“Oh, it's temporary. I wouldn't give up night watch command, in fact, I'll be doing both at the same time. There's time to fill during my shifts right now so I'll program in the round the clock regimen for anyone in training and fly short patrols before and after my shift.”
“Just don't wear yourself thin. Keep it down to a combined twelve hours on duty a day.”
“Don't worry, Captain, I'll keep my head on straight.”
Stephanie nodded and started her report when she was sure the exchange was finished. “We're on patrols, watch and training in security. The Intelligence team is still backlogged but they're getting better at prioritizing. There's really not much to report other than the new recruits are doing well in drills. Even the washouts we're getting from Chief Frost are turning out to be decent grunts,” she said, not so much as glancing at Frost. “Oh, and the pay grade structure has boosted morale for the most part. Now that everyone knows that extra qualifications and good performance will directly affect their pay there has been a big improvement overall.”
“Anything new on our vigilante?”
“Only verification that his first victim was a West Keeper. She kept to herself, came aboard with Wheeler's Regent Galactic crew and used every opportunity to use a personal comm unit to contact the Order of Eden. No one can find any evidence that her personal comm was used by anyone other than her, it uses a DNA sniffer to validate that she's the one on the line so we're pretty sure it wasn't planted on her to make it look like this vigilante is on our side. Our vigilante didn't leave any security footage of him or her killing the West Keeper, there are whole chunks of footage missing going all the way back to when Regent Galactic had possession of the Triton, and we haven't been able to generate any other leads. Whoever this is has a deep understanding of the ship's security systems, probably knows the layout better than anyone and knows how to blend in with the crew. All we can do is watch for him or her and hope that they really are on our side.”
“He can keep it up for all I care. Never got along with any cultists,” Frost scoffed. “Might shake 'is hand if ye ever catch 'im.”
“Does the crew know that there's a killer running around?” Laura asked.
“No, we've been able to keep it contained in the higher ranks of the security department, I'd rather keep it that way for as long as we can.”
“All right, then no one talks about this, but we need department heads to keep their eyes open. I want to talk to whoever this is, find out if they're working in our best interest and why they couldn't operate within the chain of command. He or she has to know that we would have taken care of this West Keeper if they brought information to us, we can't have people taking things into their own hands,” Captain Valance stated, sending a sideways glance to Frost. He looked around the table at his department heads and nodded to himself. “Good work everyone. Here's what it's all for.” Captain Valance said as he leaned forward from his seat at the end of the table. This was what everyone was waiting for, details on what the Captain was planning. Over the preceding seventeen days select crew members had been making trips to nearby planets that had been ravaged by the Holocaust Virus using the Cold Reaver and picking up as many qualified recruits as they could carry. Everyone had been training hard, working hard on the ship and getting ready to be active against Regent Galactic. As to their specific goal or direction, no one was privy to that information. “Thanks to the information recovered by Frost and a little help from our Intelligence department, I've managed to verify some important supply and transportation routes. It looks like they haven't changed in weeks, so they'll be there a while. There's a problem with that plan. The sheer quantities of goods transported along those lines and the ships we might be able to capture is too much for the Triton.
“If we plan on liberating supplies, materials, equipment and slaves from Regent Galactic at this volume we'll need a place to sell excess and someone to take care of the refugees. I'm getting ready to contact all the front line worlds that are opposed to Regent Galactic. I've prepared inquiry messages to be sent out as soon as our wormhole systems are up and running. I expect the inner Lorander and Carthan governments will most likely be the first to ally with us.”
“Lorander's a government now?” asked Stephanie.
“Yes, after taking control of several systems Vindyne left in a state of famine they accepted a few applicant worlds closer to our space. They were just about to announce their outer territories before they were hit by the Holocaust virus. We'll probably be a welcome sight.”
“Captain, do you know how wide spread the virus is now?” Asked Chief Vercelli.
Jacob sat back in his chair. He had tried to estimate it earlier, but stopped as he started to see figures that just had to be wrong. “Has anyone taken an educated guess?” he asked quietly.
Laura cleared her throat and edged her chair up closer to the table. She looked at the thin command and control unit mounted on her arm. “Jason was always better at that kind of number crunching, but I managed to come up with a conservative estimate. Considering the virus spreads to ships with a hyperdrive or wormhole system then uses them to continue spreading it to other solar systems and the number of worlds we've seen infected the virus should be reaching the inner core systems within the next ten days.”
“What? How's it moving so fast?” Asked Frost.
“It's tapping into the less secure transmission and relay systems used for galactic communications to transmit itself to places it hasn't gotten to with a ship yet.” Cynthia answered quietly. “From there ships with wormhole drives carry it to other systems that have communication hubs that use wormhole technology for their relays and so on. My department actually estimates the virus should be everywhere someone can turn on a computer within six days.”
“So it actually knows where it's spreading and how to deploy itself to sensitive areas?” asked Stephanie.
“I'm not sure,” Laura said, looking at Liam.
He nodded and went on. “It behaves like it's moving in a planned way, but we only have a small part of the picture. With the speed this thing is spreading at it's already gone far past what we can see.”
“Are our systems still immune?”
“They are, and Regent Galactic is being very public about developing a disinfection program. Only two of their held worlds have been affected from the reports we're getting though they're probably doctored and censored. They have control of or own over a hundred worlds in total.” Cynthia said.
“Now tell me people aren't smellin' somethin' rotten in that! How is it that the core worlds don't have a Star Legion worth of heavy armour comin' down on Regent Galactic's head?” Frost asked, visibly frustrated. “Regent Galactic's barely gettin' hit by this, they've gotta be behind it an' if I can figure that, the big heads closer to the core gotta know.”
“Everyone uses artificial intelligences to help manage their ships, especially the military. Organizations have been trying to cut down on manpower in favour of more dangerous weapons, bigger firepower for a long time. The only reason why the Triton got away as good as it did was because the ship artificial intelligences weren't very sophisticated and didn't have direct environmental control. The only other fleets made that way belong to the Britannian and Gandish. For all we know everyone else's ships are part of some kind of new Holocaust Fleet now.” Liam said, putting a hand on Frost's shoulder to calm him down.
“Freeground ships use artificial intels but they have security systems that are very sensitive to corrupted software. By my calculations they should be one of the last to be affected, thankfully.” Laura added.
“Any word from Jason?” Asked Alice quietly.
“They had trouble with their hyperspace systems and changed course for a world called Pandem.”
“I'm taking a Uriel out to pick them up.” Captain Valance said. Everyone who didn't already know about the plan looked at him with varying degrees of surprise. “I wanted to take one of them for a test drive,” he shrugged. “If there's nothing else, everyone have a good duty shift.”