Cascade Point by Joshua Guess

Author:Joshua Guess [Guess, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Amazon: B0719BTQHX
Published: 2017-05-09T07:00:00+00:00

19

In the time between the battle and the gate drop, Grant and his crew kept busy. Iona coordinated repairs with the other ships, each having suffered more damage than the Angel. Doing it without giving away information about the identity of the ships or other crews was less difficult than Grant would have imagined; the people only had to keep their suits polarized so no one could see faces and remember not to give away any information. All the other data that could be used to suss out the identity of the ship such as sensor data was purged by the respective sims on each vessel.

It was annoying but in the end quite doable. Grant left the other fleet ships behind with a sense of camaraderie, however detached it might be.

They hung in a nearly empty solar system waiting for a rendezvous with the Ueshiba that was already overdue. The distant star crouching in the center of the system was barely more visible than the pale dots dusted across the rest of the sky, its single planet completely unseen.

“How overdue are they?” Grant asked.

“Six hours,” Iona answered instantly. “Which is five minutes more than the last time you asked.”

Grant gave her a sour look. “Aren’t robots supposed to be pleasant and non-threatening so humans don’t get worried about an eventual uprising?”

“Maybe robots are,” Iona said with the ghost of a smile. “Me? I’m technically not a robot. So I can say what I want.” Her head tilted sharply to one side as if she heard something, then her eyes fell on Spencer.

“Incoming gate,” Spencer said half a second later. “Readings are...weird.”

Before Grant could ask for clarification, a cascade point opened and a ship came through with a configuration he had never seen before. His hand was halfway through the process of activating their defense network when a hail chimed through the comm.

“This is Sharp,” a voice said. “Sorry about overriding your system, but we didn’t want to risk taking any fire.”

Grant frowned and looked at his console. Sure enough, the hail wasn’t the only thing Sharp forced through. The entire ship was locked out, though as Grant looked at the screen, the system was released. He tapped the channel icon on his screen.

“Commander, we’re glad to see you made it through,” Grant said, choosing to save any complaints he might have about the lockout for a more private venue. “We expected to see you arrive in the Ueshiba.”

“Look at the transponder data,” Sharp replied. “This is the Ueshiba. We had to drop the outer hull. Only choice we had to get away.”

Grant gaped at the image on the screen. Now that he knew what he was looking at, it made sense. He knew it was technically possible for any navy ship using that particular configuration—which was most of them—to release the connections between the two hulls. It was an option of last resort, however. Dropping the outer hull meant losing your armor, your main weapons systems, and the ability to enter the Cascade.

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