Starpiercer: Sunlight's Edge

INTERLUDE: CRISIS

INTERLUDE

CRISIS

Sixteen hours, fourteen minutes.

That's how long it had taken. Tylo hadn't even put up a fight, and Admiral Seelow wasn't doing anything yet.

"Reports say that we've got around seven Tralfarian warships insystem."

The admiral stood up from his chair and stepped closer to the wide screen that dominated the far wall of the bridge. "Any Shellcrackers?"

The young ensign buckled into the sensor station shook his head. "Negative, sir. One battlecruiser, two cruisers, and four frigates. It's not a full invasion force sir, more like a task group."

Admiral Seelow tapped his long chin "Have they deployed any soldiers to the surface?"

"Negative, sir." Came another response. "Their Land Force Command has not issued any threats to deploy either."

"Liutenant Zhao, what's your recommendation?"

Nikolai had known he'd be asked soon enough. It was in the captain's command style. He'd been doing this ever since Nikolai had arrived onboard the Nineveh. He'd pose some questions to the bridge staff at large, and then ask one of his junior officers. Having only served under him for a month, Nikolai wasn't sure if this meant that the man listened to advice, or if he was compliant and incapable of fast thinking. He suspected it was the first. No complacent admiral would have done what he'd just had.

He cleared his throat. "I suppose, sir, my recommendation would be to deploy but not engage. All ships within supporting range, of course, and perhaps ask the Servids why the hell they're here, sir?"

The captain paid no mind to the slur, and stroked his chin again. "Is Tylo's gunboat garrison still on course to meet us? Have the Tralfarians engaged them or taken any provocative actions?"

"They're still on course sir. The Tralfarians have not moved to intercept, or made target locks."

They had just been minding their own business, is the worst part. There seemed to be nothing that had precipitated this. It had been a normal week. A shakedown cruise through the Sunduset system, publicly announced, and ratified by both the Colonial Entente and the Tralfarian Kingdom as an acceptable movement of force through the DMZ. A routine trip between the two LUMARs insystem. He suspected it was mostly just a political stunt. The Sundari colonists had been wanting confirmation that if Tralfarian forces ever entered the DMZ in force and tried to annex their homeworld, that the Colonial Defence Fleet would be capable of engaging them. It had been a glorified parade, really. Another round of not-quite saber rattling. The Nineveh and her little battlegroup had acted more like strutting peacocks than anything else, showing off their gleaming new warships to the Tralfarian garrison, with the underlying implication that if Servid tried anything, he'd be swallowing maser bolts faster than they could blink.

So much for that.

Right as their glorified parade through the system was about to wrap up, news had come through the LUMAR that Tralfarians were shooting people up in Colonial-administered space in the neighboring Tyluset system, a flagrant violation of interstellar law and defeating the entire point of the demilitarized zone.

Nikolai rubbed the back of his neck. They'd burned at nine Gs for ten hours to get to the LUMAR, and came shooting out of it into Tyluset. It hadn't been kind on his bones. Thank god for naval medical.

He wondered what the hell the Servids were getting at. The Tyluset system was probably the least important one in the entire Sundari Gulf. The Sunduset system itself had orbitals, spaceworks, several colonized worlds, and a burning hate for the servile monarchists. Destro was of course, home to the best cybernetic engineers in all of Solace, but the autistically-obsessed aliens had never taken one side or the other until recently, when they'd finally agreed to demilitarize and let Tralfarians run the show on that side of the wire. De'Larren's World was staunchly pro-Tralfarian, and where the servids based the DMZ's TARFCOM center.