Treecy was supposed to be listening to the speeches being given by Colonel John and General Shuang announcing the unified command structure for the PRE and Federation forces now that they had discovered the black hole. Instead, she spent that time being bombarded by messages from Ben. It wasn't enough that she had spent the last month grieving the lost relationship with him, he had the guts to come to her now with the expectation that she would take him back simply because he came here to do that. She finally had enough and turned to him saying out loud, "I'm sorry Ben, but I'm really not interested in a relationship with you anymore. I'm sorry if that isn't what you'd like to hear, but I've already moved on from our relationship. Maybe you should be doing that as well."

Mo and Kumiko looked at each other with Mo saying, "Damn, that was brutal."

Ben looked at Treecy but nodded with a serious expression, "Fine, I understand. You need some time, but don't take too long, because I won't always be free like this and while it doesn't matter here in this group of people, once you get home you know that you'll be much happier if you are with a man like me with a higher Popski."

On the Van Halen, Ben moved his attention from the entertainment grid back to his real body and walked to the officer's mess to have a meal. He was a little early and only one other officer was there waiting at the table. He was a short middle-aged man with a military haircut sitting at the table reading an old hard-bound book. Ben was slightly curious since such books were extremely rare.

The officer looked up from his book as Ben took a seat across from him and asked, "Good morning, it's still a few minutes until mealtime, did you have questions?"

Ben smirked and then asked, "Are there many books like that here on your ship?"

The officer placed a bookmark between the pages and then closed it, "No, not many. This is an old family relic. The writings of a great man from history." He held up the book, "U.S. President Camacho. Last of the great presidents before President Bauers ruined America."

Ben chuckled, "Oh yes, the intellectual."

The officer extended his hand, "Captain Chet Johnson. You are...?"

Ben smugly shook the hand and then said, "Benten Googlememe. It's nice to meet you, Captain Johnson. Are you the other commanding officer here?"

"Me? No, I was relieved of my command by that prick, Colonel John. I'm just the kitchen manager now, sadly." Chet frowned, "It seems that a number of my subordinates were able to convince that womanizing bastard that I was unfit for command."

Ben looked interested in something said by Chet, "Womanizing?"

"You know, a rake. A guy that sleeps with a high number of women." Chet waved his hand, "He's been with nearly every woman in the squadron. It got so bad they started to purposely assign the women to other destroyers in the squadron just to stop the infighting between the male crew and the female crew."

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Ben looked a little upset, "Is that the ship my Treecy is on right now?"

Chet raised an eyebrow, "Miss de Santos? Yes, she is on Colonel John's destroyer. But surely he knows that you have a relationship with her and wouldn't interfere..." He sighed and then said, "Well, I shouldn't say that. Colonel John seems to go after the married women as often as he does the single women."

Jackson the former pilot and now commander of Van Halen walked in at that moment and said, "Hello Mr. Googlememe, Chet." He took a seat as other officers started to appear around the table.

Chet had picked up his book and started reading once again as if he hadn't been talking to Ben moments before. Ben noticed but only looked around the table worried that he needed to be on the same destroyer as Treecy.

Jackson asked, "So, Mr. Googlememe, I wonder if you have any ideas on how we might get out of this sector of space?"

Ben frowned and then asked, "You mean if the gate isn't working? If the gate is down, we'll never know how we died. Time will seem to go forward but each second will take longer and longer. We'll simply think we are still living like normal while time outside of this sector appears to be going faster and faster until eventually, we'll die."

Jackson frowned, "There's nothing we can do?"

Ben shrugged and then said, "Unless you know some science that we forgot thousands of years in your future. Which..." He looked around, "It seems you haven't, then no. We are as you people would say... Royally fucked."

The red alert klaxon sounded and everyone except Chet raced out for a duty station. Chet stood up and said to Ben, "That signal means you'll need to head for your cabin. We are at battle stations now. Make sure you wear your survival suit in case you find the life support in your section unavailable." Chet calmly reached under his seat and pulled out his helmet and gloves sealing his own suit.

Ben decided to head for his own cabin and the safety of his own space survival suit which he was sure was many generations more advanced than what the destroyer provided. Sitting in the cabin Ben smirked at the lack of information they were providing him with and decided to hack the destroyer. Thankfully these cavemen had no idea how to prevent a neurolink user from gaining access to their internal network. It only took him a few minutes of poking around on their archaic network before he found himself able to see everything the destroyer's AI could see. Ben used the network he had set up in his van to allow his own AI, Alexa to help him parse the information into chunks he could access with a command.

"Alexa, is there any data on Colonel John's personal relationships here on the Van Halen?"

The AI answered back, "I'm sorry, I couldn't find any information on that."

Over on Nemo, Colonel John watched on his display as a tiny object launched from the second planet in sector ZX-409 and quickly raced over to Rescue One. The speed it traveled appeared to be much faster than light as it took mere moments for it to move from the planet's surface to a few kilometers away from Rescue One. Once there it flashed a beam of light over the massive battle cruiser and then parked itself in orbit around the huge vessel.

"General, any idea what we are looking at?" Colonel John spoke over the com channel.

A few moments later the General replied, "... Sys... Crash... Rebooting...*static noises*"

Colonel John looked over at Hicks, "Can you clean that up any?"

She shook her head at him and said, "It's coming in that way from them."

Colonel John frowned and then asked, "Nemo, how far away from Rescue One are we?"

"We are still a day away, Colonel John." Nemo showed his raw data from the tablet he appeared to be holding.

As they watched over their scopes they saw all the lights go out on Rescue One and then slowly as systems on that massive vessel rebooted come back on until a clean com signal came alive, "Six Seventy-Three, Rescue One, systems restored. We have had our systems breached by the object. It downloaded all data from our vessel and then tried to send us a message but our equipment wasn't advanced enough to receive it."

Hicks cried out as a wave of static came over the com channel and then a hologram appeared on the command deck of every vessel in the squadron, "GRRRSTYS YSYUUI GHTR SHIYOIOP."

Colonel John felt like the message was yelling at them until it sent the next message, "Greetings beings from another star. We are the Gah. If you are here in this system at this moment you are the ones we have been waiting for but sadly, we are unable to meet you in person."

The hologram was of a strange-looking creature that looked more like a fish than a human. It continued, "By now you should understand a little about how to use the gates we left behind but not how they work. Come to the second planet from our star and we will explain the secret of the gates."

A few moments later the holograms were gone on the little satellite circling Rescue One powered itself off.

General Shuang's voice came over the com channel and said, "Donny, I think we need to meet in person, can your AI add us to your network again?"

Colonel John nodded and then said, "We'll make it happen, I think we need to have an all-officer meeting. This could be important for all of humanity, not just our own people here in the system."

"I concur, I'll be waiting on your AI then. Rescue One out."