The Honourable Lady Amelia Euxina Isobel de la Lune was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, with a slightly curving face, amethyst eyes, and long wavy flaxen hair comfortably resting across the shoulders of the black-and-gold Royal Navy battle dress uniform she wore, partly obscuring the straps marking her as a lieutenant commander. Her white beret hung from the back of her upholstered command chair in which she half lounged cross-legged, while skilfully balancing a cup and saucer on her left upraised knee. She was, incidentally by the circumstances of fate, the eldest child and the nominal heir to the estates and titles of one of the staunchest opponent of the Royalist and Social Liberal parties’ naval policies in the House of Lords, the Duke of Dawnshire. Dawnshire, Algernon de la Lune, was the public front-figure of the Conservative Party in the Lords, which in turn would have made Amelia a prime target for harassment and hazing in a martial institution which was largely Royalists-aligned. Instead, it had boosted her position considerably, and proven quite a boon for her personal career. She had quite publically broken with her family by choosing to enrol into the very institution which her father had staked his political career on to defund and de-arm, and it had propelled her into a position of admiration by those within the same formations she served. Forsaking familial relations and potentially considerable estates in order to serve King and Country was admired by most, especially when it was the prime progeny of such a prestigious family. It wasn’t as if Amelia had done it for the attention and the publicity of it, she genuinely desired to make a naval career, and it had cut her off from basically her entire family, but being a lieutenant commander at twenty-six and already commanding a destroyer was a meteoric professional trajectory.

She picked up the cup of tea as she crossed her legs the other way and cast a languid glance over the bridge crew of HMS Euphoria. It was currently about nine in the evening shipboard time, so the second-rotation watch had still a few hours left before they were replaced by the third watch, and only about half of the bridge stations were manned. During a series of wargames arranged between Home and Southern Fleet shortly after the commissioning of the E Class destroyers, an observing admiral had commented that the lithe and fast vessels were “spiffy little fighting girls”, and the moniker had stuck. If the battlecruiser crews regarded themselves the elite of the Royal Navy, the destroyer crews liked to consider themselves the Navy’s workhorses, the shoulders upon which the rest of the Fleet stood on and would fail without. Despite being the most numerous of warship types in the Royal Navy, some two-hundred and forty in total, only about ten per cent of all uniformed warship personnel were at any time assigned to a destroyer class ship, which in turn made them even more cognizant of their importance to the Fleet as a whole. In Amelia’s and other destroyer skippers’ mind, the destroyers were the blood veins of the body that was the Royal Navy, they did everything from scouting for fleets and task forces, function as messenger ships, pirate hunting, deep reconnaissance, close-in torpedo attacks during engagements, to merchant escort duty. Any other ship was either too large, too unwieldy, too slow, too conspicuous, or too expensive to do the same tasks.

This also meant that they usually had the most experienced crews in peace time, since shipping lanes had to be patrolled, routine exercises had to be carried out, and rapid transfer of orders, personnel, and materiel had to be shipped. Euphoria was no exception, and Amelia’s eyes rested on the holographic plot and noted for probably the eleven-thousandth time that her little convoy was still in perfect formation and kept uniform speed through the Light Way. Her convoy. It left a satisfying “taste” as she rolled the term around in her head. Euphoria had departed Kitezh and Southern Fleet six days ago as escort for the Indiamen Astral Pearl, Antiochene Heldin, and Selenagrad Prize, headed “south-west” to Lucidia through the Lorelei Special Administrative Region. The Alliance had over the past six months or so started to crack down hard on foreign groups of ships larger than a seemingly arbitrary tonnage, and no warship larger than a light cruiser was allowed as escorts for merchant shipping; pure military formations were completely out of the question, and had to be redirected through the Co-Prosperity Sphere to the “south”. In reality, there was no reason for a warship to accompany civilian shipping in these parts of space, since piracy was practically unheard of within two-hundred light years of the southern edge of the Royal Union, but it allowed for valuable learning experiences for officers and crew which was too good to pass up on. Especially for young officers like Amelia de la Lune, despite her air of bravado and superiority inherited from her social status.

“Hail from Captain Parzer of the Heldin, ma’am,” the communications tech reported, returning Amelia’s attention to the here and now, and she sipped some of her now pretty lukewarm tea before placing the cup down on a small tray next to her command chair.

“Direct to my console, if you please, Mr Durzi,” she said and put a wireless set to her ear.

“My Lady,” the throaty voice of the merchant skipper said into her earpiece, “my engineering officer is recommending that we drop out of the Light Way pretty soon and recharge our Lorentz field emitters. He says the coils of the fusion drive are starting to run pretty hot, though not anywhere close to hazard threshold yet.”

“Have you conferred with Mr Antonov and Mrs Chapman about this?” Amelia asked, mildly annoyed that they had to drop out after only six days. Euphoria could keep going for ten more days without recharge, no problem.

“Yes I have, My Lady,” Leopold Parzer replied, who was, unbeknownst to Amelia, very unhappy with having to defer to such a young officer who only had four years of space-going experience under her belt and who was a noble to boot.

“Antonov says Pearl can probably go on for another thirty-six hours but isn’t averse to dropping out early. Prize is closing in on the same amount of fusion drive stress as Heldin, but Chapman says she could go on for another day or so.”

Amelia muted her mic and turned to the only other senior officer on the bridge, Operations Officer Lieutenant Aiden Fraser-Perry.

“What do you think, Mr Fraser-Perry, should we drop out this early? I’d reckon we’re not much more than halfway through the SAR, perhaps sixty per cent depending if we caught a favourable wind or not.”

There were of course no “winds” in the Light Way, but there were occasional hypercapacity energy bands which could boost the relative speed of a physical object at even faster rates, but apart from a few stable ones (the Corridor, the Arcturus Treadway, and the Dioscuria Three-Way were the most famous) there were no way to reliably locate one apart from tripping over it when travelling through the Light Way.

Lieutenant Fraser-Perry shrugged at Amelia’s question, and put away his thermocup of coffee which was the only thing still keeping him going this far into the graveyard watch.

“On the one hand, it is standard engineering procedure whenever the coils failsafe systems start to give off warning signs, even though they’re designed with layers upon layers of redundancy, so Antiochene Heldin is probably a week out before we can realistically start thinking about an imminent fusion reactor failure. But safety procedures are procedures for a reason, and we’re in the middle of a well-trodden shipping lane in pretty civilised space, so there shouldn’t be any risk entailed.”

“And on the other hand?” Amelia asked as an eyebrow rose quizzically. Aiden was a tall young officer, with very short black hair and dark fuzz around his upper lip and along his jaw that was hopefully the embryonic stage of a proper beard, and like many of the male crew (and a few of the female as well) he was absolutely infatuated with the Honourable Lady Amelia.

“On the other hand, we’re going to have to call the ship to Readiness Two, and I don’t want to be on the receiving end of Ms Lowell’s sleep-deprived ire when she has to step back onto the bridge, she only just left three hours ago.”

The dead-pan joke fell in poor soil, as Amelia simply rolled her eyes and un-muted her mic.

“Acknowledged, Captain Parzer, we’ll follow your suggestion and start charging Lorentz field emitters to re-enter normal space. Euphoria will of course take point and make sure to slot your ship into our defensive matrix; we will relay the same orders to Prize and Pearl. La Lune out.”

She cut the connection and removed the headset, and nodded to the communications technician, who immediately started to hail the other two ships of the small convoy.

“Ms Gallagher,” Amelia said as she sat up straight in her command chair and put the beret back on, “please sound Readiness Two and call Number Three watch to their stations, before contacting the First Lieutenant with my compliments to repair to the bridge. Mr Korvel, spin up the sensor suite and set AIC SAI to detect-and-protect mode. Helm, start angling for immediate deceleration and prepare for N-space entry. Mr Fraser-Perry, update our point defence and sensor bubble matrices and slave our Close Battlespace Awareness SAI to our charges via tight-beam, and get Mr Durzi to relay codes to the merchantmen as you go.”

The bridge crew answered with a hail of “aye aye, Ma’am” and repetitions of orders received, and Amelia smiled to herself as the small bridge of Euphoria became a tightly choreographed dance of military activity. The E Class was pretty middling in size as Royal Navy destroyers went with a weight of about two-ninety-one thousand tonnes in normal G, a length of four-hundred and nine metres, and a crew of three-hundred and four officers and enlisted, plus a platoon of forty-one Royal Marines. Destroyers normally didn’t carry bootnecks on board, but whenever they were deployed to patrol or escort missions, exceptions were made. Euphoria and her sisters were however known for their excellent speed, ample torpedo launcher package (seven front and flank batteries), and being surprisingly tough as escort class vessels went. Their sensor suite left much to be desired though; Euphoria was fitted with the notoriously troublesome DYNA D5E which had a perverse tendency to completely break down at the most inopportune moments. She’d been stuck in Amaranth orbit for two months less than a year back for substantial hard- and software updates, but Lieutenant Fraser-Perry (nor anyone else on board for that matter) trusted the system’s reliability the slightest.

“This has better be important,” a grumpy voice accompanied the sound of the bridge hatch sliding open, and Amelia turned half around to pat the upholstered 2-i-C chair.

“Come have a seat, Hannah, you’ll just have to grin and bear about half an hour or so before we stand down to R-Three and you can go back to your bunk.”

Lieutenant Hannah Lowell grunted and deposited herself into the chair, slouching slightly. She hadn’t bothered closing the tunic of her black-gold battle dress, the high collared white shirt not entirely buttoned up as well, but she had somehow managed to get her white gaiters on properly. Like Alexandra Barham, the chestnut-haired and grey-eyed lieutenant was a scion of an illustrious naval family that could trace their roots to the second wave of colonisation. But unlike Sandy, Hannah Lowell was brimming with ambition to excel and go far in the Service, and being a First Lieutenant on a deployed warship at the age of twenty-five was a very impressive accomplishment, but she was quietly envious of the year older Amelia for having already reached that next rung. She wasn’t exactly a classical beauty like the Euphoria’s captain, but she had a dancer’s agility to her and a slender physique that could produce a mental comparison to a large feline, like an Earth panther or an Auroran silvercat.

“Engineering reporting ion drill is steadying at 93% efficiency, Lorentz field concentration at maximum output.”

“N-space astrogation alignment completed, counter-thrusters at standby.”

“Thermal and LIDAR is at standby, ready to cycle gravpulse once in N-space.”

“Deck officers report all sections at full readiness, bugler at the ready to sound beat to quarters.”

“Gun captains report batteries 1 through 9 are manned and ready.”

Amelia picked up the headset again and pressed the ship-wide button. A long, low tone sounded over Euphoria’s tannoy.

“All hands, prepare for translation from Light Way travel and re-entry into Normal space. We will simply loiter for a while until our merchant charges have cooled down their fusion coils, and then we’ll be on our way again, expect no more than a three to four hours wait before we’re translating back into the Light Way. That is all.”

“Short and concise, Skip,” Warrant Officer Stephen Korvel, the Tactical Officer, said, “but I’d be surprised we’ll be hanging about for even that long, those new St. Krylovska long-range freighters have some of the best civilian engine packages money can buy. I’ve heard they can recharge from H-10 to H-1 in less than two hours.”

“That sounds like corporate propaganda, Mr Korvel,” Fraser-Perry said, “because that would put to shame even the new fusion coolers that are being fitted on the Vanguards and the Fearless ships, and those beasts have four separate fusion reactors that all have three Misaki bottles each.”

“Gentlemen,” Lowell interrupted in a stern voice, “please prepare yourselves for translation into N-space.”

She barely had time to complete the sentence before everyone awake on Euphoria could feel the momentary disorienting sensation of completely losing concept of up and down, left and right, and total spatial awareness. It was over as soon as it had begun, and on the order from the Operations SAI, the windows de-polarised and external sensors resumed their feeds to the viewscreens scattered across the interior of the ship. Directly looking at the pure insanity that was the Light Way would burn out human retinas within moments, and ships travelled “locked down” while underway. Now the crew of the Euphoria was greeted by a gentle starscape, seemingly in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

“Spooling up the astrogation SAI, telemetry should be forthcoming within a couple of minutes,” Sub-lieutenant Antonio McMorrow reported from his station, kind of cramped as he was between the Sailing Master’s Mate’s station and his own Astrogator’s Mate’s. Room on ships was always at a premium, but it was doubly so for warships with such “low space board” as destroyers and smaller light cruisers; they were designed for function, not comfort.

Amelia tapped her fingers restlessly on the arm of her chair, noting that the three Indiamen exited the Light Way around the Euphoria in a decently spaced formation. Absolutely nothing like the tight gap control a trio of naval ships would have managed of course, but she wasn’t above giving civilian sailing masters credit where it was warranted; they had adhered to the overall layout of the defensive scheme Fraser-Perry had devised, and they were connected to the much smaller destroyer’s sensor network. Euphoria was dwarfed by the merchant ships nearly thirty times over, but while they were big, they each had only about a third of the warship’s crew, their armour was so thin compared to the Euphoria’s as to be considered almost paper-thin, and their immense bulk was given over to cavernous cargo holds.

“Astro-SAI confirmation is ready,” McMorrow sang out, “we’re six-five-six k-clicks inside the t-limit of Nürmann-184, about nineteen light years from the Lorelei System.”

“Right in the middle of bumfuck nowhere then,” Ensign Joseph Durzi, the Communications Officer pretty much straight out of King William’s, said with a bit of a chuckle, “exactly the kind of spot we’d want to be in if one of our civvies experience engine troubles.”

“Mind your tone, Mr Durzi,” Lowell snapped, and the junior officer straightened in his chair, “this is a King’s Ship and we’re here to do our duties, not practice our routine for next open mic-night at the local pub.”

That last comment made some of the NCO’s chuckle, and Durzi’s cheeks turned ever so slightly pink.

“Scopes are clear, My Lady,” Fraser-Perry reported from his station, and Amelia’s glance over at the holographic plot confirmed the lack of any contacts apart from their own.

“Not surprising in the least, Mr Fraser-Perry,” the captain answered, crossing her legs comfortably again, “this stupid blue giant only holds astronomical interest and no strategic or political one whatsoever, it hasn’t even been deemed worthy enough of a proper name.”

Ensign Anna Gallagher, the Assistant Operation Officer, had been out of King William’s for all of four months and was of Joseph Durzi’s cohort, despite the fact that she had been part of House Lion and he of House Dragon. She had scored extremely high in astrophysics, and when she had decided on communications and operations as her choice of focus, her house leaders and supervisor had tried to persuade her to choose otherwise but to no avail. It was commonly known that the ones who rose to shipboard commands in the Royal Navy came either from the tactical, the operations, or the astrogation branches; communications, engineering, quartermaster, and medical almost always ended up as rear-service officers if they proceeded along the Service’s career path. Captain Susannah Goodenough, Gallagher’s academic supervisor had for the better part of two years tried to get Anna to change courses to Astrogation since her aptitude scores for that course had been excellent, which would have opened up so many more possible avenues for meaningful career advancement, but Anna had adamantly refused. In Anna’s mind, being a cog in the huge machine was more than enough; she really didn’t fancy the idea of being in Lady Dawnshire’s seat, despite the fact that said lady’s seat was modest enough with only having to carry the burden of the welfare of some four-hundred souls. Imagine if she advanced all the way to division or squadron level, and the immense burden of managing the fates of thousands upon thousands of actual human beings while also carrying out orders given by the Powers That Be started to pile up, upon which the Fates might ask her to forego her humanity in order to carry those orders out. No thank you, sir, Anna Thomasine Winfield Gallagher did not want that kind of responsibility dumped on her.

And yet, in that one decisive moment in history, that was forced upon her. She had been looking at the rest of the bridge crew in slight amusement whilst for some reason ignoring the wailing of mental klaxons at the back of her mind. Anna Gallagher was an exceptional bright young girl, her grandfather originally descended from a rather poor family of thorium miners on Angevin, but her mother’s family had moved to Aurora and had managed to scrape together enough funds to finance their offspring with the opportunity that they might never have, namely sending their only daughter to King William’s Naval Academy.

And the culmination of that literally generationally-long journey was rather trite.

“My Lady, I’m picking up a rather aggressive signal,” young Ensign Gallagher reported, just as Lieutenant Commander Lady de la Lune finished telling a rather used-up joke to her Astrogation Officer, but despite the social distance between the two women, the ship’s captain perked up.

“Let’s see what you have, Ms Gallagher.”

Instead of trying to communicate the importance of said situation, or warn her superior officer of how important this exchange of messages was, Ensign Gallagher simply chose to relay the subspace-pulse message her station had received moments earlier.

“Attention, Auroran warship, this is the Alliance Navy Ship Royfort, state your intention and itinerary.”