Reidia looked over the report, then turned to the Admiral. “It’s definitely them, no doubt about it. Those graviton readings are a dead match for the menace.”
“Right, but the local patrol fleets haven’t found anything.”
“Menace ships are damn hard to spot in the first place, I don’t blame the local patrols for missing them, especially if they are trying to go dark.”
“... I think I recall something about that. Menace vessels have unusually low energy signatures.”
“They are the coldest ships in space I’ve ever seen. Not even Voskar ships are that cold, you won’t pick them up on thermals which are preferred for long-range tracking. That black and silver paint they favor also helps mask them optically. It's the same story with other standard energy emissions, but I can tell the patrols what to look for. Once you know what you are looking for, it will be harder to mistake them for something else.”
“What are we looking for?”
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May 3rd, 004 SDE:
Countryman stepped onto the bridge after being updated by the night officer and noted the mood. Things seemed notably less grim today, he even saw a few happy smiles. Taking only a glance at the screens, which showed the usual distorted starscape you got when traveling at warp, Countryman took the stairs down to the lower bridge.
Stopping by the Ops console, he noticed Misaki looked especially chipper today, “Morning Misaki. Something good happen?”
She smiled, “You could say that.”
Kaori giggled, “Oh don’t be so coy. She hit it off with Derrick the other day.”
“Oh? Well I wish you luck with that.”
Kaori, turning on her seat, asked, “So what about you sir? Any luck yourself?”
Countryman smiled, “Yeah I seem to have ended up with Ruri, but half the time...”
Kaori giggled, “Right she made Rose just so you wouldn’t have an excuse not to get her pregnant.”
“I know,” said Countryman.
Misaki inquired, “So when’s the baby due anyway?”
“Soon,” said Countryman as he saw Greyman enter the bridge from the lower entrance. “Good morning Greyman.”
“A bit early sir,” he looked around, “So where’s my counterpart?”
“He left a few minutes ago. There isn’t much to say though, we are still on course for Rylna. No Valorian vessels on sensors, or much of anything else.”
Eri looked up from her console, “Not much to do either. I’m just keeping an eye on the autopilot at this point. Everyone else was talking about dates and babies.”
Greyman chuckled, “Well at least they found something to do.”
Countryman said, “So they have, anyway since you are here how’s things going with Samantha?”
“Well enough I guess, she’s been enjoying the teaching job.”
“Yeah, Rose has mentioned a bit about that. She’s been working with her a lot lately.”
“I know, Samantha seems to really like that girl. Hard to believe she’s a robot.”
Misaki commented, “Agreed, I’m honestly quite impressed. It’s amazing what we can do these days.”
“Well Rose is a bit special, but I have to say no arguments there.”
Eri stood up, leaving her console unmanned for a moment. “I’m starting to feel a little left out, everyone seems to be hooking up and having kids.”
Kaori smirked, “You seemed to have a lot of fun at the party.”
“Says the girl who got laid first.”
“Oh he was fun!”
“Sounds like quite the party.”
“Oh it was, we had a lot of fun and Misaki met Derrick.”
Countryman smiled and moved to the center display. “I’m glad to hear that people are starting to unwind. I don’t think any of us really liked the mood.
Misaki leaned back in her seat, “Yeah it was getting a little tense and grim.” she sighed as she glanced at her console, “Though our fuel situation still sucks.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Countryman nodded, they had a few hundred liters in reserve that they were holding for their fighters just in case. Leaving them with just the fuel in the main reactor, it had been full when they started this course back in April, but a month at warp had drained nearly a third of that fuel. All their calculations indicated they’d be running on fumes by the time they actually reached Krall space, and there was a chance they would need to dip into what little fuel remained in the reserves to actually reach the Krall system of Rylna.
Rylna merely being the closest Krall colony world on their charts. It was a border world, the charts mentioned a local starbase. The planet was largely agrarian, but it was part of a trade network which meant they would be able to buy fuel there.
“Agreed, but let's not think about it.”
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Williams and Cutter weaved through the traffic and made their way into one of the labs. A familiar woman looked up from the bundle in her arms, “Ah Williams, you’re early. Just let me put Abi down and we can talk.”
Williams smiled as she watched the researcher put her little one down and the trio moved on to discuss the project. “So I hear you’ve made some progress with my request?”
“I’ve been looking into it, yes. The council is more invested in Ruri’s machine girl project at the moment. Can’t blame them though, those machines are truly fascinating and less controversial than mass cloning.”
“Right, I presume you have a list ready by now.”
“I’ve managed to screen the current population and identified five thousand people I would like to review further for the cloning project, but I do need to remind you that current facilities are far from adequate for such an undertaking.”
Williams knew that, but if they were to survive as a species they needed numbers. They were growing at a remarkably high rate for natural growth thanks to council policies and actions but as far as Williams was concerned it wasn’t enough. They were going to need clones to fill out their numbers, at least for the next few generations. Of course, this did raise concerns about long-term genetic viability, which was the other thing they were here to discuss.
“Right I’ve got some plans to fix that and I’ve been looking into ways to improve ship production so that we could build the kind of facilities we need. Just a matter of getting the resources and time we need to build that stuff. In the meantime, have you had any progress with addressing the genetic viability concerns?”
“Why yes, in addition to normal cloning, we can also mix in clones chosen from lab-grown embryos. Again to maintain long-term viability it would take ten years for each batch to mature, but by creating some of the embryos we need in the lab we should have a greater gene pool than we might otherwise. I’ve also been studying several older books that looked into controlled mutations.
Cutter who had been standing by the door, inquired, “Sounds fascinating but what kind of resources will we need for this?”
“The growth acceleration to get a ten-year maturation rate would require a fairly nutrient-dense slurry mix. I can make it with the nutrient paste we produce already, but it would put a rather high drain on our food reserves. Cloning isn’t cheap in that regard, I’d say each clone would consume double what a natural-born human would. Those numbers should go down to something more normal once they emerge from their pods though.”
“Shouldn’t be an issue, hydroponics has done a stellar job of producing food for us, we currently have a five year surplus.”
“Oh? I wasn’t aware it was that large. I’d heard we’d enjoyed a good year.”
Cutter interjected, “I’ve been down there, the growing gardens are actually rather relaxing and you can watch the fish swimming in the water. It’s quite something, working in there for a bit is a good way to get some extra credits. Lots of civilians regularly work in hydroponics.”
“Oh I’m aware, my partner is a technician. He’s complained about a few of them making his job harder. Of course the proper term for what we are doing is Aquaponics, he’s had more than one complaint about it being called hydroponics.”
“A bit late to mention that, besides most people don’t care about the difference.”
“True enough.”
“Anyway farming aside, it’s nice to have that. A surplus that large will help us jumpstart the cloning process, easily enough”
“Excellent, that’s what I wanted to hear.”
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Valorian Deep Space Monitoring Station 12:
“You sure?”
“Yes, I rechecked the sensors twice. That is definitely a menace graviton signature we are tracking.”
The figure looked back at the screen. At the far edge of sensor range, a single dot was being tracked, speed warp five point two. The object was almost twelve lightyears from the station, in a part of space with nothing in it.
They sighed, “Well they are too far out to be certain, but I guess you might be right. Still, are you sure this isn’t a glitch? Those new graviton scanners are...”
“I’m certain, I just told you I checked them twice.”
“Okay, Okay. I’ll let the fleet know we have something, but if this turns out to be a ghost...”
“Yeah, yeah I get it.”
The figure moved off to comms, to alert the fleet that they were tracking something.
What followed was a lengthy conversation with fleet and the woman came back several minutes later.
“Fleet wants us to keep an eye on the signature and let us know if they do anything.”
“Not anything we weren’t doing before. Damn this job sucks, its so fucking boring.”
“Hey at least we have something to do.”
“For now, but that blip will be gone in an hour.”
She glanced at it and nodded, it was moving fairly fast. Chances were it wasn’t going to stay there indefinitely. If anything it would be gone before the fleet could properly mobilize. Yet she couldn’t help but wonder what they were doing in that area of space.
Why would the menace be here? More importantly, why travel through a section of space with nothing in it? Sure that was part of the core, but that part of the core was empty. No trade routes, no colonies, nothing. It was just an empty stretch of space. There were a few stars in that grid, but they didn’t have much worth talking about aside from a couple of remote training facilities for the Navy. Empty systems like that were really great for training and weapons testing, since there was no one around to get hurt if things went wrong. Well, no civilians anyway.
Sure enough as they were watching the blip slipped out of range, and long before any ships from the fleet could move out to intercept. The young woman sighed, it wasn’t her problem anymore though, so with it gone she turned back to her friend. “So how about a game?”
“I guess, not like there is anything better to do?”
“Well we could watch a movie.”
“Boring!”