Yen knocked softly on the door to the War Room, awaiting the call to enter before opening the door. He stepped inside and was surprised at the darkness within. The lights had been dimmed, leaving only a soft glow to outline the Captain’s form sitting at the large table. Lights that were not important for illuminating the center table had been turned off. Even the dark monitors around the room watched the Captain’s brooding like silent sentinels.
“Please, Yen,” the Captain said softly, her voice a reflection of the darkness of the room, “please come in.”
Wordlessly, he took a seat across the table, trying to read her facial expressions in the gloom. In all the time of serving under her command, Yen couldn’t remember the last time she had used his first name. Her face seemed slack and lacked the confidence that normally exuded when she entered a room. Shoulders slumped, she looked defeated.
“Ma’am,” he said quietly, not wanting to shatter the delicate mood held in the room, “are you okay?”
The Captain reached up and rubbed eyes that Yen now noticed were swollen.
“I’m fine,” she said, her eyes rising to meet his. “Who am I kidding? I’m not fine.”
Yen waited, expecting her to continue. When she didn’t, he took the liberty of speaking first. “Would you like to talk about it?”
Captain Hodge sat up straight and turned in her chair until she was facing the back wall. She wiped her eyes again, trying to regain the composure that had slipped away while she sat alone. Compassion rose unexpectedly in Yen. In all his time aboard the Revolution, he had never seen weakness in Captain Hodge. Yet now, she sat across from him with her soul exposed.
“I have been in command of this ship for a long time, Yen,” she began, the words tumbling over one another as she hurried to get them all out. “In all that time, I have never been placed in a more dangerous situation, with so much riding on my shoulders. And now, only now, my entire crew is falling apart. We need everyone we can get if we expect to win, but my Tactical Officer is dead and my Communications Officer is in the brig accused of his murder. We’re falling apart and it could cost all of us our lives if I don’t get a handle on the situation.”
“What am I supposed to do?” she asked, her voice quivering.
Yen wanted to speak, to console her, but he couldn’t find the words. For a brief moment, the thought of using his powers to help her regain her strength crossed his mind, but he quickly brushed it aside. He understood her turmoil, with so much hanging in the balance. But what scared him the most was that Captain Hodge had always been stoic to the point of being impersonal. To see her as a person, as he did now, worried him more than anything.
“I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I shouldn’t be complaining to a subordinate like this. It’s unprofessional.”
“Ma’am, you haven’t called me by my rank since I walked through that door,” he replied. “I didn’t come here because you needed a professional opinion. I came here because you needed a friend. As your friend, I want you to know you can tell me anything.”
“Friend,” she said, staring off into the distance. “That’s a word I haven’t heard in a while.” Turning to him, she gave him a scrutinizing look. “Do you even know my first name?”
“Lyrica,” Yen smiled warmly. He was glad he had read through her personnel files after coming aboard the Revolution. “Ma’am, please let me know if I’m overstepping my bounds, but it’s not just the crew morale that’s bothering you, is it?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not just the crew. We’re getting ready to engage in a battle that will be remembered for generations to come. Students at the Academy will study our exploits. I should be streaming toward the Terran rear vanguard with all haste and confidence, ready to crush their ships. Instead, I can barely focus on the mission because my crew is in chaos.”
The Captain took a deep breath. “We need this nasty business behind us, Yen. We need to get focused on the mission ahead.”
“Horace told you about the confession, I assume?” Yen asked.
“Yes,” she replied, “but he also told me about his conspiracy theory. Once people get wind of a witch hunt on board, we will never regain the focus we need to defeat the Terrans.”
“Then don’t tell them.”
“Excuse me?” she said, raising her eyes to meet his dark gaze.
“Don’t tell them about the conspiracy,” Yen said again. “The only other people that know about it are Horace and I. If you order us not to talk, neither of us will. The crew can go on believing that the murderer has been captured and punishment pending. They can stop worrying about a killer and get back to taking care of what matters: planning an attack.”
Yen leaned forward, resting his elbows heavily on the hard table, before he continued. “The point is, ma’am, that we need to get moving. You leave the witch-hunt to Horace. He has the Crown and will get results one way or another. Let me get back to working with the Squadron. And you… you get back to being our Captain.”
Lyrica nodded, smiling softly. “I could use the distraction of being Captain.”
“Nothing keeps you more focused on battle than knowing that twenty-some Terran Destroyers are only a few slingshot maneuvers away.”
Captain Hodge laughed, the sound echoing through the dark room.
“Thank you,” she said, the strength returning to her voice. “God, I could use a change of scenery right now.”
“The best I can offer is a long journey ending with a whole lot of plasma bursts in deep space,” Yen said jokingly.
“I’ll take it,” she replied, her tone subdued again. “Yen, I’m going to be relying on you heavily over the course of the next battle. With Merric gone, you are both my Squadron Commander and the Tactical Officer for the Revolution. Those are both heavy responsibilities, especially with what we’re charging toward.”
“You need to believe we can do this, that we can take out the entire Terran Fleet, or we’ll never win,” he stated sternly.
“I know, but we don’t even have a plan other than getting there before they do. After we’re there, what then? We sit and wait for Terran Destroyers, flying in at high velocity, to charge right down our throats?”
“I’m prone to think that’s a bad plan,” he replied. “However, there are other options. And what better place to discuss them then right here?”
Yen’s fingers flew over the keyboard located in front of his seat. Slowly, the gloom in the room receded as a sun and number of planets took shape in the space above the table. He continued to type, adding a hashed blue line that entered from the far side of the elliptical orbit of the planets. Finishing, a red-hashed line entered from the opposite side of the galaxy, intersecting the blue line near the second planet.
“Based upon our entry data and the projected information from the Terran Fleet, these are our entry points into the galaxy,” he began, his voice deepening as he began the formal brief. “This is our starting point for tactical decision making.”
“All right,” Captain Hodge replied, nodding enthusiastically. “Let’s see how this plays out.”
She pointed at the seven large planets orbiting the small yellow sun. “We assume that the Terrans would enter the system and immediately take up position on the dark sides of the planets furthest away from the sun, springing the ambush once we were fully committed to entering this system. Can we use their tactics against them?”
Yen shook his head. He began typing again as he spoke. “I probably didn’t depict this scenario correctly. You’re correct, ma’am, that the Terran Fleet has historically used very similar tactics to what you’re describing when engaging the Alliance. But you’ve overlooked one key point to this scenario.” As he stopped typing, the yellow sun darkened, casting all the planets into shadow.
“Deplitoxide. There won’t be a dark side to the planet when we get there,” she concluded.
“Exactly. Every planet will be dark, which means that the element of surprise is lost when trying to hide in the shadows. No, if we want to win, we’ll need something a bit more drastic.”
They sat in silence, both watching the planets roll lazily around the now blackened sun. The inner planets burned hot on the display, even in the virtual darkness. Their surfaces were seas of molten lava having been in close orbit around the small but intense sun. Even as the planets cooled in the darkness, the lava flows hardened into a rocky, craggy surface that offered no hospitality for landing ships. Yen’s eyes, instead, tracked to the four gas giants framed by the magma planets close to the sun and the icy rock near the exterior. His eyes narrowing, he started typing again, modifying the display. The gaseous outer layers of the planets peeled away; mile after mile of gas clouds disappeared into the ethos as Yen probed their chemical make up. Next to each of the four planets, chemical equations and ratios began to appear in bright red font.
“Ma’am, could our ships withstand the battering winds underneath the atmosphere of these gas giants?” Yen asked, already feeling his excitement growing.
“I suppose so, but we’d be flying blind once we entered,” she answered, unclear as to what Yen was proposing. “Those planets are virtually massive thunderstorms, unleashing electronic fury between the cloud layers. That sort of electromagnetic field would disrupt every sensor and communications relay we had. Put us in those clouds and we wouldn’t know the Terran Fleet was there unless they skimmed the surface of the clouds.”
“Or unless one of our ships was situated in the atmosphere of the gas giant as a lookout,” Yen explained. A small blip appeared above each of the four gas giants. “Our sensors would only be able to reach to the surface of the gas clouds if we flew inside. But that would be far enough for a single manned fighter to sit and observe the Terran’s approach. They could send the attack signal, yet be small enough that the Terran’s would never even know they were there.”
“And the Terran sensors?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“Wouldn’t stand any more chance of penetrating the gas giants than ours would of escaping. There wouldn’t even need to be a reason to let them know we’d arrived ahead of schedule.”
“Squadron Commander Xiao,” she said, regaining the military composure Yen was used to, “I do believe this plan of yours might just work. Head to the bridge and let them know to begin full acceleration toward the first of the slingshot positions. I will continue to look over your work and make sure we haven’t overlooked anything. In the mean time, you have the helm.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Yen said as he stood, bracing in a salute. As Captain Hodge returned his salute, he turned to leave.
“Yen,” the Captain called after his as he reached the door.
“Ma’am?”
“Good work, Yen,” she said with a smile. “I mean it.”
Yen nodded before leaving the room. As the door slid shut behind him, the smile dropped from Captain Hodge’s face and she turned off the holographic display of the planets. Instead, she turned on the small monitor that stood in front of her, typing in her alphanumeric sequence as the computer queried her for the command code. With the code entered, the Captain found herself staring back at her own image.
“Continue personal correspondence to High Council,” she ordered. In the corner of the screen, a red light began to flash, letting her know that it was, once again, recording her message.
“He was just here,” she began, speaking into the concealed camera. “As I stated before we were interrupted, I am concerned about all our safety…”