Chapter 60

Newer York, 8 Tammuz 2541 AS

Captain Hannah bat Chaya of Alexei Leonov allowed herself to be ushered into Briefing One, willing herself to present a confidence she did not feel. She was the proverbial bearer of bad tidings, and dreaded facing the representatives of the TCTO she knew would be present.

At least, she thought, Charmaine managed to warn me. Charmaine Kent, Tower Actual, had made clear to Hannah who she was meeting with. She had also relayed a request, mystifying at first, for Hannah to have her comms officer scrub the buffers for certain patterns. Then, finally, she had cleared traffic, allowing Alexei to surpass himself getting them from outsystem to dock with alacrity.

All of which meant that Hannah owed Charmaine the next several rounds.

She had not taken time to change into her dress greys. The sense of urgency from both the admiral and Tower left her no doubt they'd rather she be speedy, not well dressed. Still, it did her impostor syndrome no favors to walk into the room and find all the navy personnel in their dress uniforms, all the civilians equally sharp.

Taking a breath, she drew herself to attention and saluted the admiral. "Captain bat Chaya, reporting as ordered, Admiral." She cringed internally. Should she have addressed the whole room? The governor? No. The admiral was her boss. That was understood.

And indeed, the admiral rose, smiling, and returned the salute. "At ease, Captain, and welcome. Everyone, please meet Hannah bat Chaya, commanding Alexei Leonov. Captain, I believe you know Governor Silverman, but here are President Robina Thirteen and Seth Twenty Five, her secretary of state."

"Madame President, Mister Secretary," she said, nodding acknowledgement, which they returned. Their faces were grave, but not unwelcoming. Hannah realized that everyone except the admiral was looking stricken.

"Let me also introduce you to Ambassador Brunislava Ellison of the Tau Ceti Treaty Organization, and her aide, Rachel O'Halloran; and Doctor Ashwin Gupta of the AI institute."

Hannah offered them a nod and greetings as well, then turned her attention to the other uniformed personnel in the room

"And here," the admiral was continuing, "Is your counterpart, Commander Elyah Singer of Zephyr; her exec, Lieutenant Commander Robin Alexander; and her science officer, Lieutenant Wayra Cadotte."

Singer rose and offered a hand, which Hannah took, saying, "Commander Singer, I'm glad to meet you. I am deeply sorry to do so under these circumstances." It felt utterly inadequate, but she had to say something, she supposed.

The other woman, who seemed to be about her age, said, "I agree, on both counts."

Hannah found herself saying, "I...may I ask, I had been told that Ari ben Yosef Espinoza was a member of your party as well..." She left the question implied.

If she thought the question odd, Singer did not show it, saying, "With Commander Alexander here, I asked him to return aboard to prepare Zephyr for the tour I'm still hoping to conduct this evening. Allow me to extend the invitation to you, as well."

"Thank you, Commander."

Hannah wondered if she imagined the encouraging squeeze from Singer as she relinquished her grip. Were her nerves that obvious?

Well, nothing for it but to press on, and the admiral clearly thought the same. "Please have a seat, Captain, and if you're ready, give your report."

She took the one remaining seat at the table, suddenly quite certain it had been added specifically to include her, and not sure how to feel about that. As soon as she felt centered, she began.

"If I may, admiral, I'd like to begin with the one bit of actual help I have to offer." This was definitely going out on a limb. The admiral would have no idea what she was talking about.

Still, he nodded assent.

"When in conversation with Tower Actual, she informed me that there had been anomalous broadcasts, origin unknown, likely at the heart of the calamity. Of course, even more so than a TCTO ship, a broadcast intended for the TCTO relay network satellites would be ignored by our systems, but still, as I understand happened aboard Bellerophon, would be recorded."

She paused here, noticing that while she had not lost the room's attention per se, everyone was looking at Admiral Donato, who said without a trace of discomfort, "I briefed my senior staff on some of the details. This one, in particular, seemed important. We've of course been scrubbing our own buffers, and it was on my list of things to bring up, but..." he made a shapeless gesture, nevertheless easy to understand. There was a lot going on. Donato nodded at her to continue.

"We found quite a bit of data, of course, dating back months, well before the Incident, despite the fact that we were out of range of the furthest known relays. The amount of power implied by such a broadcast is staggering, but we haven't tried estimating it, yet. What we do have, however, is enough telemetry to improve the search cone for the source!"

Around the room, there were breaths let out, sighs, a barely perceptible relaxation of shoulders. The admiral responded, "That is definitely a ray of light, Captain. Well thought."

Singer got her attention by raising a finger, and asked, "I assume your data stream also includes those nonary packets?"

Hannah responded, "They do, and I've rarely seen my comms officer or my science officer so perplexed." She stopped before she could say that the mystery had been a noticeable boost, although something told her Singer would understand that.

"By now," Donato started musing, "we should actually have a pretty substantial corpus of data, or soon anyway, once we collect it all. I wonder if we'll know enough to pinpoint a source before Zephyr leaves." He let that hopeful idea hang in the air a moment, then said, "Please proceed, Captain."

"Sir. We completed our scouting itinerary and were heading back, with an expectation of being able to make our preliminary report via one of the outer TCTO relays. As we entered range of that beacon, we were unable to establish sync with it. I took the liberty of diverting our course to its expected location, and found...nothing. Having no better way to get answers, we continued on to our planned port-call at Ross 508. As soon as we broke Jump, it was clear that something catastrophic had happened. The outsystem relay was also absent, which was strange enough, but it quickly became apparent that Harrison Anchorage was also...missing. Investigation yielded the understanding that no artificial structure in the system, no ship, no anything remained intact. We did find a handful of lifepods, but they had been drifting in-system for months at that point. We..."

She faltered. How could she not falter. Worse, she could see Zephyr's science officer growing somehow more stone-faced by the second, and realized too late that they were a Rossie.

Keep going, Hannah. The only way out is through.

"We did retrieve the pods. As expected, there were no survivors. In some cases, it appeared the pods themselves had malfunctioned. In others, they functioned perfectly, but with no outsystem relay to boost their signal..."

She stopped again. Singer rescued her.

"Captain, even if a relay had survived, there do not appear to have been any ships who could have answered in time. Right this moment, as we speak, Zephyr is the only TCTF ship we're aware of still moving under its own power."

Before she could stop herself, Hannah exclaimed, "My G-d!"

She took three deep breaths. Forced herself to calm down enough to continue without breaking down. "We did what we could in-system, and reasoned that we had to determine what we could of the extent of the crisis. We were not going to be able to extend our travels with any additional stops, but we still had enough resources to get us to our planned visit to Serpent's Head before coming home, so we did. We found exactly the same degree of devastation, only without so much as a single escape pod. Once we were very sure there was nothing to retrieve, we Jumped for home."

There ought to be something more to say. Something to make sense of the seven million people who were definitely dead, and now, based on what Singer had implied, millions more. With the facts poured out of her, however, she found she had no more words.

Of all the people at the table she'd expected to speak next, it was not Cadotte, and yet, there it was. Their voice was a carefully controlled croak which Hannah was quite sure was not their normal speaking voice, as they said, "Do you...assuming admiral's courtesy, will you share the records with us, please?"

Singer looked as if she was going to say something, but didn't. A science officer asking for data was hardly a surprise. Hannah couldn't be sure, though, if that was Cadotte's actual motivation or if the young lieutenant was on the verge of a personal rabbit hole. Singer's look at Cadotte said she was wondering the same. Hannah suddenly found herself very much hoping to have a chance to talk to Singer and compare notes, CO to CO, some day.

Hannah looked at the admiral, who nodded. "We'll release all our readings and notes before Zephyr leaves the system."

Everyone was quiet for a moment. Hannah had expected questions, but she supposed there wasn't really much more to delve into, until and unless analysis of the data turned up something she and her people had missed.

Finally, President Robina said, calmly, "Is there anything else we can do at this moment?"

There were looks all around the table. Gupta said, "I had thought we might have a chat with Lucas," he said, indicating one of the two boxes on the table, a contraption that clearly was meant for data storage and maybe even interaction, but had had all its connections severed or even melted shut. "But I'm not sure any of us really have the stomach for it right now. I promise a full report when I do so."

No one seemed to have much objection to that. Finally, Donato said, "There is one more thing to discuss, or...well, announce, I guess. I had been leaning this way already, but I think this report puts the tin hat on it. Captain," he said addressing Hannah, "please give orders to send Alexei Leonov to drydock. We're going to need you, and your crew, somewhere else."

"Sir?"

"Baldursdottir will be ready within the week, or at least, as ready as Singer told us Zephyr was when they left Gliese 581, which will have to be good enough."

She found herself blurting, "But, sir, that was going to be Captain Erasmus' ship."

"He'll have to make do with the Vincent. You got here first, Baldursdottir is ready first, and we're going to need to send you and yours back out as soon as possible. Obviously, anyone who was planning to rotate out or needs longer leave, we'll find a way to deal with, but otherwise, I want you on Baldursdottir before this coming Shabbat." He turned to Singer. "I've been talking with Haraldsdottir. The same logic she applied sending you out when she did applies here. We have one crew, one fast ship, and a lot to do. You and Zephyr must proceed to Tau Ceti once we're wrapped up here. We can send Baldursdottir to go see what's going on in other TCT systems, or to try to narrow down the search cone for that signal, or more likely both. Erasmus and Buzz Aldrin are due back in three weeks, by which time, the other new ship will be ready. Neither of them are nearly as fast as Zephyr, but they aren't too far behind.

"Meanwhile, we'll careen Alexei Leonov and see if it's possible to retrofit time compression to him in a reasonable amount of time. If not, we'll send him out with a fresh crew as he is, as soon as possible. Then we'll have four ships. We'll start getting answers, and maybe finding better questions to ask. Retrofitting Aldrin is probably not worth it—that's a much older vessel—but I'll still have the shipwrights look into it."

Ellison spoke for the first time in a while, saying, "On behalf of my government, thank you, admiral."

He took a breath, and said, "Our official stance on our relationship with the rest of the diaspora is unchanged, understand. But this ultimately affects us all. We all need answers. We all need to find these people before they find a way to do the same kind of thing to others—not just us, but Thessaly, New China, any of them. On that note, I happen to have a decent correspondence relationship with my opposite number in Thessaly, and I'm going to send him a precis. We don't have an embassy there, nor they here, or we'd send it through diplomatic channels instead. The only relay channel we had to their spaces was through the TCTO network, but their packet boats have resumed regular courier runs, so I should able to get it on the next one that breaks Jump."

Silverman looked at him, but Hannah could not interpret the look. When she spoke, she said, "You really ought to talk to the Knesset before involving other polities."

Donato looked mildly disgusted. "Do you actually want me to? If you do, I'll do it, if only to keep you out of even deeper political soup than we're already in."

Silverman pondered, then said, "Yes, I think I do."

The President of Revi'i raised her hand, almost diffidently. Hannah did not think this was a woman who usually did things diffidently, so whatever she was about to say was likely to be a surprise.

She did not disappoint.

"If you can't retrofit Buzz Aldrin, what then?"

He sighed. "Even if we can, I'm not sure we have a crew for him once his current crew takes Vincent out."

"How long would it take to train already space-trained people to operate a Jump ship?"

Donato blinked and looked at her intently, then squinted as if thinking through something. "If we're going to rush it, they'd have to be able to handle sleep-learning; and I think I'd still want to put at least a few experienced officers aboard. I'd have to drain our training program to find them—put instructors back on ships—but..."

"But it would give us five ships."

"Which would be worth it. Are you going to have trouble convincing your Knesset?"

"I suggest it in part because the Speaker of the Knesset Shel Revi'i informed me in email this morning that they've already voted a resolution of general support, and will contribute to any reasonable plan of action."

Donato smiled. It was almost beatific. It seemed out of place, except that Hannah knew enough history and politics to recognize that this was, in fact, an historic moment. Silverman also looked pleased, as did Singer's XO...who Hannah now recognized as also a Rob type.

"I accept your offer. We'll figure it out."

There was another lull, and finally Silverman said, "If we think we've hit bottom for today, then this is a good time to adjourn. Commander," she addressed Singer, "I realize that these meetings may not have yielded much immediate aid, but I hope when you leave us, it will be with the understanding that you don't stand alone. No matter what you find at Tau Ceti, David's Star stands behind you, and the Organization, and will offer whatever support we can...subject, of course, to the will of the Knesset." That last was delivered with wry resignation.

"Thank you, Governor, Admiral," Singer said. "I agree this is a good time to break. I think we all need a little time before we head across to Zephyr for the tour. I propose we meet at the aft docks, at whichever pier our pinnace was assigned there, at..," she hesitated, and looked like she was doing math in her head. Hannah remembered that the TCTO did not use a traditional timekeeping system. "Eighteen hours. There will be dinner aboard, after the tour, but I recognize that's some time from now, so you all may want a snack."

There was laughter, and Ellison said, "You've been here three days, and you're already talking like a local."

"Listen," Singer said, and Hannah could tell the banter was slightly forced. But she'd done the same thing for morale certainly. She continued, "We're all traumatized to our breaking points. Crawling the decks of a starship while both upset and hungry sounds like a recipe for a bad time."

That got a chuckle, however mild, from everyone but Cadotte. Cadotte didn't look like they objected. Just that they had no capacity right now for laughter. If Cadotte had been Hannah's crewmember, she would have been strategizing what to do next to help them. She could only hope Singer was on the case.

Everyone stood then, and Silverman said, "Thank you all. I don't know where any of this is heading, but thank you."

Everyone filed out, then, except Donato and Hannah. Somehow, she'd guessed he would want to speak with her separately, and so she had lingered.

When everyone else had gone, she said aloud, before Donato could say anything, "I should have done more, sir."

Donato looked positively exasperated. "What more could you have done, Captain?"

On the verge of tears, she responded, "I have no idea."

"Exactly. You did everything you knew to do, and more than others would have. Erasmus will fuss over not getting Baldursdottir, but I have no qualms sending you out ahead of him on the first of the shiny new ships. You did good."

Hannah knew many people thought Donato was an ass. She also knew that she, and most of the rest of the DSR Navy, would follow him into fire. This was why. When you did good, he told you so, just like that.

"Thank you, sir."

"You're welcome. Now, go try to take a break, touch grass, something. And have that snack Singer suggested. I'm betting you haven't eaten since you broke Jump."

"Yes, sir."

For Charmaine Parnell