Incursion Vector

011

[▲] Leonov Medical Platform, Earth/Sol L1

Michael closed the com channel, still very much in awe at what his cadets—his marines, had been able to accomplish.

Of course to do it, Troskaya and MacNamara had hijacked a federal buoy route from a civilian station and put a traceable com through to a battle group engaged in border patrols which had not technically been approved yet by the Colonies. If the Colonial Interests Board got wind of it the political blowback had the potential to incite at least a few Colonies to re-declare war, though it would likely be more a political maneuver rather than an actual military one since no single Colony had a force that could oppose the combined might of the Interstellar Navy and Exoplanetary Infantry. The political infighting and land-grabbing that had been going on since the declared end of the cold war made a renewal of an actual war with a united Colonial front even less likely than his ever rising above the rank of Captain, given that he was on the shit list of practically every officer in High Command.

Regardless of the political situation, however, the cold truth was that without the Navy's intervention half of the Tiaha Migrant Fleet would have been slaughtered as it floated powerless in space. As things stood their losses would be grave, the kind of thing most other people would never recover from, but it sounded as though enough key personnel had survived the battle with treatable injuries—many of the tribal elders and most of Ibrahim's own family among them. It would take time, but they still had a cohesive command structure and could rebuild most of what they had lost.

It would take several more hours before the mess wrapped itself up at the Vespucci Waypoint, but for now High Command had enough of a trail to assume that he had been given the message and then forwarded it on to Captain MacNamara on board the Agamemnon. He highly doubted they would pry any further than that for the after action report. MacNamara—the elder MacNamara sister—would resign before she would testify otherwise, and High Command could ill afford to loose the well-respected commander of their fastest interdiction group in light of current affairs. Inspiring loyalty seemed to be something every member of their family did without trying and it was Lyall who had been the one child graced with the political acumen of a Senator. From experience he knew her calculating strategies could easily be construed as cold and ruthless, but he also knew she cared deeply for everyone placed under her command, even more so for her little sister.

One would never know it to look at them, though. The very few times Michael had been in the same place at the same time with the two they had fought like cats and dogs. When MacNamara and Ironside managed to rig a whoopee cushion sound effect into the captain's VTI he was shocked that Lyall hadn't just thrown the two out into space personally while they were manning the artillery stations of the Agamemnon several years ago. It would have been preferable to the screaming match that went on after she cornered her little sister on the crew deck at the end of the week.

Watching him with curious blue eyes that the captain couldn't believe were now set in such a grown-up face, Serge Michael pushed a cup of coffee across the stainless steel round table they had been sitting at when Halpern had paged him with the emergency. "Good or bad?"

Michael sat back down across from his son and accepted the coffee. "One of the migrant fleets was just ambushed by incursion forces."

"Oh God," murmured Serge, his eyes tightening at the corners as he tried to mask his worry. "How much of the fleet is left?”

"Enough of it, I think," said Michael. "Half had already made a waypoint jump to a different sector and those who were left were able to put up long enough of a fight to allow most of the remaining unarmed vessels to escape the area using FTL." He sipped at the coffee and with a slight grin found that Serge still set the machine to brew it laughably weak. "An emergency call put through by one of my cadets—one of my marines, let one of our battle groups jump in and salvage what was left of their ships. Including a few of the particularly stubborn tribal elders."