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We were called to the war room sometime later. The Admiral and the Captains that served as an extension of herself, Goolie and Yribia among them, as well as a few of her advisors, myself incongruously among them. We all sat in front of the large tactical displays. Kel, the Lieutenant whom I had met almost half a Cycle earlier—Syks I recalled—and a couple other Humans arrived shortly after, all slightly damp from the hasty showers they had taken before this meeting.

They had all taken part in the boarding operation, and—recalling the image of Kel as I’d last seen him, the one burned into my mind—I supposed it more conducive to strategic planning to not see your allies still covered with the former-insides of slain enemy.

“The stasis field was it?.” The Admiral said as Kel lowered himself into the chair across from her.

“That’s correct.” He responded.

“I didn’t realize you’d had the capability. I’d though all the new StasGens lost during the attack on The Hands.”

“They were. But we had plenty of time to tweek the stockpile we already had. Couldn’t quite get them to where Casslyn and her team had, but with her schematics and the Major’s knowhow, we got close enough. The biggest challenge was peppering the Heg Cruisers with them without detection.”

“Same with the mines?”

“Yes, although for that we didn’t have to grid them just so. Just zip by and drop a few dozen amidst the chaos. I don’t think they even registered so much as a blip from our ships with everything else going on. Once we identified the segment of Cruisers holding back, we started laying our modified Stasis Field Generators on the 2 farthest back.”

“Well,” The Admiral said with a sigh. “I suppose this is a better outcome than we could’ve hoped for. Without your forewarning, our dust would be spread across the heavens. In fact, even with your forewarning, I don’t think we would have prevailed. It was your stealth fleet’s ability to fight half the battle invisibly that saved us.”

“Yeah well… I’m just sorry we weren’t faster. We were barely able to decipher The Heg transmission before they jumped. If it wasn’t for Saxxon’s quick cipher work figuring out the coordinates, we wouldn’t have made it through the Rift with them at all.

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So we didn’t have the time to get everything in order exactly as we might’ve liked. And once in… well… we weren’t entirely sure what was going to happen. We knew the destination roughly… but we weren’t sure why the Armada was headed there, though we assumed it was to stage an attack on The Collective from a closer location.”

“Closer location, huh.” The Admiral chuckled. “We’re in the Far Reaches right now, still over 3 thousand LightCycles from the nearest friendly outpost. If The Hegemony was planning to establish a beachfront here, they’ve sure got a queer idea of what closer means.”

The Admiral paused and gazed to the tactical displays on the wall, the ones mapping the half trillion cubic LightCycles of empty space we’d surveyed over the past 300 MilliCycles, all of it entirely devoid of Hegemony presence.

She turned thoughtfully to Kel.

“Since the attack on The Hands, the Fleet has surveyed nearly 5,000 LightCycles in every direction from home, and other than those few dozen seemingly under-equipped and occasionally partially abandoned outposts on the boarders that we dispatched early on, we’ve seen no indication of Hegemony presence, not in any of the zones of the Far Reaches that we know they once frequented, and not anywhere in all the thousands of LightCycles farther.”

She leaned forward, looking at Kel.

“High Command was initially operating under the tenuous assumption that The Hegemony had relocated somewhere quite a bit farther that their previous Homesystem, mostly due to our scientist’s inability to detect any HyperTransit exit Jumps within the Charted Zones. But now, with my Fleet’s continually coming up empty-handed for over a quarter-Cycle, we have the definitive proof that they’ve gone elsewhere—“ She paused again, then cocked her head slightly in what I assumed to be a Human gesture she had picked up long ago.

“—exactly how far are they?”

“They are…” Kel’s eyes shifted askance to Lieutenant Syks and the other Humans in the room. After a moment’s pause he finished. “…rather far.”

There was a brief silence in the room. An empty space in which certain things were not said, things that I couldn’t begin to guess at, but whose general shape I intuited instantly. It was the shape of things not meant for all ears in the room.

I wondered if I would ever be privy to them. Evidently The Admiral was confident she would be, and so tactfully pivoted the conversation.

“Indeed.” She said.

And as though that was some code word, all tension abated and Kel resumed where he had left off.

“We didn’t expect to be dropping right on top of your Fleet, and I don’t think they did either. But a few minutes before we popped out of Hyper, we got the readings. We saw your fleet, and we knew they had too.

But we weren’t entirely sure that we going to be able exit HyperTransit before their Armada to warn you.”

“Well it seems fate was smiling down upon us today, my friend. How is Saxxon by the way?”

“He’s well… or at least as well as one could be in his position, in any of our positions.”

“Indeed, you’ve been gone for half a Cycle, and from the sounds of it you’ve managed to evade detection for the duration.”

“That’s correct.”

“It also sounds like you have a lot of intel for us.”

Kel’s eyes were serious, and the tension in his brow never left even as he snorted back a laugh.

“Understatement of the MegaCycle, Preyl. I’ve got the ultimate fuckload of intel for you.”