You are woken from a nap, off-duty of course, by your tablet chiming with an incoming FTL message. You sit up form your cot, scrub the sleep from your eyes, and fumble your tablet into your lap. Not feeling quite awake you reach over and pick up the coffee mug from the bedside table and slug back the sludge at the bottom of the cup. It's utterly vile and leaves you gagging even as it shocks you properly awake. Looking back to your tablet you thumb in the unlock code and drag open the FTL message.

TO: CAPT Lawrence Warde, HMSCS Night Horse.

Your report re: golrak presence in the Murnmore system has been received. Navy elements are assembling to address the issue posthaste. Your ship has been deemed too valuable to risk at this time. Thus you are hereby ordered to withdraw to the Celesmore system by the most expedient route at the earliest opportunity. The Night Horse has been given clearance for priority refit re: lingering damage from the battle of Azur.

RDML Edwarde Day the 4th, commanding officer, Celesmore Navy Patrol, sends his congratulations for a most excellent job in locating the hidden base of a most hated foe. Allow me to add my own.

SIGNED: RDML Aquila Barantyn the 2nd, commanding officer, Surveyor's Corps, Celesmore detachment.

You lay back on you cot to star at the overhead. That is about the most unambiguous 'good job, now get the hell out of the way of the real Navy' message you have seen in a while. On one hand it smarts to be shoved out of the action so unambiguously. You are commanding the very close kin to a Timbersnake class ship, one of the best scout ships the Navy has ever had. On the other you can see the logic behind the orders. It even makes sense to you, though the way this 'Rear Admiral Aquila Barantyn the 2nd' has decided to just order you about rubs you the wrong way.

Sitting back upright you decide that a little malicious compliance might be in order. The “most expedient route”, by the book, is a direct warp jump back to Celesmore. And the 'earliest opportunity' is, technically, right the hell now. Still, it would be the word of a captain against that of a rear admiral if, or rather when, things go completely prune shaped for the Night Horse warp jumping out and alerting the golrak to human presence in the Murnmore system. Accordingly you decide to get any order to do exactly that in writing first. You tap the reply button and begion to compose a message.

TO: RDML Aquila Barantyn the 2nd, commanding officer, Surveyor's Corps, Celesmore detachment.

Please confirm your orders to return to the Celesmore system by “most expedient route at the earliest opportunity”. At present that would be an uncharted, repeat, uncharted Munrnmore to Celesmore warp jump after breaking silent running for a full power run to safe Warp jump distance in the middle of the Murnmore system with a golrak squadron present in intercept position.

SIGNED: CAPT Lawrence Warde, Commanding, HMSCS Night Horse.

You send it off and reach for your uniform trousers. Whatever is going to happen today is going to start in the the next few minutes. In a sense it already has but only the first bureaucratic rumblings of a proverbial landslide. By the time you have made it out of your quarters your tablet dings again.

TO: CAPT Lawrence Warde, HMSCS Night Horse.

Amend my previous to “most expedient route at the earliest opportunity within reason.” Your arrival back at Celesmore is expected within twelve days.

SIGNED: RDML Aquila Barantyn the 2nd, commanding officer, Surveyor's Corps, Celesmore detachment.

You wince at the follow-up tug on your leash but at least your superior officer is smart enough to see reason when it bites him on the ass instead of doubling down on micromanagement via FTL comm link. You send back a 'received and understood' confirmation and start running the math in your head. Murnmore to Azur is four days, and Azur to Celesmore is another five. Add in a day to transit in Azur takes ten, so you have two days to extract yourself from the Murnmore system and still make the Rear Admiral's deadline. You claim a fresh mug of coffee from the synthesizer and head for the bridge. Extracting the Night Horse from the Murnmore system under silent running won't be the easiest thing you have ever done but with two full days to play with it is no impossible task.

February 11th, 8252

It takes only a day to curve the Night Horse around the Murnmore system and into a position where the golrak don't have a snowball's chance in a supernova of intercepting your run up to the warp jump. You breath out a sigh of relief as the Night Horse makes the translation with barely a shudder and you stand your crew down to transit stations. Everyone is on edge just waiting for the Kleinova drive to strike again but it hums along contentedly for now.

February 14th, 8252

It has been three days of a subtle, almost tinnitus style hum reverberating through the Night Horse at odd intervals. Midshipman Huckle traced it back to the Kleinova drive but declined to work on it mid warp jump. You agreed and commended him on his sanity and on his willingness to share the stockpile of earplugs from the engineering stores. Midshipman Engel looks a bit more haggard then usual but puts up a sufficient facade that you decline to bully him into the auto doc for an evaluation.

Just after midnight ship time there is a soft thump of something bouncing off of the hull. You call up a damage report but don't see anything obviously wrong on the inside of the Night Horse. Flipping over to the external components you curse as the Deep Void Sensor Array diagnostics come back as damaged / degraded. Fixing that is a near routine task given how easy it is for the delicate sensor masts to be damaged by a stray micrometeorite or the like. The problem is that it requires a space walk. The crew and egghead automatons can probably handle the job without risking any of your human crew, but it will have to wait until after the Night Horse translates back to reality in the Azur system.

February 16th, 8252

Midshipman Huckle is unsuccessful in his efforts to repair the deep void sensor array in the one day you had in the Azur system. You debate delaying for the extra day to give him a second go at it but decide not to given that the Night Horse is headed in for a brief refit in less then a week. The warp jump out of the Azur system goes of without a hitch, but the damn hum is back less a bit over six hours later. You resign yourself to the feeling of fatigue when you awake in the morning.

February 21st, 8252

The Night Horse arrives in the Celesmore system a full day before Rear Admiral Barantyn's deadline. You call ahead to confirm vector and the refit berth that you were promised. Irritatingly you find that the reservation for the berth was made for march first and that, this being a leap year in the official Star-Empire calendar, you will have to wait an extra day for the berth to clear. You shrug off the micromanagement turned management from the Rear Admiral and mark down the delay instead to the commander of the Celesmore Yards, an officer from of the Office of Ship Construction, doing his own malicious compliance dance against a micromanaging request.