The Warbler lurched beneath Kimberly, hit by the blast of venting air. The sirens of both the Fata Morgana and the Warbler activated, screeching in her her ears.
It was the single most terrifying sound she could have ever heard. She had heard it in earnest once before, on the UTFS Pere. It was the sound that indicated that, for some reason, the thin walls that separated one from the void had been breached.
It was the single most terrifying sound she could have ever heard. She had heard it in earnest once before, on the UTFS Pere. It was the sound that indicated that, for some reason, the thin walls that separated one from the void had been breached.
The Warbler lurched beneath Kimberly, hit by the blast of venting air. The sirens of both the Fata Morgana and the Warbler activated, screeching in her her ears.
It was the single most terrifying sound she could have ever heard. She had heard it in earnest once before, on the UTFS Pere. It was the sound that indicated that, for some reason, the thin walls that separated one from the void had been breached.
Struggling to remain calm, she opened a comm to Weapons, but before she could even begin to speak, the Warbler’s alarms cut out.
“Midshipman Caspar to Bridge, airlock sealed.”
Kim paused. “Thank you, Midshipman.” She muted the line, then opened one to Atmospherics. “Bridge to Atmospherics.”
“Go for Atmo.” Hans Henrick replied.
“Raise onboard air pressure back to one atmosphere.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“You really treat them like they’re idiots, don’t you?” Isa asked.
“No.” Kim replied, not looking back to Shishani. “I treat them like they’re fallible. Because they are. There’s no room for error on a starship—an extra layer of redundancy isn’t going to hurt anyone. You’re from Tactical—I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
Isa laughed. “That’s rich. Where’s your Away Team? Oh, that’s right—you sent them into an unsecured environment without comms, and someone with actual experience in infantry ops had to go rescue them. You’re from the Fleet—I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
Another comm line chirped, saving Kim from actually having to reply to that. “SENCOM to Bridge.” The voice was Celia Abrams.
“Go for Bridge.”
“We’ve regained Comms with our Picket Drones and the Away Team. Picket indicates contact with D cruisers in seven minutes.”
“Thank you, SENCOM. Patch us through to Away Team.”
There was a pause. “Who do you want?”
Kim rolled her eyes. “I apologize, isn’t Ensign Silver the commander of the Away Team?”
“Ensign Silver’s KIA, Commander.”
Kim’s heart practically stopped. Ten had been a huge asset for the Warbler, an irreplaceable part of the crew. Only Ervin Norton was more important for the functioning of the ship in here mind, and...
“Patch us through to whoever the Second-in-Command is.” Isa said.
“Who is this? SENCOM to Bridge Actual, who’s there with you?”
“This is Bridge Actual.” Kim said, glaring to Isabella. “One of our guests is up here. Feed me through to Ensign Freeman.”
“Copy that.” There was static for a moment, then the name on the display changed.
“Bridge to Ensign Freeman?” Kim asked, still reeling.
“Go for Freeman.” Cassidy was sobbing.
“What’s your ETA at the ship?”
“Two, maybe three minutes?”
Kim swore. “Alright then. How are you all?”
“Silver... Ten’s dead. No-one else was seriously hurt though, and we picked up someone from the ship’s contingent.”
“Agent Red found you then?” Isa asked, stepping over to the comm.
“Ensign Freeman, that was the commander of the Tactical detachment on this ship. You’ll answer her questions.” Kim said, trying to reassert herself. This was her ship, her bridge. Shishani might have had the right, had the Republic still existed, to commandeer the ship, but as things stood Kim wasn’t going to just hand her the Warbler.
“Understood, Captain Shan. Commander, yes, we were approached by your Agent. Agent Red was, in fact, vital in preventing further KIAs in our engagement with the D.”
“Thank you, Ensign.” Isa stepped away from the comm, looking at Kim questioningly. Kim shook her head, and Isa said “Bridge out.”
Kim turned back to the display of the Warbler’s battlespace. “So, we have four minutes of flight time before we hit the D.” Kim said, tracing a glowing path in the air thoughtfully. “Isabella, what’s the mass of the Fata Morgana?”
Isa paused. “Two hundred thousand tons, unloaded and with no relative motion.”
Kim nodded, and closed her eyes. “That’s doable then.” She said after a moment of thought, then opened the comm line to Ansibilics. “Bridge Actual to Ansibilics.”
“Go for Ansibilics.”
“Elise, I need a Fold calculated.”
“Yeah, I gathered—what specifically?”
“Can you do the math for an Ilatawa Assist, using the three D ships and the Fata Morgana as foci?”
“I can... It’s a Tactical Fold though, Commander, it’s going to drop us out around the nearest massive body.”
“Run the math. I just want our options open.”
“Copy that. Ansibilics out.”
Kim turned back to Isabella. “Before you ask, it’s basically a Gravity Assist in Foldspace. You use a ship’s Ansible to change the characteristics of the Fold so that the ship periodically dips back into normal Spacetime. Almost all the Folds we use are set up to preserve both the relative velocity and heading of the ship upon its exit from Foldspace. That’s why they take so long to calculate. You can skip a lot of that time if you’re willing to only preserve one of those, or even just exit Foldspace at your destination, and correct for Delta-V and heading on arrival. If you do them sequentially, you can get as close to c as you want.”
“In Terran, please?”
“You set up the fold so that you have an absurd amount of Delta-V when you exit. This is normally bad because it means that you can hit a planet at speeds we measure in fractions of c, or the speed of light. We’re in Interplanetary Space, so it doesn’t matter. If we’re pulling oh-point-one c out there, we’re going to lose those Cruisers and have time to actually calculate a fold.”
Isa shook her head. “Why not just blow them out of the sky? You have R-Bombs aboard, right?”
Kim frowned. “What the hell is that?”
“Never mind, even Antimatter will do it. Why don’t you just vaporize them from here?”
Kim shook her head. “Antimatter escalation. The D have Antimatter weaponry, but don’t use it immediately. At the size that our battlespace is, they’ll have ample time for one of the other cruisers to let off a salvo of their own Antimatter-equipped drones once they realize that one of their own ships just vanished. That’s what the Ilatawa solves.” Kim stepped aside, letting Isabella see what she had sketched out.
The simulation played out in the air, the Warbler launching from the Fata Morgana’s hulk, spinning in three dimensions, before vanishing into Foldspace. It reappeared by one of the D cruisers, a single Drone with an Antimatter warhead slipping out of the launch tubes, streaking towards the ship. Then, the Warbler vanished again, and repeated the process by the second D starship. After the third iteration, it vanished, and reappeared a few light-seconds away, with, as promised, a velocity indicator that was using the speed of light as the unit.
Isa nodded. “I see. But if that works-.”
Kim held up a hand to silence Isabella as the comm chirped again.
“Ansibilics to Bridge.”
“Go for Bridge Actual.” She’d have to get her crew to start using that ‘Actual’. It hadn’t been necessary when the only people on the bridge had been those that were supposed to be there, but now that Shishani was apparently going to spend time here, that would have to change.
“First analysis of the Ilatawa Fold shows that it’s doable. But there’s one thing... Aetna keeps insisting that we can’t do this. He says it’ll cause Arrhythmia, but that’s not what the Anscomp says. Do I proceed with plotting the Fold?”
Kim frowned. She turned to Isabella. “Did your AI have any insight on Ansibilics?”
Isa shrugged. “Not that I know of. And should I... Am I being useful here? Should I go?”
Kim nodded. “Yes. Excellent. Both of those.” Then, the small part of her brain that still put weight on such things decided to kick in with some tact. “Can you go check out Weapons, make sure they’re combat-ready?”
“Will do.”
Kim breathed deeply, glad to be rid of the First Citizen. It felt odd to think of Isabella as the technical ruler of Tridentine and most of everything within a few dozen light-years of it, but it was true. If only there had been anything to rule, that was.
A minute later, she finally heard the airlock cycle, and the Away Team was aboard the ship.
Breathing deeply, she keyed the PA System online. “All hands to battlestations, repeat, all hands to battlestations!” She opened up a line to Deborah Chambers, the Deck Officer for Weapons. “Bridge Actual to Console One, do you have all hands aboard?”
“No, ma’am! We’re missing Ensign Silver.”
“Copy that.” She cycled to the next Deck Officer, Celia Abrams. “Bridge Actual to SENCOM Commander, do you have all hands aboard?”
“Affirmative.”
“Bridge Actual to ESS Commander, do you have all hands aboard?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Bridge Actual to all hands, report eyes on our Tactical Agents.”
“This is Console One. We have Agents Tesari, Red, and Augustin.”
“Copy that. Bridge to anyone near Agent-” She struggled to remember the name “-Ketteth, report-.”
She froze. A voice echoed through her head, not her own. It belonged to someone else, something that felt utterly alien to her.
Agent Ketteth is aboard. The First Citizen orders you to launch the ship.
Kim froze, then tried to brush it aside, but her arm was moving already. “Bridge Actual to Engines. Take us out.”
The Warbler rose off the flight deck, and drifted forwards, out of the hanger. The three D ships were barely visible as pricks of light in the distance.
“Bridge Actual to Console One.”
“Go for Console One.”
“I need three Antimatter drones on standby. Set them for fully autonomous flight.”
“Copy that. We’ll set that up as soon as it’s authorized.”
“Bridge Actual out.”
Kim called up Aetna. “Authorize three Antimatter drones for launch. Give both Bridge and Console One the authority to fire.”
“Yes, Commander. Also, you have Ansibilics continuing to work on the model for the ship to make an Ilatawa Fold. I must advise you that this is ill-advised, and will result in the Warbler entering an arrhythmia with-.”
“Stop. Even if you’re right, some risk is acceptable here, but you’re not, so it’s irrelevant. Also, where’s Ervin? I need him up here.”
“The Executive Officer is in Console Six at the moment.”
Dammit. Of course he was. “Order him back to the bridge. I need him here, not in a Console.” Although after Ten’s death, we’ve only got six pilots. We’re at three-quarters capacity, and it’s our first actual engagement since Saray.
A siren flared up next to her—a proximity alert.
“SENCOM to Bridge, unknown small craft inbound! Matches trajectory, no class, ETA at Warbler T-20 seconds.”
Kim whirled to face the display of the Warbler’s battlespace. “SENCOM, ID it. See if it’s broadcasting or if we can spoof the guidance.” It was over thirty feet long though, a third the size of the Warbler—the kinetic energy of that thing at these speeds would tear the gunboat apart.
“It’s broadcasting on an Xon-war-era Federation Starfighter band—nothing intelligible though.”
“Run a decrypt against known Federation encrypt keys. Order Weapons to engage, and Engines to match its acceleration.”
“Commander, those were Starfighter frequencies for a reason—there’s only so much bandwidth, and that part of the spectrum is the best at transmitting voice-.”
“I’m aware. Run the decrypts.”
There was a pause—only half a second or so, but far too short for them to have actually found the key. “We have the key. It’s identifying as Terran, though. There’s someone on the other end.”
“Patch me through.” There was static for a moment. “UTFS Warbler to unidentified Starfighter, be advised that you are on a trajectory to violate our battlespace. Do not proceed.”
“Shut up, Shan.” The voice was Isabella Shishani’s. Kim swore. “Deactivate your Ansible. We’re going to fix the problem here.”
“No. Isabella, bail out of the fighter. We’ll pick you back up after we deal with the D cruisers.”
“Turn off your Ansible, don’t execute that fold. That’s an order.”
Kim tried to reply, but the comm went dead. She swore again—this was just one of the many things she hated about Isabella Shishani.
“What the hell was that?” She heard Ervin ask.
“Isabella Shishani is an idiot. She doesn’t understand anything she’s doing here. Shut off that damn proximity siren. Tell it that fighter’s a friendly. Shut Celia Abrams up too—she keeps calling me.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Ansibilics to Bridge.”
“Go for Bridge Actual.”
“Fold calculated. Tell me when to activate it.”
Kim closed her eyes, and breathed deeply. “What’s the time between folds set at?”
“The Folds will take place at half-second intervals.”
Kim added Deborah Chambers to the line. “Bridge Actual to Console One. Stand by to fire your Antimatter warheads.”
“Copy that, Bridge.”
“Ansibilics, you are go for the Fold.”
The starscape flickered. A D cruiser filled the sky, barely a half-mile away. “Fire one.” A missile flared away, seeking the unmistakable heat signature of the cruiser.
The starscape flickered again, and the second cruiser was visible from a different angle. “Fire two.” In the distance, there was a flash as the first cruiser vanished, a substantial amount of its mass converted into pure energy by the drone’s Antimatter. Kim caught the glimmer of a point of light in the distance, inbound from the trajectory that the Battlespace display indicated they had come from...
The starscape flickered again, the third cruiser visible. “Fire three.” Kim said as the Warbler shot past, the relative velocity of the two ships too fast for any distinct view. That point of light was growing brighter. Acting on instinct, she shouted “Ansibilics, belay that fold!”
It was too late to take action though, and the starscape flickered once again.
It its place was static. A burning white light shone off to one side, a single constellation visible far away.
“Bridge to Ansibilics, we’re getting some strange readings. This isn’t normal Spacetime.”
Kim nodded. “What’s the background Ansiblic radiation like?”
“Off the charts. The Ansible’s indicating that it’s entered an Arrhythmia with at least two others, but we’re not suffering any dilation.”
Kim nodded. The brightness off to the side was beginning to fade rapidly. “Can you reverse that Fold?”
“As in fold us back to where we were? I’ll run the math—Folds are directional, so it’s not a simple operation.”
“Noted.” The Warbler lurched beneath her, and then the stars reappeared. There was still a burning light, but they were clearly in normal Spacetime once again. Kim breathed deeply. “Ansibilics, it looks like we won’t be needing that Fold. Pull any data we have from that before the Anscomp dumps it.”
“Copy that.”
“Bridge to SENCOM, reestablish contact with that starfighter. We’ll need to pick the pilot up.” And have a shouting match, of course.
This entire mission had been horrible. First there was the fact that she had lost another crewmember. Then there was the strange Fold—something had to be off about their Ansible. Then, of course, the paramount disaster, and the indirect cause of the other two, was the fact that, out of the tens of billions of humans in the universe, Isabella Shishani had been one of the ones to survive.
It was the single most terrifying sound she could have ever heard. She had heard it in earnest once before, on the UTFS Pere. It was the sound that indicated that, for some reason, the thin walls that separated one from the void had been breached.
Struggling to remain calm, she opened a comm to Weapons, but before she could even begin to speak, the Warbler’s alarms cut out.
“Midshipman Caspar to Bridge, airlock sealed.”
Kim paused. “Thank you, Midshipman.” She muted the line, then opened one to Atmospherics. “Bridge to Atmospherics.”
“Go for Atmo.” Hans Henrick replied.
“Raise onboard air pressure back to one atmosphere.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“You really treat them like they’re idiots, don’t you?” Isa asked.
“No.” Kim replied, not looking back to Shishani. “I treat them like they’re fallible. Because they are. There’s no room for error on a starship—an extra layer of redundancy isn’t going to hurt anyone. You’re from Tactical—I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
Isa laughed. “That’s rich. Where’s your Away Team? Oh, that’s right—you sent them into an unsecured environment without comms, and someone with actual experience in infantry ops had to go rescue them. You’re from the Fleet—I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
Another comm line chirped, saving Kim from actually having to reply to that. “SENCOM to Bridge.” The voice was Celia Abrams.
“Go for Bridge.”
“We’ve regained Comms with our Picket Drones and the Away Team. Picket indicates contact with D cruisers in seven minutes.”
“Thank you, SENCOM. Patch us through to Away Team.”
There was a pause. “Who do you want?”
Kim rolled her eyes. “I apologize, isn’t Ensign Silver the commander of the Away Team?”
“Ensign Silver’s KIA, Commander.”
Kim’s heart practically stopped. Ten had been a huge asset for the Warbler, an irreplaceable part of the crew. Only Ervin Norton was more important for the functioning of the ship in here mind, and...
“Patch us through to whoever the Second-in-Command is.” Isa said.
“Who is this? SENCOM to Bridge Actual, who’s there with you?”
“This is Bridge Actual.” Kim said, glaring to Isabella. “One of our guests is up here. Feed me through to Ensign Freeman.”
“Copy that.” There was static for a moment, then the name on the display changed.
“Bridge to Ensign Freeman?” Kim asked, still reeling.
“Go for Freeman.” Cassidy was sobbing.
“What’s your ETA at the ship?”
“Two, maybe three minutes?”
Kim swore. “Alright then. How are you all?”
“Silver... Ten’s dead. No-one else was seriously hurt though, and we picked up someone from the ship’s contingent.”
“Agent Red found you then?” Isa asked, stepping over to the comm.
“Ensign Freeman, that was the commander of the Tactical detachment on this ship. You’ll answer her questions.” Kim said, trying to reassert herself. This was her ship, her bridge. Shishani might have had the right, had the Republic still existed, to commandeer the ship, but as things stood Kim wasn’t going to just hand her the Warbler.
“Understood, Captain Shan. Commander, yes, we were approached by your Agent. Agent Red was, in fact, vital in preventing further KIAs in our engagement with the D.”
“Thank you, Ensign.” Isa stepped away from the comm, looking at Kim questioningly. Kim shook her head, and Isa said “Bridge out.”
Kim turned back to the display of the Warbler’s battlespace. “So, we have four minutes of flight time before we hit the D.” Kim said, tracing a glowing path in the air thoughtfully. “Isabella, what’s the mass of the Fata Morgana?”
Isa paused. “Two hundred thousand tons, unloaded and with no relative motion.”
Kim nodded, and closed her eyes. “That’s doable then.” She said after a moment of thought, then opened the comm line to Ansibilics. “Bridge Actual to Ansibilics.”
“Go for Ansibilics.”
“Elise, I need a Fold calculated.”
“Yeah, I gathered—what specifically?”
“Can you do the math for an Ilatawa Assist, using the three D ships and the Fata Morgana as foci?”
“I can... It’s a Tactical Fold though, Commander, it’s going to drop us out around the nearest massive body.”
“Run the math. I just want our options open.”
“Copy that. Ansibilics out.”
Kim turned back to Isabella. “Before you ask, it’s basically a Gravity Assist in Foldspace. You use a ship’s Ansible to change the characteristics of the Fold so that the ship periodically dips back into normal Spacetime. Almost all the Folds we use are set up to preserve both the relative velocity and heading of the ship upon its exit from Foldspace. That’s why they take so long to calculate. You can skip a lot of that time if you’re willing to only preserve one of those, or even just exit Foldspace at your destination, and correct for Delta-V and heading on arrival. If you do them sequentially, you can get as close to c as you want.”
“In Terran, please?”
“You set up the fold so that you have an absurd amount of Delta-V when you exit. This is normally bad because it means that you can hit a planet at speeds we measure in fractions of c, or the speed of light. We’re in Interplanetary Space, so it doesn’t matter. If we’re pulling oh-point-one c out there, we’re going to lose those Cruisers and have time to actually calculate a fold.”
Isa shook her head. “Why not just blow them out of the sky? You have R-Bombs aboard, right?”
Kim frowned. “What the hell is that?”
“Never mind, even Antimatter will do it. Why don’t you just vaporize them from here?”
Kim shook her head. “Antimatter escalation. The D have Antimatter weaponry, but don’t use it immediately. At the size that our battlespace is, they’ll have ample time for one of the other cruisers to let off a salvo of their own Antimatter-equipped drones once they realize that one of their own ships just vanished. That’s what the Ilatawa solves.” Kim stepped aside, letting Isabella see what she had sketched out.
The simulation played out in the air, the Warbler launching from the Fata Morgana’s hulk, spinning in three dimensions, before vanishing into Foldspace. It reappeared by one of the D cruisers, a single Drone with an Antimatter warhead slipping out of the launch tubes, streaking towards the ship. Then, the Warbler vanished again, and repeated the process by the second D starship. After the third iteration, it vanished, and reappeared a few light-seconds away, with, as promised, a velocity indicator that was using the speed of light as the unit.
Isa nodded. “I see. But if that works-.”
Kim held up a hand to silence Isabella as the comm chirped again.
“Ansibilics to Bridge.”
“Go for Bridge Actual.” She’d have to get her crew to start using that ‘Actual’. It hadn’t been necessary when the only people on the bridge had been those that were supposed to be there, but now that Shishani was apparently going to spend time here, that would have to change.
“First analysis of the Ilatawa Fold shows that it’s doable. But there’s one thing... Aetna keeps insisting that we can’t do this. He says it’ll cause Arrhythmia, but that’s not what the Anscomp says. Do I proceed with plotting the Fold?”
Kim frowned. She turned to Isabella. “Did your AI have any insight on Ansibilics?”
Isa shrugged. “Not that I know of. And should I... Am I being useful here? Should I go?”
Kim nodded. “Yes. Excellent. Both of those.” Then, the small part of her brain that still put weight on such things decided to kick in with some tact. “Can you go check out Weapons, make sure they’re combat-ready?”
“Will do.”
Kim breathed deeply, glad to be rid of the First Citizen. It felt odd to think of Isabella as the technical ruler of Tridentine and most of everything within a few dozen light-years of it, but it was true. If only there had been anything to rule, that was.
A minute later, she finally heard the airlock cycle, and the Away Team was aboard the ship.
Breathing deeply, she keyed the PA System online. “All hands to battlestations, repeat, all hands to battlestations!” She opened up a line to Deborah Chambers, the Deck Officer for Weapons. “Bridge Actual to Console One, do you have all hands aboard?”
“No, ma’am! We’re missing Ensign Silver.”
“Copy that.” She cycled to the next Deck Officer, Celia Abrams. “Bridge Actual to SENCOM Commander, do you have all hands aboard?”
“Affirmative.”
“Bridge Actual to ESS Commander, do you have all hands aboard?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Bridge Actual to all hands, report eyes on our Tactical Agents.”
“This is Console One. We have Agents Tesari, Red, and Augustin.”
“Copy that. Bridge to anyone near Agent-” She struggled to remember the name “-Ketteth, report-.”
She froze. A voice echoed through her head, not her own. It belonged to someone else, something that felt utterly alien to her.
Agent Ketteth is aboard. The First Citizen orders you to launch the ship.
Kim froze, then tried to brush it aside, but her arm was moving already. “Bridge Actual to Engines. Take us out.”
The Warbler rose off the flight deck, and drifted forwards, out of the hanger. The three D ships were barely visible as pricks of light in the distance.
“Bridge Actual to Console One.”
“Go for Console One.”
“I need three Antimatter drones on standby. Set them for fully autonomous flight.”
“Copy that. We’ll set that up as soon as it’s authorized.”
“Bridge Actual out.”
Kim called up Aetna. “Authorize three Antimatter drones for launch. Give both Bridge and Console One the authority to fire.”
“Yes, Commander. Also, you have Ansibilics continuing to work on the model for the ship to make an Ilatawa Fold. I must advise you that this is ill-advised, and will result in the Warbler entering an arrhythmia with-.”
“Stop. Even if you’re right, some risk is acceptable here, but you’re not, so it’s irrelevant. Also, where’s Ervin? I need him up here.”
“The Executive Officer is in Console Six at the moment.”
Dammit. Of course he was. “Order him back to the bridge. I need him here, not in a Console.” Although after Ten’s death, we’ve only got six pilots. We’re at three-quarters capacity, and it’s our first actual engagement since Saray.
A siren flared up next to her—a proximity alert.
“SENCOM to Bridge, unknown small craft inbound! Matches trajectory, no class, ETA at Warbler T-20 seconds.”
Kim whirled to face the display of the Warbler’s battlespace. “SENCOM, ID it. See if it’s broadcasting or if we can spoof the guidance.” It was over thirty feet long though, a third the size of the Warbler—the kinetic energy of that thing at these speeds would tear the gunboat apart.
“It’s broadcasting on an Xon-war-era Federation Starfighter band—nothing intelligible though.”
“Run a decrypt against known Federation encrypt keys. Order Weapons to engage, and Engines to match its acceleration.”
“Commander, those were Starfighter frequencies for a reason—there’s only so much bandwidth, and that part of the spectrum is the best at transmitting voice-.”
“I’m aware. Run the decrypts.”
There was a pause—only half a second or so, but far too short for them to have actually found the key. “We have the key. It’s identifying as Terran, though. There’s someone on the other end.”
“Patch me through.” There was static for a moment. “UTFS Warbler to unidentified Starfighter, be advised that you are on a trajectory to violate our battlespace. Do not proceed.”
“Shut up, Shan.” The voice was Isabella Shishani’s. Kim swore. “Deactivate your Ansible. We’re going to fix the problem here.”
“No. Isabella, bail out of the fighter. We’ll pick you back up after we deal with the D cruisers.”
“Turn off your Ansible, don’t execute that fold. That’s an order.”
Kim tried to reply, but the comm went dead. She swore again—this was just one of the many things she hated about Isabella Shishani.
“What the hell was that?” She heard Ervin ask.
“Isabella Shishani is an idiot. She doesn’t understand anything she’s doing here. Shut off that damn proximity siren. Tell it that fighter’s a friendly. Shut Celia Abrams up too—she keeps calling me.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Ansibilics to Bridge.”
“Go for Bridge Actual.”
“Fold calculated. Tell me when to activate it.”
Kim closed her eyes, and breathed deeply. “What’s the time between folds set at?”
“The Folds will take place at half-second intervals.”
Kim added Deborah Chambers to the line. “Bridge Actual to Console One. Stand by to fire your Antimatter warheads.”
“Copy that, Bridge.”
“Ansibilics, you are go for the Fold.”
The starscape flickered. A D cruiser filled the sky, barely a half-mile away. “Fire one.” A missile flared away, seeking the unmistakable heat signature of the cruiser.
The starscape flickered again, and the second cruiser was visible from a different angle. “Fire two.” In the distance, there was a flash as the first cruiser vanished, a substantial amount of its mass converted into pure energy by the drone’s Antimatter. Kim caught the glimmer of a point of light in the distance, inbound from the trajectory that the Battlespace display indicated they had come from...
The starscape flickered again, the third cruiser visible. “Fire three.” Kim said as the Warbler shot past, the relative velocity of the two ships too fast for any distinct view. That point of light was growing brighter. Acting on instinct, she shouted “Ansibilics, belay that fold!”
It was too late to take action though, and the starscape flickered once again.
It its place was static. A burning white light shone off to one side, a single constellation visible far away.
“Bridge to Ansibilics, we’re getting some strange readings. This isn’t normal Spacetime.”
Kim nodded. “What’s the background Ansiblic radiation like?”
“Off the charts. The Ansible’s indicating that it’s entered an Arrhythmia with at least two others, but we’re not suffering any dilation.”
Kim nodded. The brightness off to the side was beginning to fade rapidly. “Can you reverse that Fold?”
“As in fold us back to where we were? I’ll run the math—Folds are directional, so it’s not a simple operation.”
“Noted.” The Warbler lurched beneath her, and then the stars reappeared. There was still a burning light, but they were clearly in normal Spacetime once again. Kim breathed deeply. “Ansibilics, it looks like we won’t be needing that Fold. Pull any data we have from that before the Anscomp dumps it.”
“Copy that.”
“Bridge to SENCOM, reestablish contact with that starfighter. We’ll need to pick the pilot up.” And have a shouting match, of course.
This entire mission had been horrible. First there was the fact that she had lost another crewmember. Then there was the strange Fold—something had to be off about their Ansible. Then, of course, the paramount disaster, and the indirect cause of the other two, was the fact that, out of the tens of billions of humans in the universe, Isabella Shishani had been one of the ones to survive.