Starcorp 1: Escape from Sol

Sawyer had not been in his mow for more than five minutes before receiving his orders. Admiral Sloan’s instructions to him were simple. He and the other five mows were to engage the pursuing UFP for a minimum of seven minutes. When this occurred, they were to race back to the Orion ahead of the UFP spacefighters. The thinking, as Sawyer understood it, was for the mows to use their superior acceleration to outpace the spacefighters and catch up with the Orion, which should have attained time jump velocity by then. It was by his estimation a plan with multiple weak points. The first among these was the dependence upon the UFP spacefighters doing what they wanted them to do. The plan was also dependent upon the Orion escaping the grasp of the spacefighters and holding onto that separation for two hours. And lastly it was dependent upon a minimum of four of the mows surviving the engagement for the whole seven minutes. All these were less than likely outcomes by Sawyer’s estimation. But even if these events did occur as the Admiral hoped Sawyer feared that there would not be enough time left for the six of them to escape with the Orion. The more he thought about this plan the more he dreaded volunteering to be a part of it.

What shocked Sawyer even more than the orders he received was the discovery that CC volunteered to be the sixth mow pilot. He first learned of this when she called over to him from her mow. She had just finished listening to Joshua’s instructions when she did this. Her attempt to get Sawyer’s thinking on Joshua’s plan of action was repeatedly thwarted by his pronounced declarations instructing her to not be there. To hide her fears, CC brushed away these statements with a consciously performed facade of nonchalance.

After ten minutes of pleading, and arguing, Sawyer came to an acceptance of CC’s presence on the team. Oscar was far more accepting than he. He welcomed CC to the team with jubilant enthusiasm. He saw this joining as a return of the big three. This was the moniker he assigned to them during their video gaming days. The name signified the fact that the three of them were frequently in the top ten in scoring among all Physalia gamers.

Sawyer, CC, and Oscar, and the three other team members had nothing to do but talk for a further thirty minutes. All of them were dealing with growing feelings of distress because of the wait. At the end of this time, they were alerted that their deployment was imminent. All six of them tensed up in anticipation of this event. From inside of their mows, they could not hear the hum of the basestar’s main thrusters or the absence of it when it shut down. Through their cockpit monitors, they could see one of the large docking bay doors open. They watched as the magnetic arms of the docking bay computer maneuvered them in front of the open portal. Through the opening, they could see streams of warheads, numbering in the tens of thousands, spewing out from the rail guns of the Orion and disappearing into the black of space behind them. When the barrage came to a stop, they watched themselves being forcibly expelled out of the docking bay an instant after the railguns of the Orion stopped firing.

“Twenty-seven minutes to lethal range.”

The report of the primary weapon system operator filled the crew capsule and resonated within the ears of all presence.

“We need to go faster,” Eckhart insisted.

Gruenberg responded to this with his usual indifference to stupid remarks.

“We’re going as fast as we can.”

The tenor of Gruenberg’s reply fell too far below the level that Eckhart was willing to accept. His reliance on Gruenberg’s expertise notwithstanding, he needed his General to comprehend how important this point was to him. This urgency sparked him into rifling back a retort ahead of his possession of all the verbiage to express it.

“We can’t let them—open this—this—time portal!”

“They’re not going fast enough for that yet,” Gruenberg reacted with a halfhearted reply.

“How can you be sure of that?” Eckhart challenged.

Gruenberg took note that the answer to this question required the input of some details. Because of this, he showed Eckhart some attention and provided a reply he believed to be suitable for a civilian.

“If your scientists are correct, Prime Minister, then they’ll have to be moving twice as fast as they are right now, and probably a quarter more than that. They’re two hours away from those speeds.”

Eckhart had no reason to doubt this. He was briefed on the mechanics of the star-drive that the starcorps were most likely using. But this information did not stop him from being anxious about their situation.

“We shouldn’t have let them get this far ahead of us,” Eckhart grumbled at no one in particular.

“They’re not that far ahead, Prime Minister,” Gruenberg soothed. “They’re not getting away.”

Gruenberg’s command and control spacefighter was positioned at the back end of the UFP force that was pursuing the Orion Basestar. It was escorted by twenty spacefighters that were tasked to protect its occupants. The remaining four hundred and thirty-six spacefighters were clustered in front of them. Gruenberg had recalled them from their dispersal action and situated them in a mass formation. This he did to prepare them for an assault on the Orion.

After a further two minutes, the pilot reported that they had just crossed over into the sensor field of the Orion. This new situation had no effect on the operation of the force. The sensor field of the basestar told them that they were being tracked by the computers aboard the Orion. But this sensor field provided no assistance to the UFP spacefighters. The information it produced was accessible at the point of origin and nowhere else. The UFP spacefighters were still limited to visual observation and triangulation for their calculations on the distance between them and the basestar. Based upon this, they knew that they were another eighteen minutes away from enveloping the Orion within their own sensor field.

Gruenberg knew that he could have extended their sensor field to encompass the Orion at any time during the previous half hour. But he chose not to for the same reason that the Orion chose to reduce its sensor field to one-twentieth of its previous size, power. The sensor field was too great of a drain on the power supply of spaceships. Gruenberg wanted to catch up with the Orion as quickly as possible. To do this, he directed as much power to the main thrusters as the reactors of the spacefighters could spare.

“Twenty-three minutes to lethal range.”

The primary weapon system operator bellowed out his report. There was no response. They all were in wait for that moment when they would be close enough to overwhelm the defensive systems of the basestar with their weapons. Six minutes into this wait the primary weapon system operator bellowed out a new report.

“Entering target vessel’s lethal range in one minute.”

With a shouted command, Gruenberg opened a fleet-wide voice and video communication channel. This sudden reaction took Eckhart by surprise. He had no idea what was happening. The only thing that stopped him from expressing his confusion in the form of a question was the speed at which this was happening. He had every reason to believe that the answer to his question was soon to be answered without his asking it.

“All spacefighters, initiate your DED Systems.”

This command did little to dispel Eckhart’s confusion. He understood that the DED was the directed energy defense system that all the spacefighters were equipped with. And he knew that this system, once it was initiated, would fire on any threat to the vessel of its own accord. What he did not understand was Gruenberg’s reason for putting the armada in this defensive posture. Keeping the directed energy weapon system charged and at the ready was a power drain, although it was of no great significance.

“What’s happening?” Eckhart inquired of his General.

“We’ve gotten close enough to the warship to be fired upon,” Wilkinson explained on Gruenberg’s behalf.

“Then why aren’t we shooting at them?” Eckhart questioned in an insistent tone.

Wilkinson took it upon himself to explain their situation to Eckhart.

“We are falling towards the warship and they are falling away from us. This means that the travel time of a railgun barrage from them will be significantly shorter than ours. Right now, the flight time of a barrage would be about fifteen seconds for us and five for them. That warship could commence firing on us at any time now.”

“And you think it will do this?” Eckhart questioned Gruenberg with a tinge of anger in his voice.

“I would,” Gruenberg returned impassively.

Gruenberg’s declaration did not take long to come to pass. Nearly two minutes behind his words thousands of warheads began piercing the boundary of their sensor fields. Within seconds of this occurring, the directed energy defensive systems of the spacefighters began diminishing their number. On the forward display monitor, the animation of these destructions seemed insignificant when compared to the large number of warheads streaming across the distances between the boundary of the sensor field and its point of origin. It took less than three seconds for the warheads to cross the distance. The overwhelming majority of these warheads flew by doing no damage. The maneuvering thrusters of the spacefighters pushed the vessels up, down, left, and right so that they might slip between the projectiles that flew by them like a hailstorm. The combination of these two defensive measures served the large majority of the spacefighters well. By the end of this barrage, sixty seconds later, more than one-hundred thousand warheads were launched and thirty-two spacefighters were destroyed or damaged. Gruenberg’s command and control spacefighter passed through it unscathed.

“Fighters! Six of them!”

The shrieking report from the sensor field operator reflected his surprise. His attention, like the attentions of all others inside the command and control spacefighter, was fixed on the task of avoiding the storm of warheads. The appearance of six mows took them all by surprise. The DED system was the one element of the force of spacefighters that attended to them without hesitation. However, unlike the warheads, the mows had shielding and countermeasures to help them endure directed energy beams for a prolonged span of time. When the occupants of the UFP spacefighters came around to taking note of them, they were near to point blank range with the leading edge of the UFP spacefighters. The flight time from launch to impact was half of a second.

“Evade! Evade!” Gruenberg yelled towards his crew. “All fighters, evade!”

In the time, it took Gruenberg to finish this command a dozen spacefighters had been dispatched by the six mows that was plunging into their formation. Up, down and lateral movements were insufficient for evading this assault. The UFP spacefighters had to show their tails for this action. Only their aft primary thrusters were powerful enough to push them out of the kill zone of the mows quick enough and far enough to escape. Moving before the mow commenced to fire at them was their only chance for survival. For most within these kill zones survival was a matter of luck. The mow chose to fire at one or more of the other spacefighters before turning its attention towards them. This gave them the space of time they needed to get away.

The mows penetrated the formation of UFP spacefighters for two minutes. Unlike the barrage from the Orion, they did not do a quick pass through their ranks. The mows slowed their descent so that they could engage with the UFP. They separated out into six different directions so that they could contend with all sectors of the UFP formation. By the time that these two minutes had passed an additional forty-four UFP spacefighters were destroyed or rendered inoperable, and the remainder were breaking and turning to escape the lethal fire of six mows.

The advantage of surprise was gone by the end of this time. The UFP spacefighters were dispersed and most were well out of point blank range. The contest turned about to the advantage of the spacefighters and their overwhelming numbers. They began to press the fight. The six mows ducked and dodged amidst the swarming UFP spacefighters. It took just under three minutes for the first mow to be destroyed by a hail of projectiles from multiple directions. It was shredded into pieces by more than a dozen warheads. It took another two minutes for a second mow to fall victim to the crowd of spacefighters targeting from all sides. It was at this moment that the progression of the battle turned again.

“Colonel Trujillo, breakaway now,” Gruenberg yelled into the microphone fixed into his monitor. “You and your wing with me.”

Gruenberg’s command and control spacefighter spent the whole of the past seven minutes trying to stay clear of the lethal fire coming from the six Orion spacefighters. The entry of the six mows into their formation produced a havoc that washed through their numbers across a span of thirty seconds. Their own momentum was the cause of their greatest peril. The mows fell through their ranks at a pace just slow enough to give them the time they needed to target every spacefighter within it, one after the other. The entire force was effectively a collection of moving targets falling towards half a dozen floating, heavily-armed, rapid-firing, quick draw gunships. The UFP spacefighters did not have the speed to contend with the mows in such close quarters and with such little time to react. There was not enough time to do anything but scatter. From a god’s eye view, the spacefighters appeared to roil about like a thin flake of smoke colliding with a soft squirt of air.

“What are you going to do?” Eckhart yelled at his General.

Gruenberg ignored the inquiry. He was too busy giving orders to entertain the question.

“Set a course for that warship, best possible speed.”

Gruenberg followed this command with orders to the remaining portion of his force.

“When you’ve destroyed those starcorp spacefighters come to me.”

“How much time did we lose?” Eckhart questioned loudly.

Gruenberg was reluctant to answer that question even if he did know the answer, which he did not. He knew that the basestar had bought itself a large chunk of time with this tactic. What he did not know was if it was enough to enable it to escape.

“Too much,” Gruenberg grumble back after a time.

Joshua Sloan and his commanders had spent three-quarters of an hour following the approach of the UFP force. At the start of this time, the six pilots had just gotten situated in their mows. There was little said between Joshua and his command and control capsule crew over this span of time, and there was little more to do. The primary thrusters of the Orion were doing all that needed to be done. All present inside the command and control space-capsule knew what was about to happen. They were all well versed on what they had to do. The tension inside the command capsule of the Orion grew with each passing minute. None there knew how this action would play out. But they all knew that this would be their last engagement, one way or the other.

By this time, it was known to all that they were seconds away from this final engagement. But the number of seconds that was separating them from this event was unknown to all but Joshua. The crew’s confusion was due to the entry of the UFP space force into their sensor field. This it did several minutes earlier. It passed into lethal range of their railguns two minutes earlier. At this moment, the only thing that was preventing the Orion from firing its guns at the UFP spacefighters was an order from Joshua.

Joshua was aware that his Command Capsule crew was waiting for an order from him to commence firing. But his worry now was for the mistake of giving this order too soon. He knew that they had a time advantage over the UFP spacefighters. They would not reach the desired five-second projectile flight time range for another five minutes. By this time, he knew that the flight time of their projectiles would be just under two seconds. Using this advantage to its maximum benefit was something he was eager to exploit.

On top of this, Joshua had a second worry. He did not want to wait too long. If the UFP began their barrage before them, then the weight of Orion’s counter would be abbreviated by the need to enact defensive measures. He weighed these two concerns against each other as he watched the time tick by. When the clock closed towards the final sixty seconds, Joshua concluded that he dared not wait any longer.

With a sudden outburst of words Joshua ordered the shutdown of the primary thrusters, the opening of the docking bay doors, the deployment and charging of the bottom-side railguns, the activation of the targeting computer and the firing of all weapons, in that order. It took eight seconds for all these commands to be enacted. After the passage of sixty seconds, he ordered the barrage stopped and the retraction of all railguns. An instant behind this he ordered the launch of the six mows. These three acts took little more than two seconds to complete. The closing of the docking bay door cost them an additional five. When the last of these orders was completed Joshua restarted the primary repulsor engines and returned the Orion to maximum acceleration. The command capsule went silent as all watched the battle between the six mows and the UFP force fall away into the distance.

“They’re coming,” the sensor operator reported to Joshua at a shout.

The Orion had been falling away from their encounter with the UFP space force for thirteen minutes when the report or pursuing spacefighters was announced. They were far beyond the range of the meager sensor field that the Orion was projecting, but a continuing visual scan of the area provided an imprecise understanding of their disposition. This method was the means behind the sensor operator’s report.

“How much time do we have?” Joshua yelled out.

“Unknown, Admiral.”

“A guess, a range, anything…”

“Admiral, there’s no way of knowing.”

This answer did not come as a surprise to Joshua. He was well aware of the limitations of measurements in space that were based on any means other than sensor field technology. Radar was next to useless at detecting stealthy vessels across the great distances of space. Visual observation was a better alternative, but it had its limitations, as well. Military spaceships were stealthy by design. This also made them difficult to be seen visually across a thousand miles of space. This was especially true when its commander chose not to emit any light. With their thrusters operating it was possible to see the glow of the engines from a distance. But this information said nothing about its location and movement. Without an enveloping sensor field, triangulation was the only means for turning visual observations into calculated measurements of distance and speed.

“Can you tell me how many?” Joshua asked his sensor operator.

“Negative, more than a few, but not all.”

Joshua took a moment to consider this reply and then vocalized the summation of his rumination to no one in particular.

“That means that the mows, or some of them, must still be fighting.”

“For now,” Noonan grumbled towards Joshua in particular.

The situation that provoked Noonan’s barbed remark was apparent to all. The divide of the UFP force was a strong indicator that this event was not going to go the way that they hoped. One likely outcome was that the six mow pilots would not make it back to the Orion ahead of this breakaway UFP group. Despite this anticipated tragedy all knew that this was the least of their worries. Most thought the six pilots were doomed from the instant they left the basestar. The others held onto the hope that Admiral Sloan had a plan to get them back aboard. These two positions notwithstanding, all knew that the six were expendable to the cause of preventing a greater tragedy, the destruction or capture of the basestar. It was understood by everyone that this breakaway UFP group could not be allowed to get within lethal range of the Orion.

The crew of the Orion Command Capsule followed the approach of the UFP breakaway group for another ninety-one minutes. Periodic reports from the sensor field operator advised all that the visual of the group was growing ever more pronounced. The last report, five minutes earlier, estimated their number at more than one-hundred and less than two. By this time, these reports were being taken in by the crew with a modicum of interest.

“Admiral, we are at time jump velocity,” the pilot announced with enthusiasm.

The Command Capsule crew of the Orion took in this report with a nearly inaudible gasp of relief. They all had been counting the minutes to this moment. This was their escape window. It was the culmination of all that they had done up until that moment. An expression of release spread through the capsule like a wave of energy. Ten seconds later their demeanors changed into looks of concern. They had done the math and gauged the consequence of initiating a time jump at this moment. The six mow pilots would be lost to them across four light-years of space. This thought held all but one of them locked in a cogitation regarding the merits and morality of staying and going.

Joshua had no thoughts on the pros and cons of staying and leaving. He had considered this situation long before this moment and decided how he had to act. His analysis of this dilemma brought him to the realization that his feelings would not serve him well in this. With this thinking in mind, he was prepared to act with speed and without sentiment at the moment it needed to be done. He believed this was that time.

“Prepare to start transmitting telemetry,” Joshua ordered after a second of hesitation.

“Admiral,” Noonan pleaded out behind an expression of disbelief. “You can’t do this.”

The crew of the Orion command and control capsule froze in their chairs in reaction to Noonan’s assertion. Joshua gave his Commander a moment of thought before responding to his entreaty with a concise response.

“Yes, I can. Transmit.”

The communication officer initiated the transmission after a slight hesitation. A minute of silent contemplation followed behind this act. At the back end of this, the Command Capsule crew began peeking at Joshua for a sign that he was about to give the order to open a time portal. With each passing minute, these looks and glances became more numerous. They all knew that time was not on their side. They worried about the approach of the UFP spacefighters. They knew that if they waited one minute too long they would lose the opportunity. All of them by then had by then given up on the hope that the six mow pilots could catch up with them. Time was too short and they had yet to receive a transmission from them that detailed their status. They all feared that the six were dead, Joshua included.

“Sensor field contact! We’ve just been enveloped by the enemy’s sensor field.”

This sudden alert came from the weapon systems operator. A sensation of shock spiked inside the crew. The presence of the enemy’s sensor field told them that they were being targeted. Joshua suspected that this UFP splinter group was not far behind them. It made sense to him that the commander of that force would expend as little energy as necessary on a sensor field. Less than a minute later, this suspicion was confirmed when the UFP spacefighters began appearing on the sensor field monitors of the Orion.

“Shutdown the engines and the sensor field generator. Divert all available power to the temporal field generator.”

Joshua shouted out these orders two seconds after seeing the first UFP spacefighter on the capsule’s sensor field monitor. This information told him that a railgun projectile fired from this splinter group had a fifteen second flight time from that spaceship to his. Normally this would have given the basestar’s targeting computer plenty of time to fend off a barrage. But Joshua learned from practice that he needed an eight-second window to perform the jump. And for the whole of this time, the sensor field had to be down.

“Engage temporal field generator,” Joshua commanded after hearing that his previous orders had been completed.

An instant behind this command all images on the external monitors transformed into static. For three seconds after this, there was nothing but silence. At the end of this time, the pilot gave his report.

“Admiral, we have crossed into null space/time.”

Joshua took this report with a soft sigh of relief. Three seconds later he took in a different report from Commander Noonan.

“The devil is going to dig a special pit in hell just for you, Admiral.”

“Yeah, I know,” Joshua whispered back.

Gruenberg was ninety minutes into his pursuit of the starcorp basestar. The distant glow of its primary thrusters was the only means that he used to steer his command towards it. But tracking it was not difficult. The basestar made no turns or deviations off its trajectory. The newly commenced emission of a coded radio transmission from it made this task even easier. Gruenberg believed this to be a recall order for the six starcorp spacefighters. He surmised from this that the basestar was nearing the velocity it needed to open a time portal.

“Extend sensor fields by ten percent,” Gruenberg called out to his command across their communication link.

Gruenberg calculated that his force was thirty minutes away from the lethal firing range, at the most. But it was his fear that the basestar was less distant from opening a time portal. Because of these estimations, he was eager to know exactly how far away the basestar was and how fast it was going.

“The starcorp warship is still not on our monitors,” the sensor field operator reported.

Gruenberg took a moment to consider this report and then he called out a new order.

“Have all fighters in the wing go to one-hundred and ten on their reactors.”

In Gruenberg’s mind, this was a gamble, but it was one he felt they had to take. If allowed to continue operating at this level, the reactors in his spacefighters would start going critical in another twenty minutes, more or less. When this happened, the spacefighters would have to reduce their power production by one-third to bring them down to a safe level, rapidly. Despite the consequence of this, Gruenberg’s thinking told him that speed was more important than endurance. He believed that he had to have that basestar within lethal range of his guns well before the end of this time. It took a little more than three minutes for Gruenberg’s gamble to pay off.

“Contact!” The sensor operator shouted with excitement. “Our forward spacefighters have just enveloped the warship.”

“How long before we’re in lethal range?” Gruenberg shouted back at the young officer.

The young officer reported that they were three minutes away from a five second flight time for their railgun projectiles, at maximum muzzle velocity. He roughly calculated that they were at a twenty-second flight time at their present distance. This information gave Gruenberg cause for hope. But the report he was not hearing was inducing the opposite effect. They had yet to enter the basestar’s sensor field. Gruenberg had been advised that the act of dropping the sensor field was a likely first step before opening a time portal. His thinking at this moment was that the basestar was minutes, if not seconds, away from diving into null space/time. This thinking had him weighing the options of commencing their barrage at that very moment or waiting a little longer. After a second of thought, he chose to wait. A dozen seconds behind this decision a new report came in.

“Contact!” The sensor field operator yelled out. “We’ve just entered the warship’s sensor field.”

Gruenberg had no immediate reaction for this. He knew there was no chance of striking the basestar with a projectile at that distance. Its defensive system would destroy them all halfway through their flight time. But he feared doing nothing might cost him the only chance he would have. In the time it would take for his force to close the distance, the basestar might dive into null space/time. Because of this indecision, he took two seconds to weigh each option against the other. For Eckhart, this was a second and a half too long.

“What’s happening? What’s wrong?”

Gruenberg gave no thought to this inquiry while he considered his choices. At the end of his two seconds of contemplation, he shouted out his decision in the form of commands.

“All ships, shut down your engines. Channel all available power to the primary weapon. Target enemy vessel and fire at will—continuous fire—fire now! Fire now!”

It took little more than three seconds for the first projectile to exit the opening of a railgun. In half that time, a new event was coming into the awareness of the crews of the UFP force.

“General, it’s gone! The sensor field is… The enemy warship has shut down its sensor field.”

Gruenberg noted the report from the sensor station operator. But he gave no response. He knew there was nothing to do but wait and watch as the barrage of warheads continued to spew out of the rail guns from one-hundred and twenty-two UFP spacefighters. Nine seconds into this torrential fusillade the avatar of the starcorp basestar disappeared from the sensor field monitor. For the next ten seconds, there was silence.

“What just happened?”

Eckhart articulated his question with an inflection of disbelief. He had a strong suspicion about what just happened. But it was his hope that someone would tell him something different.

“It’s gone,” the sensor station operator reported with a hint of amazement in his voice. “It just disappeared.”

There was no need for a definition of word disappeared in this instance. They all knew that this sudden disappearance meant that the basestar had made its escape into null space/time. This conclusion was supported by a pulse of electromagnetic radiation that seemed to originate from the basestar’s last known position. All but one inside the UFP command and control spacefighter was awed by this event. Eckhart, to the contrary, was seething with anger. After taking several seconds to fume over this turn of events, Eckhart looked at Gruenberg and said the only thing he could think to say.

“What now?”

“Prime Minister, they’re gone,” General Gruenberg explained with a dejected look and a shake of his head. “We lost them.”

“I can see that, damn it! How do we find them? How do we catch them?”

To include his ministers into this discussion, Eckhart panned about and scanned their faces as he spoke.

“Prime Minister,” Wilkinson spoke up tentatively, “we don’t have that technology yet. It will take years, possibly decades to figure out how they did that.”

“We have scientists! We have engineers, don’t we?” Eckhart railed back at his Minister of Defense with ferocity. “I want to know how they did it! I want spaceships that can do this, and I want this done now. Somebody has got to know how they did this. Find them!”

The intensity of Eckhart’s rage had the attention of all present, but few were willing to look at him. Carr had elected to remain out of the path his wrath up until this moment. Out of fear of bringing up what he knew needed to be said, the Minister of State spoke his words gently.

“Prime Minister, we have bigger concerns right now. There’s going to be some political fallout over this.”

Carr paused to see if Eckhart was comprehending where he was going with this. He noted the seething anger that appeared to be expanding within him, interpreted this as evidence that he did understand where this was going and went on with his message.

“We have thousands of dead and nothing to show for it that we could not have acquired by doing nothing.”

Carr paused again and waited to see if Eckhart wanted to respond to this. He continued with his talk after a two-second delay.

“There is a growing rumor on Earth that you knew what the starcorps were going to do before we left.”

Carr paused again to give weight to this last remark, and then he continued.

“Reports of our losses are being continuously tallied on Earth. Your favorability rating is falling by the hour, Prime Minister. This is a problem that we have to start looking at.”

The muscles in Eckhart’s jaw began to flex as he ground his teeth. His stare towards Carr appeared to be looking straight through him. This and his continued silence told Carr that he was getting the message. To assure himself that he had successfully conveyed the size of this problem, Carr finished his elucidation with one final remark.

“There’s talk of impeachment.”

This news fed into Eckhart’s fury with a ferocity. The idea that this failure was causing a political downfall for him added to the rage the success of the starcorps produced. Through a long pause of silence, he said and did nothing. His eyes maintained a fixed stare into the air in front of him. The tension in his body constrained his desire to go into a physical temper tantrum. All present waited for his reaction and instructions. After a short time, the communications officer was distracted from this vigil by a transmission coming through his headphone. The officer took several seconds to take in the communication. At the end of this time, the officer looked to General Gruenberg and reported.

“General, Captain McLaughlin, and his wing are still engaged with four starcorp spacefighters. He requests instructions on how to proceed.”

This report captured the attention of Eckhart, much to the note of the Gruenberg. Without saying a word, Gruenberg passed the question on to Eckhart with a look. He, in turn, responded to it with a softly spoken command.

“General, get us back there.”