Delphi Envoy (Delphi in Space Book 14) by Bob Blanton

Author:Bob Blanton [Blanton, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2022-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Aperanje

“Prepare for jump!” the Aventurier blared through his speakers. “Prepare for jump!”

Catie hurried to the bridge. Not for any particular reason; she just wanted to be on the bridge when they entered the system. The first crewed starship to ever visit Aperanje. Liz just nodded to her. Gravity went away, the first sign that they were opening the wormhole since the drives could not accelerate the ship while opening a wormhole.

“Send the probe,” Liz ordered

“Probe is through.”

Everyone waited as the probe scanned the new system and sent the data back via quantum relay. Sending a probe first was standard procedure ever since the Sakira had jumped into the path of an asteroid on one of their first missions.

“Probe data shows the jump point is clear.”

“Then take us through,” Liz ordered. “Chesapeake, follow us in thirty.”

“Aye, aye, Commodore,” the Chesapeake replied.

“Entering wormhole now,” Helm reported.

“And here we are,” Liz said as the viewscreen showed the Aperanjen sun.

Gravity slowly returned as the ship started decelerating along its path toward the sun.

“Chesapeake is off our port stern,” Navigation reported.

“Chesapeake, jump thirty degrees above the ecliptic, then proceed on course,” Liz ordered.

Catie gave Liz a questioning look.

“Something I learned from a young lieutenant,” Liz said, referring to Catie’s penchant for using all three dimensions when planning an attack or defense. “Who knows what the Aperanjens are planning. They’ve been playing games during our calls; maybe they’ll want to play them for real now.”

Catie just shrugged.

“Let’s light ourselves up,” Liz ordered. “Active radar and comms.”

“You want to make it easy for them to surprise us?” Catie messaged.

“If they’re looking at us, they might not notice the Chesapeake. It’ll be running silent.”

◆ ◆ ◆

Marc called a special meeting to get everyone updated on the Earth’s efforts to form a unified government.

“Admiral Michaels, this is your show,” Marc said.

“I’m sure everyone is scouring my weekly updates, but I’ll go ahead and provide a summary of what has happened.

“In what I would call an audacious move, the G20 formed the United Federation of Earth. They have been meeting to define the rules, much along the lines we’ve discussed before. Their major goal is for voting rights to be based on both population and economic size. They’re not interested in having a bunch of smaller countries muddy the waters, and it looked like the U.N. was going to backtrack on its commitment to that formula. There is a general hope that some of the smaller countries will form unions, like the EU, so that the politics at the federation level will be more focused.”

“Remind me, who’s in the G20?” Nikola asked.

“The United States, China, the United Kingdom, the EU — France, Italy, and Germany double dip since they’re also members of the EU — India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, Argentina, Australia, and Saudi Arabia.”

“That’s quite a list.”

“Yes, and they’re basically daring the other countries not to join. They’ve all withdrawn from the U.N. to force the issue.”

“Will they succeed?” Marc asked.

“I think they will.

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