Incursion Vector

008

[▲] Tāwhiao Retreat, New Zealand, Earth

Keiji found himself knocked halfway out the doorway by Leo, who was himself shoveled out of the way by Nim as she climbed to her feet and commandeered the entire com station herself. She had an emotionless, focused look in her gray-green eyes that he had only seen once: when she had been dragging Seig's unconscious shrapnel-filled body out of her fighter and handing him off to the corpsmen after pulling him out of the black of space using nothing but sheer luck and emergency rope.

"What the hell are you doing?" he demanded. "We need to get word to High Command!"

"What's High Command going to do right now that'll be worth shit?" snapped Nim over her shoulder. She began typing in a series of commands into her computer, fingers flying almost faster than anyone could make out. "I know for a fact that Lyall's at Xuanzang right now with the Agamemnon and two destroyers."

"Xuanzang is two jumps from Vespucci," said Calli, her brow wrinkling as she performed the distance and turnaround calculations in her head. "A Cerberus-class can hack it but there's no destroyer in the fleet that can pull two jumps in less than thirty minutes!"

"It's better than nothing, Calli," muttered Damien as Nim pressed the confirm command to send her message.

For a moment there was nothing but dead air, then a mirror image of Nim herself loomed into view. She was a decade or so older, with worry-lined hazel green eyes and short cropped hair of a lighter shade of red, but the two looked so similar that even Leo was forced to look back and make sure their flight's Stuka pilot hadn't transported herself across half the galaxy in some sort of twisted prank she would come up with just to screw with them.

"Nimue Galway MacNamara! What! The! Fuck! You know better than to call me on patrol!" There was a pause as her eyes focused on something just below the recorder. "How did you get to my... how many times do I have to tell you not to hijack relays you little shit!"

"First contact aliens are attacking the Tiaha fleet at Vespucci Waypoint!" Nim practically screamed into the screen. "Come on, Lyall, roll out! They're picking Leo's family apart!"

"I can't just take your goddamn word on deployment-level shit, Nimue!" the woman snarled back even though she was rapidly getting herself dressed in a blue jumpsuit with captain bars on the shoulders. Keiji felt his face flush with embarrassment when he realized that he was watching a superior officer, a superior officer related to Nim, run around her quarters in some very non-military issue underwear.

Calli lunged forward and shoved Nim to the side for a moment, typing another series of commands into the com. "Captain MacNamara I just forwarded you the last transmission we had from..."

"The Averroes," finished Leo. Despite his best efforts the man was failing to keep up his usual calm demeanor and instead looked as though he had lost all the blood in his body and was about to be sick to his stomach. It actually was a bit frightening to see their flight's most rock-solid pilot thrown so hard to the ground.

"Jesus fucking Christ," muttered Lyall, dragging her palm across her face as she read through the transcript flashing up on her screen quickly. "Where the hell are these bastards coming from?" The woman jammed her finger at the screen angrily. "You get a com in to your Captain ASAP before High Command gets eyes on this signal you pop weasel. I'll try and get us there in time to be useful. MacNamara exit channel."

The screen died and the whole of the com room plunged into dull yellow shadows cast by the com station's power switch. Everyone stood where they were in silence, wondering what sort of disaster was going to happen next. From the look on the squad's faces nothing short of an all-out assault on Terra Core was going to surprise them.