The Eden Project

0.2 : Grasshopper, part 2

    "Vega, report!" The Admiral looking through the video screen had a strong jaw and a moustache as equally peppered with grey as his hair was.

    I was taken aback. I wasn't expecting the leading Admiral of the task force himself to be on the call. Nor did I expect a 4-star Admiral to address his captain so informally. "S-Sir, Captain Vega..." I tried to mentally slap myself into focus. "I am sorry to report Admiral, but she didn't make it. I am Acting Captain Emmett Crawford, sir. I was her XO and she placed me in acting command before she died."

    The Admiral was noticeably taken aback, he didn't say anything for nearly a minute. After a while his head snapped to the side and shortly he gave a brisk shake of his head, turning back to the camera.

    "Is everything alright sir?" I asked, not sure how to take whatever that was. I could feel that panic rising back up inside me. Even with the alarms off, I could still catch glimpses of red lights strobing down corridors out of the corners of my eye.

    "Did you know that your captain and I entered the academy together? We enlisted at the same time, in fact I was standing right behind her in line." I was standing as still as I could as the man talked, not wanting to make the wrong move. He muttered some words under his breath but all I could catch was "drink".

    With a spark of an idea and an equal mix of guilt, I addressed the Admiral. "sir , would you prefer I hand command to another on the ship?" If you believe someone else would be better suited to fill Captain Vega's shoes I will do my best to get them for you."

    That seemed to snap the man out of his reverie. "She put you in charge, and she knows you and your crew better than I do. Consider your field promotion from Lieutenant to Captain ratified. Now Captain Crawford, give me that report on your ship without any further delays."

    "Yes Sir!" I responded, giving him a quick salute. "We currently have all our emergency capabilities back online, however we are still missing our engines and our weapon systems. Our Shields are also down Sir, the hit took out our forward array and the feedback did significant damage to the rest of the ship.

    The Admiral nodded back at me and replied, "I'm going to need a more accurate report on your flight capabilities Captain."

    "Yes Sir, sorry Sir! I have engineering working on getting the engines up as we speak." as I said that I felt a buzz on my forearm and looked down to notice the screen there blinking a priority update. "Scratch that Admiral, I have just received word that our engines are back online. What are your orders?"

    "Good. Your orders are to take your ship and make it back to Sol by any means necessary. Whatever it takes, you are to report to fleet high command on Luna as fast as possible. Do not let anything stand in your way."

    I was dumbstruck. "Sir, may I ask why? And why my ship?"

    "The Grasshopper is not only equipped for long-range travel, you are also the least damaged ship in the fleet, thanks in part to jumping in last. You have the best chance of returning home."

    A chilling thought suddenly came to me. "Admiral, if I may be permitted to ask, what about the rest of the fleet? What about you sir? Surely your safety is our top priority?"

    The silvered verteran sighed, as if he expected this conversation to be far shorter. "The ships too damaged to escape will cover the retreat of those who can. Do you have any other questions captain? We have all day."

    Taking the hint, I saluted him again. I must be getting a welt on my forehead by this point. "No sir, moving out now sir!" the big screen blinked out returning to a now-dusty black.

    With my finger on the ship-wide, I shouted; "Jenkins, get the fleet view up! Zelenka, get those engines powered up and take us out of here right away!" As I shouted, I could hear crew members all around tapping hurriedly at their consoles or scurrying away to different parts of the ship. Who was the pilot on deck? There. "Reed, get ready to jump us on your mark as soon as you are able, we've got to do this fast!" A lofted thumbs up was all he got in response as the young woman's other hand flew furiously over her console. I stomped on the floor button to raise the captain's chair from its recess under the floor. Sitting in it, I pulled up the tactical display on one if it's screens.

    What I saw startled me well and good. I shouted to the sensor officer. "Jenkins, are any of the other ships moving?"

    "Sir?" His response came back slowly, with a hint of confusion. I had a macro view of what we could pick up outside, but he had a far more detailed view in front of him.

    "Dammit man, answer the question! Are any of the other ships moving or is my terminal really accurate?" on my tactical display, the dot indicating our little Grasshopper moved slowly away from the rest of the pack, but no others moved with us. I crossed my fingers hoping we were the first ship the admiral contacted and the others were just taking longer to spin up.

    "Sir, I'm not seeing any other ships moving out to follow us. The rest of the fleet is repositioning however. Would you like me to send the feed to your display?"
I gave him a wave of confirmation and the feed zoomed out and updated with far more details. Zooming back in slightly and refocusing in on the capital ships, I started to get the whole picture. Most startling was the number that was actually moving. Of all the ships less than half of the ships that jumped in were marked as operational. All the ships I could see were rotating hard to port and edging closer together. They were forming a blockade! They must be trying to turn their widest field of shield arrays towards whatever was out there. And that right there is when it really sunk in. We were the only ship getting out of there. "Get the live feed of the blockade up on the main display now!" I shouted to no one in particular.

    Everyone looked up with me to see a live video feed of a double wall of massive warships rotating to turn themselves into a literal wall, a flickering glow of their shields spreading out rapidly across the line complimenting the burning spots of venting gasses illuminating the once-great ships. But less than half of the ships seemed to have shields. In a panic, I reached for the terminal in front of him to hail the admiral. Just as I felt my finger graze the composite class however, I felt the floating tig of the jump drives pull me as the ship blinked out of the system. The last thing I saw burned onto my retinas was the outer edge of the ships blossomed into perfectly round balls of flame.

— later. —

    7713.

    The drawer clicked open and inside I found a stack of papers addressed to me, and behind that, a large glass bottle and a letter. I noticed the bottle first, how could I not. It was an incredibly expensive bottle of tequila all the way from earth. But the letter, both the envelope and the letter poking out from inside were made from thick textured paper. I'd only seen paper like this when I went to Admiral Headquarters on Earth for my Officer Academy graduation. Sue had been trying to sneak into the library. It was even sealed with wax!

    But I could see some of the writing and I couldn't help myself. The Captain told me the code after all, didn't she? I carefully pulled out the page as if it would somehow fall apart in my fingers. It was even written with a proper fountain pen! The lines were unmistakable, and the ink was a colour of burnt orange on the aged cream background.

<— — —
    "Roxy,
Like you said, I owe you a drink.
Hopefully you'll finally let me convince
you to retire and we can have that
drink together for real. Not just as
"old academy friends".

yours, Artie"
— — —>

    Roxy. If I ever heard someone call Roxana Vega that, I'd be expecting them to be cold on the floor in seconds. And Artie?! I definitely didn't ever expect to hear someone address Arthur Abbott, one of the most decorated men serving in the navy, like a schoolboy barely out of his teens.

// originally uploaded Feb. 11, 2022