Heels clacked in a hurried rhythm on the hard vinyl flooring of the Independent Systems Alliance Combined Joint Armed Forces Command Headquarters. The first pair of heels, leading the way, belonged to Chief of Naval Operations, Fleet Admiral Edwina Bradford, military head of the Alliance Space Navy. She was walking determinedly down the hallways of massive complex known colloquially as “the Stage”, the name everyone but the state bureaucrats used. It was an uninviting complex of grey carboncrete formed in the rough shape of a relatively low theatre stage (the main building) and layers of interconnected taller towers, “bleachers” (the adjoining buildings and annexes), surrounded by some actually beautiful parks and green lungs. The Stage completely lacked the architectural beauty and extravagance of the Royal Navy’s Admiralty House on Aurora, or the impressive and tastefully understated opulence of Admiralty Palace on New Malta. Instead, The Stage was big, ugly, to the point, and most important of all, economic.

Edwina Bradford was a woman of roughly average height for her homeworld of Thrace, with light brown hair that sported more than a few premature lines of grey, tied very carefully into a regulation bun, and the beginning of crow’s feet appearing at the corner of her dark eyes. Her facial features were very angular, and her nose slightly crooked. No one could convincingly claim she was any sort of beauty, but she didn’t have to be. The 29th century was the time of cheap and very non-invasive cosmetic surgery and even molecular reconstruction, but Bradford was elevated above that; she didn’t give two shits about what people thought of her appearance. When she had her back turned, and they assumed she wasn’t listening, the men and women in the Stage called her “Boadicea” after the Iceni warrior queen of far antiquity. Of course Bradford knew about the moniker, and she was privately proud of it, wearing it as a sort of personal badge, taking delight in the Amazonian comparison. But right now, pride in her nickname was far from her mind.

Pushing open another set of doors on one of the many upper level floors of the Stage’s central building, she instinctively straightened her cream white officer’s tunic. The Alliance Space Navy’s uniforms were decidedly less ornate than the Royal Auroran Navy ones. The officer’s service uniform consisted of a traditional-cut cream white tunic with golden buttons, dark gold bands with thin red borders on the cuffs to denote rank, a white inner shirt with black necktie, and black shoulder pads bordered by gold lace. The trousers were black with white or gold lining, and polished black boots. Hats were uniformly peaked caps for officers, black for junior ones and white for senior. Enlisted ranks had a much simpler getup, which was a white or black outer-shirt (depending on the season) over white shirt and black tie, white or black trousers, black boots, completed by a black side cap with white lining and a silver tassel hanging from the front tip. This was the service uniform at least; just like the Royal Navy, the mess dress and parade uniforms were more elaborate, but they also had more of an air of mass-production than the Royal Navy’s, and only senior officers were allowed tailored outfits.

This was what most of the surprised onlookers were wearing, as they watched the highest ranking officer of the entire Alliance Space Navy briskly walk through the Foreign Analysis floor of the ASN Office of Naval Intelligence. Surprised, and shocked, because the other clacking boot heels that followed in Edwina’s wake belonged to six Alliance Marines, dressed in olive drab fatigues, tan aramisteel plate carriers and arm- and leg armour, tan integrated tactical combat helmets, and loaded carbines in their hands. They walked in lockstep right through the floor, personnel, both uniformed and civilian, giving them a wide berth, and after almost bursting through another set of doors, they stepped into an outer office. The confused staff officers looked at the newcomers and at each other, not knowing what to say or do. A secretary in civilian clothes stepped up to Edwina.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am, but can I enquire what this is about?” she asked, casting uncomfortable glances at the marines in full combat gear.

“You may not,” was the curt reply from Bradford, and she shoved the secretary aside.

She opened the door to a large inner office, the marines fanning out on each side of her, hands on their weapons, but not trained at anything or anyone. The office was the standard Stage fare; mass-produced cheap Elysian cedar furniture, a number of data readers and plots, and shelves containing old-fashioned dossiers, logs, and hardcover books. A briefing table filled the middle of the room, with the end dominated by a large work desk; behind which sat the person Edwina was looking for.

Admiral Philippe ibn Houdhri el-Ahmadi looked up from one of the desk’s computer screens, a thin smile and an enigmatic expression on his face.

“Ah, Ma’am Bradford, what a delightful surprise, how can I be of assistance?”

Ibn Houdhri was just a little bit taller than Edwina, slightly built, his bronze face clean-shaven and long black hair kept in a ponytail under his peaked cap. His eyes were milky grey, and one almost got the feeling that he had the ability to see right through a person to the very soul within. He spoke slowly and clearly in a flanging voice, courtesy of a throat implant; he had been born mute but that was hardly a challenge for modern medicine. Thing is, ibn Houdhri had the option of switching his implant for one that sounded completely natural, but he chose to keep this one, which had a tendency to produce an unnerving and uncanny sense of otherness in others when hearing him speak. The psychopath probably got off on that, Edwina mused.

“Sergeant,” she said in an icy tone, not even bothering with addressing ibn Houdhri’s comments, “carry out your orders.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” one of the marines said and stepped forward, one arm reaching out.

“Sir,” he said to ibn Houdhri, “I must ask you to surrender your sidearm and come with us, if you please.”

“Why, of course, Sergeant,” the admiral replied, getting slowly up from the desk with both hands clearly visible, “I don’t have the faintest idea of what is going on, but you’re just doing your job, as we all ultimately are to the best of our abilities.”

That last comment was accompanied with a quick glance in Edwina’s direction, and she ground her teeth together. The other admiral slowly took his pistol out from his belt holster, and handed it grip first to the marine sergeant, who upon receiving it secured it by popping out the magazine and ensuring it didn’t have a round chambered. He nodded, and two other marines stepped up and flanked ibn Houdhri.

“May I ask,” he said calmly, his expression completely unchanged, “what this is all about? Am I being detained on some charge, or is this all a practical joke?”

“Admiral Philippe ibn Houdhri el-Ahmadi,” Edwina said, hands clasped behind her back, “you are under arrest for,” being an absolute moron, a spineless lickspittle, a gigantic fuckup, a shit-caked cockroach, a complete waste of oxygen that deserves nothing more than a bullet between the eyes, “conspiring to commit treason against the Alliance military, the Alliance Charter, and its people, as well as gross mismanagement and overreach of your mandate as Commander, Office of Naval Intelligence. Sergeant Mátyás, take him away.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” the marine sergeant replied, and communicating with hand gestures, the marines formed a cordon around Edwina and ibn Houdhri, and escorted them back out unto the office area, the ONI staff there looking on completely nonplussed. Walking behind the arrested admiral, Edwina smirked to herself. If this does not spread the word about who’s really wearing the pants around here, I don’t know what will.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you right, did you just say I have to release that slimy son of a bitch and drop all charges?”

“Look, I want to nail his balls to the proverbial cross as much as you do, but in this case you’re going to have to give the order to let him out of custody, and politely ask the Provost Marshal’s Office to slide those charges down to the very bottom of their priority list.”

Edwina Bradford got up from her office couch, headed over to a cabinet and fished out a bottle of Valparaiso brandy, poured a significant amount into her coffee cup, put the bottle down on the table hard, before sitting down in the couch and taking a long sip of the now spiked beverage. Permanent Undersecretary John Davies and Permanent Undersecretary Hitoshi Tachibana looked at each other, wordlessly sharing their sympathy with the Chief of Naval Operations. Permanent Undersecretary Intira Chirathivat leaned across the low table and grabbed the bottle, and poured some into her own coffee.

“Assuming you don’t mind, of course?” the petite flaxen-haired bureaucrat said, to which Edwina simply waved at her in a dismissive gesture. Chirathivat smiled and took a sip.

It had been Davies who had drawn the short straw and turned into the bearer of bad news, and Edwina could tell that he was being truthful about wanting to punish ibn Houdhri. It still didn’t take the sting out of what should have been a moment of triumph for her turning into a circus act.

“Please,” she said at length, letting silence linger in her top-floor office for a few moments, “explain to me why I should let that traitorous bastard off the hooks now that I’ve finally gotten him dangling, good and proper?”

“Because,” Tachibana said, “as soon as this reaches the Capitoline Hill, you will receive a mail asking you to release him, and this mail’s language will not be as polite and sympathetic as we’ve tried to be today. And if you don’t comply, there will be a brief period of nothing happening, and then you’ll find yourself axed come next naval finance review session in the House of Planets, with your personal résumé suddenly covered by black spots, courtesy of the Kelley administration.”

Hitoshi Tachibana, the Permanent Undersecretary of the Navy, was on the surface an agreeable sort, with short black hair and a bespectacled pair of intense brown eyes. He was slight, and didn’t really fill out his government-issue charcoal suit, but that just made people underestimate his sharp intellect and dedication which had kept him in his office for close to forty years.

“I beg your pardon,” Edwina said, taking another sip of her cognac-coffee, “have I just woken up from a months-long coma and no one bothered to tell me? Last time I checked the calendar, it was June, which by my calculations is still a fair bit of time out from the general elections on 13 October. When I looked at a news stream last, Ferdinand Kametz was still President of the Independent Systems Alliance, and Terrence Rodrigo Kelly was still only the leader of the Liberal Progressives Party.”

“Edwina,” John Davies, Permanent Undersecretary of the Exterior, portly and greying but sharp as a rapier, leaned forward in the lounge chair and clasped his hands together, “you’re a very smart woman, and you know which way the political winds are blowing. The Kametz administration and the Independence Party have been in rough chops for three years now, they even lost twenty-eight seats in the last House of Planets election, and the Liberal Progressives added thirty-five. Kelley and the LibPros are walking into Constitution Palace on 14 October, that’s a surety.”

“And when that happens,” Chirathivat filled in, “Kelley and his cronies are going to make it their top priority to have as many of their friends and supporters in high positions in the Navy. And ibn Houdhri happens to be one of the Navy’s fiercest advocates of the Liberal Progressives’ promised ‘no holds barred’ foreign policy where the Union and Aurora is concerned. That fact is no secret, and he and his fellow hardliners are, perhaps unsurprisingly considering they are military, legion within both the Alliance Navy and Army.”

Undersecretary of Defense, Dr Intira Chirathivat was everything Tachibana was not. Olive skinned and fair haired, fashion-conscious and with a flair of the dramatic, she had originally been an academic and political analyst for a major policy institute in New Zanzibar on Elysium. She had ambitiously rubbed shoulders with the real shakers in the Alliance political system and managed two years ago to land the post as Permanent Undersecretary of Defense. She and Tachibana’s portfolios sort of overlapped, but like their actually elected “superiors” in the Council of State, Tachibana was in charge of the civilian administration of the Alliance Space Navy, with all its associated major divisions, such as Logistics Command, Doctrine and Training Command, Naval Special Warfare Command, etc. Chirathivat had to deal with the rest of the many-headed hydra that was the ISA armed forces, including the system defence forces, the Alliance Army, the Militia, the Orbital Defence Command, and also had the unenviable task of being in charge of negotiating with civilian contractors and firms. She absolutely loved it.

Edwina sipped some more of her drink and used the short break to take a mental hike. The Independent Systems Alliance had been formed in 2569 on top of the corpse of the mismanaged Verge Federation, which had emerged in the 2300’s as a confederated alternative state to the increasingly dictatorial United Earth Alignment. The Verge Federation had, in Edwina’s opinion, been a good idea in principle, but had floundered quickly by being too loosely organised, with some polities clearly outmuscling others economically. Without any sort of central government or political authority, it hadn’t taken long before the Verge Federation had simply imploded, splitting into about two dozen single- and multi-system polities. In the 2560’s, the four systems of Epsilon Eridani, Mordecai, Procyon, and Gibraltar had slowly banded together to create the Elysium Tetrarchy, named after Elysium in Epsilon Eridani. These were the most populated and most industrialised planets and system economies in the former Verge region, and formed the nucleus of the emerging Independent Systems Alliance.

This initiative had been spearheaded by the visionary politician Jeffrey Burnside, and after his premature death due to a congenital disease, his daughter Sophia had continued his work. It had been slow going, but the disjointed and rudderless planets of the former Verge Federation were for the most part convinced peacefully to join the fold. What set the ISA apart from the former Federation was the much more federated system of a central democratically elected political authority, split between the legislative branches of House of Planets and the Charter Chamber, with the Council of State as the executive branch. The House of Planets was elected every four years with a dozen representatives from each ISA member world, regardless of population and gross system production, and elections to the Charter Chamber was done every eight years, with five members from each world. The House of Planets was the first floor, where proposed bills were presented and debated before sent to the Chamber House for approval or, if rejected, sent back to the House for amendment.

This system had served the early ISA well enough, but in present times, June 2874 CE, the ISA had expanded to include fifty-nine inhabited worlds, and had experienced an extreme boom in membership the past sixty years, especially following former President Uriel Konstantin and his aggressive foreign policy. This had bloated the House and the Chamber in terms of representatives, and had in effect turned into a political morass. In order to effectively cut through this Gordian knot of stalled legislature and endless debates and amendments to bills, the public service class on Elysium, Marduk, Starfall, and Triton (the capital worlds of the Elysium Tetrarchy) had turned to their own to circumvent the plodding elected bodies. This was why the Permanent Undersecretaries were in Edwina’s modestly furnished office and dictating what her next course of action should be, instead of the actual elected politicians serving as secretaries in the Council of State. It was simply more expedient this way, and it applied to all levels of government in the ISA; the bureaucrats were in effect the ones who ran the entire titanic structure of the Alliance, and made all the hard decisions while receiving none of the credit. Nor the blame, for that matter.

Democratic? Hell no, but it kept things running instead of having politicians confer with literally billions of constituents every time a bill that wasn’t purely routine came up in the House and Chamber. Did it rub Edwina completely the wrong way? Fuck yeah, it did; she had joined the Alliance Space Navy sixty-three years ago with the blue-eyed and idealistic vision of doing her part in serving the Alliance and its populace, only to learn upon reaching flag rank at Commodore, that the House and the Chamber was basically window dressing, a fig-leaf for the real movers and shakers behind the proverbial curtain. She had been bitter after learning that, but now, twenty-eight years on, she had become pragmatic (or nihilistic) enough to appreciate the expediency.

“You all seem to forget,” she continued after her slightly uncomfortably long pause, “that the fuckwit that is ibn Houdhri is actually charged for treason and having grossly mismanaged the command he has been given.”

She put her cup down on its saucer emphatically, and the porcelain sang.

“For the love of ever-loving fuck, the man subverted funds from the overall Office of Naval Intelligence budget to deploy state of the art long-range reconnaissance buoys in not one, not two, but three foreign systems. He had ONI agents commandeer civilian shipping on multiple occasions these past fifteen months and lead these ostensibly ‘civilian’ Alliance-flagged merchant ships into Union space, and used them as fronts to drop off drones and buoys. If the Maltese, Corinthians, or, God forbid, Aurorans chance upon these, we’re screwed six ways to Sunday. The Blues aren’t morons, they’re able to logically discern who would benefit most from deploying stealth drones in their systems; or, failing that, at the very least take said drones and buoys apart and trace the parts back to us. Goddammit, ibn Houdhri is carrying out what is essentially a one-man political brinkmanship campaign, and he’s going to drag this entire star nation down with him in the vortex of violence and death!”

Edwina was perfectly aware she was almost shouting at this point, but that didn’t stop her from delivering her point with a certain amount of pathos. Davies and Tachibana looked at each other again, while Chirathivat sipped her own spiked drink while looking at the wall behind Edwina. It was Tachibana who broke the tension.

“Regardless what ibn Houdhri has or hasn’t done, I hardly think his actions are that influential; after all none of his assigned agents were ever caught by the Union.”

Edwina fixed him with a withering glare.

“Not influential? The man has broken about a dozen interstellar laws that predates the United Earth Alignment, and have even diverted funds from other ONI divisions are, I might add, are of more direct importance to our nation, like, oh I don’t know, counterespionage. Not to mention that I will look like the galaxy’s largest idiot if let him off scot-free now after having him arrested in front of the entire ONI staff.”

“You have yourself to thank for that particular conundrum,” Chirathivat interjected, “you did yourself an extreme disservice by ordering a Marine fire team to suit up in actual fucking combat armour, and parade them down one of the most important floors of the Stage. Damn it Edwina, you’re in the Joint Services HQ, you could have grabbed any team of roving shore patrol officers, private security guards, hell, even Army military police, but you had to go the extra mile to get Marines to arrest him. You’re just lucky that ONI personnel are bound by oath and law to secrecy, so there is a possibility that the Provost Marshal’s Office might manage to wrangle some sort of gag order on this as well, but don’t put money on it.”

Okay, in hindsight, that had been a tactical blunder, Edwina was forced to admit, but like hell I was going to let this opportunity pass by without humiliating that rat as much as possible.

“So, disregarding all of that, what now?” she said out loud, accompanied with a weary sigh and another coffee-brandy sip.

“First,” Davies said, leaning back in his lounge chair, “as we’ve already said, you’re going to have him released. Second, you need to remove him from the position as Chief of Office of Naval Intelligence.”

The CNO’s eyes sparkled a bit at that and her heart did a little flip of excitement.

“Wait, so I still get to punish that self-important toad?”

“Ah, in a manner of speaking,” Tachibana responded, damn it, are they telepathically connected or something? “Just please consider the optics of the situation.”

Davies put his elbows on his knees and folded his hands in a serious gesture.

“Let us for a moment entertain your idea of a worst-case scenario, that one of the Union militaries discovers one of the buoys that ibn Houdhri’s ONI agents have planted. For the sake of this hypothetical, let’s go with Corinth. The Corinthian military intelligence types take said buoy apart, discovers that the unmarked parts can, in fact, be traced back to the Independent Systems Alliance, because of the particulars of the titanium extracted from worlds or asteroids that exist in orbit of stars with this or that particular radiation frequency. We know how to do that, and there’s no reason to believe other star nations don’t either, so that argument in favour of obscuration is out of the window. Next up is counting on one hand which interstellar polity has the most to gain from deploying monitoring equipment in obscure spots within Royal Union systems. Any analyst with more than three brain cells will quickly come to the conclusion of the ISA.”

“So, here’s the kicker,” Chirathivat took up the baton, “if you boot ibn Houdhri to janitorial duty right now after a two-year stint as head of ONI, you’re going to paint us as the killer with a smoking gun still in our hand to the rest of the galactic community. So, he needs to be promoted laterally, as it were.”

Edwina’s face formed a grotesque mimicry of disbelief.

“Excuse me, what the flying fuck?”

“Please, Ms Bradford,” Tachibana said, “set aside your personal feelings or even your moral obligations in this case. Believe me when I say that war with the Royal Union and Aurora is the last thing the people who actually know what is going on in the ISA want, and this is one more step to legally sidestep that issue. John here has been sending missives to his people on New Malta, Corinth, Antioch, and Samos for days now to act with the utmost indignity should this kind of allegations emerge. We’re sort of banking on luck at this point, that the Blues don’t happen upon the drones and buoys for some time, but it’s basically a question of time.”

Grabbing the porcelain cup and draining the last of her drink in one go, Edwina fixed the three with a glare that would have made any junior officer relieve their bowels.

“You three chucklefucks are actually suggesting, nay, ordering me to not only approach the Provost Marshal’s Office and tell them to release that slithering reptile that impersonates an Alliance Space Navy officer, but then proceed to give him a position that befits his rank? Am I correct so far?”

Tachibana sighed heavily, while Davies loosened the top button of his shirt, and Chirathivat rediscovered that previously interesting spot on the wall behind Edwina.

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Edwina said, reaching for the bottle of brandy still on the table, and re-filled her cup, this time sans coffee.

“You will of course have full jurisdiction to what position the recalcitrant admiral should assume next,” Chirathivat said, downing the rest of her own drink.

“Well, I assume I should be grateful for that,” Edwina said with more than a bit of sarcasm colouring her tone, “although considering he is a full admiral, there are only a few positions in the ASN he can, as you say, laterally, be assigned to without causing a stir.”

“It does, however, sound like you have a destination in mind,” Tachibana said, something like apprehension in his voice.

“Where he can do the least damage,” was Edwina’s reply, “and which would incidentally place one of my trusted subordinates into a position where a person could do the most damage. I’m speaking of course of ON-”

“I think we all go that proverbial memo at this point,” Chirathivat said with a dismissive gesture, before reaching for the same bottle and filling some of her own cup.

“Well then,” Edwina said after a sip of pure spirit, and a following grimace that she hoped she suppressed sufficiently for the others not to notice. “You’ll know I’m talking about Capitolis Fleet. Admiral Chantelle Montmorency, the current commander of the largest fleet in the ASN, has for the entirety of her career been a supporter of my cause, has been an exemplary officer, led her commands to extremely good results in inter-fleet wargames, and, most importantly apparently given what has gone down, possesses a conscience and a pretty damn good moral compass. Losing her as the commander of the capital systems fleet commander will suck, but having ibn Houdhri bound to the capital systems fleet would mean he could only deploy his ships to the four systems of the Elysium Tetrarchy, and not, say, fucking Angevin or Valerian. It limits his movement, physically, tactically, and strategically, to Epsilon Eridani, Mordecai, Gibraltar, and Procyon. That’s actually a win in my book.”

“That does seem like the most expedient and logical conclusion to this particular problem,” Tachibana said, scratching his clean-shaven chin.

“Naturally,” Davies said, “Montmorency might experience this as a demotion, but I trust in your diplomatic skills, Ms Bradford, to smooth that one over.”

“Please,” Edwina replied, taking another sip of the strong alcohol, damn, it was only three in the afternoon, “I have known Chantelle for many years, and while yes, she might feel despondent at first, I know she’ll rise to the occasion. Plus, having a consummate officer like her in command of ONI, if only for a short while, will do wonders for that shady bunch of folks. Plus, she will be stepping into a new position, as you political vultures pointed out, that will absolve her of all blame, considering that we did this before the Union or Aurorans actually discovered the drones and buoys that ibn Houdhri illegally had deployed.”

The boatswain’s mate put the silver pipes to his lips and played the ancient high-pitched tunes that denoted the arrival of a senior officer onto the ship. Fifty-six Royal Marines, in black fatigues and black plate carriers, wearing their trademark green berets presented arms, the full complement of the HMS Carcharodon’s marines that weren’t on duty, and the rest of the welcome party wearing their black-white or black-gold battle dress uniforms. Sub-lieutenant Kayden Blanchard stepped out of the ranks to salute the party exiting the sub-nosed shuttle in the middle of Carcharodon’s boat bay, performing the equally ancient ritual of admitting guests on board a warship.

Lord Hartcastle, flanked by Sir Edwin Doughty and the Captain of the Fleet, Post-captain Lady Susanne Hawkins of Oakborough, walked down the gangway of the shuttle, and saluted the about a century younger lieutenant.

“Permission to come aboard, Sir?” the admiral asked, with an easy smile of his face, well-used to this ritual and trying to ease the young officer’s evident nervousness.

“Permission granted, Sir,” Blanchard replied, snapping to attention, “welcome to the Carcharodon, it is an honour to welcome you on board, Sir.”

“Pleasure is all mine, Lieutenant,” Hartcastle replied with a polite nod, and turned his attention to Commander Lysimachos and Lieutenant Commander Hazard who stood a few paces back. For some ancient reason that had been lost over the millennia, it was always one of the most junior officers on board a warship that welcome distinguished guests; not only in the Royal Navy, but most space navies. The actual Captain of a ship always waited until after this formality was completed, and had to wait even more if a flag officer had appointed said ship as their flagship. Despite the urgent and serious nature of the reason Hartcastle was on board, this ceremony was always obeyed to the letter.

“My Lord Hartcastle,” Lysimachos said while saluting, “it is my honour to offer you the full hospitality of Carcharodon, and introduce you to my First Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander Leonetta Hazard.”

Hartcastle nodded his thanks, and to the shouted order of the commander of the Royal Marines on board, Lieutenant Hakim Al-Jalal, the side party snapped out of attention, turned on their heels and started to exit the boat bay, their duty done.

“Allow me in turn,” the admiral replied, “to introduce you to my Chief of Staff, Commodore Sir Edwin Doughty, and my Captain of the Fleet, Post-captain Baroness Oakborough.” Susanne Hawkins was obviously Amaranthine in origin, since she was almost as tall as Hartcastle and her skin was a crisp bronze. The post of Captain of the Fleet was a temporary posting, and worked closely in tandem with a fleet’s chief of staff; where the COS would be in charge of synchronizing a fleet commander with other flag officers of a fleet’s staffs, the Captain of the Fleet would do the same with the captains and bridge crews handling a fleet’s ship.

“I take it,” Doughty said after everyone had exchanged salutes, “that Rear Admiral Holland is on board?”

“She’s been on board for the better part of seven hours now, Sir,” Hazard said, and started to lead the party out of the boat bay and towards a set of gravlifts.

“I bet she had a rather sheepish look when she stepped on board, I reckon,” Doughty said with an accompanying chuckle, but Lysimachos shook his head.

“Actually, she looked like wanted to throttle me, and I’m pretty sure only the presence of the side party prevented her,” he said and rubbed his neck for emphasis, which only made Doughty chuckle even more.

The gravlift took them straight up to the captain’s cabin, located at the very foot of the bridge superstructure.

“I trust,” Oakborough said once the five were confined to the small lift car, “that you’ve handled the situation with the discretion it behoves; after all, OPSEC needs to be airtight on this one until we get marching orders from Admiralty.”

“My Lady,” Lysimachos said a bit uncomfortably, “due to the nature of how we came about the contact, more or less half of the officers on board, the Boat Bay personnel, and by now, at least most of the Royal Marines and senior Engineering personnel. The rest of the crew knows that something happened, which was resolved rather quickly with most of them standing down from action station after less than an hour.”

“Our officer of the watch felt she had no choice but to beat to quarters, Ma’am,” Hazard supplemented, “which meant that all off-duty personnel were sent to action stations, and the hastily added comment ‘this is not a drill’ did little to douse the flames.”

“Even so,” Lysimachos cut in, “this is a ship of seven-hundred and fifty souls, keeping something like this secret would be almost impossible.”

“I guess your exile is still in effect for a few more days then,” Hartcastle said, “but if your hunch is correct, I think you’ll get a pat on the back from Admiralty in good turn. And if not officially, then at least you’ll get one from me.”

The lift car came to a halt and the occupants walked the short distance to the captain’s cabin hatch, being saluted by the two Royal Marines on sentry duty. The captain’s cabin on a relatively small scout cruiser like Carcharodon was not nearly the same size as the huge flag officer’s quarters on major ships of the line like Resolute, but they still had a common area that doubled as dining and briefing room, an entertainment corner, a small office, heads, bedroom, and an attached pantry. Already seated by the long table in the common room was Rear Admiral of the Black Freya Holland, a frankly impressive amount of printed sensor readings, preliminary engineering reports, and tablets scattered about. She rose quickly as the others entered and saluted, but Hartcastle waved her down again. Hazard activated the cabin’s privacy shield as she closed the hatch behind her, and the others took their seats around the table.

“I take it the buoy is underway to Resolute as we speak, correct?” Oakborough said as she sat down and grabbed one of the tablets and started skimming the charts displayed on it.

“It was loaded by the same Boat Bay crew who brought it on board almost nine hours ago in a pinnace in the Supply and Maintenance Bay, and took off before your own shuttle launched, Ma’am.” Lysimachos said, and poured what was his seventh or eighth cup of coffee of the day from a pot on the table.

After quickly discerning what they were dealing with, the bridge officers of Carcharodon had stood the superfluous crew down, picked just enough Boat Bay people, Engineering personnel, Royal Marines, and pilots they required to bring the object on board, before hiding it in one of the storage bays in Engineering. Lysimachos had immediately contacted Swiftsure and Holland, who had made best possible time from the other side of Hercules’ Hood, whereupon Holland and a small group of officers and Engineering personnel had gone over, before both cruisers had under full military power headed back to New Malta orbit, tight-beaming Resolute with a communiqué. Now, six hours and change later, both Carcharodon and Swiftsure were hovering at rest in the relative shadow of the large flagship.

“This,” Holland said with a wave of her arm at the scattered material, “is what the combined Engineering types of both ships have managed to compile over the course of the past eight hours. As you can see, there isn’t a whole lot we can say with any sort of certainty without actually disassembling the buoy, but we left that for the flagship’s engineers and Fleet Intelligence, so they can form their own opinions.

But what is clear, corroborated by Lieutenant Commander Eltze, Lieutenants Mittelstadt, Gage, and Milner, is that the object in question is without a doubt a long range, long endurance observation buoy. It is fitted with a passive grav-pulse detection array, a high power telescope, thermal sensors, and a self-contained miniature fusion bottle, all of this covered by several layers of coolant-filled photon-absorbing armour plating. Deployed where it was in the middle of a gas giant’s ice ring, it was for all practical purposes invisible unless someone happened to trip over it, like Lysimachos’ boys and girls did.”

“And we’re sure it’s not simply one of the newer types of New Maltese buoys that they for some reason forgot to tell us about or put in the log?” Doughty offered, though of course he didn’t believe it particularly likely. Holland shook her head.

“For one, this buoy is much larger than anything in the New Maltese arsenal, and it is specifically tailored for low detection emissions while absorbing as much data input as possible. The thing screams stealth, to the point where it doesn’t even have a communications array for dumping its data; it instead has an extremely short range beam laser, meaning the recipient of the buoy’s findings must pass within only a few thousand kilometres, and turn their own beam receivers towards that particular location.”

“All of this information has been uploaded to these tablets,” Hazard said, “and as a separate but security-locked log entry. None of this has been transmitted electronically from this ship.”

“Good, Lieutenant Commander,” Hartcastle said, stroking his beard thoughtfully, “make sure it stays that way. Your crew is unfortunately going to have to spend a few more days in lockdown until we have heard what the Admiralty thinks about this. I’ll flag one of the fleet’s destroyers to take the physical evidence back to the capital, about a two week trip for a ship of that size. Return answer will probably be by signal, but still, that’s almost three weeks. I’m sorry to do this to you, Lysimachos, especially since you’ve actually managed to stumble upon something of extreme importance, both militarily and politically. But if this is what we think it is, believe me when I say that you’ll all be rewarded.”

“By ‘think it is’, you’re referring to an ISA spy drone, right?” Hazard asked, drawing an angry glare from Holland.

“Too early to say, Lieutenant Commander,” Hartcastle said with an apologetic shrug, “but let’s just say I have a very important meeting to schedule in Admiralty Palace in St. Angelo, both with our own senior officers, but also those of the New Maltese navy and the members of the Council of Princes.”

“You just might,” Doughty said, putting a security lock on one of the tablets, “have stumbled upon evidence of a star nation preparing for all-out war.”