USD: 37 Days after arrival at Fort Glisson

Location: Nu Crateris, A3123Y Platform, CIC

Amy sat in her chair inside the new, smaller, heavily reinforced CIC in the center of the spire. Abbey and Wyles and a dozen MilTech technicians whom she had slowly began to trust were also seated at various consoles. Wyles had taken the role of tactical officer, and while the techs were almost redundant with Abbey’s abilities she had given them what jobs were available, that would reduce the overhead on combat processing.

“Prepare for transit in 10 seconds,” Abbey announced.

The entire crew of the station was suited up in skin suits, hard and soft. Even Abbey hadn’t complained at having to put on her helmet, Amy noticed. A digital countdown appeared on the CIC’s large wall-sized main screen.

Amy tapped her chair’s armrest as they transitioned. There was no physical sensation of exiting the jump space, only the status screens and Abbey’s acknowledgement of successful entry into Nu Crateris.

“Passive sensors are open wide, scanning and correlating new data. The d-field’s tuning has been adjusted 5.6% for the next jump transit to improve exit energy dissipation. I’m afraid our exit might have been more noisy than normal, I’m sorry.” Abbey said.

“That’s alright Abbey. Nothing detected nearby?” Amy asked.

“Nothing within weapon range. I’m processing the incoming data now by distance bands. Nothing within 100km. Nothing within 500km…” Abbey said, her voice becoming more robotic before she trailed off completely, lost inside her head.

Amy turned to her screen and watched as the navigational map began to populate with icons, confirming that the planets were where they should be as well as updating smaller objects. The techs at the consoles relaxed as they realized the danger of being jumped on exit was looking less and less. Wyles ordered the rest of the crew that had been waiting at damage control points and other safe areas on the station to stand down from the highest alert level to the more moderate yellow alert.

A blue icon appeared on Amy’s display, and the main screen flipped to a rendition of the system nav, highlighting the blip as SR01. A red blip appeared ahead of it, and yellow vector lines came into focus, displaying their direction and trajectory.

“There they are.” Amy said. As she was considering what to do, four more red blips appeared, and they were on an intercept course for SR01 and the fleeing frigate.

“Abbey?” Amy asked, concern appearing on her face.

“My drive plume analysis indicates SR01 is chasing the same frigate that fled 92 Pegasi. There are also four drive plumes of tentatively classed frigate/destroyers on a intercept course. I have a 70% confidence that they are more Corpo vessels. This is increasing as more data becomes available.”

Amy knew SR01 was well built, and the Corpos were all likely heavily damaged, but four on one was an enormous risk. One that Yalof seemed to be taking.

Abbey spoke up as Amy considered the situation. “Should we order SR01 to retreat and rendezvous with us? Depending on the status of the hostile ships, there might be serious risk to SR01.”

Amy’s first thought was yes, that would surely be better. Risking losing their destroyer was not a great idea when they could chase the fleet with the station and destroyer and likely win with overwhelming firepower with little risk.

But…

If the destroyer was destroyed, it would sweep a nasty problem under the rug for them. One that Wyles and the MilTech employees, even Whitely… didn’t know about.

When she didn’t answer, Wyles frowned, then looked to Amy. “I would suggest having it retreat. From what I’m seeing, the risk isn’t acceptable when we can regroup and then consider engaging with both units.”

Abbey’s mouth opened in surprise. “I’m picking up NAI signals from Dedia! Um... ahh…”

Amy’s eyes widened. A very long ago conversation where the ‘GAI’ Nameless had commented on their CEO as being an Avatar as well as Whitely’s suspicions she was the Empress’ child came to mind. ‘We have three Ais,’ Alex had said.

Three Ais, or three NAIs, Amy repeated in her mind.

“Is it Alex?” Amy asked.

Abbey shook her head. “It’s H32, the defense NAI made for Dedia IV. We can’t communicate yet because of the time lag. I’ve sent a request for a laser comm. I’ve picked up large amounts of activity in orbit near the space elevator. It looks like orbital infrastructure is rapidly being constructed from planetary surface resources.”

Wyles pointed to the red dots. “What about SR01? I think that’s more pressing right now.”

Amy sighed and nodded. “Abbey direct SR01 to retreat to our position.”

“What was the Captain even thinking? Did you put a total idiot in charge?” Wyles said.

“Ahahaha… It’s… controlled by a GAI.” Amy lied.

Wyles raised an eyebrow. “What? You turned a full warship into a drone? I have people who could handle things better, even if it was mostly operated a ship like that needs human supervision when operating independently.”

Amy sucked on her lip, then looked at the plot.

“Yes, it looks like you’re right, but we’ll talk about that later. Having fully automated warships would be very helpful considering our ability to expand production thanks to Abbey.” Amy said.

Abbey raised her hand. “I do good!”

She then closed her eyes for a second then continued, “Also, I have sent the laser comm to SR01. It should reach it in three hours. My estimates show that if we burn toward it and SR01 reverses acceleration, we’ll rendezvous in 16 hours. I can maintain tracking on the Corpo ships even if they go dark. The only way they can break contact is if they go behind a planet, and we can catch them before that!”

Wyles frowned. “What if they disperse on multiple trajectories?”

Abbey opened her mouth in surprise, then thought about it. She knocked herself on the head and looked embarrassed. “I’m afraid if they did that, they can probably get two or three ships to the Gas Giant if the courses are divergent enough. Oops!”

“I think that’s inevitable. They have more units than we do. If we had the frigates, it might be different.” Wyles said.

Amy looked at Wyles, then Abbey. “But we don’t have them. How long until we can bring them into combat range?”

Abbey closed her eyes and waved her head back and forth. She had an answer when she opened her eyes a few seconds later.

“30-40 hours is my best guess!”

“But we don’t, so we will just have to make do. Abbey if they split off, make sure we vector after the one that leaves us still able to move towards Dedia IV just in case they try to attack it. We don’t know what defenses they have there.” Amy said.

“Okay!” Abbey said as she saluted with a smile.

“Nothing to do but wait until we get close enough to talk. I’m going to go rest.” Amy said.

Wyles nodded. “Good thinking. Not good to stay awake the entire time. I’ll send you a message if something happens.”

“Thanks.” Amy said, before heading to her room.

USD: 38 Days after arrival at Fort Glisson

Location: Van Biesbroeck’s star, Meltisar, Fort Glisson, Company S, 1st Cadre

Alex was certain Instructor Hills was trying to kill them. They hadn’t received any rest time longer than an hour over the last three days. Everything felt like an endless fog. Everyone was making more and more mistakes and that led to more and more ‘correction’ from the instructors.

There were only a few times where they managed to get a little rest for an hour. Some tasks allowed part of the group to close their eyes and shut off while the others carried out the orders.

They had to organize themselves how to ration out the down time. Some like Alex, Tia, and Rachel needed very little sleep while others, including Hikari really felt the lack of it. Those who could picked up the slack where they could.

It wasn’t easy.

Some had broken down, a few had washed out, but most had continued to trudge along together with what support they could give each other. Just when it would seem about over, Instructor Riley or another DI would crack a joke relating to Hills sudden scare and the entire ordeal would start again.

Tasha had snapped at Hills, remarking on the ‘datapad incident’ and his seeming terror and how he was afraid of datapads. It was dumb, because now she had every datapad in the entire cadre, and Hills had made her uninstall and reinstall their operating systems for over 24 hours.

All of them. Repeatedly. Along with the datapad’s registration information and assignment. One mistake meant she had to start over and there were several hundred datapads in total.

Alex felt a growing sense of guilt. Many of the recruits focused on Tia for the blame, but the silver-haired girl endured it with indifferent aplomb. Alex spotted her looking at herself in the shower room mirror, a haggard expression the only sign of a crumbling fortress of stoicism.

Tia turned to her, and the blank expression reappeared as soon as she saw Alex enter.

Alex bit her lip. The other girl started to leave.

“Hey.” Alex said.

Tia paused and raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“I put that on your datapad. I wanted to get back at you for your harassment of Rachel.” Alex said.

Tia froze and looked at her, her eyebrow twitching slightly, the only allowance of expression the girl let slip. There was an awkward silence, then Tia moved past her, stopping shoulder to shoulder.

“Well, I wasn’t the one who got it.” Tia said, before leaving the shower room.

Alex let out a breath, then went to wash her face.

Hills had forbidden all of them from eating at the mess, and they’d all been forced to eat nothing but MREs as well. Worse, he’d somehow got them the worst possible choices: Chicken a la King and Veggie Omelet.

Each person only got one MRE, and they were… terrible and small at the same time, leaving Alex hungry. Time for afternoon assembly was in a few minutes and as Alex joined the other recruits gathering, Instructor Riley found her.

“Myers! Get over here!” Riley shouted.

Alex obeyed the order, a slightly perplexed expression on her face.

“Congratulations, your leave has been approved. Stay right there.”

It wasn’t long before everyone was at the assembly. Alex felt conspicuous as she got a few questioning glances, but Riley enlightened them all soon enough.

“Listen up, Recruits. Myers here has a sick sister. She’s been granted a days leave to go visit her. We are all going to wish her sister a swift recovery. FRONT LEANING REST!” Instructor Riley shouted.

Alex started to obey, but got stopped immediately. “Not you, Myers. You’re to watch.”

Riley turned back to the assembled recruits, who had all moved to the pushup position. “You will all call out at the top and bottom of the repetition, ‘MYERS! SISTER! GET! WELL!’ you will all move in unison. If you are out of tune, you will all keep moving until you get it right! Do you understand?”

“YES, DRILL SERGANT!” came the reply.

“Move ho!” Instructor Riley shouted.

“MYERS!”

“SISTER!”

“GET!”

“WELL!”

The chorus continued as everyone went up and down in unison.

Alex’s eye twitched as she watched, a roil of emotions she couldn’t sort out filling her chest.

A short time later, Alex stepped into the admin building. She felt a bit of confusion as she realized they had told her she only had one day. By her counting, she needed at least three!

Drill Sergeant Fabien was waiting for her, as well as a man she didn’t know who was wearing a skinsuit.

“Recruit, this is Second Lieutenant Richardson. He will fly you to MIL-1A.” Fabien said.

“Yes, Drill Sergeant!”

“Alex Starlight Myers?” Richardson asked, looking at her as if he was comparing her face to a memory.

Alex nodded. “Yessir, that’s me.”

He offered her his hand, and she shook it.

“I’ll be flying you up and back down.” Richardson said.

“Thank you.” Alex said doing her best to restrain her boiling excitement. She was going to get to see Elis!