Allison’s two-week vacation from cheerleading had come and gone. Once Bit had been repaired, Allison had been sending one request a day to request permission to return to Yellowstone. She had provided all the information she could about the location of Robin’s commune, but the search teams had not found it. She had this sense it wasn’t a priority. She told anyone in the military who would listen that wherever they had been living had blocked the Sal’nash signal. No one wanted to listen to her. She refused to approach her Babu, Maria, Eyre or Isis. Every time she did, she pissed off someone in her chain of command. She’d just go to Yellowstone, but it was under a level eight quarantine. That meant you needed permission from the joint chiefs of staff to even be in system. You need presidential authority to go to the surface.
She looked at her latest rejection. In Major Ghai’s defense he dutifully passed each and every one of her requests up the chain of command without complaint. The first two times it had actually reached the joint chiefs of staff. They had politely rejected it, saying it was still too risky for someone of her strategic and diplomatic value. The rest it had been killed at Special Operations Command at HQ. She couldn’t even get permission to go to Silwra. Leave request denied, you are too integral to our operations against the Sal’nash. The annoying part about that response was, there were no anti-Sal’nash operations. They couldn’t find them.
That was when she landed on her final plan. One string she could pull, and her command would have no idea. She was going to call the Grand Eminence. If the League made a stink and asked them to send their own survey teams they would be denied, it was System’s Alliance space. If they pressured the System’s Alliance and suggested a compromise, that a member they consider to be joint forces, such as, a certain Battlelord were to confirm no active Sal’nash presence and verify the survey data after an onsite inspection, in person, with the League security council, that would be acceptable, she could try to find the commune, she could also get her visit to her doctor.
When she had finished dropping everyone off on Tuesday evening, she skipped supper and told Major Ghai she had an urgent request to go to the embassy she was free to enact her, as she saw it, master plan. She volunteered at the orphanage the Embassy had opened, helping feed the children and clean up. There were many disappointed little faces when they realized Oozie wasn’t with her.
T’hyl found Allison as the latter was leaving the kitchen. The Yorleer greeted her warmly and motioned towards the secure embassy wing. Allison followed her. They arrived at the secure communications room.
“Battlelord, the Grand Eminence is waiting for you on the hyperwave.”
Allison bowed her head and entered. The tech manning the device excused himself quickly after Silwrath salute to Allison. The old red Silwrath was standing outside. He had an ancient style Silwrath projectile weapon in his hand and he was wearing what amounted to a Silwrath leisure suit.
“Battlelord. I understand you wished to speak with me urgently.”
Allison blinked; She hadn’t imagined him ever taking vacation of any sort.
“Grand Eminence, I’m sorry for bothering you. Is this secure?”
He nodded.
“It is. Now, I am sure whatever you need is of critical importance, so let us not waste words, tell me what you require.”
Allison blushed, was it critical? She took a deep breath and just went with it. She had already disturbed him, no need to delay his annoyed denial of her request.
“Sir, I want to go to Yellowstone.”
He looked at the recorder.
“I would think your own command would be better equipped to accommodate that request.”
Allison leaned down.
“Sir, they have denied me access for two weeks. I have reason to think there is intelligence there that we can use to stop the Sal’nash remnant. My military is either too incompetent, or negligent to find it. I have a good description of the terrain and landmarks. I am sure the council is interested in any intelligence the Alliance has gathered so far. You could demand access to the system with your ships to verify our intelligence and perform your own survey.”
He snorted and loaded two shells into what amounted to a Silwrath shotgun.
“The System’s Alliance has denied our request already, they will never permit our ships within your borders in any force. Your government has been dragging its feet giving us any data at all. Why would a new request change anything?”
Allison smiled. His wings flicked.
“You have a plan. Very well.”
“The System’s Alliance is eager for our diplomatic relations to continue to be good. If you pressure them again, of course they’ll say no, sir. However, at that point you offer a compromise, an observer, on an Alliance survey of the planet and system. If they say yes, you can have them track down my intelligence lead. If they say no, here is where you demand access, if not for your people, then for a member of the System’s Alliance you trust and consider a joint forces operative, me. You know I require scans and blood work on Silwra, sir, so if they agree you demand an in person debriefing for yourself, or your security council, from me. I go to Yellowstone, I verify the intelligence and data you’ve been provided, I track down my lead, then I continue to Silwra, where I provide the verification in person, and see my doctor.”
He seemed to be debating her request internally.
“Sir, you will get unfiltered access to any new intelligence I gather, and your science and medical teams get direct access to me for scans and blood work for twenty-four standard hours. I cannot go above my chain of command’s again to talk to the president, if I could, I’d already be on Yellowstone, but I’ve done it one too many times already. You are the only way I can do this and not face repercussions. Sir, I know there is something there.”
He closed his shotgun up.
“That blasted Cortack Nutina is right, you are either my Battlelord, or you are not. I will get you to that planet if I have to pilot the ship myself.”
Allison’s translator failed miserably on the word Cortack. It took her a moment to realize what it was, it was a Silwrath insult, that equated the person it was used to describe as someone who would not shut up. The Cortack being a very loud and very annoying avian species on Silwra. She had heard the insult many times during her time on Silwrath ships.
“Thank you, Grand Eminence.”
He nodded.
“When you arrive, I expect you to make up disturbing my sport shooting by joining me for a round. Live with honor, die with dignity, Battlelord.”
He closed his side of the hyperwave. Allison was full of nervous energy now. She just knew it was going to work. Which would make its failure all the more painful. She started pulling on her coat when she saw Tyler and Keira arrive. She nodded to them both before hurrying towards the exit without fully getting her coat on. Keira gave Tyler a dirty look. Tyler just looked like he had for the last three weeks, like someone kicked his puppy. Allison had been doing what she always did, which was avoiding inevitable hard conversations. So, she’d pretty much been one- or two-word answering Tyler when she was unable to avoid him entirely. She was curious why Keira would show her face at the embassy. Considering she was banned from League space. Keira rushed to catch up to Allison.
“Allison, what did my brother do?”
Allison was standing out in the cutting frigid wind struggling with her zipper and swearing at it. She looked up at Keira with wide eyes.
“Nothing. Sorry… I’m in a rush.”
Allison was flustered and had gotten her zipper completely jammed. Now she had to either call her mother, who thought she was at the base, or walk to the transit stop and wait for twenty minutes with her coat wide open. She kept yanking on it, trying to get out of her awkward social situation. Keira gently shoved Allison inside the building.
“Your fingers are frozen solid.”
Keira swept Allisons numb fingers away from the zipper and gently dislodged it. Allison had her hands inside her coat and under her armpits.
“Seriously Allison, what is going on? You didn’t even say hello to him and he’s been acting like someone stomped on his heart and laughed at him.”
Allison shrugged.
“Nothing. It just didn’t work out how I expected. It’s fine. We’re still friends.”
Keira put her hands on her hips.
“Whatever. I tried.”
Allison looked around.
“Um, why are you here, I thought you were banned from League space.”
Keira slid her hands into her coat pockets.
“Community service. My pardon is conditional. So, I have to put in a thousand hours of community service here, or with the colony, and visit my Freedom Guide three times a week.”
Allison blinked.
“Freedom Guide?”
Keira nodded.
“Its like a parole officer. Though she seems more like a therapist? She’s making sure I get caught up with my education, get reintegrated with society, and just talking about how I feel. She’s a bit twitchy but seems alright.”
T’hyl appeared and noticed the pair talking. She kept a discrete distance.
“Why is Tyler here?”
“He’s volunteering too. He’s trying to make up for the damage dad did. He’s pretty upset about it all. They were close when he was younger, he wanted to make things right, like he did something wrong.”
Allison shrunk into her coat.
“Did, he… is he mad at me?”
Keira looked confused.
“No. He’s in love with you. He’s trying to figure out what he did wrong. He begged me not to talk to you about it but I’m his big sis, I just want to know why you broke his heart. At least be honest with him.”
Allison felt a knot in the pit of her stomach. She’d totally misread the situation. She closed her eyes and her shoulders slumped.
“I… I thought he… I thought he hated me for putting him in a coma and getting you and your dad locked up. That he was trying to figure out how to forgive me. I figured; I’d just distance myself so he could… well move on. I can’t even forgive myself, how can he?”
Keira put her face in her palm.
“You know what fixes stuff like this? Communication. You two need to talk this out. I’m getting tired of his moping. I do not miss being sixteen.”
T’hyl used the lull in the conversation to approach.
“Battlelord, I apologize for interrupting your conversation, the high council is requesting your presence in the secure communications room.”
Allison nodded.
“Sorry Keira.”
Keira nodded. Allison followed T’hyl back to the secure comm room. Nothing was on except the large viewscreen. This was highly unusual. Allison folded her coat and hung it over a chair. She stood at ease with her hands folded behind her back. The large viewscreen came to life. It showed the five high council members in their private chambers, Primarch Rubina, who usually acted as spokesperson addressed her.
“Battlelord, we have need of your service. One of our science fleets that was on a long duration survey mission to the uncharted regions has gone dark after reporting some concerning readings. They were approximately one hundred thousand light years away from our border, across the galactic core. They are halfway through a five-year mission. We have no means to reach them. We need to verify their readings as soon as possible and we need the utmost discretion.”
Allison was a bit shocked; Did they have no rescue plans?
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“Primarch, I am confined to the Eden system by my command. They will never authorize a blind jump to one hundred thousand light years away. It is possible, especially if you can provide me with absolute coordinates for a section of empty interstellar space near the location. I would face court martial and possible execution for dereliction of duty if I went. I can bring your plight to my commanding officer, but I will be honest, I do not expect the answer you need. Any hope of a rescue mission would hinge on System’s Alliance cooperation.”
The Primarch’s drooped wings indicated there was something desperate to the council’s request.
“You misunderstand, Battlelord, there can be no rescue. The fleet has been lost with all hands. It is the data we need to recover. They tried transmitting the data, but it was cut off at ten percent of the transfer. The last message we received was that all ships were lost and the fleet commander was launching a secure data beacon to a nearby planet while he could before his ship’s FTL Byproduct lost containment. We must get to it before the attackers do.”
Allison wanted to help. She felt she owed the council for Keira’s freedom. Also, she just liked helping. She sighed. She was going to get into a lot of trouble if anyone found out. They’d pick up her wormhole activation on gravity wave detectors. She sighed. Bit would not go for any of this. She needed to do it with her core shutdown.
“Primarch. It will be my honor to serve the council in this matter. I will need your assistance with my deception.”
The Primarch’s wings lifted up.
“I will need approximately six standard hours. During that time, I need to have an excuse to be out of comm’s range. I will tell command the high council demanded my presence at a conference and that I should not be disturbed under any circumstances short of an attack on the colony. Dark Mother willing, we will not be attacked. I will need the embassy staff to deflect any attempts to contact me. If they ask, I will need the council to confirm my whereabouts, here, in the embassy on Edan. I will also need whatever data you have, and especially somewhere clear of gravity wells that is close to the target coordinates.”
Primarch Rubina bowed her head.
“We are transferring the data now. Your discretion in the nature of this data, and the events that have taken place are appreciated, Battlelord.”
Allison did a Silwrath salute. She was really feeling leery about this mission but having the High Council owe her a favor, especially one this big, would be worth it, in the end. They closed communications and Allison tracked down one of the techs. She pulled a data drive from her school bag and offered it to him.
“You can erase the contents; I need the data the Council just sent and the data key. Please.”
He slammed his chest.
“Immediately Battlelord.”
Allison paced outside the comm room until the data drive was delivered to her. She offered him the standard League salute. She summoned Bit. She almost summoned the drone wing, but she swiped them away. With no Bit, going in quiet and with the least amount of footprint possible would be her best bet. If she was spotted by whatever attacked them her only option would be to run if they could take out an entire League fleet. She found a lady’s room and pulled her armor out of her backpack and her weapons. As per regs, especially after the attack on Yellowstone, everyone was within a few minutes of their kit. Allison was no exception.
She nearly ran Tyler over when she was rushing towards the landing pad. As it was, they landed in a twisted pile of gangly teenage limbs. Their noses were almost touching. He was flustered and trying to apologize. Allison’s heart skipped a beat with him this close. Her teenage imagination had run wild numerous times imagining what it would be like to be in his arms. She kissed him full on the lips. It wasn’t planned, the urge just came over her. He kissed her back. She hopped up. Her face was beet red.
“Uh, I gotta go.”
Tyler blinked a few times and called out.
“Why… what did I do?”
Allison turned back at the bottom of the stairs to the landing pad.
“Nothing. I’m sorry.”
Allison rushed up the stairs. The landing pad was the highest point on the embassy grounds. A bitter wind whipped her hair around. Bit’s running lights lit up the night. Tyler grabbed her wrist from behind. He looked up at her.
“Allison, you don’t need to run away.”
Allison turned towards him.
“I’m not. I have to go its important.”
Tyler tightened his grip on her wrist.
“Where? What is so important?”
Allison looked up at the cloud filled sky.
“To see if monsters are looking back at us. I’ll be back. I’ll see you in school tomorrow. I promise. We’ll talk about everything. You can’t tell anyone I left. No matter what. I never left the embassy, do you understand?”
Tyler nodded and he slowly released her wrist. Allison rushed to Bit and climbed into the cockpit. Bit sounded confused.
“Allison? Is something the matter? I received no alerts. Where are we going?”
Allison pulled a liquid metal cable from her holo-phone and connected it to the interface port.
“Allison? What are you doing? You are making me nervous.”
Allison started sweeping power away from the core.
“Sorry Bit.”
Bit realized she was disconnected from all the fighter’s systems.
“Why have you locked me out of all of my systems?”
Allison sighed she felt like she was betraying Bit, she wasn’t, it was just better if the AI had no part of knowledge of what she was doing so she lied.
“We aren’t going anywhere. I noticed power spikes when I called you for a ride. I do not want a surge to damage your core processes. I am going to shut you down and keep you offline until Aunt Maria, or a tech she trusts can look at the power systems.”
Bit sounded very confused.
“I didn’t detect any power spikes or surges.”
Allison nodded.
“That is part of the problem. It means the main power junctions are not providing feedback so you cannot control power surges. I have isolated you and I will shut you down and all power to your core. I’m sorry, it needs to be done for your own good.”
With that Allison killed the power to the core. The fighter’s systems rebooted. She sighed and activated full cloak and stealth systems. She inserted the data drive. The data was… strange. She could have used Bit’s processor to filter it, she was stuck with her holo-phone which while powerful, was nothing compared to Bit’s neural net of nanoscopic quantum processors. The readings she could pull out of the corrupted data made absolutely no sense; The universe just didn’t work that way. She could see why the High Council was so desperate for the data from the expedition. If the fleet commander’s last act was to save the data over himself, it must have been very important.
Allison took a deep breath and closed her eyes. So far all she had done was lie to Bit. The moment she lifted off she was in violation of her pilot’s license. The moment she transited the wormhole she was in violation of her oath as a System’s Alliance officer, but after her mother, did that really matter to her? She shook her head. She’d wasted enough time. She lifted off and once she was at a safe distance went ballistic. She burst through the atmosphere and engaged a quickly plotted FTL course to the location of AG-AP-01. It took her only a couple of minutes to arrive. She started receiving League and Alliance warning buoy messages indicating this location was a level ten hazard. All ships were warned to keep a thirty light minute distance. She swapped her cloak for a shield and blithely ignored the warning and entered the restricted zone. Her antimatter detonation had resulted in space-time distortions. She hoped it would mask her wormhole activity.
Her FTL jump would have flagged on the FTL tracking board. They wouldn’t know what ship caused it after she went dark only that one occurred. Her exit so close to the anomaly should have masked the transit. She hoped so anyway. If not, she had maybe twenty minutes before someone came looking. She didn’t waste any time plotting the wormhole target. She wondered if anyone had ever done a blind jump this far before. It didn’t matter, she was already committed, she was the moment she jumped to FTL. She didn’t hesitate when the wormhole launch button turned green she just pressed it. The wormhole was unstable. Pure white bolts of lightning crackled over its surface. Her sensors started screaming at her, incoming FTL signatures were all over her board. What they were was anyone’s guess the wormhole and anomaly were making target resolution impossible.
“Yep, they saw me. Well shit.”
She heard her comms crackle to life. She could barely understand the message.
“This is the SAS Daedalus whoever you are you are in violation of a level ten hazard zone and are in danger return to the edge of the anomaly and prepared to be boarded.”
The wormhole was already starting to destabilize, it had a much faster decay than it should have had. She didn’t wait. There was no way for the Daedalus and her escort to follow her through it. Unlike every other wormhole, she’d transited, this one felt like she was riding a bucking bronco at the fall fair. It was all she could do to prevent the fighter from being slammed into one of the edges of the tunnel she had very stupidly torn through a zone of an already unstable space-time anomaly.
*****
Ajay yawned and leaned on his hand. This was the sixth FTL monitoring duty he’d had in a row. No one liked them. Nothing ever happened. No one was dumb enough to make an unscheduled FTL jump within a hundred light years of a System’s Alliance base. It could get their pilot’s license revoked or at least suspended and System’s Alliance FTL authority never said no to jumps unless it was too restricted space, of which there was precious little. So once again Ajay was stuck staring at a monitor where every single dot was green. His eyes drifted shut. He had not gotten much sleep at all in the last four months. Every time he even got close to REM sleep the alarm on his holo-phone would go off. An alarm jolted him awake. He looked around. His eyes went wide when he saw a flashing red dot on his screen. He scrambled to remember the procedure. The ops duty officer rushed over.
“Corporal, what is going on?”
Ajay pointed at the screen.
“Unscheduled FTL activation sir. It shows the exit vector as a level ten hazard zone, classified hazard. Estimated transit velocity was about one hundred light years per hour. Are they suicidal?”
The ops duty officer tapped around the AR HUD provided by his cybernetic eyes he initiated a call to Andromeda Sector Fleet command and control.
“Unscheduled FTL activation detected grid six, sector nine. Transit exit Tango-Alpha-One. Level ten electromagnetic and space-time hazard. Estimated velocity one hundred light years per hour. No secondary transit detected. Please identify craft and arrange intercept.”
The C&C duty officer responded.
“We had no craft on scope in that grid location. Please verify your data.”
The ops duty officer leaned over Ajay’s shoulder while the teenager attempted to verify the data. The ops duty officer stood up.
“Data verified. FTL transit was initiated at that exact grid coordinate. Please intercept.”
*****
Commadore Wolf leaned forward. The bridge of the Daedalus was one of the more serious in the fleet. Commadore Wolf expected excellence and quiet efficiency.
“I’m sorry, Ensign, say again.”
The ensign verified the message one last time before relaying it to the Commadore.
“Sir, we’re being ordered to intercept a ship that initiated an unscheduled FTL jump at all possible speed. They jumped into a level ten hazard zone. Message confirmed. It is authentic.”
The commadore opened a channel to his fleet.
“Emergency FTL jump to attached coordinates. Initiate five minutes. Fleet battle configuration on exit.”
He released the fleet comm button and tapped his fingers.
“This should be entertaining; I just cannot wait to see who was stupid enough to do an unscheduled FTL jump with the entire Andromeda Sector on high alert.”
His XO, Captain Janice Seng, who by all accounts was an uncompromising woman, nodded.
“It will give the crew some practice with interstellar interdiction.”
The commadore nodded.
“Excellent point. We can always improve efficiency of operations.”
He motioned towards the front of the ship. The fleet initiated a coordinated jump. They exited their jump in perfect formation. Almost perfect. The destroyer, Glory was off exit trajectory by zero point zero three kilometers. The commadore frowned.
“XO, ensure the captain of the Glory is reprimanded for his imprecise jump. Thirty meters is bordering on negligence at best, reckless at worst. Launch alert fighters. I want to see this miscreant.”
His science officer was desperately trying to lock onto the target of their search. The commadore tapped his fingers impatiently.
“Why is this taking so long?”
His science officer sounded frustrated.
“Sir, it must be small. Wait I am seeing a massive buildup of… unidentified energies in the anomaly.”
He zoomed into a highly unstable wormhole. He could not get resolution on the target craft the wormhole was causing visual distortion. The commodore punched the armrest of his chair.
“Open a channel all frequencies.”
His comm officer nodded. The commadore addressed the rogue crew.
“This is the SAS Daedalus whoever you are you are in violation of a level ten hazard zone and are in danger return to the edge of the anomaly and prepared to be boarded.”
Whoever it was did not answer. The science officer sounded shocked.
“Sir, mass readings indicate it is not big enough to have an antimatter reactor, let alone wormhole projector. Sir, the unidentified craft is transiting the wormhole. The amplitude of the energy build up is increasing exponentially, we should leave.”
The commadore stood up.
“We are not going to let some piss ant tramp freighter escape, get me a fix on the other end of that wormhole.”
The science officer grabbed the edge of his console as a wave of energy washed over the fleet. Klaxons started blaring. The commadore was forced to hold onto his command chair he snarled out the words.
“Damage report.”
His ops officer answered him.
“Minor damage across all systems and ships.”
The science officer was starting to look extremely worried.
“Sir, that was a low energy wave. It is building up for another pulse that is exponentially stronger. Whoever they were, they are already dead, we need to go sir. Now. The pulses are going to start going faster and if the next one doesn’t destroy us outright, the one after that will. We have three minutes at the most before we will not escape.”
The commadore frowned and sat down he pressed his fleet wide broadcast.
“Initiate emergency FTL jump to Eden system in your best time. We have three minutes before the next energy pulse hits it will cause catastrophic damage.”
One after another the ships vanished in flashes of blue light.
*****
It was just after ten pm Earth standard time. Maria was tinkering with a holo-designer that took up the center of her main floor. She spun the new assault carrier ship design around. It incorporated far more organic technology than those before it. Its main cannon was based on experiments she’d performed with gravitic energy. In effect it used the graviton core that would also propel it to maintain a long-range beam that effectively caused a space-time quake. It would tear anything apart given enough time and power. Such tinkering had produced Allison’s new starfighter, and many other weapon systems.
The line that Amee used to like to call the ‘Oh Shit’ line started beeping. Maria sat on the edge of her desk and tapped accept. It was a rather flustered-looking scientist who used to work with her on Project Stargate. He was holding a tablet, his wrinkled hand held up the device to the holo-recorder.
“Doctor Aurelius, we have detected more of your Temporal Gravimetric waves coming from the sight of the anomaly created by the massive antimatter detonation. The amplitude is off the charts. A fleet was caught in one of them.”
Maria nearly dropped her bottle of Synth-O the last time she had seen that was her sister hopping through time. Her first thought wasn’t that her sister had come back, it was that someone had breached the Project Stargate files. She quickly accessed them and was relieved when she saw they were still untouched. She rubbed her forehead and opened a new comm channel to Andromeda Command. The holo flickered once it happened just out of sync with her Oh Shit line. She looked at the duty officer at Andromeda-1. He looked shocked to see the president.
“I am sorry ma’am; We’ve had several disruptions to communications. Some sort of hyperspace weather.”
Maria nodded.
“Commander, I need every single abnormal event detected in the Andromeda Sector and I need it yesterday.”
He motioned to one of his techs.
“Sending it to you now, ma’am.”
It did not take Maria long to identify the source of the disturbance. There were only three spacecraft that matched the size and mass that were capable of creating a worm hole. Two of them were lost with Enid and Hazel. The last belonged to her niece.
“Allison, what have you done this time?”