"Ren, status?" I ask.
She stares at her screen, doing her best not to look back. "The decale survived, if that's what you're asking. The ship is built for multiple reentries without any maintenance, the heat of that didn't even peel the paint."
"Any internal damage?"
"Nope. The blast threw us faster than I would have like, but we're the most fragile objects aboard the ship."
"Anyone want to explain who just tried to kill us?" Gear says. "Did the dissenters get nuclear weapons, are the Australians attacking, did aliens..." She catches sight of Nyan. "Hold that question, who is she?"
"Alien," I say. "People trying to kill us are also aliens. I'll explain later."
"Captain," says Lexi. "I just finished a thorough examination of the hull."
"Damage?"
"Zero. As I said, that wasn't anything. The interesting thing is that our surface is now radioactive."
"We were just in a nuclear..."
"I did a spectral analysis, we have a fine layer of cobalt dust across our entire surface."
"Why?" Connor mumbles. "It's pointless to deploy cobalt bombs on a planet without an atmosphere, everything's already shielded."
"What's significant about the cobalt?" Nyan asks.
"A nuclear weapon wrapped in cobalt," Connor explains. "The weapon iridates the stuff and tosses it high into the atmosphere where it rains down and kills everything."
"We call them planet busters," John adds.
"That sounds horrible!" Nyan exclaims.
"It is," I agree. "That's why we and the Australians don't have any."
"Good, the Council has a rather big ruel against nuclear weapons."
"Oh, I thought you were talking about Cobalt bombs. Because we have plenty of nukes."
"And there's one of those problems I have to deal with," they sigh. "Have you ever considered how much of a headache your actions cause a superior civilization with a higher moral standard that's attempting to annex you."
"Nope," I respond. "Gear I need you to scan the surroundings, those things where accompanied by a capital ship the first time."
"First time?" she grumbles. "You get a few hours of rest and some one will alway decide to take a relativistic jaunt during it."
"John..."
"Linking video file and dropping into the bases outbox."
"Good work."
"Gear," says Connor. "Are you remembering..."
"To tie into the planet's satellite net, yes, yes I did. The battleship... dreadnought... whatever it is that I'm looking for is not in our blindspot around the planet." Her console beeps. "But they are in orbit around Xoltol 6, do you want me to run them over with the active sensors."
"Negative," I tell her. "Let's not let them know we're coming." The crew rushes to get the ship sett for warp, and in less than a minute our drives are spinning up, the cores separate out from their inert forms into their positive and negative components. The stars move out of our way and the planet below melts into an indistinguishable blob of grey.
We pack on the forward momentum for just a moment before dropping back into normal space a quarter hundred AU's from our starting points. Gear quickly starts sorting through the new sensor reading.
YOU ARE READING
Lucky 13 (NaNoWriMo 2017)
Science FictionHumanity may not be destined for great things, but its children are. Cheep long rang FTL is finally a reality, and onto the Lucky 13, one of the first of these new ships, is thrown a crew new out of the Academy. Captain Daniel May, just as green as...
