TNS Chapter 31 Preview (Patreon)

Thanks for your continued support! Please enjoy this preview of Chapter 31 which will release on Patreon on 3/20/23 at 0800 MST!

Subject: Staff Sergeant Power

Species: Human

"This looks like... Alpha Centauri, I'm pretty sure," CPL Chang chimed in.

"Yeah, there's the shipyards. But... hey sarnt could you activate the highlights?" LCPL Livingstone asked.

"I'm not your fucking remote, marine," SGT Gruff growled as he tapped the screen again.

"Yeah, there we go. We're definitely in Alpha Centauri. All the shipyards, and nowhere else are you gonna see that many... other ships... Wait..." Chang trailed off.

I looked at the screen a bit closer and it took a moment to realize that the ships that were highlighted weren't the typical civilian ships that you'd normally see. There were carriers and battleships, far more than there should be. Even if we had rendezvoused with the rest of Second Fleet there wouldn't be this many. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I could count them. But we were looking at our grouping plus three others, with a fuck ton of ships per grouping.

"Hey staffsarnt, you ever seen more than one fleet in the same place at the same time?" Gruff asked.

"Nope," I said.

"Yeah, me neither."

"What's going on?" PFC Rogers asked with a bit of fear in his voice.

Time to be a leader.

"Who gives a fuck? It ain't none of our damned business until it's made our business, marine," I said with a knifehand for emphasis and more than a little impatience. "Gruff, turn it back to mirror mode. The rest of you, back to sweating."