LOCATION: STO NAVALYARD

  SYSTEM: VARLEN

  DATE: 2400

  After returning to Varlen to make her report, Valeria and the Eclipse were ordered to dock at the naval yard for maintehe yard in Varlen was the only facility on this side of STO space with the clearao hahe top-secret ships. Evehere were some steps she had to take before that could happen.

  It wasn’t like Valeria could simply approach the massive hangars or radio ahead that she was on her way. All of her unications had to gh a tight beam ser link to a stealth satellite that only the Erebus css ships khe location of. From there it unicated to the station and she had to wait for the encoded ping sequehat indicated she was allowed to approach.

  Valeria loved to be in charge of an Erebus css ship, but she despised all the hoops she had to jump through sometimes. She did uand why they were necessary though.

  The other thing she despised was how gcially things moved iO. She had been back for over two months, yet there hadn’t been a respoo her report. She knew Vice Admiral Fletcher was still oation because he had met her shortly after she returned, but she hadn’t heard from him sihen. That all ged an ho.

  Captain Greaves, report to meeting room six as soon as possible.

  -Vice Admiral Fletcher

  She quickly donned her dress uniform and made her way to the meeting room. Most of the people she passed in the corridors were engineers and stists, but occasionally she saw other members of the Navy. The st time she had been in Varlen, there had been quite a bit more Navy personnel and ships. It wasn’t a good sign that most were now gohe only reason she could think of for the ck of Navy personnel was that they had been shipped out. If she was right, the flict with the pirates on the far border must be heating up.

  Valeria arrived outside the door and knocked. She was quickly ushered in by Fletcher’s voice.

  “Sit Captain,” the maured to one of the chairs around the rge fereable. “I imagine you are w why no rescue attempt has been made for Captain Krieger and his crew yet?”

  “Does it have anything to do with how empty the naval base is, Admiral?”

  The man nodded. “That’s part of the reason. The other is that the STO leadership is denying us ships to go and rescue them.” Fletcher held up his hand to stop Valeria’s question.

  She closed her mouth and waited for the man to finish.

  “The reason for that is the STO Leadership doesn’t uand the nature of the rescue. They think it's just another ship. Ohat was where it wasn’t supposed to be. They are not aware of its covert and top-secret nature.”

  “What? Why wouldn’t they be aware of that?” she asked in fusion.

  “Because I didn’t tell them. Project Erebus is a bck books project. The less they know, the better, but it does put us in a bit of a bind.”

  What Fletcher just admitted made her realize she was flying a ship that would be written off at any time. That was not a fortable realization.

  “If you had reported that pirates captured the ship, then we could have sent out a fleet. The people in charge would like nothing more than to deny the pirates access to STO teology. Eveheir goal would have been to ralize the teology instead to recover it. Because the ship and its crew were rescued, the STO leadership deemed it a low priority with the ongoing hostilities on the old Coalition border. They feel that the ship, or at least the crew will be returned in time.”

  “They couldn’t know that,” she stated.

  “You’re right, they ’t know that for sure, which is why I’ve called in some favors and mao get three frigates and three corvettes together along with a salvage ship to go retrieve our property. I want you to take the Eclipse and act as a scout for the fleet. The ships trailing you aren’t cleared to know about the project, so I want you to jump ahead and make sure the way is clear. The ships should be here within awo days, so get your crew ready, you get underway in six hours.”

  After being dismissed, she hurried back to her ship while sending an all-hands recall through her . The ship was already topped up on supplies and fuel, so she would be ready to go as soon as her people got back.

  She was just about to ehe hangar where Delta’s Eclipse was being held when an all-statio went out and the interihts started fshing red.

  UNKNOWN MILITARY VESSEL IN SYSTEM, ALL CREW TO A STATIONS!

  Did a pirate stumble into the system? She hurried to the bridge of her ship, all the while sending orders to her crew to get the Eclipse’s systems online.

  She was nearly ready to unch when the red alert was ged to yellow. Before she could wonder why, she received a from Fletcher.

  It seems we have a visitor, and they brought our ship and our crew back. I want you out there keeping an eye on things while the rest of the fleet stationed in Varlen moves to intercept. Use caution, Captain. Your report didn’t mention them having a w frigate, yet they seem to have one now.

  -Vice Admiral Fletcher

  What? There is no way they could have built a frigate in three months. So where had they gotten one?

  ***

  The jump into Varlen was a nerve-wrag one for Alexahe ship was w fine, but he couldn’t predict what the STO Navy might do. Predictably, their arrival stirred up the fleet. Alexander worked quickly to remove the cables from the Epsilon’s Dawn and any sign that he had been there.

  While he didn’t think they would begrudge him having to run power cabling to get the ship here, he wasn’t going to risk it. Alexander wao get back to the Fury as quickly as possible to avoid any unnecessary plications.

  sidering the information that Na was texting him, he should probably hurry. Acc to the text, the STO fleet was already heading in their dire. The optical sensors even spotted aealth ship leaving the facility. He was gd Lucas programmed an algorithm into the puter to pick out anomalies caused by the stealth ships. Without it, it would be nearly impossible to locate those ships without the jump wakes to calcute off of or randomly spotting stars being occluded.

  Alexander had an ulterior motive for having the man program something like that. He wao see if they could locate the alien ships the same way they spotted the STOs. So far nothing had popped up. Mingyu would have said something if the puter had alerted them. He didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad ohe aliens who put him in this body likely had better teology than humanity. The code Lucas wrote might be pletely useless at deteg their ships.

  That was an issue for ter though. For now, he had to deal with the STO.

  A few hours ter, Alexander was back aboard the Fury and on the bridge with Captain Na. They were far enough outside the system that the STO ships were still on approach. He figured jumping in farther out was safer than jumping in at the normal jump point. This gave them time to scope out the situation, and for Alexao have cleared off the other ship.

  The STO ships hadn’t tacted the Fury yet, nor had they respoo the hails sent their way or the emergency bea going off on the Dawn. Na had already released the ship and moved far enough away to jump if the situation turned sour. Alexander was hoping that wouldn’t happen and that they would reach out ohey got close. If everythio pn, he wouldn’t o announce his presehe STO seemed jumpy enough without a-foot-tall robot appearing on their ss.

  “The STO ships are now within missile range,” Na said as he gripped the arm of his chair tighter. “They appear to be holding there. The stealth ship is moving above us. Maybe to cut us off, it's hard to tell. Even with the program trag it, that ship keeps vanishing off the ser.”

  “Do your best to keep track of it. I expect they will tact us shortly.” He would o give the data to Lucas when they got back to see if he could improve the trag software a bit more.

  Alexander roven right a few mier when the lead ship, a cruiser, if he had to guess, sent a tight beam ser their way.

  “B.S.E. Eden’s Fury, state your business in this system!” a rather imperious voice ordered.

  “Not the frie response, but at least they aren’t shooting at us. Go ahead and reply, Captain Na.”

  The captaihe ed response, letting the STO fleet know that they had rescued the crew of the ship ahere to return both.

  “That is not an STO vessel,” the man said before his e quickly cut off. unicatiouren mier, but the speaker was someone different.

  “This is Vice Admiral Fletcher, who am I speaking to?”

  Mingyu looked at Alexander, his eyebrow going up. “Do you wao talk to him?”

  Alexahought about it for a bit before shaking his head. So far the STO had only unicated via radio. So it didn’t make much seo hide in the background.

  “Hello, Vice Admiral. My name is Alexander Kane, owner and operator of Blue Star Enterprises, or BSE as our ship is designated.”

  The li quiet for a bit again, likely due to radio speed g. When the voice returhe man sounded relieved. “Thank you for returning our people and property, Mr. Kane. Would it be possible to send a ship to dock with yours to retrieve our crew?”

  As if, he almost ughed out loud. “We would prefer to trahem to one of your ships via our shuttle, Vice Admiral.” There was no way he was letting the STO board Fury.

  “Very well, please have your pilot dock at the STO Blueridge.” The li quiet after that.

  “Whie is the Blueridge?” Alexander asked as he turo Na.

  “It’s the cruiser. If you don’t mind Alex, I would like to fly the shuttle there myself.”

  “Are you sure? What if they take you prisoner or something?” He wouldn’t put it past the STO.

  “That’s exactly why I ’t ask any of my crew to pilot the shuttle over there. Plus, I’m familiar with military w. I handle myself if they get grabby.”

  “If you’re sure, be my guest.”

  The man nodded ahe bridge. Alexander followed him shortly after to gather up Krieger and his people.

  ***

  “Ma’am, this ship has a full suite of ser ons.”

  She frow that. She had received orders from the Admiral to fnk the ship and gather as much data as possible. It was an ugly vessel, with a mostly ft bow, and blocky outli reminded her of some of the ships she had seen in museums as a small child. They had paihe ship to make it look better, but she doubted anything would make this ship look good. It did look familiar though.

  “Ensign, pull up the image of the space statioook when we visited Y6X-3H2. Now overy the s of this ship over the ships attached to the station.”

  “It’s a match for the empty frame, Ma’am… How is that possible?” the fused sensor operator asked.

  How ihat system didn’t have nearly enough infrastructure to refit a ship in three months. Yet it was clear they had done just that. They must have some form of advanced automation. EveO’s Navalyard took nearly a year to put together a new ship and that was sidered fast. Three months was beyond impressive and she had to wonder if this was what ossible without all the bullshit and politics?