Among the Cold Starlight

[Gir Quee]

Time crawled for Gir as he waited for the Tide to enter the Honia system. He had hoped that Yrolos would have a detailed report about the bio-hound, particularly is intended target and source. Yet the technician had sent him little so far, aside from a few hasty notes about the orientation of the remains and a few holo stills of the same on the concealed grav trap. Part of him wanted to directly order Yrolos to solve the social part of their incident rather than focusing on recording the multitude of objective signs of the cyborg's demise. Yet he knew that Yrolos was biologist by trade, rather than a detective. He managed to busy himself with routine paperwork and documenting the incident between Osiris Corp and Vulca Mineral Corps over the allegedly misplaced cargo. Yet even as he powered through drafting those documents, his mind wandered off to try and figure out the connection between the bio-hound's last location and its appearance near Vulca Mineral Corp's offices. It seemed unlikely to Gir that such a creature would try to return to its operators in the midst of such a heavy search because its discovery would incriminate the company. Given the nature of the cyborg, Gir's preliminary guess was that the thing was moving quickly to attack its target. The thought that Gordian James was the bio-hound's original target crossed his mind. He guessed that it was possible that the creature had specifically disguised itself as a Vulca Mineral Corp package in order to specifically get close to the old man. And while that theory provided an answer to who the target was, it didn't reveal anything about who was behind the attack. As he formulated and pondered alternative theories, a notice flashed across his screen that the Tide had entered the Honia system and mere minutes away from reversion.

He ran through the ship's systems and checked in with the section chiefs about the status of their equipment and crew. It seemed unlikely to Gir that any of them would report anything unusual, but if there was, and something unusual was occurring around Honia, they could be in a world of hurt. He didn't want to know that his gunnery crews were away from their weapons as they dropped into the middle of a pirate raid, or find out that the shields were offline for maintenance as they reverted into a freak meteor storm. None of these were the case however, and the Tide and the rest of the fleet slipped smoothly into the doldrums around Honia. The inhabited moon itself appeared as a cool, shimmering jewel whose brilliance was only heightened by the plain browns of the gas giant that it orbited. While several other starships hung in orbit around the moon, none rivaled the Tide in size, nor did the orbital traffic rival the expeditionary fleet in size. Gir couldn't help but feel some pride as the Attas IV colonization fleet entered orbit around the moon. His brunette communication's officer looked down at him.

"I'm picking up a lot of open comm wave traffic," said the woman, "and they're talking about us."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

"I can't tell. Some channels seem to suggest that they fear us, while other channels are speaking of allies against the Nagai."

Gir frowned, "The Nagai? Get me a line with someone in their government, and if you can, preferably someone who is their equivalent of the defense forces."

"Yes sir."

 

[Gir Quee]

Gir watched as a dozen shuttles departed from the Tide to glide down to the surface below. Some of the shuttles carried small portions of cargo from Hast that would be exchanged on the surface below for other predetermined goods, but several of them simply carried passengers and crew wanting to make landfall on the inviting moon. If he had not been on duty, Gir likely would have joined them, if nothing more than to see the scanning stations at the university. Instead, he found himself going through old data entries while he waited for Lieutenant Bas to tell him that she had established a line with one of their officials. Minutes passed before the brunette cleared her voice.

“I have their custom's commander on the line. I'm transferring it to your headset now on channel Besh Four.”

Gir rotated a nub on his headset comlink until he arrived at the right frequency. He heard an audible click before a surprisingly cultured male voice began to flow through the speaker.

“Hello?”

“Hello,” started Gir, “I am Captain Quee of the Ocean Tide.”

“Commander Esan,” replied the man curtly, “what can I do for you today?”

“I heard rumors that some Nagai are raiding the area. Do you know if they are true?”

“It's a possibility,” said Esan, “I can't tell you if they will or not. You are worried about your ship, is that it?”

“It is,” said Gir, “not so much the Tide as the ship's accompanying her.”

“From what we have seen, the raiders strike indiscriminately. There's no way to predict when they will arrive or with how many people and ships. My secretary tells me that your ship will only be here for half a day. I think the chances of you encountering them are small. My advice, and this is strictly off the record, is to conduct your business here as normal, but not too linger.”

“Thank you for your time, commander.”

“Good day captain.”

The line went dead, leaving Gir to wonder if it had been worth the call. But it does confirm the rumor that we heard a week ago that such a threat exists, even if it hasn't reached our world yet. That's something, I suppose. Gir slumped in his chair as he notated the encounter in his log. He moved onto more paperwork. Minutes passed before he heard an oddly familiar but out of place voice. He looked up to see Kolit standing before him.

“You're up.”

“I slept for an hour,” confided the mon calamari youth, “but I couldn't fall back into the dreams.”

“If you had woken up a bit sooner or simply stayed awake, you could have been on Honia right now.”

The mon calamari leaned up against a console next to his, “I don't think that Uncle Salmakk would have liked that.”

“Probably not,” said Gir, “but you're up. What do you want to learn?”

“I was just going to watch.”

“There's not much going on right now,” said Gir, looking around the bridge, “aside from a lot of routine paperwork, diagnostics, and testing. But you know what, we can build off what I was showing you earlier on the Java.”

 

[Gir Quee]

Gir beckoned for Kolit to sit down at the console next to him. Kolit settled into the console changed the seat's height to better accommodate his relatively short frame, especially compared to that of the console's normal user: Captain Hopkins. Gir leaned over to type in the codes needed to authorize access to the computer.

"What are the three most common starship sensors?" quizzed Gir.

"Ah...electrophotoreceptors, full spectrum transceivers, and dedicated energy receptors?"

"Right," said Gir, linking his console to Kolit's viewscreen, "which one is the most important?"

Kolit hesitated, "That's a trick question, isn't it?"

"It is," said Gir, watching their screens propogate with sensor feeds from the ship's sensor arrays, "all dependent on what you're trying to see or do. For commercial shipping, and just for general detection, full spectrum transceivers tend to be the most useful. You got a fair amount of experience with them and EPRs on the Java, but you haven't had a good look at DER yet. Look at this screen."

Gir pulled up one of the DERs that was being used to monitor the other ships of the fleet. The wire framework of the vessels was filled with pulsating colors glowing with a wide variety of shades ranging from a dull, light orange to a vibrant, deep blue. Gir focused their screens on a colony corvette and pointed at the center of its saucer-like hull.

"That deep blue right there, what do you think that signifies?"

"Lack of energy?"

"A lot of energy, in this case," said Gir, starting to fiddle with the controls, "we're looking at the reactor of the ship. And as we zoom in and out from it, we can see where the power is transferred and siphoned off to. We can see its flow to other areas of the ship, and the rough estimates of its flow rate. And if we change it to this setting, we can see the various areas of the ship's shields, and where it seems to be rising and falling."

"Why does the front of it seem to have more colors than the rest of it?"

"The bow portion of the shield is currently colliding with more particles from the system's solar wind," said Gir, "more energy is needed to keep that section at the same strength as the other sections then. Next question: in general, do you think it's easier for a smaller ship to see a larger ship? Or a larger ship to see a smaller ship?"

 

[Gir Quee]

"I would guess that it's easier for the smaller ship to see the larger one."

"Why?"

"A bigger ship probably has a larger sensor signature? I mean, it'd definitely be easier to spot visually just on its size, right?"

"True," said Gir, "do you think there is a difference in the size of each ship's sensor arrays though?"

"Yes. A larger ship probably has larger sensors," said Kolit, "more powerful sensors, right?"

"Right," said Gir, "and that's the Catch-22 of the situation. By size alone, larger ships are easier to spot. But larger ships also carry more sensors, many of which are also substantially more powerful than those of smaller ships. The end result is roughly a wash, which is particularly why it's important for us to have good sensor operators who are not only very good at using the sensors, but who are also alert and creative enough to try interpret brief fluctuations and anomalies. In the end, not only does the Tide here rely on its own sensors though, but those of the ships around it, to create a constant flow of information that is shared between all allied ships. Controlling the flow of information then is vital to winning a battle, which is why as a carrier, the Tide is particularly outfitted to act as a nerve center that not only receives information, but also send it back out to the same sensors and receptors."

"So can you control the flow of information to only your people?" said the mon calamari, "that sounds like a contest of waiting to see who messes up first..."

 

[Gir Quee]

"Well...that's a simplified version of it," said Gir, "but very often that is true. Simply even scanning in the wrong area or using too high powered of a search sensor ping can alert an enemy that someone is looking for him. But what I want to get through to you is that is the base framing to consider in electronic detection. The sensor array on the Ocean Tide isn't exceptionally powerful, unlike many other exploration craft, but it's pretty typical for a ship of its size. That may sound like a pretty insignificant statement, but even standard is exceptionally high for the work that we do, especially when combined with the sensor feeds of other starships. As a designated command and control vessel, the Ocean Tide also compiles sensor information throughout the fleet to form a composite picture of the area around us."

"So you're going to teach me how to do that? How to read sensors?"

Gir thought on that for a moment.

"You know the basics from your time on the Java," said Gir, "I think that you know enough at this stage that you need to experiment and watch others without me hovering over your shoulders. That will be the best way to learn. Your console is currently set to read only, which will allow to you experiment with viewing the different datastreams with different filters and or composite settings. When you can show me that you can interpret a full spectrum transceiver of incoming objects, I will begin to expand on how you properly range such systems and how to send out active sensor pulses with the least amount of chances of alerting an enemy."

"Okay."

Gir blinked. If anything Kolit had proven to be a weird amalgam of curiosity and anxiety that never seemed to hesitate between asking too many questions or too few. Yet at that time, he seemed to have attained just the right balance of interest and grounded confidence that Gir actually thought that he might actually enjoy teaching him. The blonde man leaned over to see that Kolit was applying various filters to the ship's scans of the star port below. There should be enough in there to keep him occupied for at least a half hour. Maybe even more if he spots an interesting ship in the mix...Gir turned his attention back to his own console. He began to use one of the ship's full spectrum transceivers to look for a distant object, like asteroid or abandoned space station, that might serve as a suitable focal point for his nephew's training. He fiddled with a dial on the bio-computer, noticing an odd sensor return across all of the sensor's frequencies. By size and shape alone, it appeared to be an errant asteroid. Yet the object appeared to be moving quicker than most asteroids that he had seen, and perhaps just as importantly, the the object did not appear to be rotating on any of its axes. That suggested artificial movement, yet a quick glance at a background DER showed that if there was any artificial sources of energy on it, they were exceedingly well shielded. At a first glance, Gir would have thought that he had encountered some raider's ruse, but the object was so far away from inhabited space that it would take hours, maybe even days for it to reach the space around Honia.

 

[Gir Quee]

Gir watched as Kolit fiddled with the sensor readings, changing his attention from the wireframe views of the city to the full-spectrum transceiver images of the ships around the Ocean Tide. If they hadn't been affiliated with their fleet, Gir would have been quick to censor the mon calamari from looking at them so closely. At such an early stage of one's career, it was best to learn the proper customs of the profession. While Kolit was not actually scanning the ships, it might normalize the idea that such a practice was common and acceptable. It was not. Most starship captains did not take too kindly to other ships performing indepth scans on them. Such nosiness was not only impolite, but also often a sign that the scanner might be looking to take advantage of the other ship in some way or to attack it. And Gir did not relish the idea of having a diplomatic incident, especially so far away from home and help. The blonde man did a double-take on his nephew's screen. He's advancing fast. I might have to get this exercise properly prepared for him sooner than later...

Gir experimented with sending out various low-frequency active sensor pings towards the distant rock and comparing it to the passive scans. Most of it seemed almost normal. The cross-section of the object suggested that it had once been part of a planet or moon before it had been shattered into a planetisimal. As years worn by, the chunk of rock had been weathered by stellar phenomena and chiseled by other passing objects. Gir guessed that it spent thousands of years traveling through the empty void before finally descending on the Honia system. Yet everything behind the first half of the object appeared a hazy blur, no matter how much he focused both the active and passive sensor scans on it. Perhaps more perplexing, Gir noticed that he had uncoordinated return sensor ping hitting the sensor's receptor dish, which be the result of another ship pinging the Tide or abnormal structure inside the object itself reflecting a signal. Suspicion clawed back at Gir's consciousness. He tapped several buttons on his headset comlink.

"Mulk, are you onboard?"

"I am, captain," said the private scout.

"Interested in earning some extra pay?"

"What is it?"

"Want to take your flatfish out and scan an incoming asteroid at close range?"

"Anything unusual about it?"

"Not that I can blatantly state," said Gir, "otherwise I wouldn't have need for your services. Call it a suspicion."

"Righto. Send me the coordinates and a few notes about what you've seen to the Blue Wave," said the duros, "And I'll get right out there."

"Excellent."

 

[Gir Quee]

Minutes later, Gir watched as the Blue Wave hovered up out of the vertical hangar shaft before rapidly accelerating away from the Tide. seconds later, the ship disappeared among the pinpricks of distant starlight. A quick glance at the sensor screen told Gir that the flatfish had jumped into hyperspace. Gir idly typed in several commands into the console, which provided him with a rough astronavigation plot of the jump that Mulk was using. He glanced at the countdown of the estimated time of arrival of the duro's ship. We have some time then. He turned his attention back to Kolit as the mon calamari youth fiddled with the upper parameters of a filter on one of their ships. Gir eyed the screen carefully. That's a dead end...but that's a useful experience in and of itself...His headset comlink produced a mild chime, announcing that he had an incoming call. He tapped a button on his earpiece to accept it.

"Captain Quee speaking."

"Ah...yes...this is Yrolos," said the disembodied voice, "one of my colleagues was able to partially decrypt a chip they found in the bio-hound's remains."

"What does it say?"

"Some of the programming is gargled, but the droid had three targets that it was tracking: yourself, Gordian James, and Tyels Cort."

Gir's face contorted into a frown. He had grown to live with the thought that he would almost always be the target of some assassination attempt, whether it be from his time in Republic service or his recent endeavors in the space around Hast. While the news that he was a target was unsettling, the other names on the target list occupied his name more. His hunch about his mentor, Gordian James, being a target was now confirmed. While worrying, it too wasn't exactly unexpected given the droid's location and the apparent attempt to draw James into an ambush in the cargo hold. Apparent? No...maybe it did get him. He didn't feel or look well when I left him...and bio-hounds are known to inject poisons into their victims...

"Did your colleague find anything else yet?"

"Not yet. I'll let you know if we do, but I thought that you should know that right away."

"Yes, thank you..."

"Right, well, I have more work to do. Bye."

Gir tapped a button on his earpiece.

"Call Gordian James."

"Calling...Gordian James."

It took several seconds for the aged man to answer.

"Yes?"

"James, I need you to check into the main medbay," requested Gir, "there is a strong chance that thing which we encountered in the cargo hold poisoned you."

"Are you certain, Gir?"

"It's just a precaution."

"Very well, I will. James out."

 

[Gir Quee]

"Is everything all right, Uncle Gir?"

Gir turned his head to face Kolit to almost immediately notice a slight twitch on the youth's face. He's worried... While Gir was probably better than most humans at reading mon calamari body language, simply from living around them for so long, he wasn't quite sure how worried Kolit really was. Salmakk's family in general had a reputation for remaining relatively cool and calm on the surface even when internally their emotions swirled in a tempest. But that thought added another level of complexity to the question. Do I treat him as a family member? Or as a budding professional?

"We found an assassin droid onboard," said Gir, "and while it's been destroyed, I think an old friend of mine may have been poisoned by it."

"Oh. But you're safe, aren't you?"

Gir hesitated, "It would seem to be. It was only after a couple of people..."

His mind suddenly wandered to the third person on the kill list: Tyels Cort. That Osiris Mining Corporation executive supposedly was on Kardeffion, at least according to Lonmoz. Does that mean that the droid was programmed well in advance to target some of the voyage's key backers? If so, whoever programmed it didn't have time to reprogram it to target Lonmoz instead...or they didn't know about it. That brought some comfort to Gir's mind. He decided to do some personal searching through the local subspace transceiver network in an attempt to find a common enemy that they would all share. That search proved fruitless, which caused him instead to search for a reason to oppose their colony plans. The Ocean tide's communications and information systems were fairly advanced: the ship even contained a BRT Supercomputer to house various artificial intelligences which could potentially coordinate and overseer a colonization effort. But with the Ocean Tide not currently housing such an entity, Gir was able to harness its massive processing power to filter through thousands of results over the ship's robust information network. Yet despite all of these abilities, he couldn't find a single, quality lead. I'll have to wait on the folks in the Laboratory to provide me with more information before I can actually do something...

Gir glanced at the chrono box on the lower right hand of his console's screen. Time's flying by...He typed in several commands in an attempt to find the sensor feed that the Blue Wave was supposed to be transmitting to his ship. yet he could only find a few fragments that lasted a handful of seconds, and all of it was time-stamped as being transmitted to the Tide minutes ago. Gir typed in several commands into his console, and in the process, linked his headset comlink with the ship's hardened subspace transceiver.

"Blue Wave, this is Ocean Tide, do you copy?"

But no response came. He repeated the message several times over but was met with no response. Fiddling with the sensor suite, Gir attempted to focus one of the full spectrum transceiver's to find the ship lurking near the unusual asteroid. Yet he couldn't find the starship. He narrowed his eyes. It's possible that there's some natural phenomena out there that's fouling up our sensors and communications devices...but it could be something or someone else. The blonde man began to weigh his options.

 

[Gir Quee]

Worry whelled up within Gir as he considered the possibilities behind Mulk's disappearance. Death and destruction were never far from a spacer, especially in such a small craft. Gir could think of dozens of scenarios ranging from mynock infestation or a hyperdrive malfunction to enemy raiders or an intense burst of solar radiation which could have caused the duros's death or destroyed the ship. But if such destruction was the cause, Gir guessed it would have something to do with the unusual asteroid itself.

He spared a glance at Kolit and considered how to approach that reality with his nephew. The bio-hound incident was personal enough to have worried him, but the mon calamari had never met Mulk or ever ridden the Blue Wave. He should have less of an attachment to them...But at the same time, two incidents back to back, as freakish as they are, might discourage or frighten him even more. He flipped a switch on his headset comlink even as he looked up a frequency number on his console. His blue eyes scanned through countless of lines of aurebesh before finally settling on a cyan coded line. He switched the comlink over to the designated frequency.

“Captain Yonos, I need you to scramble you and the rest of your squadron to investigate a point that I'm transmitting to you now. It is the last known location of the Blue Wave. Immediately report to me anomalies or if you locate the Blue Wave.”

“What was the Blue Wave doing, sir?”

“Investigating an asteroid,” replied Gir, “didn't seem particularly dangerous from our far scans, but maybe that's not the case. We got brief sensor feed for a couple of seconds, and then...nothing.”

“No distress call?”

“Negative.”

“We're scrambling.”

Gir flipped through several screens on his console, just in time to see Yono's snubfighters get hurled out of the upper hangar bay from the pressor catapults. The Typhoons quickly ignited their engines, leaving fleeting blue ion trails before disappearing among the starry expanse of space. Less than a minute later, the starfighters jumped into hyperspace. In the back of his mind, Gir pondered the possibility that he had just sent Yonos and his people to the same fate as the Blue Wave. Encountering death was an inevitable facet of spacegoing life, yet he couldn't think of a worse death than that of pure disappearance. Perhaps the demise of his parents colored that perception. He shook the morbid thoughts from his head as he turned his attention back to the immediate realities.

What happens when they actually get there? If Mulk and the Blue Wave were fine, it would be a simple matter for the fighters to return back to the Tide. But if the starfighters found the Wave floating adrift in space, that presented a whole new problem: the squadron didn't have the right training or equipment to be able to help out the Wave in the event of a mechanical or medical emergency. In the worse case scenario, the encountering of an enemy, the starfighters might not be able to effectively beat back a strong enemy or capture a weaker but faster one. It seemed almost certain that he would need more resources. He began to marshall the necessary people and equipment and put them on standby. The Actaeon's Sprint-class Rescue craft was readied while the security forces across the fleet were briefed for possible action. The minutes passed quickly enough that Gir barely caught sight of the countdown timer that announced that Yonos's snubfighters would be reverting to their destination in a matter of seconds. He configured his console to receive live sensor feed data just in time to catch the first moments of the planetismal from the vantage point of Sunflare One.

 

[Gir Quee]

The snubfighter and her consorts almost immediately diverged away from each other to form a standard search pattern. As they did so, Gir began to see bright red darts of countless turbolasers and laser cannons fly out at them from across the rocky object. The Sunflare's craft recoiled the attack and began to juke and jink in attempt to avoid the attacks, but not before several of their starfighters were incinerated from the weapon's fire. Gir's stomach twisted and knotted itself as he imagined himself being in Yonos's starfighter, sailing among a shower of deadly lights. Sunflare One's voice began to flow through the speaker.

“Captain, this thing is covered in weapons. I've already lost Four and Nine, and Six is already heavily damaged.”

“Withdraw immediately,” ordered Gir.

“Acknowledged Tide, wilco.”

Sunflare One's sensor feed quickly changed from flyby views of the weapon's studded installation to the star-studded black ocean of deep space. That soon too vanished as Sunflare squadron jumped back into the safety of hyperspace, leaving Gir wondering what they had just encountered. Whatever it was, it clearly wasn't friendly. Mulk had probably lost his life discovering that, as had two of Sunflare's pilots. Chatter began to rise among the bridge crew as they became aware of Sunflare Squadron's fleeting encounter with the rocky object. Gir could feel the eyes on him. Such losses might have been expected in a war time situation, but they weren't as expected on a voyage like this. Gir looked up from his console, ignoring the countless eyes among as he searched for one particular pair.

“Vrought, better signal Honia system control and inform them of what we've found,” decided Gir, “how many people do have down on the planet?”

“Around three hundred, sir,” announced the flight controller, “from the Tide herself. And another five hundred from the other ships in the convoy.”

“Get in touch with everyone that you can,” decided Gir, “see how many of them you can get back here as soon as possible. Inform all vessels to prepare for action. Inform the Honia government of our discovery.”

Gir inwardly cursed as he reconsidered the situation. The discovery of an enemy during a transfer was terrible news: the ships weren't fully crewed, nor could he simply flee and leave his people to the chances of fate. He looked at the list of names again. That's far too many to both notify quickly and pull them back up to the Tide. The enemy could easily arrive here before that transfer is completed. He punched in more commands into his console, checking into the departure logs of the ship's passengers. He didn't recognize most of the names, though a few stood out, such as the defel executive from Osiris Mining Corp and his chief of security. We'll almost certainly have to fight. Gir turned his eyes to Kolit, who was now absorbed in watching the bridge crew prepare for battle.

“Kolit, go back to our cabin, rouse your uncle Salmakk up, and head to the Java. If worse gets to worse, I want the two of you to be able to quickly escape if necessary.”

Kolit's lips approximated into what Gir had learend was the Mon Calamari equivalent of a frown, yet the youth's voice was surprisingly steady and calm.

“The object is that dangerous? What is it?”

“I don't know how dangerous it is,” said the blonde man, “and if I can't be certain of that, I assume the worse. Now go.”

 

[Gir Quee]

The mon calamari youth hesitated, which Gir guessed was because he hadn't answered his nephew's second question, before he clambered out of the seat and absconded out of the bridge. Gir gazed wistfully at the images of the rocky object that some members of the bridge crew was now reviewing on the bridge's massive CS-Mark 12 holoprojector. The visual feed isn't fine enough to get much out of that. If I only knew who was behind it, we'd have a better idea of what we're up against. Converting an asteroid into a ship was among one of the simplest and cheapest ways to obtain a massive capital ship. This ease of construction had led many cash-strapped or enterprising groups to turn them into warships, most notably the Killiks during the Swarm Wars. But each group brought their own variations to their designs, leading to a wide variety of abilities and qualities. One of his communication's officers, a young brown-haired man that went by the name of Bota, waved him down.

“I've got the custom's commander on the horn sir. He's asking for everything that we have on them.”

“Transmit everything to him,” said Gir, “and make sure he knows that we are willing to assist him.”

“Yes sir.”

Gir noticed several dark blurs start moving in the corner of his eye, causing him to turn his head as Captain Hopkins led more uniformed sailors into the bridge. A quick glance over their faces led Gir to recognize some of htem as members on the previous bridge crew shift. Gir also recognized the hammerheaded ithorian walking next to Hopkins as the ship's executive officer. While many executive officers on a ship the Tide's size primarily handled paperwork, but Neelig Abon was notable in that he specifically wanted to get experience on the bridge himself, leading Hopkins to appoint him the as officer in charge of the third watch. The two ambled over to Gir's station, prompting Gir to rise and greet them.

“I see that the automated alert system is working,” observed Gir, noting a trace of irritation in Hopkin's red eyes.

“Yes, it is,” said Neelig in a low, gravelly voice, “how far out are they, and what are they?”

“By sublight speed, maybe eight hours,” guessed Gir, “and that could easily be covered in a matter of minutes via hyperspace. As far as what the threat is, we don't know.”

The blonde man motioned to the holo-projector, “That is the footage of an asteroid that I sent several ships to observe before it fired upon us.”

“An asteroid station?”

“It's moving.”

“An asteroid ship then,” corrected Hopkins, “could be almost anyone.”

Bota called down to him, “Commander Esan wishes to speak to you.”

“Transfer him to my station.”

“Yes sir.”

 

[Gir Quee]

Hopkins grimaced as he removed a bead of sleep from the corner of his eye, “Is this guy good?”

“Professional but laconic, at least from what I've seen.”

“Sounds like a man after your own reputation,” said Neelig, “I mean no offense by that, sir.”

“None taken.”

The miniaturized holo-projector attached to the console began to form wispy lines of speckled light before resolving into the likeness of Esan's face. The man looked across the three faces, meeting each one's gaze before moving onto the next. Gir wondered if he was trying to familiarize himself with faces and names, or if he was trying to read the mood of those present. Try as he might, Gir couldn't read the man's intentions. Finally, the customs officer settled his gaze on Gir.

“There's not much that you gave us,” said Esan, “but I suppose that we should be thankful that we know the threat is coming before it reaches our world. I will need a full understanding of your capabilities before I can consider your offer of assistance.”

“I can have my communication's officer provide you with a detailed breakdown,” said Gir, “but you should have a rough idea from your ship's own scans and our transmitted clearance request.”

“Let me rephrase that,” said the other man, “I have reviewed those files in depth, but some of the technologies present on your ships are foreign to me. I didn't need some techno-mumble jumble, I just need to know what they can do roughly. We don't have a single ship close in size to whatever it is that is approaching us. Your Ocean Tide is probably the closest thing present. Do you feel that your ship can stand up to the other ship in slugging match, even for a little bit?”

“Hard to say given how little we know about it,” considered Gir, “but I would feel comfortable putting it up against most warships of its own size.”

Esan abruptly turned his head to the side and looked up and away from the camera. If he's not talking to us, he's talking to someone else...or he's viewing something else...While Gir couldn't hear any words, he could see a flicker of some emotion briefly cross Esan's otherwise impassive face. The man leaned forward somewhat before turning back to face the Directorate officers.

“I have just received word that the object has vanished from our sensors.”

Gir glanced at his own console as recalled his sensor window. There was no signature on his screen, and a quick pull-up on the sensor officers's screens showed that they too could no longer find the object or any trace of it. Things that size don't just disappear....Based on the calculations for the Blue Wave and Sunflare squadron, if the object had a class one hyperdrive, they could expect to see it within twenty standard minutes. Gir looked up at the custom's commander.

“Our sensors no longer show it as well.”

“I think that we must assume that it is inbound then, if we have no other evidence of its location,” said the man, “frankly, there stands a good chance that we will not be able to repel an invasion. I have half a dozen patrol craft and a single frigate at my disposal. I will be making my recommendations to the civil authorities to evacuate from the world if possible, and if that is not possible, to evacuate away from populated areas. I would recommend that you send out similar instructions to those people of your's who are on the ground.”

“And what of space?” asked Hopkins, “do you have a plan for fighting them?”

“We have no idea of when and where they will show up, though I imagine that will be sooner rather than later. I will best prepare my people an vessels for action, and I expect that you will do the same. We will have to improvise from there. You will excuse me, but I will need to leave this call now to do just that because time is short. May the Force be with you.”

It's been a while since I've heard those words...Even as Gir considered those storied words, Esan cut the call. Leaving the three Directorate officers crowded around Gir's console. The ithorian slid behind Gir to occupy the console previously being used by Kolit. After inserting his code cylinder into the socket, Neelig rapidly typed in the characters that allowed him to login. Gir looked up at Hopkins.

“Do you want to take the wishing well or the auxiliary bridge?”