Chapter 66: Yularaat Arrival

Some twenty-six days later, I was sitting in the captain’s chair as Blaine counted down the time until we emerged in the Yulara system. The intervening four weeks had been spent traveling from system to system and scanning the ones we entered.

The good news was that the time involved had allowed Ensign Daniels and his men to tear apart every controls station and rebuild it. They had found few additional problems, but the work allowed them to optimize and personalize everything. The men seemed to sit up straighter and pay closer attention once they had stations that they had helped put together.

The systems we had visited had all be empty of active Sa’arm influence, but in three of the seven we found clear evidence of visited by Sa’arm scout ships. One system with a K-class star proved to be the most interesting and worrisome. The system was about forty light years from Crucibleat, and contained one planet that orbited near the outer edge of the habitable zone. The planet appeared to be undergoing some rather extremely volcanism, but during our orbit I noticed that large colonies of algae floated in the seas. Further study showed massive levels of titanium and platinum in some of the cooling lava flows.

We had left two different warning buoys in the system when we left five days after arriving. The planet looked like it could provide a massive amount of raw material for spaceship building and we all worried that the Sa’arm would be returning to the system that William Rich suggested should be called Cayleyat, based on a volcanic region back on Earth.

We had some success with sending drones back to Crucible for our concubines. I had received one set of messages when we visited the fifth system and spent a couple of rather idyllic hours listening to my ladies talking about how much they loved me. Most of the rest of the crew had received equally pleasant messages.

But as the clock counted down to our emergence in the Yularaat system, my stomach seemed to twist into knots. This would be my first meeting with higher command and I had questions about how they would look at a fifteen year old given command of a corvette.

“Approaching system boundary,” Blaine called out breaking me out of my reverie. “Break out in six, five, four...”

My hands grabbed the arm rests of my command chair and squeezed the metal. My mind filled with the imagined sound of the metal protesting the abuse as Corsica burst back into normal space.

As soon as we emerged I turned to Ensign Munfree. “Make sure our identification signals are transmitting properly. Then find out where the system commander is and let him know we have arrived.”

“We are being challenged by a satellite. It appears to be an AI,” Ensign Munfree responded.

“What is it asking for? We don’t have any codebooks,” I said.

“So far the questions have just required me to press certain buttons. I feel like I’ve dialed up my old credit card service center. Press one for English type stuff,” Ensign Munfree said flippantly.

“That makes no sense,” Blaine responded.

“From what I’ve read we already figured out that the Sa’arm don’t speak and we suspect they do all communication through some kind of mental link. They likely can’t respond at all to the kind of challenge Chastity is dealing with,” I said.

“I never thought about that,” Blaine said. “Are you sure that we know that?”

“The military suspected it before the President made the announcement about pickups over a year ago. They never showed the video on Earth, but the aliens first encountered the Sa’arm years before. Back then the Sa’arm ignored the aliens and refused to communicate,” I said.

“I remember the President’s announcement included that video of some kind of specialist news crew visiting a Sa’arm controlled planet. The Sa’arm seemed to ignore the crew until one of the members got in the way,” Ensign White said.

“Exactly. They didn’t even appear to notice that we were talking and no electronic communication we used received a response. So a satellite using an electronic challenge can be fairly sure that a ship responding is not Sa’arm,” I said.

“Captain,” Ensign Munfree said. “I have received a message for you and the helm.”

“Put it on the overhead,” I said.

A moment later we could hear a voice boom out over the speakers. “Unknown ship. You are instructed to hold position until the satellite challenge is completed. If it sends you a green signal you can then turn sixty-five degrees to port and to approach at no more than thirty-five percent power.”

“Ensign, do we have a green signal?” I asked.

“It just came through,” Ensign Munfree said.

“Helm, come about to two-nine-five degrees, thirty percent power,” I said firmly.

“Only thirty?” Blaine asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “I’d like to keep a bit of a reserve while we approach. This system appears to be fairly regimented and controlled. I’m not confident on our welcome.”

“We are a bit of a change,” Ensign White said. “None of our crew was part of a military unit back on Earth.”

“Which puzzles me,” I admitted. “Its one of many questions I’d love to have answered.

“Another message for you,” Ensign Munfree said. “I’ll going to put it on the overhead.”

“Corsica,” the same voice we had heard boom out earlier spoke. “We have records showing you are assigned to guard Crucibleat. Admiral Redmill wishes to speak to your captain in person. Continue on your present course. Once you are closer we’ll guide you to the station. Please avoid the region near Yulara’s outer moon. We have a prototype ship undergoing trials and want to avoid any accidents.”

“Prototype?” Ensign Munfree asked.

“I saw it in the tracking, but didn’t bother with talking about it,” I replied. “Actually I see four ships total on the sensors. Three are castle class. The fourth must be the prototype.”

I pulled up the sensor records for the fourth ship and put them up on one of the main viewscreens. The ship looked like someone had taken a castle class ship, extended the length of the ship by fifty percent and then put something like a hexagonal bolt head on the front end of the ship.

“What is that?” Kelsey asked. “And why would you want that bow? It has to be hard to maneuver.”

“I’m guessing its filled with a large battery of powerful guns,” I said. “It makes some sense. The guns can be more powerful if they are in fixed mounts rather than fully mobile turrets. But I agree, that looks like a dangerous ship to be in.”

I turned the sensor scan opaque so we could see the space directly in front of us. Blaine was watching the screen and called out. “We have a ship approaching from our one o’clock.”

“Castle class,” I said. “Probably just to escort us in. Watch them and definitely don’t run into them.”

“Fly casual?” Ensign White asked.

“You know entirely too many science-fiction movie and television references,” I muttered.

“Captain, we’re being hailed from the approaching ship,” Ensign Munfree called out.

“You’re the communications officer. If its just a hail, you can respond,” I said.

I saw Ensign Munfree blush. “Sorry,” she whispered before she began running her hands over the controls.

Ensign White looked back at me. She had a strange smirking smile on her face. I shook my head as Chaz sat up in her chair. “This is Corsica. Aoba Castle are you the ship approaching on our starboard bow?”

I watched as Ensign Munfree frowned. “If you must as my name is Ensign Munfree. I am the communications officer on Corsica and I have been since we launched the ship from Crucible. You were hailing us and I responded.”

“No!” Chastity shouted. “You are not in my chain of command. I know enough to be able to say that it is not your place to reprimand me. I answered as I was trained. If you have questions about that you can check with my chain of command later. Now once again, Are you the ship approaching on our starboard bow?”

“Give um hell,” Ensign White said softly.

“Careful, Ensign,” I said softly. “I agree that the question was definitely out of bounds, but I do have to be able to say that you did not violate military courtesy if the man decides to make a formal complaint.”

“He won’t,” Blaine said softly.

Just then Chastity stood up. She seemed to be glaring at the control panel. I had a feeling that if she had heat vision there would be smoke pouring from the machine. “Well, excuse me for not being a former member of the military! Now, you hailed us and have been surprisingly rude in the conversation since. I was trying to confirm which ship was calling so there would be no confusion on our side. Crucibleat has two Patrician class ships and that is all. The closest I’ve been to a Castle class ship before today was seeing several Sa’arm ships that appear to have been built based on the same design, only larger.”

“That does it,” I muttered. “Chastity transfer whoever you are talking to over to my headset.”

I reached into a pouch on my command chair that I rarely bothered with. Inside was a simple over the ear headset and microphone. It was not very comfortable so I rarely put it on, but I quickly got it into place. “Sir?

“Who is this?” a voice growled in a strong Germanic accent. “Did that cunt find some fool to talk to me?”

“I’d prefer if you did not refer to my communications officer as a cunt,” I growled back. “This is Captain Mark Parker. I command Corsica. And its apparent to me that military courtesy was not applied in your recent discussion with my officer.”