Incursion Vector

024

[▲] Bridge, INS Robert A. Heinlein

Michael looked at his Marine Commander from the corners of his eyes. “Repeat that again for me, Tags. I'm getting old.”

“Do us a favor and put that age card back in your deck for the next couple decades,” scoffed Redloader, pulling off his cover and rubbing his hand over his thinning white hair. The man flatly refused to have his baldness corrected despite the plethora of treatments on the open market for the hereditary condition. “You heard what I said, Captain.”

Pressing his lips together he focused his eyes back on his command screen, then noticed a flashing priority com coming in from the Agamemnon. He tapped the icon and opened the secure channel. “Take it you heard from Tantalus, Hoplite.”

“This just turned into a cluster fuck of ridiculous proportions,” replied Lyall with a grim scowl wrinkling her nose. “If we jump in assets to commandeer that ship for intel half the Tiaha fleet is going to open up on us to buy time for the rest to jump out, refit, and hit us back with a sledgehammer. We can't play the 'Leopold ibn Yusuf's in their flight' card for much longer.”

“They must think we're at a full loadout,” commented Redloader with a nod. “Good. We need to keep it that way. With those Alkonst carriers as their backbone fighting them in a clustered sphere like this is going to cost us even when they're down to a quarter of their fighter crews.”

“What we really need is to find out what the hell was going on inside that ship,” said Michael, steepleing his fingers beneath his chin as he leaned forward against his chair restraints. “God am I going to regret this later. Armstrong, patch Doctor Russell into this channel on secure internal.”

“Aye aye, sir,” replied his communications officer, a seventeen-year-old ensign who had spent half the First Contact Incident acting as a corpsman simply because he had been the only cadet without incapacitating injuries after the IED explosion when the flight surgeon showed up. He still tended to jump out of his chair whenever someone dropped something on the bridge or made any sort of particularly loud noise but Michael had a feeling the ensign would work through things eventually. “Russell is online... now.”

Cooper Russell's reddish-brown eye loomed into view as he did what he always did when accepting a com: shove his forehead right into the camera before sitting back in his chair and acting like a sane person. “What can I do for you, Captain? Little MacNamara put a dent my baby?”

Not overly fond of any of the members of Project Baskerville, Redloader just rolled his eyes at Russell's childish query and went back to stand behind where Halpern was coordinating her flight's activities from the crow's nest. It was a shame to waste the lieutenant's myriad of skills by keeping her anchored to the bridge, but until they picked up their final compliment of technical crewmen at Lalande she was managing the slack in live theater coordination effortlessly. When Redloader had suggested she move into the Navy and take a promotion she had politely but firmly declined, making her intentions to stick with Flight Methuselah abundantly clear.

Michael still couldn't quite tell if Redloader was proud of the cadet for staying where she was or just genuinely amused by her ability to voice her utter disgust with the suggestion using words normally heard only from Senators on reelection campaigns. Halpern had the linguistic flexibility of a carnival contortionist and it was hilarious on occasion to watch her employ it on a crowd when she could have just as easily tossed in a hand grenade to the same effect.

“Methuselah made an interesting discovery on the derelict,” said Michael. “A jury-rigged medical bay full of clones with what they're thinking is incursion tech inside them.”