Sticking to Manta’s wing helped me cope with the sudden switch from relaxed rock-hunting to dodging away from something. By now, my computer had resolved some of the fuzziness I had ignored as background-static into small, hyper-velocity projectiles, most likely fired from a railgun. Such weapons were far less destructive than the plasma-cannons used by Starfighters, to say nothing of the antimatter-torpedos we carried, but I had just seen a demonstration of their biggest advantage, their stealthiness.

“Are you alright?” Manta asked over our paired channel.

“Yes, Sir.” I reflexively answered, still trying to get enough air into my lungs while the blood was pulsing in my ears.

“Deep breaths, the first time to stare death into the eyes is the hardest. You survived and will be alright.” he said, his voice utterly calm. Drawing upon that calmness, the knowledge that I only had to remain at his wing, watching his back helped me a great deal.

“I have your wing. Let’s check out the other contacts.” I responded, now with a lot more conviction.

At the same time, I kept an eye on my sensors, watching Wildcat and Wolverine on their approach-vector, while Manta let his Starfighter dance through the void, changing vector seemingly randomly. I quickly realised that that had been my mistake, my vector had been mostly predictable, I had slightly changed it when the other two might have needed help, but other than that they could have lined up their shot from millions of kilometers away and I would never have noticed. Another lesson to learn, never be predictable.

A minute later, now with two pairs of Starfighters flying in a loose formation, we approached the contact earlier designated as four, trying to match an object to the ghosts on our sensors. What we found was another rock, tumbling through the void, making me wonder if whatever had jumped into hyperspace had used those rocks to hide, hoping to be mistaken for one of them.

“Let’s check out the last one.” Manta ordered and changed his vector with the rest of us following along.

Meanwhile, the information coming from the Merathorn showed that the rest of Carmine-Squadron, groups 1, 2 and 4 were swarming around her hull, ready to accelerate to reinforce us or, if necessary, defend our home from sudden attack.

We were almost at the last contact, a strange, flickering ghost on our sensors, as if there were a multitude of tiny contacts in tight formation, when Wolverine broke the silence, with a muttered “Damn…”

Along his voice, there was a stream of data, giving us the readings from his slightly closer position. I needed a moment to understand what my computer was telling me but when I did, I understood that there was a problem. What we were seeing had been a spacecraft not too long ago. Now, it was a small cloud of fragments, lazily drifting apart, orbiting the distant primary.

“Captain Burris, we have debris out here. With our Starfighters, we can’t resolve what it might have been.” Manta reported back to the Merathorn, while I kept my sensors directed at the debris while we all hung in the void, matching vector with it. Manta was obviously remembering that only minutes ago, we had been shot at, constantly changing his position, hopping around the void, something I copied, roughly keeping my position relative to him but shifting enough to make distant shots next to impossible.

“Hold position.” was the only order from Captain Burris, making me wonder what he had in mind. There was little we could do with our Starfighters but we had our orders.

One of my hops brought me a little higher, relative to the drifting debris and my sensors picked something up for a split-second. Certain that I had seen a strange flickering, return, I pulled the reading from the recorder, taking a much closer look at the tiny return. What I saw, caused me to clench my jaw in anger.

It was a corpse, of that I could be certain, most likely human and from what my optical sensors had picked up, dressed in a ship-suit very similar to the one I was wearing.

“Carmine 9, Merathorn, Carmine 17 here. My sensors picked up a corpse.” I reported over the open channel, feeling that the image I had recorded was important enough to warrant a direct report. Transmitting it back to the bridge and the rest of my squadron only took moments and with that, it was out of my hand. Now, Captain Burris had to decide what was going to happen.

“Carmine-Squadron, spread out to form an perimeter-patrol. The Merathorn will close in and collect as much from the debris as we can.” Captain Burris ordered. A few moments later, we were assigned a part of the globe the Squadron would form around the Merathorn, ready to defend our home if whatever had been out here was still lurking nearby.

“Feeling ready to take the lead again?” Manta asked as we were flying towards our section.

“I have the lead.” was the only answer I could give to that. I would still have to thank him later and find out how he had known what the strange contacts meant but I was fit to fly. I had learned my lesson and would not make the same mistake again.

Once we had reached our assigned section, I started a lazy dance, letting my Starfighter drift and twist with my whim, listening the gain of my sensors turned up high and letting the random static of the Universe fill my mind, letting it be the music to my dance. It was strangely calming, being surrounded by nothingness my mind drifting and focused at the same time, my body in a state of total relaxation. Maybe because death had reached out to grab me, without me even knowing, but I had managed to slip away, thanks to Manta’s warning.

“Carmine-Squadron, return to base. There’s nothing more we can do here.” Captain Burris ordered after about two hours. Commodore Ming acknowledged the order and I started to accelerate back towards the Merathorn. We had done our job, now, I just wanted to know what had actually happened here. I wasn’t sure if I would be told but I was curious. I had seen a corpse out there, of that I was certain, which meant that someone had blown up a human spacecraft. But what kind of craft? That I just didn’t know, the debris had been too shattered to allow me to make a judgement, even with the Starfighter’s computer. But from the size of the debris-field, I would guess that the original craft wasn’t much bigger than my Starfighter.

Manta and I were amongst the first to return to the Merathorn, mostly because we had been out there the longest. I knew that Group one would remain out there, until we had gained some distance, but for now, we were standing down from general quarters. After matching with the Merathorn, I engaged the automatic retrieval, letting the computer do the rest. It was just easier and somehow, the events of the day were catching up on me, making me a little jittery. It was not the right state to manually thread the needle and I didn’t feel a need to prove myself that I could do it. Almost dying once a day was more than enough for me.

In the hangar, I unlocked the Starfighter, forcibly steadying my legs as they tried to start shaking. The technicians were already waiting for me to disembark, one of them clasping my shoulder for a moment, steadying me, but none of them mentioned that I was a little shaky.

I made sure to talk to them for a moment, just like I had after the few times I had taken the fighter out in training, as if nothing special had happened.

“Cadet Horn, the Captain has asked that we report as soon as we are back on the ship.” Commodore Ryker told me from a few steps away.

As we were walking through the ship, with Commander Siloh and Lieutenant Wirum joining us, I noticed that he glanced at me a few times, as if to make sure I was holding it together. It made me wonder if I looked that bad, to make my commanding officer worry but there was nothing I could do about my appearance, at least not without making the Captain wait. The Commodore led us through the bridge and in a small conference-room just next to it.

There, a woman I assumed to be the commander of the Marines on the Merathorn, due to the fact that she was a Commander wearing their green uniform was already waiting, together with Captain Burris himself. Both had grim expressions on their face that made me somewhat dread what was to come. In addition, a Lieutenant wearing the uniform of the fleet was standing behind the two of them, looking a little uncomfortable.

“Carmine-Squadron, Group 3, reporting as ordered.” Commodore Ryker intoned and all four of us saluted. The salute was returned by both present officers, before the Captain gestured for us to take a seat.

“What we found out there is worrying. The other sections already reported in, now it’s only you, who actually have been out there. But, for the sake of completeness, let’s go over it from the start. Lieutenant Chan, if you would?” the Captain ordered. The naval Lieutenant stood, walking to the front and pulling up information on the screen. While I wasn’t quite familiar with the formatting used, I was able to get a rough understanding, even without his explanation.

What he presented was the sensor-information that led to us launching, the different echoes and traces. None of them seemed to be entirely out of place and the Captain even admitted that the sortie had partially been to give me additional experience, as Commodore Ryker had requested. That particular tidbit, he dropped almost accidentally but it hardly mattered.

Once that part was presented, Commodore Ryker went over what we had found out there, allowing me to remain silent. He mentioned that the sneak-attack using hyper-velocity projectiles was something he had seen before, during the last war, which was why he had recognised the strange sensor-echoes before we were struck.

The readings I had taken right after that attack were pulled up but sadly, they were too distorted to allow us a good identification of the jumping ship, it was merely a ghostly echo, vanishing into hyperspace.

Finally, we got to the debris we had seen and, after a few glances at the inconclusive data we had gathered, the floor was turned over to Commander Callahan of the Federation Marines. A team of her marines, led by her in person, had gone out with the landing-shuttle, gathering as much of the wreck as they could. What they had found confirmed my initial assessment, it had been humans, wearing ship-suits that were virtually identical to Fleet-issue, but not quite. In addition, nothing in the remains of the ship was quite right for the Federation Starfleet, being just a little off.

When the report wound down, the Captain stood, taking the stage himself.

“For now, I order you and your subordinates to remain quiet about what they have seen. I fully expect that it will officially be classified, once we turned over everything to the Intelligence-Agencies. To do that, we’ll continue on to Fleet Base Lysmuta as fast as possible.” he ordered, staring at each of the present officers in turn, as if trying to glare us into silence.

“Dismissed.” he concluded, marching out of the room with the naval Lieutenant in tow.