Triumph's Ashes (The Cassidy Chronicles Volume 5) by Adam Gaffen

Author:Adam Gaffen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, LGBTQ, Space Opera, Cassidy Chronicles
Publisher: Adam Gaffen
Published: 2021-07-25T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

TFS Defiant; Cislunar space

Stardate 12008.28

“They’re definitely on a course back home, Skipper,” reported Ensign Skaggs.

“Good. Did we get any useful readings while we were in the neighborhood of Alpha Phoenicis?”

“We recorded everything we could,” said Wilder from Tactical. “Our closest approach was about a light month; call it 800 billion kilometers.”

“Anything interesting?”

Wilder was clearly out of her depth but pushed on regardless. “Confirmation of the system composition. It’s a binary star: one orange giant, fifteen times the diameter of Sol; one white dwarf, one quarter the diameter of Sol. No planets, but a fair amount of junk.”

“So not a destination we would have chosen.”

“No, Ma’am.”

“Well, I’m sure the Science Division back home will be excited to get the data. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

Home.

Three weeks into this chase, the idea of home was weighing heavily on the crew. The minor design oversights were looming larger and larger the longer their mission extended. She’d been keeping a log of improvements to the basic design for submission to Hecate for consideration for the next generation ships. Exploration might never be their purpose, but having a convenient home base to return to every couple days was also a luxury easily lost.

Now she had the long run home to look forward to. Over the past week they had replaced the langasite crystals twice more, each time dropping out of warp for nearly an hour as the finicky, if straightforward, procedure was completed. Both times they’d been able to pick up the trail of the Artemesian ship without much difficulty, information which would be invaluable once they got home. Which got Chloe thinking.

“Ensign, you have the conn.” Technically, Lieutenant Wilder should have been placed in command, but after three weeks of pursuit things had become routine and Chloe wanted to give all of her bridge officers a chance to be officially ‘in charge.’ She believed it would pay off in their abilities and growth, in the end.

“Aye, Ma’am. I have the conn.” Skaggs waited while Chloe exited the bridge, then settled into the command chair, her console’s controls fed to the subsystem built into the arm.

Engineering was a place of relative calm today, with another maintenance item behind them and KC’s crew doing their usual sterling job.

“Engineer, can I have a word with you?”

If Wardell was surprised by her Captain’s appearance in Engineering she didn’t show it.

“Certainly, Captain. My office?”

“That would be nice.”

Once they were settled, Wardell said, “Is there a problem?”

“Not at all. I thought today’s changeover went quite smoothly.”

“Thank you, Captain. I’ll pass that on to my crew.” She sat back and waited. She didn’t have to wait long.

“KC, what if we overtook the al-Battani before we changed the crystal?”

“What do you mean, Captain?”

“Well, when we changed the first crystal, I know we were running on the ragged edge of failure and we couldn’t push the system hard.”

“No,” agreed Wardell. “I did an analysis, and we were less than fifteen minutes from a full-blown decrystallization failure.”

“That sounds bad.”

“Think of a diamond turning to dust as you’re looking at it.

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