Chapter 193B – The Best Plans and Plots (Patreon)

Note: This should have been part of last week's ShipCore chapter, but I was just having a hard time with it. So just consider this the second part of 193 that should have been together.

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USD: Twenty-Four Hours since hostile fleet incursion.

Location: Meltisar, MOR-1, Solarian Diplomatic Cutter

The small diplomatic cutter’s bridge was quiet enough that the atmospheric recyclers were the loudest thing to penetrate the tension. Veliana stood behind the nervous naval lieutenant’s command seat, waiting intently for a reply from the Solarian fleet. The time lag involved meant that it took hours to send a message and receive a reply, and the window for the next message to arrive was approaching rapidly.

The rest of the crew shot her nervous glances. That didn’t bother her and was understandable. It wasn’t often that the small ship would see a NAI waiting on the bridge, but her VIP passenger berth had felt claustrophobic… and isolated.

The feeling of claustrophobia and isolation had only multiplied the longer she’d stood her post in Meltisar dealing with Princess Celestia, who had taken control of the system in stride without tripping over her own feet. That in itself hadn’t been a problem, but the young NAI named Alex had been worse.

For what it was worth, Veliana had concluded that the girl wasn’t lying about her Chi rank. That meant that either Celestia and Alex were working in lockstep far better than anyone could imagine or… the Princess had indeed elevated herself to Psi rank somehow.

That was the conclusion that she had come to and put in her report. It was the basis for her reasoning on why they should work together with Meltisar. The Alliance with the Imperium was shaky at best, and while Meltisar had a poor long-term position on the map, they had something that Solaria needed desperately: a much faster route and direct access to Corporate space.

There had been enough time to receive a short brief from the fleet with very scant details due to operational security, while the diplomatic cutter had not been restrained from sending a detailed dispatch and report. That had only been possible because Meltisar had wanted her report to go out, otherwise they’d all likely be cordoned off by dozens of jammers or restricted to a mooring.

She glanced down to the Lieutenant who was starting to sweat even though the atmospheric cycle was keeping the room at its standard comfortable temperature.

“Don’t worry, Lieutenant. We probably won’t all die in this mission,” she said with a half-hearted smile.

He looked back at her with a pained expression that he quickly hid behind a neutral façade. “Sorry, Ma’am. Just things look a bit…insane.”

Veliana grunted and turned her attention to the ship’s anemic sensor package. There were eight major fleet blobs that registered as ‘hundreds to thousands’ of ships, which was terribly inaccurate. Then there were thousands of smaller pockets of civilian ships, military singletons, and defense bases dotting the system.

It was all a terribly blurry picture of the system, but if the cutter had a better sensor package, it wouldn’t have ever been permitted to be used as a diplomatic vessel.

In the southwest system quadrant, there was a distinct lack of another fleet that should have been present by now, but the Corpo fleet was conspicuously absent. From the shared information from Meltisar, it wasn’t even present in the next system over. She doubted the Ertan fleet would have shown up without their promise to come, and the backstab seemed out of place.

More worryingly, if the Corporate fleet wasn’t here, where was it? The only thing she could think of was that it had been deployed to the front lines on the Western Frontier, which would spell disaster for the Solarian units there. Although…

Veliana glanced back at the readout on the Solarian fleet and focused the sensor net on it. The screen worked itself without her having to touch any keys or console, which caused a minor panic attack between the crew before they realized she was using her NAI interface to work the system.

“It looks like a lot of our ships aren’t there,” Veliana mumbled.

The lieutenant looked at her with confusion. “Ma’am?”

“Our fleet is too small. They’ve held back a lot of ships. Maybe they already agreed with my reports and plan,” she theorized.

Maybe Fleet HQ and Solaria had diverted some of the inner system fleets to 13 Centauri. That it took the Federation 7 jumps to reach the front from the nearest core system compared to the Corpo’s 3 meant that getting reinforcements to the western frontier was complicated. 13 Centauri wasn’t a core system, so sending Inner System ships there was technically a violation, but the situation in Meltisar…

Was there going to be another all-out interstellar war like during the Collapse?

A bleep and then beeping tone indicated a transmission had arrived and was waiting to be decoded. The decryption software blinked on the main comm console twice, then turned red. Everyone turned to her, the message being decodable only by a NAI.

A scowl appeared on Veliana’s face as she accepted the message, then read it.

It was from Chi Ferreta, demanding more information.

Veliana felt a surge of irritation; she had already sent all the pertinent details in her first transmission. Now they were forced to wait even longer for further instructions.

She sighed. “Lieutenant, have you ever been on a diplomatic mission like this before?”

The young officer shook his head. “No, ma’am. This is my first independent assignment. I was previously stationed on an IS patrol cruiser as the junior nav officer.”

Veliana nodded. “I see. Well, let me tell you, this sucks. Instructions are to sit here and wait another twelve hours.”

He seemed surprised at her candid response, but nodded after a second. “I couldn’t agree more.”