Third Contact (Envoys Book 1) by Peter J Aldin

Author:Peter J Aldin [Aldin, Peter J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

Bradley “Widowmaker” Bradstock had been the first of the other Peacers to join Chipper in his mess booth. That had been at 0505, just before Assured dropped out of leapspace. He must have noticed Chipper hadn’t made himself coffee, because he brought a second mug with him when he sat, pushing it across the table with a grunt in place of a Good Morning.

With an established reputation as a man of few words, Widowmaker had been even less communicative since the rest of his Peacekeeper Team—who’d composed most of Fireteam Charlie—had perished instantaneously in nuclear fire at Pollyanna. The two men sat silently side by side in their booth, watching the feed from the ship’s forward cam on the screen shift from grey static to the black velvet of normal space, and glancing out the viewport beside them at the same void. Occasional snippets of information scrolled along the bottom of the mess screen: Assured had arrived inside the system’s “Oort cloud,” but had to course correct twice in the first ten minutes to avoid local comets; the system had twelve planets and one asteroid belt; comms traffic in alien languages was abundant; a single moving vessel had been identified one billion kilometers away, possibly a gigantic ore freighter …

Stines and Westermann arrived at 0646, piling their breakfast trays high. Westermann still limped but her leg was getting stronger all the time. The two newcomers brought lively conversation and conjecture to the table. And soon after, the mess began to fill with other curious off-duty crewers, hungry for information along with breakfast, their eyes glued to the screen above the serving counter.

“Not eating breakfast?” Westermann asked Chipper as she finished the final bite of hers.

“I will soon.”

“Normally I find half the servery empty when you get here first,” she laughed.

Stines chuckled at that.

“You sick or something?” Westermann continued.

“I’m excited,” he replied with a grin. “It’s pretty zing, you know, being the first in an alien system.”

“Oh, really?” she teased him. “Pretty zing, huh? What are you, a Thesian thud-poet now?”

Stines laughed harder. Widowmaker grunted acknowledgment of Westermann scoring a point on Chipper. Chipper poked out his tongue.

“I bet 100 francs that zing-boy here won’t just be the first Peacer to land on the alien planet,” Stines chipped in. “He’ll be the first to fall in love with an alien gal.”

Westermann cackled at that. Widowmaker grunted again.

Chipper noticed Hecate, Manolo and Umbrano collecting their meal then. They all shot glances at a side table, before heading for a table in back. Hunched over the side table was Jogianto. He hadn’t seen her come in. Like Chipper, she only had a coffee, and she was staring out the viewport.

“Well, that’s the rest of our team here, then,” Stines grumbled, losing his good mood.

“How they working out?” Westermann asked this of Chipper.

“They’re good operatives,” he replied, “but they hate each other’s guts.”

“Evidently why they’re not sitting together,” Westermann replied.

“How are your two doing?” Chipper asked her and Widowmaker.

Bradstock shrugged.

Westermann groaned. “Painfully. The guy Umbrano thinks everything is a euphemism either for sex or for farts.

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