A vast tear of bright light appeared in the middle of nowhere in the unfathomable huge expanse of the void. The tear crackled and sparkled with energies running rampant, licking tongues of ions with nowhere to go. Widening now, a cascade of colours, far too many for the human eye to register, flashed and danced as the tear became a maw, and a sleek, lithe shape started to materialize in the centre of it. By this point the maw had a radius of several kilometres, and the shape, while sizable, filled only a fraction of that large space. The ion tongues reached out and slapped angrily against this shape, running around and over its armoured carapace, finding no purchase. A wide shape of controlled ion particles, almost like a drill, was pushing ahead of the shape, and the energies of that were creating the rupture in space. As if not wanting to let go, the wild lashes of energy snapped and crackled against the metal frame of the large spaceship, but to no avail. Almost triumphantly, the eight-hundred and nine metre long titanium frame slipped through and the rupture collapsed as soon as it was clear, the particle drill in front of the ship disappearing simultaneously.

“Light Drive force field disengaged, readings nominal, particle disperse rate 98.6%, bleeding well within safety parameters.”

“Astrogation SAI engaging, cross-referencing star charts, telemetry forthcoming.”

“Engineering reports Misaki fusion bottle gyros are funnelling, capacity rising, should expect full performance within seven minutes.”

“Sensor suite is operational; LIDAR and thermal show no contacts in the immediate surroundings up to fifty k-clicks out. Still waiting on grav-pulse, but expect no contacts within contiguous operational sphere.”

“Communications up and running, scooping the feeds for packet dumps.”

“Astral telemetry confirmed; we have arrived approximately two-twenty k-clicks inside the t-limit of the St. John System.”

Commander Matthew Lysimachos, master and commander of the seven-hundred and forty-nine souls on His Majesty’s light cruiser Carcharodon, smiled in appreciation. He knew the officers manning the bridge computer stations were singing out their reports while suffering from waves of post-translation nausea to varying degrees, but that didn’t stop them for carrying out their jobs quickly and efficiently, running down the procedural checklist required when a starship emerged from faster-than-light travel in the Light Way.

He stood up from his command chair, placed centrally on a raised dais on the bridge, and clapped his hands together.

“Excellent work, people, smooth handling through that last part of translation, Helm. Miss MacKenzie, spool up our long range and inform New Malta Astral Control and Royal Navy Western Fleet Command of our arrival. Just use the standard meet-and-greet, and relay to Master van Verhey what approach lane they want us in. Miss Mittelstadt, stand us down from Readiness Two, all crew to resume normal activity, and alert the Chief Steward that he might start preparing the Destination Meal.”

He was answered by a chorus of “aye aye, sir”, and he smiled again. God, it felt good running such a tight ship. At only thirty, Lysimachos was unusually young for a full commander, especially a commander with a cruiser command. He was tall, with long prematurely greying brown hair which he wore slightly out of regs in a small bun, and his impressive physique was the result of a draconian training regimen that he didn’t relax one bit, whether in space or on ground. His uniform, like the uniforms of the rest of the bridge crew, shared distinct similarities to the Royal Navy’s dress uniforms, but they were much less ostentatious. For both males and females, it was composed of a black double breasted tunic over a white shirt, with a colour-coded stripe along the tunic opening; white for enlisted, gold for officers. The trousers were black with the same colour-coded linings and long white gaiters over black boots which had magnetic soles that could be activated if necessary. Headgear was berets for all under the rank of commander, navy blue for enlisted and white for officers. For senior officers, it was a white peaked cap, with varying levels of golden embroidery depending on rank. Officer ranks were discernable by the amount of golden bands on their tunic cuffs and the insignia on their shoulder epaulets and collars. Enlisted noted ranks and seniority by white bands and shoulder insignia. On the right shoulder of everyone was emblazoned in a half-circle, and with golden letters, the name HMS Carcharodon. Functional, fashionable, and most of all, famous, the Royal Navy uniform was almost as much a symbol of power as the massive warships in which the wearers of the uniforms served.

Speaking of which, the Carcharodon was in Lysimachos’ opinion a work of art. A Canterbury class light cruiser, it was designed from the keel out for just two missions; see far, and shoot good. Like all Royal Navy ships, it was quite long, with a defined hull shape that could be described as lissom and graceful. Sacrificing internal armour compared to previous generations of Royal Navy light cruiser classes like the Imphal and Spartan classes, who had been classified as true “scout cruisers”, the Canterbury’s were slower, less protected. Counteracting that, they packed a wallop for their weight class at eight-sixty-eight thousand tonnes in normal G, sporting a combined broadside of thirty-two twelve inch railguns covered by thick titanium gunports, a torpedo battery of six Type-18(in) tubes, and two dual turrets of long-barrelled sixteen inch railcannons. Modern warships, regardless of star nation of origin, were fundamentally similar; one large rectangular rear section housing the immense fusion reactors and bottles that powered the ship and ion engines respectively, as well as the Light Drive which generated the Lorentz force fields of ions that enabled ships to rip through into the sub-plane that was the Light Way, where speed and time was relativistic. Then followed the main body, containing the broadside armament and the vast majority of decks, compartment, and stations, and was completed by a smaller forward section where torpedo batteries and fire directors and spotters were located. What separated Auroran style warships from the rest of humanity’s was the emphasis on a much flatter top and bottom, concentrating the broadside over fewer decks. The flatter tops also made Auroran ships wider, and to compensate the top and bottom were subsequently much more heavily armoured than their counterparts. They also had tall, heavily armoured bridge superstructures that stretched relatively far up from the main body, with the large main sensor and communications suites placed directly behind the bridge. The grav-pulse sensor arrays were usually spread out like “wings” from the side of the bridge, with back-ups in the forward section.

The flatter profile had resulted in a design shift away from broadside-only ships, and nearly all Auroran warships also had top and sometimes bottom turrets containing railcannons. The railcannons weren’t necessarily of much larger calibre than the broadside railguns, but their literally hundred metre long magnetic rails meant the projectiles could reach even greater speed upon exiting the barrel, thereby generating exponentially greater force upon impact. If these guns were ever turned on a planet, the resulting impact would be in the range of several thousands of megatons, worse than any weapon of mass destruction ever actually deployed. There was a reason numerous interstellar treaties existed to prohibit railguns ever being used against planets and populations. Lysimachos had seen first-hand the sheer destructive power of these fearsome weapons; as a junior lieutenant he had been with New Acre’s fleet that had simply torn apart the entire Solusian navy in a mere hour, a single pass of the line of battle, where the only Auroran casualties had been on the flagship’s flag bridge, whilst the Solusians had counted their dead in the tens of thousands. What a “trade war” that had been…

“Response from New Malta Astral Control,” Lieutenant Katherine MacKenzie reported, drawing Lysimachos back to the present, “should I patch it through?”

Lysimachos nodded, and walked leisurely past the large 3D holographic tactical display projector that filled almost two-thirds of the available bridge space, and came over to the communications officer’s station. She pushed a few buttons and one of the secondary viewscreens came to life.

“Your arrival has been noted and logged, Carcharodon, welcome to St. John and New Malta.” The man dressed in a burgundy and black uniform spoke with a clipped English accent; Italian and not English was the first language on New Malta, but English, alongside Simplified Galactic Chinese, French, and New Hindi was widespread enough to be recognized as linguae francae.

“Please redirect your course to two-eight-niner by zero-six-one, and follow approach lane oh-six-oh and assume contact again upon one-five-oh million kilometres out for exact approach vector to HMSS Jutland.”

“Miss MacKenzie,” Lysimachos said, “send off a standard message of confirmation and thanks to Astral Control, and then send a missive to Admiralty Palace with my compliments to Admiral Dumont and let him know Carcharodon is at his disposal as soon as we’ve bunkered and victualed.”

“Aye, sir,” she replied and started speaking into her mike.

“Master van Verhey,” he continued, turning to the helmsman, “lay Carrie over on the ascribed course correction, and give her enough acceleration to attain, oh I don’t know, nineteen-thousand kps, if you will. That should have us by the New Malta lay-over in about seven hours I think, with plenty of time for deceleration.”

“Aye sir, coming about and pushing on the gees,” the veteran warrant officer replied.

“Miss Mittelstadt,” Lysimachos, looking over to the tall lieutenant in charge of Operations, “make a note in the ship’s logs, main points; ‘arrival in St. John System at 16:55 hours shipboard time, Tuesday 07th May 2874 Galactic relative, completed journey from Aurora in seventeen days shipboard standard.’”

“Aye, aye sir,” Francesca Mittelstadt replied, nodding in confirmation, and started to type out a slightly more fleshed out report in the official ship’s logs.

Satisfied with the performance of his bridge crew, Lysimachos returned to his command chair and sat down, crossing his legs. The captain’s chair was just a larger version of the upholstered crash swivel chairs that the bridge crew sat on, with communication screens in both arm rests. Right next to it was another, but slightly lower to indicate the person sitting in it was not on the same level as the captain of the ship. Currently it was unoccupied, as the Carcharodon’s second in command, Lieutenant Commander Leonetta Hazard, was off watch, as were several other of the main bridge crew, such as the tactical and electronic warfare officers. Each station officer had several technicians and junior officers to aid them, so the total bridge crew if all were present would be nineteen, spread out among the computer stations in a half-circle from the central dais and holographic tactical projector. At the rear of the bridge were several crash seats for yeomen who would act as runners if needed. This layout was common among all Auroran warships, it simply scaled up or down depending on the size of the ship, with the largest battleships having several tiers of stations with stairs and walkways separating them.

“You think we’ll get some shore leave, sir?” MacKenzie asked, looking over her shoulder at the captain.

“Oh, I hope so,” Assistant Tactical Officer Sub-lieutenant Yuri Podkolzin shot in, “I’ve been dying to see St. Angelo City and the Piazza di Principesa for years now, and the National Museum of Classical Art too of course.”

Lieutenant Anaya Chen, the Astrogation officer, snorted in amusement.

“That is just sad, Yuri, we’ve spent more than two weeks in deep space and the first thing you want to do is hit up a museum and take snapshots of snazzy architecture? No wonder you’re still single.”

Most of the bridge crew laughed or chuckled at that, making Podkolzin’s cheeks turn a slight shade of pink. In truth, career officers in the Royal Navy usually waited until their ship- or station assignment days were done before settling down, and thus married quite late, often with much younger partners, though age in the 29th century was quite relative. This was why the likes of Lord Sélincourt who was well past one-hundred had a daughter who was not even twenty yet.

“I for one,” Chen continued, “will be hitting up the bars of Via Rossetta. I hear the price of a pint is less than a pound, which is going to make for a merry night out indeed.”

“Thank God for New Malta,” Warrant Officer Eric van Verhey commented as he relaxed his grip on the controls and gyros, “the Royal Navy’s home away from home. It has everything one could want in a posting; lots of warm weather, cheap drinks, legalised gambling, cheery folks...”

“True enough,” Lysimachos finally said, and the chattering crew fell silent, “we have been a fixture out here so long that we’ve become an integral part of Maltese society. It is pretty unique that another star nation, especially one as advanced and well-established as the Suzerainty of New Malta, allows another nation’s space navy to establish a permanent military presence in their system, including a truly massive naval space station in their orbit. Western Fleet has called New Malta home for over two-hundred years now, and we even have our own sector command in Admiralty Palace in St. Angelo.”

“Best part is,” MacKenzie interjected, “the locals actually love having us here, which is saying something, since there’s what, six-hundred thousand Royal Navy and Fleet Auxiliary personnel on ground and in orbit? Can’t say that about places like Lucidia.”

“Ugh, don’t mention Lucidia,” Chen grunted, “don’t ruin the good mood by mentioning that hell-scape of internal conflict and constant backstabbing. The fact that we’re required to maintain a military presence there is astounding.”

“You don’t think the Lucidians would be able to govern themselves?” Podkolzin asked, and Chen shook her head, but it was Mittelstadt who answered.

“That’s a hard no, sub-lieutenant. Just look at the last time we tried giving them back the reins, in 2861, and within six months Lord Hartcastle had to park an entire battle squadron in orbit and threaten with deploying Royal Marine assault brigades to stop the nascent genocides that were slowly gathering steam. No, it’s only the Auroran colonial administration, heavily supported by the ships of the Fleet and troops of the Army, that’s keeping the place from ripping itself to shreds.”

Lysimachos let his officers discuss matters back and forth, not really wanting to stop them. More than two weeks of FTL travel not only taxes the engines and reactors, it is also physically and mentally taxing on a crew, and the choice to not drop out of the Light Way to rest engines and people meant they were even more spent by the time they arrived. Better let them get excited about shore leave than try to shut them up. And hey, he was looking forward to some R&R as well. If he remembered correctly, there was a nice hotel on the Via Palomini that had a pool on the roof and a twenty-four hour bar…

“Well, this certainly sucks.”

Lieutenant Commander Leonetta Hazard brushed fiery orange locks over her ear and let out a huff of annoyance, as if her comments weren’t saying enough. Lysimachos couldn’t disagree as the two rounded a corner on their way to the officer’s wardroom. A curt missive from Admiralty Palace, “courtesy” of Admiral of the Red Sir Ryan Dumont, told the crew of the Carcharodon that as soon as they were done filling up their hydrogen tanks and re-stocking supplies, they were to join the 9th Light Cruiser Flotilla under Rear Admiral of the Black Freya Holland, and in conjunction with the New Maltese Navy, set up a patrol perimeter along the outskirts of the massive Gozo asteroid belt, almost halfway between New Malta itself and the St. John system’s t-limit. That meant they were literally hundreds and hundreds of millions of kilometres away from any shore leave and sorely needed reprieve. And that had been a week ago.

“What are we even supposed to be looking for out here?” Hazard continued to gripe. “It’s not like anyone are able to sneak their way into such a tightly defended system like New Malta. The New Maltese Navy has like seventy ships of their own, half of them in this system alone, the rest covering Octavia and Augusta, and our own Western Fleet is here in force, including twenty-four ships of the line, and a further thirty-two cruisers and forty destroyers. Not to mention the spider web of buoys and recon satellites. What are we supposed to look for that’s willing to do something stupid in the face of that much firepower?”

Lysimachos sighed, and stopped ahead of the sliding hatch to the officer’s wardroom. By ancient tradition, the commanding officer of a warship was not allowed inside the wardroom without the express permission from the President of the Mess, invariably the executive officer, which in this case was Hazard.

“Permission to enter the wardroom, Miss President?” he asked formally and Hazard nodded, too worked up to vocalize the reply. At one point in time, this rule had been obeyed very strictly, and the captain was only allowed inside on special occasions, but the rules had been relaxed over the centuries, and the captain was now allowed to ask permission whenever. It was still customary for the commanding officer to take their meals in their own quarters though, but they were allowed to socialize with their senior officer’s if they so wished (and were given approval, which wasn’t automatic).

The officer’s wardroom was a pretty large room by warship standards, and was decorated in a faux-classical style with a red floor carpet and wooden details and furniture. About a third was a dedicated dinner area, with three long tables that each seated twelve, a third was a lounge area with HD viewscreens, a music system, and couches, recliners, and chaise lounges, while the last third was a bar with a counter, stools, and small tables and chairs for those who wanted to enjoy a drink or smoke. On larger vessels, the wardroom (or wardrooms on the larger battlecruisers and battleships) would be solely for the officers of lieutenant rank and up, and a gunroom for the junior officers, but the Canterbury class didn’t have a large enough complement to justify this, so the single wardroom was used by all officers on board. Nearly all the off-duty officers were crammed in the bar or longue area, some two dozen odd in total, and they uniformly looked as miffed as Lieutenant Commander Hazard did. The second in command went over to the bar, where Lieutenant Lucas Gage, the chief engineer, poured her a glass of gin and tonic without her even asking. Lysimachos wanted to say it was only three in the afternoon, but he noticed the several empty glasses scattered around and thought better of it.

“This is some bullshit,” Lieutenant Chen said testily, nursing a stein of beer, “we nearly broke a Royal Navy record by getting here in just over seventeen days.” As the Astrogation officer, it was obvious she was irritated as it had been her calculations and navigation which had gotten to New Malta so quickly.

“We crossed two-hundred and seventy light years in under three weeks,” she continued, “nearly bursting our Misaki bottles in the process, nearly losing our goddamn minds due to the stress of having to keep correcting our course and adapting to the Light Way ‘winds’, without seeing outside of the portholes and bridge screens because the light would literally fry our optical nerves, and the engineers running themselves ragged. And for what? So that Sir Ryan ‘Fuck You Very Much’ Dumont can tell us to hump it and send us out to these godsforsaken rocks?”

A lot of the other officers nodded in agreement or chimed in with “hear, hear”.

“I know we technically have only been out in space less than a month after leaving Trafalgar in Aurora, and a standard deployment is three months before shore leave, but it is standard procedure to let crews who have travelled significant distance in the Light Way to have at least some kind of respite before throwing them back out there.”

“You know why,” Mittelstadt said, smoking a cigarette in one of the corner chairs by the bar, “and that’s because Admiral Dumont is pissed because he is being replaced now that Donegal is the new First Lord. And he’s taking it out on us, the latest ship to arrive from the capital.”

“Oh, steady on there,” Lysimachos warned, having found a couch to sit down in, “remember, no discussion of politics, religion, or intimate relations in the wardroom.”

“This isn’t politics, Sir,” Mittelstadt countered, “this is internal Royal Navy affairs. Dumont is a Koyanagi man, and now that he’s out, Dumont’s days as a fleet commander are numbered.”

“I won’t be crying no tears,” Lieutenant Gage said from behind the bar, now pouring himself a G&T, “the man never did anything to deserve fleet command in the first place, and he certainly don’t know how to run one. He was a career staff officer who managed to hang out with the right people and keep his mouth shut when appropriate. Western Fleet is consistently the worst fleet during inter-fleet exercises; just look how Home Fleet trounced them two years ago around Amaranth.”

“This is bordering on dangerous territory…” Lysimachos said, trying to reel his dispirited officers back in.

“Sir,” Mittelstadt said, “surely you understand this as well. You’re only a few years older than most of us…” That made Gage laugh, since he was approaching seventy, “But you must be aware that Koyanagi has never been well-liked among the men and women of the Fleet and Auxiliary. Many of the brass liked him, because they benefited from it, but we are the ones who have had to serve on the ships his ilk created for us, and adhere to his policies.”

“And fine timing too,” Hazard said in an acid tone, “just when the Alliance is getting their shit together and that Amazon CNO Bradford start’s whipping the Alliance Space Navy into shape, we get a First Lord that is a political tool for the Conservatives, and ironically enough, their mortal enemies, Labour. Our naval procurement policies have been erratic, our recruitment and training numbers are down, our fleets are bunched up instead of spread out, and His Majesty is even toying with the idea of creating new peers just to counterbalance the Conservatives in the Lords. My God, what a fine mess.” She followed that last comment by downing her drink.

“Right, that’s it!” Lysimachos shot up from his chair and looked around the room.

“You are all acting like school children right now, griping and moaning about things way outside of your control. Yes, it is a damned bad spot we’re in, we could have used shore leave, our fleet commander may be acting surly because he knows he’s on his way out, yes, the politics of the Service has been a mess. But that does not change the fact that you’re all King’s Officers. You’ve all had four years at King William’s Academy, you have served as midshipmen and –women for years, earned your golden bands, and you’ve sworn an oath to do your utmost to defend our allies, the kingdom, and uphold the honour of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. And you better start acting like it.”

The tannoy chose that exact moment to come to life and a tone to denote “attention please” played for a moment before the voice of Lieutenant Commander Trevor Merryweather, Carcharodon’s Tactical Officer, could be heard.

“Captain to the bridge, I repeat, Captain to the bridge.”

The message was short, but it was enough to grab the attention of everyone in the room, and Lysimachos headed straight for the door, while Hazard bolted up from her stool and followed in his wake. The wardroom was impractically far from the bridge, and the two walked briskly along the halls and bulkheads. Like all Royal Navy warships, the titanium walls were painted white, while the floor and roof was black. This was to help people orient themselves if the artificial gravity failed and they had to activate their magnetic boots to get around the ship. Here and there they passed what appeared to be windows that looked out into space, but since they were almost as deep into the ship as was possible; the “windows” were instead viewscreens that showed feeds from outside cameras. This was for psychological reasons, for despite centuries of space travel, humanity still keenly felt the claustrophobia of travelling for weeks and months inside huge metal cases, and something as simple as being able to look outside helped assuage that. It helped give the impression of not being stuck in a huge artificial construct that defied everything natural to the human brain as it had evolved into back on Earth. For the same reason, plants were extremely common, as seeing living, breathing, growing things helped combat the aberrant sensation of travelling at thousands of kilometres per second in the emptiness of the void.

The two officers hopped into a gravlift at one of the deck intersections. The lift system on board warships in the 29th century was fluid, which meant that instead of horizontal or vertical lifts, the lift cars were able to go in every direction since they were fitted with projectional gravity emitters, and the car moved through several decks and up nearly a hundred metres into the bridge superstructure without Lysimachos and Hazard noticing a thing. Saluting the Royal Marine sentries on watch, dressed in black uniforms and plate carriers, green berets and carrying loaded bullpup pulse rifles, the two senior officers entered the bridge.

As soon as they entered, Lieutenant Commander Merryweather rose from the executive officer’s seat, from where the officer of the watch kept an eye on all the stations and the 3D plot, and with a salute returned to his station at Tactical.

“Very well then, Mr Merryweather,” Lysimachos said as he sat down in the familiar command chair, “what did you call me up for?”

“Sir, it appears we have a little lost lamb.”

“Pardon?” Hazard said quizzically, turning her chair to face the Tactical Officer. “A lost lamb?”

“Yes, Ma’am, it appears this one has strayed a fair bit away from its herd.”

Lysimachos rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Lieutenant Commander, please stop speaking in allegories and just tell us what it is you brought us up here for.”

Suppressing a bit of a chuckle, Merryweather quickly typed in a few commands on his keyboard and the holographic plot changed and zoomed in on one specific electronic signature. He rose from his chair and pointed to it.

“That, Sir, is the Starmistress, registered on Beatrice in the Independent Systems Alliance. She’s a nineteen hundred metre long pleasure liner, with a crew of six-hundred and nineteen and four-thousand and seventy passengers, at least recording the manifest submitted in Starfall. Her flight plan, as confirmed by New Malta Astral Control, was to sling around Hercules’ Hood…” he pointed at the super Jovian some ninety million kilometres out from the Gozo belt, “and come onto approach lane one-niner-oh for her entry into New Malta space proper. However…” He zoomed out the holographic map using sharp finger movements and submitted a few commands on the attached keyboard, and the registered approach lanes and monitored angles of approach by the combined New Maltese-Royal Navy reconnaissance and buoy/satellite network appeared as bubbles, denoting actual sensor coverage. The Starmistress had somehow managed to miss all of the latter ones since exiting the t-limit, and it was by only pure luck that Carcharodon’s grav-pulse had picked her up. And Carcharodon had been on station for less than a standard week.

Lysimachos sat forward in his chair, realization dawning.

“Miss MacKenzie,” he said to the Communications officer who was also part of the watch, “hail the Starmistress, right now.”

Realizing the gravity of the situation, Lieutenant Katherine MacKenzie put her headset over the top of her beret and leaned emphatically into the mike. At the same time, Lysimachos made hand gestures to Hazard, telling her to bring the rest of the available (and not overly intoxicated) bridge crew up.

“Commercial starliner Starmistress, this is His Majesty’s cruiser Carcharodon, we have noticed your presence on grav-pulse and cannot fail to notice you have deviated quite some way from the provided approach vector given by New Malta Astral Control. Please adjust your heading to previously given vector, and state your reason for deviating off course. Carcharodon out.”

“Very good, Miss MacKenzie,” Hazard said, while downloading that same data Merryweather had put on the main holographic display onto her command chair interface. As it finished downloading, she produced a mighty frown.

“Sir,” she said, turning towards Lysimachos, “Starmistress hasn’t had a layover in two weeks, and that is a long time for a commercial pleasure liner. Usually these come to port on orbital stations and tethers wherever possible, but Starmistress has been in Union space for twelve days, five days in neutral space, following leaving Starfall, and has not ported since.”

“Right,” Lysimachos said, tenting his fingers in deep thought, “we don’t want to jump the gun on this, so let’s play it cautious.”

At the edge of his vision he noticed the rest of the regular bridge officers assuming their stations, lest the ones who obviously had had too many units of alcohol, such as the Astrogation and Operations officers; they were replaced by their ensign juniors. He turned back to MacKenzie.

“What is the reply?”

“Sir,” she pleaded, “the time limit for transmission and return hasn’t passed yet; she should have received our missive only forty seconds ago based on this distance.”

He kicked himself, damnit man, calm down.

“I’m sorry, Miss MacKenzie, carry on.”

“Shall I beat the crew to quarters, Sir?” Hazard almost whispered in his ear, but Lysimachos shook his head.

“No, most likely this has some natural explanation. Not only do we not want to unduly arouse the crew, it’s going to be hell to pay going back to Western Fleet HQ and file all that paper work when we discover it’s just some faulty transponder, and not a malicious attempt of invasion.” Sarcasm coloured his voice, and Hazard couldn’t help but smile a bit.

“As you say, Sir, lay off punching holes in the civilian ship, got it.”

Almost as soon as she finished speaking, a voice crackled out from the bridge’s loudspeakers:

“Warship Carcharodon, this is the Starmistress…”, “Well that’s rather rude and unbecoming, omitting the proper prefix and all,” Sub-lieutenant Yuri Podkolzin commented.

“Carcharodon, we are a commercially owned pleasure liner, and we owe it to our paying guests to allow them to see the sights the galaxy has to offer. As such, we have diverted to admire the ice-crystal belt of Gozo, to give our passengers their money’s worth. I’m sure you can understand that this is the will of our shareholders, and our duty to our guests.”

Hazard seemed extremely nonplussed, looking back and forth between MacKenzie and recently arrived Sub-lieutenant Kayden Blanchard, the replacement Operations Officer for Lieutenant Francesca Mittelstadt. Matthew Lysimachos was having none of it though.

“Miss MacKenzie,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose again in frustration, “please tell the gentleman that this is non-negotiable, and that every starship needs to adhere to the rules in the sovereign space nation that they are guests in, especially in a system like New Malta with a large naval presence. And failing that, tell him I might become cross.”

“Starmistress, this is His Majesty’s cruiser Carcharodon, you have been ordered to adjust your course and heading. This is non-negotiable in regards to the military presence in-system, and as such you must comply with Astral Control’s directions.” Something fierce glinted in young Katherine MacKenzie’s eyes. “Failing to comply with the instructions provided will be seen as a violation of the Sirius Accords of twenty-four-forty-four, article two, paragraph sixteen, violation of the space of a sovereign star nation without proper clearance. If Starmistress does not defer to provided instructions within the next standard shipboard time sixty minutes, HMS Carcharodon will unfortunately have no option but to forcefully make your ship port.”

She turned back towards Lysimachos, a sinister smile on her face.

“You think that got their attention?”

Lysimachos and Hazard didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. Probably the latter.

“Miss MacKenzie,” Hazard said at last, “you have performed your duties according to the book, but what the book doesn’t tell you…”

Lysimachos picked up for Hazard.

“What the book doesn’t tell you is that there is a time and place to make such forceful claims. I would like to follow you up on your threat to make the Elysians adhere to their original flight path, but for some reason, if they refuse to oblige us…”

“The Starmistress is turning around!” Podkolzin reported, and Lysimachos relaxed a bit.

But neither MacKenzie nor the bridge of the Starmistress had turned off the feed, and the voices of the captain, 2-i-C, and navigator on the Starmistress bled through.

“Fucking Aurorans, who do they think they are?”

“We’ve come a hundred light years only to get accosted by these space-lane fascists…”

“The day of reckoning will come, you’ll see.”

“Miss MacKenzie,” Lysimachos said with a voice that was liquid nitrogen, “inform New Maltese naval authorities that we will be bringing to port a nominally civilian vessel, upon which I would like Royal Navy shore patrol and Maltese customs officers to inspect every inch of that vessel, down to the smallest little cot.”