“Have Weaver send the information to Earth,” the CO said. “Tentative ID, more when she wakes up.”
“She’s liable to be extremely disoriented,” Dr. Chet pointed out. “And all my personnel are male. I’m going to ask Miss Moon to sit in on this one.”
“Agreed,” the CO said, frowning. “I guess there’s no way to pretend she’s not in a spaceship.”
“No,” Dr. Chet said, shaking his head. “Not unless Earth will open the gate and allow us to shove her through before she wakes. She really should be in a proper hospital.”
“Unlikely,” the CO said. “Not with a potential Dreen presence on this side. And on that note, Tactical?”
“Not a peep, sir,” the TACO replied. “No indications of anything unusual in the system. And we’re keeping a very close eye on the instruments.”
“So the Dreen came in here, dropped a rock on the facility, picked up one survivor then came back a couple of hours later and snatched most of the rest,” the CO said, his brow furrowing. “And then they just left? To where? Why? With an open gate to Earth, why just leave?”
“Bigger fish to fry?” the XO asked. “A higher priority mission? For all we know, that war that was such a big thing to us might not have meant much to them. We might not even be on their radar. There could be a massive battle going on in the next system and we wouldn’t even know it…”
“Here they come again,” Senior Tactical Specialist Favarduro shouted. “Forty Blin Kar fighters at one-one-seven mark sixteen.”
“The Klingoddar has stopped responding to hails,” Commo Specialist Faul interjected. “Its emergency beacon has stopped broadcasting.”
“Uanarmm bless and keep them,” Ship Master Kond replied softly. “Chaos ball generator?”
“At least another forty kleg,” Engineering Specialist Rorot replied.
“Engage with masers,” Kond said calmly, shifting his weight slightly in his combat couch. The air around him was a rich tapestry of information, sonar pulses filling the air with data from all the ship’s sensors. The fleet was once again escaping the hated Blin, but at great cost. The Caurorgorngoth was the last of the Chaos Ships. If they were destroyed, the Blin dreadnought would be able to gather up the fleet like so many vaila. “Keep them off of us until the chaos generator is back on line. Patch me through to Fleet Master Lurca.”
“Lurca.”
“Higher One, we are under attack from Kar fighters. There will be a dreadnought somewhere out there. Be careful.”
“We are reaching jump point now,” the fleet master replied. “Hurry to follow us. How are your supplies?”
“We managed to fully fuel before the last battle,” Kond replied. “We are good for two jumps. We got ninety percent of our magazine load from the factory ship. That was all they’d produced. We also need some parts, but we’ll need more after this so we might as well wait.”
“Meet us at the rendezvous,” the fleet master said. “Lurca, out.”
“And again we are on our own,” Favarduro quipped. “No freighters or fuelers or cruisers to slow us down. What luxury. What grandeur.”
“What doog,” Engineer Rorot said unhappily. “Without a chaos generator. With fusion bottles down. With our reality shifter becoming unreal.”
“Nobody ever said it would be easy,” Favarduro said, pinging a burst of laughter around the compartment. “Oh, and here come Kar fighters to make our day oh so much better. Recommend evasion pattern Mindrg in three kleg.”
“Very well,” Kond said, pinging the information to the battlecomp. “Let us take some of these foul beasts with us if we are to fall.”
“Some more, Ship Master,” Favarduro said, pinging laughter again. “Some more.”
“Group of experts,” Miller muttered. “So with a group of world-class experts we’re sitting out here freezing our butts off to send Morse and a bunch of nobodies back on Earth—”
“Oh, shut up,” Weaver whispered back. “It took them four hours.”
“And the survivor is…” Admiral Townsend asked over the video link. The image suddenly distorted as did the voice but it was still as clear as a low bandwidth streaming video.
“Still out, sir,” the CO responded. “Given her condition, Dr. Chet is unwilling to bring her out of the drugs rapidly. There are ways to do that but—”
“It’s the doctor’s call,” the admiral said with a sigh. “She probably won’t have much more information than we already have. The experts in such things are unwilling to open the gate, even for long enough to shove her through.”
“Did they say why, sir?” Bill asked neutrally.
“Just that we don’t know the true abilities of the Dreen,” the admiral said with a shrug. “They’re really exercised about them possibly breaking through. They also wanted to ensure that she’s in isolation and that she gets a very full physical.”
“She was brought in in a quarantine stretcher,” the CO replied. “And has been in the isolation area ever since. That’s SOP under the circumstances. I’ll ask Dr. Chet about giving her a full pre-mission phys. But given the way her body’s scrambled up, I’m not sure he’s going to want to add the chemicals he needs to her system. Not any time soon, anyway.”
“I’ll pass that on,” the admiral said. “Make sure that she’s not removed from isolation until you return to Earth. That’s not negotiable.”
“Understood, sir,” the CO said. “So what now? Do we head home?”
“Negative,” Townsend replied. “We need to find out what’s happening out there. Probe for the Dreen. Carefully. Try to find out where they’re at, what they’re up to out there, what their order of battle looks like. Hell, what their ships look like. It’s an old-fashioned intel gathering mission. You’re the boat snuggling up to the Soviet backyard to get intel. Go get it.”
“Yes, sir,” Spectre said thoughtfully.
“Leave this lash up in place,” Townsend added. “But camouflage it if you can. If you need to talk or seriously need support, we can use the gate. Same orders as before, use your discretion but don’t get into any furballs if you can avoid it. However, if you get an opportunity to jump a lone Dreen ship and determine that it’s possible to win, do so. Capture it if possible. The idea is to get a look at what their hyper tech and weapons tech consists of. We need a system we can use other than the Blade’s. Anything you need that we can shove through the gate quickly?”
“XO?” the CO asked.
“I doubt we can get the critical spares we need to the base quickly, sir,” the XO said, looking at a pad. “But if we come back this way, it might make sense to have some stockpiled by then. I have a list. Other than that, fresh food.”
“I’ll get with the liaison at the base,” the admiral said, nodding. “Send the list over and we’ll get them down there if it’s feasible. Anything else?”
“Permission to send and receive Family Message Forms, sir,” the CO replied.
The FMF was a method that sub crews had of keeping in contact with their families. It was highly limited and highly censored, being only a ten-word message either way. Families were not permitted to send negative news; putting more stress on guys stuck in a tin can under water was never a good idea. “I hate you and want a divorce” was not a message the Navy was going to send to a guy who could fire a nuclear missile or cause a melt-down of the nuclear core. Sub crews, being smart, had of course set up a code system so that they could get more than “I love you. Everything’s fine” messages through. More than one submariner had gotten word that his wife was having an affair despite being at six-hundred-feet depth, several thousand miles away and through a system specifically designed to prevent such news. So far, none of them had tried to fire off a missile although a few had tried to open up a hatch and walk home. For those few, there was a very pleasant tranquilizer and an “I-Love-Me” jacket until they could be evacced.