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Black Sky - Chapter 49
🕑 Added 2020-05-07 19:39:22 +0000 UTC
I watched the sensors with bated breath as the small, maybe five kilometer in diameter, asteroid was continuing its tumble through space. I had been careful when landing, even if the asteroid massed about seven-thousand times as much as our frigate, even the smallest deviation might have alerted the computers on the destroyer searching for us. At the end of the day, looking for movement was next to impossible but looking for acceleration was certainly plausible.
My landing-spot had been on the side turned away from the destroyer but now, we were rotating back into view. The rock I had chosen was rotating quite fast, making one rotation about once per hour, giving me a good period of time to see the rest of the system. Part of me wished to have some sensor-buoys that would allow us to get a good look, even while the asteroid was between us and our pursuer, but we just didn’t have any.
But it seemed as if we had made our escape, once the cruiser came into view, the sensors gathered as much information as they could and it seemed as if it was idling in the area we had appeared in, not doing much. After a few minutes of watching space tumble by, I decided to get myself the legacy to read, hoping that the writings of Kianna Howe would grant me some insight into the truth of the story told to me by Airah. In addition, reading gave me something else to focus on, other than worry about the destroyer searching for us.
When I got back, I suppressed a vile curse when I realised that in the time I had been in my cabin, a jump-flare had washed over us. Looking at the sensors, I realised just how lucky we had been that we had been turned towards the flare as it passed us, or we wouldn’t have noticed it at all. The signature of the flare managed to bring that curse out, it wasn’t just as simple as a single ship entering, it was distributed in a way that hinted at multiple ships. individually, they were all small, barely registering on our sensors, making me guess that it was a group of frigates or corvettes, most likely Beliar-class corvettes.
Not that it would matter, unless they were insanely lucky, their chance had come and gone, but still, someone had deployed five spaceships and about two-hundred people to hunt us down. It seemed to be an insane overkill, unless there was something in play I didn’t know about.
Knowing that our best chance was to make like a rock, letting the asteroids around us mask our signature, I shut down as much of the frigate’s systems as I dared, even dimming the artificial gravity to a fraction of its normal value and shutting off the cockpit lights, leaving only the systems that kept us from suffocating.
It was oddly comfortable, sitting there weighing only ten percent of what I normally weighed. A weight had been taken off me, quite literally, but also figuratively as I took periodic glances to the sensors, telling me that the frigates seemed to have spread out and were furtively searching through the system.
Another weight was taken off by my reading, the account of Kianna Howe seemed to match what Airah had told me. The fleet commanded by Admiral Kezost had attacked targets deep in Tellurian-space, even raided civilian shipping, but there was no mention of attacks against other civilian targets. I could understand attacks on shipping, at the end of the day, it was next to impossible to determine if a shipment of food was going to the civilian part of a space-station or into the military supply-depot orbiting right next to it. Especially as most of the time, the answer was a simple ‘both’, making attacks on purely military supply-lines impossible. I also noticed that apparently, the fleet under Admiral Kezost had returned to re-supply at official Starfleet-depots twice, maybe even more often. It was only that at the second stop, then Captain Howe had been transferred, to form a new squadron, the Carmine Squadron.
I stopped reading at that point, not sure whether to continue or not. There was a curiosity about Commodore Ryker and his early days in the Starfighter-Command but at the same time, I wanted to keep thinking of him as an authority whose teachings I ought to emulate. Reading about him, being a cocky, young lieutenant might change that thinking. I had once heard that you should avoid meeting your heroes, it would only disappoint you. So, would I be disappointed if I read about him? Was it worth the additional wisdom from Captain Howe, or would it be smarter to read something else and return to her writing a little later?
Just knowing that the Admiral’s fleet had been supplied by the Starfleet, even while they had been raiding civilian shipping was quite damning for the official version, in which the actions of Admiral Kezost had been widely condemned. So, why did the Starfleet supply someone that commited war-crimes, if they opposed such actions?
Instead of trying to figure out that question, I decided to get a drink and walked into the galley, taking a better look around. While there was coffee, quite good one actually, I wasn’t really feeling it. Instead, I decided to try the tea that sat there, unopened, in an actual tin-can. Part of me wondered about it but after breaking the seal and taking a good sniff, I decided that I wanted to find out just how it would taste.
While I was waiting, I heard a yelp from Airah’s room and decided to return the favour, quickly walking over to her door and calling out, asking if she was alright. When there was no answer within a few moments, I triggered the door control, letting it slide open and looked inside, only just managing to keep myself from laughing.
Airah seemed to have managed to wrap herself in the thin covering, used mostly for psychological reasons, and fallen out of the bunk. Only that in the reduced gravity, she hadn’t actually fallen but was more or less hanging there, apparently a little groggy and unable to get herself oriented.
“Seems like you are hanging in there…” I said, losing the struggle not to make a bad joke, as laughter broke through my control.
For a moment, she looked at me with a look of indignity on her face that I only laughed harder, even as I stepped up to give her a lift.
“I’ll get you for that.” she muttered but I was just close enough to hear it.
“I’m sure you will, princess.” I whispered back, before gently blowing into her ear, causing her to blush scarlet and splutter in surprise.
“How long have I been asleep?” she asked, once she was back in a more dignified position, sitting on her bed.
“Good question, let’s call it two days?” I suggested, carefully keeping my voice level and deadpan. The look of disbelief on Airah’s face was well worth it, at least until she noticed my smirk and glared at me.
“What? It’s the truth, the rock we are on has a rotation-period of fifty-three minutes and a few seconds, we landed about three hours ago and you’ve been asleep the whole time. Do you want to call it three days?” I asked, trying to sound completely innocent.
“Just tell me.” she pouted, making me relent.
“You’ve been asleep a little over eight hours.” I finally told her, only to be reminded by a chime from the galley that I had tea waiting for me.
“I’ll head back into the galley, it seems you are alright. Why don’t you join me for some sort of brunch?” I asked, getting a nod in return. When I left the cabin, so that she could change, she simply followed behind me, staying in the ship-suit she had worn while sleeping. It reminded me that, now that she was able to keep an eye on things, I should take a shower.
After a quick check that nothing had changed in the cockpit, I went back into the galley and noticed that Airah had a strange look on her face. In addition, she had poured the boiling water into the mug I had prepared, letting it sit on the other side of the table, while going through the pantry, looking for something to eat.
“We should be alright, just another rock in a system full of rocks. But there’s something else going on here, something big. Why don’t you tell me why someone send a destroyer and a group of corvettes after us? I don’t think I’d warrant such an expenditure, not in a million years. So, what is going on here?” I asked and Airah visibly paled, hearing that we truly were hunted.
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