Whatever they gained in distance and fighting time before reaching the planet, they would lose by having all three enemy ships on full alert before they got there. Her strategy could backfire badly, but running out to meet the Voloth halfway would be throwing away their best advantage. It gave Ekatya too much time to second-guess herself. She opened the all-call and informed her crew of the impending battle, then made a far more private call. The moment she finished, the bridge hummed with low voices as orders were given and systems checked. That’s what we’re going to do.Įkatya outlined her strategy and thanked the stars that she had drilled this team so relentlessly. One of the smartest people I know once told me that if I have to fight, then hit first and hit hard. They don’t know we’re here, and they won’t until we power up. That’s why we’ve been running in gray mode since our arrival. She slowly rotated her chair, as always appreciating the design choice that put her alone on the third level and gave her an unobstructed view. The rest of the bridge crew turned their backs to their stations along the walls and faced her as well.
He nodded and set to work, but every other head in the second and third rings of the central dais turned to look up at her. Notify Command Dome and ask for authorization to engage, she told her com officer. She tapped her board and added, Estimated time of arrival, eighty-six minutes. Get out and don’t come back.Īs her grandfather said, the best way to win a battle was not to fight it.īut even the Caphenon could not intimidate a Voloth Empire invasion group.Ĭonfirmed, said the data systems officer. She could have intimidated a destroyer captain, using the sheer size of the Caphenon to send a message: The Protectorate’s largest warship is guarding this planet. They thought the Voloth strategy would be to menace the Arkadia, the little long-range science ship that had been studying this planet for ten months, and squat in Alsean space until an invasion group arrived.
She preferred this beauty to the graphic interpretation of an event their visual scanners could not detect-an event they had not expected for another day.įleet intelligence had expected a single scout ship, at most a destroyer. The remainder of the hemispherical upper display showed an endless carpet of stars, vastly thicker on the starboard side where a galactic arm flung itself across their view.
Beneath their feet and rising halfway up the port side, Alsea’s second moon loomed, a ghostly orange as it traversed the planet’s shadow. At the moment, both upper and lower displays were active, creating the illusion that the bridge was floating in space. C aptain, I’m detecting pikamet radiation.Įkatya Serrado briefly considered ordering the scan onto the bridge display, then ruled it out.
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