a little bit. I just want to relieve that bit of stress I have now that I still can.”

“Alrighty then.” Luna leaned in and initiated the kiss this second time. “Then I’ll gladly oblige in bringing down your stress levels.”

After reducing my stress, we finished up getting dressed and packed our bags to go back to Earth. Since I didn’t bring much, that wasn’t much of an issue for me. For Luna, it wasn’t much different, apart from getting the sharky contained. That was a bit harder, but in the end still manageable. I would like to see the face of the person who has to check Luna’s bag though, as suddenly a plushie shark pops out.

We put our luggage all in the designated container that would be transported off the ship when we had docked, and then made our way to the bridge so we were ready to finally arrive in the solar system. We’d already sent a message ahead for our arrival, so the escorting ships should be with us quite soon upon leaving our FTL jump.

“Commander, we are two minutes away from arrival.” Zu said.

“Great, are all the weapon systems down?”

“Yes they are, Commander, they were the last time you asked.” McAllister replied.

“Just making sure.” I smiled and stared in front of me.

“Keep breathing.” Luna nudged me in the side.

“I know. It should be me who’s reassuring you, you know?”

“Hehe.”

We spent the rest of the two minutes in silence, apart from the final countdown from our good old navigation officer.

“Arriving in… five… four… three… two… one…”

We blipped out of our FTL and were greeted by the rings of Saturn to the right side of the bow. A beautiful sight to behold and a welcome sight for many.

It didn’t take long for our comms channel to start buzzing.

“Welcome back to the sol, Roald Amundsen.” It was the voice of Lieutenant Commander Blackwall.

“Thank you for the welcome, Glowworm.” I quickly replied.

“We will be joining you at your flanks and start escorting you towards X-12.”

“We will be in your care.”

Our escorts were waiting next to Titan and had started making their way towards us.

It took them only five minutes to take up positions at our sides.

“That’s some serious battle-scarring you’ve got going on there, Roald Amundsen.”

“We definitely need a new lick of paint, that’s true.” I replied. “Have you been briefed on our situation, Glowworm?”

“We have.” Blackwall replied. “It seems like you were pretty lucky to come out of that engagement alive.”

“Luck, guts, blood, sweat, tears and a lot of ammo.”

For a moment no one replied over the intercoms, only for it to crackle back to live thirty seconds later. “You did well.”

The rest of our trip to X-12 was pretty much under radio silence. With our little blue planet in the distance, slowly getting bigger and bigger. What we could tell was that the shipyards we could see were all in full swing. Brimming with activity. A small fleet of destroyers lay anchored next to other space stations. Some larger ships anchored on Luna. The full military-industrial might of Earth on display.

I took a glance at Luna, who was just looking at it all, her mouth almost dropping open. And you could barely blame her. If I wasn’t awfully familiar with how the United Federation’s military worked, my jaw would be dropping, too. I just wondered how they were selling this sudden enormous expenditure to the populace.

“Roald Amundsen, you are cleared to dock.” Glowworm let us know over the intercoms. “Dock 1 is all yours.”

“Thank you.” I replied. Just after that, I got a notification on my holostick. It was a message from Blackwall. An invitation for a drink after we’d gotten cleared. An invitation I definitely didn’t deny.

With a couple of loud clanks, our ship was docked and secured against the station. After which we all made our way to the bridge docking port nearby. Eva met us there too.

As the doors opened, a dozen armed soldiers faced us. With a Captain leading the group.

The Captain stepped forward on board our ship and saluted us.

We all promptly saluted back.

“Commander Lauren Davis, we are here to escort your crew off-ship. You will be briefly taken into custody.”

“Understood.” I gave him a nod and started to unbuckle the belt that held the holster of my service pistol. The rest of the crew laid their hands on their belts as well.

The Captain quickly held out his hand. “That won’t be necessary, Commander. Your officers can keep their service weapons.”

“Are you sure?” I lifted my hand from my belt.

“Yes, the Admiralty is convinced you at least deserve that much honor.” The Captain saluted us again.

I gave him a rather confused nod, after which the soldiers led us out of the ship and into the station.

Eva looked almost as confused as I was and whispered to me. “Is it just me, or are we getting a lot of mixed signals?”

“Definitely.” I agreed.

-Somehow, it suddenly feels as if we could both get court-martialed and promoted at the same time…-