Incursion Vector

002

[▲] Gagarin Interstellar Naval Shipyards, Sol Sector

The crew took the news of their impending draft into active military service without much in the way of either shock or dissension. After all, they had been expecting it after what had happened during the now officially-titled First Contact Incident. They had been putting up with military intelligence and special science division officers picking over their ship and the wreckage they had collected for a solid two weeks as they made their way waypoint to waypoint back to fortified Terran Alliance space. People talked, and information leaked. For everything on board the ship already knew about what was going on, it was surprising that it hadn't yet hit the main information networks.

It was a sign of just how tight a ship the Headmaster Captain had been running, and just how much his crew respected him to keep it that way even though everything else felt like it had fallen to pieces.

Captain Michael delivered their orders without ceremony, much as he had told Flight Methuselah the whole of the situation surrounding the Incident weeks ago during their briefing. There was new information, however. All cadets in their first through fourth years were being transferred to other University Frigates as Naval High Command had been told by the Colonial-Terran Congress that they were too young to participate in live warfare.

This was what caused the most dissension in the ranks; everyone on the Heinlein, from the ten-year-old first year cadets up to her flight of nearly graduated pilots had kept things running smoothly and without incident just like any other majority-age crew stuck in the same situation. In fact they had probably done a better job of it considering main fleet crews weren't trained and schooled on the same ships they ultimately served on; there wasn't a person in the main fleet that would know the Heinlein better than even the youngest member of the cadet crew currently taking care of her. No one wanted to leave their home, not after they had lost friends in the battle and especially not after their home had been shot up by aliens who were in dire need of killing.

The younger crewmen were mostly being transferred to the INS Arthur C. Clark, a Thunderbird-class strike carrier constructed fifty years before the Heinlein. A few, the ones Nim knew had parents either in Congress, one of the military High Commands, or were part of the web of chancellors, governors, or colonization barons that governed Colonial space, were being reassigned to the Alkonst-class Frank Herbert, which was as close to a flying fortress as strike carriers came in the fleet. The Herbert was over a hundred years old but she was nearly impossible to kill or decommission—many had tried and they all had failed. That was probably what High Command was counting on to protect the high-risk cadets whose parents made them targets for every kidnapper in the galaxy. That, and Headmaster Captain Rungran had been Rear Admiral of Fleet Intelligence before taking his conditional retirement to head the ship. Scuttlebutt said the man's information network in the Colonies still put most black hat hackers to shame a decade after he officially left the game.

Captain Michael gave the cadets his word that he would bring them all back to the Heinlein as soon as High Command allowed him to, provided the ship was still fighting the enemy and there were some aliens that still needed killing. His promise seemed to soothe most of the cadets who were furious about being kicked off their ship so soon after they had watched their friends die.

Nim and the rest of Methuselah stood at attention as Sparrow and Colonel Redloader, who looked as though he had aged twenty years in as many days, announced that what remained of Roughneck—all three of them—were being reassigned as tactical advisers and main wing to the Issac Asimov. Unlike the Heinlein, her sister ship hadn't engaged any enemy forces, but she was being pulled back into the main fleet along with them because they were the most advanced strike carriers currently in the Navy. It was going to be their duty to prep the Asimov's crew to fight the incursion forces, which made Flight Methuselah the main engagement flight on the ship. They had been flying combined patrols with Roughneck for weeks; it was just the Colonel's announcement that made it official.