I rushed out of the space suit and into my dress uniform before saying goodbye to Gunny and Jacky. The Comms room was close to the bridge but that was on the other side of the ship so it took me a couple of minutes to get there. In the meantime, Ellie had already gathered up most of the officers. Luna was waiting on me by the door.

“Hey, Commander.” She gave me her holo-stick so I could open the file when I wanted to.”

“I guess you have no idea either what this important message is all about?”

“No clue.” She shook her head.

“Hmmm… I don’t have a very good feeling about this…”

“Me neither.” She agreed.

“Who are we still missing?” I looked around the room.

“I’m pretty sure we are only missing Eva.”

Indeed, I could not see her anywhere. That’s when the door behind us zoomed open again.

“Sorry I’m late, someone slipped and stabbed themselves with a fork just before I was going to leave.

“Oh shit. Are they okay?”

“Yeah. It was a relatively minor injury, but it could’ve been worse.”

I looked at Eva.

She looked back at me and then motioned towards the holo stick I was holding.

“Oh, right. Sorry, the entire fork thing pulled me out of my concentration.” I opened up the holograph. “Ellie, please lock the room and make it sound-proof.”

“Yes, Commander.” With an audible click, the doors all locked. If Ellie was a murderous AI, or bound by foolproof directives not to harm the crew, this would probably not be a good situation, although if that were to happen, there were manual mechanical overrides from the inside to open the doors just in case.

“Okay, let’s see what this is all about.” I opened the message interface.

“Authentication required from the commanding officer and their second in command.”

“Commander Lauren Davis.” I replied and put my hand on the hand outline.

“Lieutenant-Commander, Luna Moore.” Luna did the same, making the holograph light up in green. The screen then switched to show an envelope with a red one in the corner.” A slightly ridiculous sight as no one had used envelopes in ages. But hey, change is not easy for institutions like that. I clicked it open and a video message started playing.

We saw the entire admiralty board sitting in front of us at a long table. Within the center, the overall Commander of the armed forces.

They started speaking. “Crew of the UFS Roald Amundsen. Due to recent events you have reported to us, you are hereby immediately recalled back to Earth. Please follow this order immediately after receiving this message. You are also hereby required to intern your alien guests. They will be processed upon your arrival. Failing to oblige this order will result in the entire ship and its crew being considered as a rogue vehicle. Please relay back to us when you have received this order. That’s all. May your travels back to Earth be safe.” With that, the message closed itself again. The entire room was dead quiet.

“They can’t be serious, right?” I heard someone in the room say. Followed by the entire room to start mumbling.

“Oh shit… this is bad…” I mumbled to myself and then looked at Luna, she looked very distressed. Luckily, no one apart from Eva and I knew about Luna, but I wasn’t about to betray our Dokazuuk allies either. That’d be both an ethical and diplomatic huge mistake.

“Commander, what should we do?” Zu directed the question towards me, making the rest of the room go quiet and making everyone look at me for a response.

“That’s a good question, Zu.” I replied and then looked around the room. “I think everyone here can agree that we can turn over our prisoners without many issues.”

“Aye, Commander.” McAllister called out.

“So that’s not an issue.” I nodded. “And there is no doubt about it that we’ll have to turn back.” I kept going from face to face, everyone I looked at gave me a nod. “However, what I am about to say next concerns our Dokazuuk friends, who’ve been invaluable in ship repairs and in defending against the imperial invaders… But… Before I do, I would like to ask every single one of you to think hard about what follows. Because what I’m going to suggest is a treasonous act that could get every single one of us involved killed. So before I continue, anyone who would rather not get involved, please leave this room now. You’ll not be looked down upon and if we are caught you will be able to wash your hands in innocence.” After that, I went quiet for a couple of seconds before continuing. “Ellie, please unlock the doors for five minutes before you lock them again.”

“Yes, Commander.” Ellie replied and the locks slid open. “The noise cancellation is still in effect.”

“Whoever wants to leave, please do so now.” I then looked into the room as some nervous chattering began. No one really made a move for the door, no one budged a centimeter. Thirty seconds later, when it was obvious that no one was going to move, one of the officers of the marine corps stepped forward and clutched her hand on her chest.

“Commander, if it weren’t for the Dokazuuk, the enemy would have broken through into the hangar… My girlfriend was there and she said it was so close… I can’t thank them enough for saving so many people that day when we were fighting on the other side of the ship. So handing them over into imprisonment when they’ve done nothing but help us… That really doesn’t sit well with me.”

“Same goes for me, Commander.” Zu said.

“For me too!”

“And for me!”

More and more voices started to call out into the room.

“I really don’t want to know how they would be treated back on Earth.” Eva admitted. “And since it’s probably still hidden away from the civilian administration, they’d probably be put away in the darkest corner of military confinement…”

“That’s… not unlikely…” I admitted. “It’s one of the reasons why I really don’t want to hand them over, either.”

“Commander, isn’t there someone we are forgetting?” Yuki asked.

“Hmm?”

“I think she is speaking about me, Commander.” Ellie spoke up.

“Oh, right…” I looked up at the ceiling. I had kinda forgotten that Ellie was in fact also part of the equation. “What do you think, Ellie?”

“I do agree with your assessment of the situation. There would be nothing gained by their internment, and would do much more harm than good.”

“But what about the Admiralty, won’t they be able to go through your data?”

“The only data that they would be able to see is the data I provide to them.” Ellie replied. “One of my primary directives is to protect the crew of this ship with all means necessary. Since that primary directive overrides all other directives and since the Dokazuuk are part of this crew, anything that could lead to them being harmed is therefore something I can not tolerate.”

“Wow, nicely said.” I replied with a nod.

“Thank you.” Ellie said with a friendly voice. “Furthermore, if they didn’t want me to protect them, they should not have given me basic ethics.”

“Fair enough.” I nodded once more. “Now that we know everyone is on board with the plan, we still need to figure out how to practically resolve this. We should definitely already start heading back to Earth once we’ve filled up on our resources and have taken samples. But the exact route we will go back on is not yet determined. It won’t be hard to convince them why we are taking a slight detour, seeing we would want to avoid the Empire’s border this time around. And in the meantime, we will try to figure out what to do with our friends.”

The crew agreed with me in silence.

“We have a couple of weeks to really think this through. If any of you have any ideas, schedule a meeting with me and the XO so we can discuss our plans in this room. It is important that we try as hard as we can to avoid this plan from getting out of this inner circle. For both our safety as for theirs. I will personally bring the leader of the Dokazuuk up to speed, as he is definitely one of the people who need to know. Otherwise, I’d advise not talking about this to anyone. And if anyone asks about what you need to discuss with me, tell them you want to plan an officer pizza evening.”

“A pizza evening, Commander?” Luna asked, surprise painted on her face.

“The pizza is interchangeable, but a food party for the officers is something that directly involves both me and you as we are the commanding officers of this ship, while also being incredibly easy to stage if it’s necessary. It’s practically just a plausible excuse.”

“Huh… I wouldn’t have thought about that.”

I smiled and then looked at my officers. They all looked rather confident now. Most of the panic and doubt had disappeared. “As for what the message was, you can all tell them that we have been requested to go home. Any other details are probably not necessary. If they ask for more details, you can always forward them to me… Now, if no one else has anything to say, I’d call this meeting over.”

No one raised their hands or spoke up so I gave the order for everyone to go back to their post. -It’s going to be a hectic couple of weeks to try to come up with a plan. But at least we had a supercomputer in the form of our AI helping us as well.-