New Frontiers (Expansion Wars Trilogy, Book 1) (4 page)

Celesta’s blood ran cold at the name and she immediately forgot Marcum’s outburst.

“The Phage?” she almost whispered.

“No,” Marcum shook his head. “At least not that we’ve detected. The brief I received when the com drone buzzed through the system was light on details, but it was enough that I’m ordering you out of the system. As of right now your current orders are to take the
Icarus
and make best speed directly to Xi’an. You’ll rendezvous there with a CIS Prowler that’s been monitoring the system.”

“Can you give me a bit more than that, Admiral?” Celesta asked.

“I could, but I’m not,” Marcum said. “You’re being deployed on a recon mission, Captain. I need you to investigate what this might be and I’m afraid that if I give you too much detail you’ll be inclined to jump to conclusions that may lead to rash action when you finally arrive in Xi’an. The short answer is that despite the Xi’an System being off limits we have reason to believe a Fleet warship may be stranded there.”

“But—” Celesta tried to interject.

“Your orders are being transmitted as we speak,” Marcum waved her off. “I’m verbally ordering your ship out of orbit; you can go over the data packet on your way to the jump point. No arguments. The next words out of your mouth had better be ‘aye aye, sir.’”

“Aye aye, sir,” Celesta said automatically, but she was staring at the logo for Seventh Fleet as Marcum had killed the channel before she had even opened her mouth.

Starship captains were given a lot of leeway when it came to how they executed their orders. CENTCOM knew it was fairly pointless to try and micromanage the operations of vessels that were lightyears away with no way to reach them except dispatching a comparatively slow and costly message via one of Tsuyo Corp’s com drones. As such, Celesta Wright was accustomed to orders that could almost be vague suggestions that CENTCOM would appreciate it if her ship were in a certain area at roughly the time they required.

The orders that had arrived from the
Amsterdam
as the
Icarus
made her way out of the unnamed system were different, however. These were the type of orders she’d expect when they were on wartime footing, not a reconnaissance flyby in a system that had no habitable worlds … at least not anymore. The Phage had begun their savage tear through Terran space by first annihilating everything on the surface of Xi’an and then later destroying the planet completely in a display of firepower that still gave the veterans who’d witnessed it nightmares.

Admiral Marcum’s staff had cut orders that required her ship to hit specific and precise rendezvous at such an aggressive pace that if there was a single maintenance delay with the
Icarus
they’d miss it completely. The knot that had formed in her stomach at the mention of the Xi’an System refused to go away in the face of these unusually specific orders, at least specific for a time of relative peace. Humanity was in the midst of a post-war upheaval that looked to be a prolonged situation as the remaining enclaves restructured their agreements with each other even as others broke away completely and shunned all contact with the remnants of the Confederacy.  

Celesta read through her orders one more time as the
Icarus
flew her first warp flight back to the Columbiana System and a new worry began to gnaw at her. They would stop in the New America capital system to be joined by six other ships before pressing on to the Frontier, all of them newer warships with veteran captains. Marcum had specifically said it wasn’t the Phage, but was there a new enemy at the gates that just happened to pick the Xi’an System as well?

Even as she realized how virtually impossible that scenario was a new, possibly worse fear arose. Xi’an was still under control of the Asianic Union and therefore was within the Eastern Star Alliance, Starfleet ships were not given permission to freely travel there. Could the ESA be ready to capitalize on the Confederacy’s downfall and gain a few more worlds in the confusion? The idea of fighting humans, while it would at least be familiar, seemed repugnant after the horrors of the Phage War. She hoped she was wrong.

“Commander Barrett,” she said, raising her voice unnecessarily and waiting for the computer to route her intercom request.

“
Barrett here, Captain.
”

“I’m forwarding you our new orders, but from what I see we can tolerate no holdups due to technical trouble with the
Icarus
,” Celesta said as she began packaging and forwarding a copy of the orders to her department heads. “Please have Commander Graham physically decouple the RDS pod from the main power MUX. Tell him that while I admire his perseverance and skill when it comes to the new drive I cannot afford for it to act up again and delay us. We’ll be flying on the mains while in real-space until further notice.”

“
Understood, ma’am
,” Barrett said. “
I’ll go down now and speak with him
.” She frowned as the intercom beeped softly to tell her the channel was closed. Why would Barrett leave the bridge during his watch to go to Engineering? When she looked at the clock on her office wall that displayed ship’s time she realized that Barrett had likely been in bed and she’d been sitting at her desk for hours longer than she realized. She quickly logged off her terminal and straightened up her desk before heading to her own quarters to catch at least a few hours of sleep before first watch began.

****

By the time the
Icarus
had reached her final rally point before the warp flight directly to the Xi’an System six different com drones had caught up with them, each providing a little more detail about the political chaos within the former Confederacy and the not-so-secret meeting with a new alien species, but almost nothing about what was awaiting them on the Frontier.

Celesta was somewhat relieved to learn that Augustus Wellington, formerly Senator Wellington of the Terran Confederate Senate and Chairman of the Fleet Operations Committee, had moved quickly and decisively to consolidate his powerbase and use it as leverage to bring all the other factions to the table. The powerful politician from New America was wasting no time hammering out a restructuring deal while most of the major pieces of the old system were still intact. Despite the loss of Haven, much of the old administrative apparatus had survived as well as a fully functioning CENTCOM along with Starfleet. If he could get everyone to agree quickly there might even be some opportunities opened up for the other enclaves to step in with the loss of the ESA’s production and manufacturing power, something they’d never wanted to compete with in the past. Celesta’s fervent hope was that the politicians did what politicians always did: look out for their own best interests. If they were able to strike a new set of accords quickly and restructure the remaining planets within the Confederacy’s sphere of influence, there was less chance for more splintering and unrest among the civilian population.

“Captain, we’re receiving a standard hail, no encryption,” the com officer, Lieutenant Ellison, called. “Source is a CIS Prowler.”

“Respond with our standard countersign, Lieutenant,” Celesta said. “Tactical, am I correct in assuming that we were the first to arrive?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lieutenant Commander Adler called from the tactical station. “No other transponders in the system active but ours; even the Prowler is quiet.”

“Very well,” Celesta said. “Ensign Accari, please secure our own transponder and ensure we have no other emissions from the
Icarus
but the com system.”

“Aye aye, ma’am.”

“Burst packet from the Prowler, ma’am,” Ellison said. “They’re asking us to keep the com chatter to a minimum and to form up on them. I’m sending the text from the message to your station now.”

Celesta looked over it, slightly irritated that she was being given orders from a non-Fleet officer, but tamped it down once she read the full message.

Senior Captain Wright, please form up on the Prowler and we’ll more easily maintain emission security protocols. We’re deploying an asset deeper near the jump point to greet and route the rest of your task force to the formation. Once all ships are accounted for you will have full operational control over the mission.

Agent Uba

“A full-blown agent,” Celesta mused softly to herself. “CENTCOM must be taking whatever the hell is in Xi’an very seriously.” The fact there was an agent aboard the Prowler made her mind flit briefly to Pike before she was again wholly focused on the business at hand.

“Nav, I’m sending you a set of rendezvous coordinates you will use to get a course plot to the helm.” She raised her voice, “Helm, all ahead one-half when you get it.”

“Ahead one-half, aye.”

The main engines rumbled to life as the
Icarus
switched from her unguided drift to powered flight, the prow angling down the well as they chased the smaller CIS Prowler. Celesta could shave off quite a bit of time by ordering a more aggressive approach down the well, but the other ships were likely days behind her so it would be a pointless expenditure of propellant. She also tossed around the idea of having her chief engineer, Commander Graham, reintegrate the RDS pod so she would have use of the gravity manipulating drive, but discarded the notion quickly. There was something in the Xi’an System that had CENTCOM scared enough to order the
Icarus
all the way from the unnamed planet they’d been orbiting despite the fact there were a dozen closer ships, two of them identical
Starwolf
-class destroyers.

Whatever was there had to be something so dangerous or mysterious that Admiral Marcum wanted his most decorated, battle-hardened captain to be the first to investigate. She took some small comfort in the fact that Marcum had actually used the word
investigate
multiple times during their conversations as opposed to intercept, disable, or destroy. Maybe this was simply an overreaction from a command structure that was now trying to find its stride in a time of relative peace.

“Commander Barrett, you have the bridge.” Celesta stood up as her XO walked through the hatchway for duty. “I’ll be in Engineering. Ensign Accari will brief you on the latest developments.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Barrett said to her back.

****

Celesta rode the lift down from the command deck, located at about the midpoint of the comparatively squat superstructure fitted on the
Starwolf
-class, all the way down to Deck Eight where she could take the main aftward access tube all the way to Engineering. Before leaving her office the previous evening she’d sent a message to Commander Graham’s inbox asking that he come up with a few options for employing the RDS without risking the failure modes they’d experienced on other systems when it decided to fail.

She’d complained bitterly to Tsuyo and CENTCOM both about the abysmal reliability of a drive that had been fitted to an active duty combat vessel, but the excitement of the brass for the new drive trumped the strident complaints of even the legendary Captain Wright. So, without wasting further time and effort trying to get management, as she’d come to view them, to see it her way she had decided to trust her own engineering crews to find an acceptable solution. It was either that or she’d jettison it over an unpopulated planet before returning to New Sierra.

“Commander Graham,” she announced her arrival loudly to be heard over the noise of the machinery in the bowels of her ship. “I hope you have some good news for me.”

“I do indeed, Captain,” Graham said. A fellow Britannic citizen, his accent was similar to hers, but a practiced ear would be able to tell they likely didn’t come from the same planet within the enclave.

“It was a fairly simple solution, but a degree of difficulty is induced by the sheer size of the components needed, not to mention the safety concerns. To be perfectly honest, Captain, this is something that should have been built into the RDS pod before they ever tapped
Icarus’s
MUX.”

“Very good, Commander.” Celesta suppressed smiling at the enthusiastic man. For some reason he always took that as a mocking gesture. “I am prepared to be awed by your engineering prowess.”

“The problem is, at its core, a simple one,” Graham assumed his “lecturing” voice and mannerisms, clasping his hands behind his back and leading Celesta deeper into the heart of the ship. “The RDS develops unexpected variances in its power supply and causes a push-pull on the MUX. Sometimes it’ll draw enormous amounts of current unexpectedly, other times it will dump so much power back on the bus that it blows out the junction.

“Tsuyo R&D assured us that this was all accounted for, and to be fair there is an extensive detection and suppression network on the power taps, but what we’re finding in real world testing on
Icarus
is that the MUX controllers aren’t always ready for what the RDS power sub-system does. I’ve had discussions with the
Amsterdam
’s chief engineer while we’re in such close com range and he agrees with my findings.”

The
Icarus
, like every other starship since humans had begun leaving Earth, utilized a “smart” electrical distribution system that allowed the computer to monitor and prioritize where power was sent. It utilized a multiplexing system, or MUX, to distribute power and reduce the amount of wiring stuffed into a ship that was hundreds of meters long. It also had many redundancies and safeties built in to prevent the ship from being damaged, the same safeties that were causing them problems when it came to their new reactionless drive.

“And what solution do you suggest to mitigate this?” Celesta asked.

“In descending order of preference I would first take the ship back to New Sierra and tell Tsuyo to either pull the RDS pod or properly integrate it into the ship’s power distribution system,” Graham said, ticking off the points on his fingers. “Barring that, I would leave it disconnected and simply refuse to risk the safety of the ship over what is proving to be a system that isn’t ready for active deployment. Third, I would order my teams to begin fabricating an interface consisting of up and downstream surge detectors coupled to fast-break load contactors. What this should do, in theory, is very simple: When an event is detected the connection to the main bus is broken before the RDS has a chance to damage our power system.”

“Cons?”

“We’re breaking the connection completely,” Graham shrugged. “That means when power is reapplied that it won’t just come back up. You’ll have to reinitialize the entire startup sequence again.”