Incursion Vector

009

[▲] Vespucci Waypoint, Perseus Arm

"Time, Lieutenant."

"Niner zero seconds out, mark."

Lyall sat back in her chair and steepled her fingers patiently. Coordinating jump exit vectors for three warships—two of which were using their secondary rail drives in order to facilitate a quicker turnaround between waypoints—was a tricky maneuver that caused most captains to err heavily on the side of caution by waiting for cooldowns and cross-checking their math.

In a perfect situation everyone jumped and exited at the same time, but rarely was that the case when navigators didn't have hours to compare and refine their calculations across ships. With too much of a difference between jump solutions ships exited in too staggered a formation, making them easy fodder as they could be attacked one-by-one as they emerged into an engagement sphere already under the control of the enemy. Bridge openings gravitationally too close in space risked premature collapse; too far apart and individual ships became artillery fodder when they exited too spread out to provide effective covering fire. And of course there was always the ever-present guess factor of exiting their jump just far enough out to not collide with enemy ships already present in the engagement sphere but just close enough to be able to unleash an effective initial wave of shock-and-awe destruction to try and scare the enemy off, or at least render them disoriented enough that the followup attack cost them more resources than it cost allied ships.

Luckily Lyall had muscled her way into getting two of the best multi-jump navigators in the fleet assigned to her ships. She had plucked them right off of the University Frigate Arthur C. Clarke the minute they graduated due in no small part to her little sister's scouting reports marking them as, in her words, "lucky bastards who jumped their fake destroyers right in on our engines." Sometimes having the brat around was useful.

Actually, always having the brat around was useful. From what she heard, Headmaster Captain Michael believed Nim was the best Stuka pilot in the fleet bar none, and the man had shepherded some very skilled pilots through his ship and into the main fleet since taking over for the incompetent fool who'd originally been given the Heinlein. Being privy to the earliest years of her life Lyall knew that put behind the controls of any spacefaring vessel for a month or two and her little sister would become the best pilot that ship ever had, regardless if it was a corvette, a fighter, or some slag-hauling scow. Every spacer knew space; her sister was one of the anomalies who could feel space. She was a freak, and Lyall used the term both lovingly and with a great amount of envy.

As the oldest child in the family Lyall had worked her ass off to get where she was: youngest captain of one of the newest battleships off the research line, commander of Battle Group Minuteman, and a chair on the Naval High Command Special Engagement Council. She was only a few years into her thirties and she was perfectly happy with and secure in her place within the fleet; one day she might buck for admiral, but for the foreseeable future the Agamemnon was hers and nobody was going to take her crewmen or her ship away. Nim, like her brother Aries, had slept through her courses and still had time to pull some of the most legendary stunts in University Frigate history—somehow she had managed to one-up her brother's mischief-laden years on the INS Larry Niven. She had no idea where her sister was headed, but provided she didn't die in combat or get herself blacklisted by the important members of High Command brass, she suspected the brat could eventually inherit the Heinlein from Michael, taking over the most sophisticated deep space ship the Navy had in its active fleet.

A small part of Lyall had always hoped her sister would wind up on the Agamemnon, though. There was a dearth pilots in the Navy who were highly intelligent, fluidly adaptable and ridiculously skilled. Most only had a singular proficiency and the best in the fleet had two with a healthy streak of luck. Nim had all three aptitudes and she knew it—that was something she and Aries had always shared. Aries, however, had respected the military chain of command instead of picking and choosing orders to follow. Military orders would never be enough for her little sister to stay put and do what was she was told. If she didn't care for the people she was with she tended to do whatever the hell she thought would be challenging to her regardless of what anyone said. Everyone knew the brat would have made a far better deep space explorer than a marine, and been wallowing in insane amounts of Colonial cash, but she had always idolized her big brother and his tales of epic space battles.