Borass Station, Gliese 581

24 megaseconds since the catastrophe

Commodore Kel Haraldsdottir had the mother of all headaches. In fact, she could not have said how long it had been since she had not had a headache. She actually had her head examined, in the literal sense, just a few shifts before, and was almost disappointed to discover there was nothing physically wrong with her. A brain tumor would have given her a great excuse to at least take a nap.

This is what I'm reduced to, she thought. Black humor and black coffee.

In the time since she'd pushed Zephyr out of the nest, she had made considerable progress on shoring up the survivability of the habitats in Gliese 581. Despite initial reluctance on the part of various non-ship personnel to move to a "ghost ship", being able to use the hulk of Bellerophon to shift people around had worked out well. There were about one hundred now-permanent residents of the old ship, almost all of them former crew of Bellerophon herself or Aquila. After being allowed some time for recovery from their various traumas, they'd begun, at first by ones and twos, then in quantity, to ask for actual assignments maintaining and even repairing the ship. Now, they considered themselves posted to a ship that just happened not to be going anywhere, with the "unit pride" that went along with being part of a crew with a purpose.

Haraldsdottir had doubts that Bellerophon would ever actually fly again. Silverman seemed more optimistic, and was also the more expert. That, coupled with the fact that allowing those personnel to do something was better than them sitting around doing nothing, convinced the commodore to authorize actual repair work. If nothing else, it would provide more habitable volume! She might have rather have pressed them into different service in the shipyard, but Silverman insisted he had enough genuine yard hands for the work in hand there.

The rest of Bellerophon's personnel were rotations from over-stressed rock-stations that had never been meant to be habitations. These were ore processing, factory, and even agricultural facilities that had been tied in both to New Norfolk and to the shipyard, with most of the workers commuting to and from New Norfolk. The decision had finally been made to start converting some of these facilities to be intentional living environments, but that meant clearing them out, at least sections of them, in the meantime. The result led to some crowding on Bellerophon, which in turn was now being relieved by the repairs to that ship. Still, the ship had been designed for long term, long range, independent survivability in a way the factory stations had not. The instance of Chef resident there seemed simultaneously harried but cheerful anytime the commodore checked in with him.

She remained uneasy that she had left the ship essentially in command of an AI. The problem was that she had no other officers to spare. She'd had Silverman in charge there for a short while, and he was still superintendent for the repairs going on. His day to day, however, was spent at the shipyard.

There was still a lot of resentment around the system at Haraldsdottir's "high-handed" tactics. Many people still felt Zephyr should also have been pressed into habitat duty instead of being sent away. What little news she had felt comfortable releasing to the public from Zephyr's travels, since, had mollified some, but not all, of the grousing. Word had leaked out that she was building—really finishing—something else at the yards, and she had just gotten an earful about how she should be working instead on getting the keel laid for Newer Norfolk.

She really hoped she could talk them out of that name. Meanwhile, she simply continued to talk them into postponing the construction. She told them what she could, but in fact, Karenski had been sparing in details.

So now, the latest round of shouting over, she sat in her office, massaging her temples for all the good it did her. She missed Singer, who had quickly become someone she could talk to despite the difference in their ranks. Silverman was also a good sounding board, but he was simply too busy. What little Haraldsdottir did know had convinced her they needed to work quickly.

She had almost managed to at least unclench her jaw when the comm chimed. She gave serious thought to ignoring it, but a second, more insistent chime told her it was something important.

She was so very tired of somethings that were important.

So, she sat up straight, smoothed her hair and answered the call in the middle of the third, even more strident chime. "Haraldsdottir."

The comms officer who came on screen looked sufficiently wild-eyed that for a moment, Haraldsdottir feared she had not done enough to smooth her hair and her features and that some of her raw edges were showing. "Commodore, packet from the relay, encrypted, your eyes only. Priority Zero."

The comms officer's wild eyes were thus explained. Priority Zero came as close as anything did to a war warning. Except, of course, the Tau Ceti Treaty Fleet did not have any concept of a war warning.

Or at least, it hadn't.

"Thank you, Ensign. I'll read it immediately."

"Ma'am." The tech nodded, and then signed off without further ado.

The commodore took a breath, then another, then opened her mailbox.

She read the cover letter from Karenski once, then again, incredulous. Then, she speed-scrubbed through the rest of the attachments.

War warning indeed. They still didn't really know with whom, but there could be no doubt any longer. Someone had attacked...everyone. Successfully. New China was slag. Newer York's famed green spaces would likely have to be completely gutted and reseeded. News was filtering in from other independent polities of disruptions and disasters of varying proportions.

She returned to the cover letter, and the orders it contained. She touched a call button and Lieutenant Alanna Graham, who had been acting as her aide, answered so promptly that Haraldsdottir was sure the comms officer had given her a heads up.

"Lieutenant, I'm going to need my pinnace prepared to fly in...let's call it three kilos. Please call Captain Silverman and tell him I will need to see him immediately upon my arrival at Spinward 15."

Graham blinked, but otherwise remained impassive, saying, "Yes'm. Anything else?"

Haraldsdottir considered that question a minute, then said, "Yes, Lieutenant. Pack a bag."

Graham went pale, but said, "Yes'm. Clear on your final."

"Clear."

Haraldsdottir stared at the screen again for a minute, then stood and left her office, striding purposefully to her own quarters to pack. Her headache was gone, and there was an enigmatic smile on her face as she went.

Yaakov Silverman met her at dockside, which she'd come to expect. He was at least as busy as she was, maybe busier, but he never stinted naval courtesy. "Commodore, Lieutenant", he said, nodding in turn to Haraldsdottir and to Graham. "To what do I owe the honor?" He eyed the baggage they were carrying with a visibly dawning suspicion.

"We need to talk in the most secure location you can think of."

He took a moment, clearly weighing options, then said, "The main briefing room aboard ship would probably be that, then. I can order the construction crews to take a break, clear the ship, or at least that deck. Honestly, there shouldn't be any work on that deck right now, anyway. Everything from deck five up is finished except for some paint."

Haraldsdottir weighed options in turn, then responded, "Let's do that, then."

He gestured and said, "This way, then!"

It was hardly the first time she'd been aboard a ship in progress, empty of crew. In the past, she'd felt various ways about it. Some ships felt eerie when untenanted.

This one, though... She wasn't superstitious enough to believe that ships had wills of their own, beyond the AIs that inhabited them, but this one felt ready to slip the leash. She knew on some level that was probably her own anticipation, but she still could not escape it.

They walked in silence through the main airlock, down one deck and down the corridor to the quiescent bridge. Haraldsdottir allowed herself one brief look around, lingering briefly on the hot-seat, then followed Silverman into the briefing room.

Once the doors were closed, she wasted no time, asking as they found seats, "What's the least amount of time you would need to make this ship ready for departure."

Silverman's lingering suspicious look turned into something like a wolfish grin. He had no real idea yet what was going on, but he'd just been handed a challenge. Not to mention he was smarter than the average bear. Whatever a bear was. The commodore and her aide had come aboard with bags. They weren't going home to Borass.

So he just asked the most crucial question from his own standpoint. "Where's the crew coming from?"

"I've already asked Lieutenant Commander Luchny to recruit at least fifty ratings from Bellerophon and have them ready to transfer at short notice."

"Would Luchny be coming as well?"

Haraldsdottir suppressed a moment's irritation at having her own question put off by Silverman's. He needed this information, of course. "No, alas, although I don't envy him the headaches that I'll be bequeathing him."

"So, fifty ratings, four officers—"

"Four?"

"You, me, Graham—" he pointed at the obvious bags, "—and I think Lieutenant Kaparthy. She's got a level head and she knows the systems as well as anybody alive, maybe even better than Espinoza. Do we have an AI?"

She pulled two cartridges from one of her bags, and handed them to him. "One Castor, one Pollux. Both already briefed and reporting themselves eager to serve. It was the most I felt I could have trained up without giving away something might be afoot."

She could see Silverman curious what had spurred this urgency, but also recognizing he'd tested her patience enough. "Assuming no issues with their integration with the network, and that their own inspection of the state of the engines matches my own, conducted right after Lieutenant Graham called me, we could leave dock in six kiloseconds. I've kept the reaction and replication mass tanks topped off since the second they were built. There's a lot of the ship below this deck unfinished, but with such a reduced complement, it shouldn't be crowded. I'd expect it to take us about thirty kilos to rendezvous with Bellerophon and pick up our ratings."

As if on cue, Haraldsdottir's hand terminal chimed. She checked the ID and saw it was the drydock's comms tech. She answered it. "Haraldsdottir."

"Sorry to disturb you, Commodore," came the response, and she considered she might have answered a little sharply. "Lieutenant Commander Luchny insisted he needed to pass a message to you directly. Lag to Bellerophon is 30 seconds, so this will be canned, and it's also encrypted." The tech was clearly mystified, but that was his problem.

"Send it here, please."

"Ma'am."

A moment later, allowing for transfer time and decryption, the voice and video message came through. "Ma'am, we may have a problem..." There was a dramatic pause, and Haraldsottir braced herself to find out that Luchny could not drum up enough volunteers. She hated the idea of conscripting anyone, but she was already going to be running with a skeleton crew.

Then, he finished, with a wicked grin. "Every able-bodied hand aboard volunteers. I'll leave it to you to figure out how many we have to disappoint. Luchny clear."

She looked at Silverman, eyes posing the question. "We could probably take 'em all, but at that point it starts to look like we're abandoning the system. Which...we're not, are we?"

"No, although I have a feeling the various station admins are going to feel like we have. All right, here's the situation: the Diaspora Treaty has been invoked. Karenski is now CIC of whatever units can be gathered from every signatory, all of whom have suffered some kind of attack or disruption. I've left the briefing in your queue. Read it when you get a kilo. We still don't know exactly who or what we're facing, but we definitely need more hulls, and fast ones. "

The wolfish look was back on Silverman's face. "That's why we've been building this baby, isn't it?"

"It sure is. Karenski was right again, telling us to prioritize it. He probably hates the position he's in, but I'd rather him than Donato. He sees further ahead, damn him."

Silverman nodded, then said, "Give the word, Captain." And that solved the one problem Haraldsdottir had been having. She was itching to take the hot-seat herself, but technically, she was a flag officer, and the command should be Silverman's. With that phrasing, he made it clear he was content to be her exec.

"The word is given. Start the clock."

He rose and was giving orders via his terminal before he was out the door.

So it was that a mere six kiloseconds later, the new ship left drydock under heavy automation, docking thirty kiloseconds after that with Bellerophon and taking aboard seventy-five ratings, all of whom had already been briefed on the risks of going out on an untried ship with such a stripped complement, and came anyway.

And then, leaving behind them the howls of outraged station administrators and a heartfelt "G-dspeed" from Borass Tower, TCTFS Mifune Gō boosted for the boundary, and thence for Tau Ceti.