Giving chase

After the bemused young officer had left the bridge, Dustin turned to the gathered women. “Well?” he asked. Meli stretched - she was clearly as tired and battered as he was after their fight with the monster and the weave bubble popping so close to them, but the Velca was doing a better job of hiding it. “I agree with the promotion, husband. I’d have suggested it over dinner if you hadn’t already done it - that was both a very smart move, and a technically challenging one that he pulled off.” Rye snorted at that, and Meli rolled her eyes. “It is challenging, love. Just because you don’t think so just goes to show how much of a genius you are.”

As Rye blushed at the compliment, Dustin sighed and shook his head. “That’s great, but I was actually more interested in what we’d found with the scan.” Sammie glanced up at that. “We’ve got a known system as the endpoint; they did it in one jump though, we don’t have any routes that lead there in one.” Dustin nodded then gestured for the pilot to continue as it looked like she wanted to say something. Grinning at the permission, Sammie continued “I could get us there, Captain. I’m sure I could fly any route that someone would willingly use as an emergency jump. No way there’ll be any tangles or snags on that kind of a run.”

He could feel the desire to give chase in her voice, but shook his head. “No. Several reasons, not least because we don’t know where the exit point to that jump is. Just because we can follow the thread, doesn’t mean the other end is safe. I don’t want to bring Sola back to reality inside a volcano or something” Sammie started to complain that all weave jump exits were at the edge of systems before he interrupted her. “That’s just what we’ve been told and experienced, Sammie. You’re not supposed to be able to weave jump without a ship either - hell, the weave drives on your fighters were thought to be impossible about a year ago. My order is no, we are not directly chasing that thing.”

Then Dustin glanced at the others and tapped his communicator. “Bleu, how soon can we transfer the monk back to the abbey’s medical staff? I want to get underway as soon as possible.” A rather abrupt doctor on the other end of the line informed him that the monk was already being transferred, the Queri having done all she could - which apparently had sped up the poor soul’s recovery by months. Once he’d thanked her for the update, Dustin strode to his chair and hit the main comms. “Attention all hands; we are departing as soon as the last of our guests’ belongings are off the ship. Prepare to get underway. Naera, please contact me as soon as we’re done unloading.”

Emely and Trea’k arrived back on the bridge ten minutes later; the abbot had apparently dispatched them the instant they’d gotten the all-crew message with his thanks for their assistance in soothing the more troubled of the novices. Filling them in on the details took a few minutes more, before Dustin tasked the Feliax woman with contacting the rest of their part of the fleet. “We can return to here if this is a no-go, but I want them spiralling in to the system one jump out from our target. We’ll reconvene there and all jump in together, just in case there’s something hostile waiting for us.” He said, having already plotted out the route with Meli; while he wasn’t happy about Sammie flying them directly he did want to give her some piloting time and so had opted for a simple but rapid set of jumps to let her get the experience at the helm she needed.

It was an impatient three hours later that they finally lifted off. On the one hand, Dustin wanted to give chase as swiftly as possible - but on the other, he knew that with the distance they had to travel just to get to a safe jump distance out from the planet, and the number of hops planned they would already be talking a trip measuring in days if not longer. A few hours either way were unlikely to make any difference. Even so, he was glad when Sammie finally called out that they were in position for their first weave flight. “You have the helm, pilot.” He said, noting that for all her professionalism when working the dark-skinned woman still gave a little fist-pump before toggling the weave-navigation arms up on either side of her head.

The pilot’s seat was directly in front of Dustin’s chair, just on a lower ring of the bridge - and so he watched intently as Sammie sat up straight before the screens flickered to show the travel map that she was to be following. Despite this being a known route, they were flying it manually - Meli and Bleu both hovered near to Sammie, just to be safe. The countdown echoed through the ship and then - nothing, save the steady call-outs from his chief science officer as to the health of their pilot. An hour later, and the return to normal space sounded. Dustin wondered how long it would have felt for Sammie. When he’d flown, it hadn’t seemed to take him nearly as long as had actually elapsed; something about having your brain working in a different dimension to your senses when piloting the weave-drive.

While thinking of the pilot, Dustin had left his chair and was halfway down the steps towards her seat when they exited the weave. Bleu didn’t appear too worried, neither did Meli - but he’d experienced the outcome of his own first weave-jump, and so while Sammie didn’t have anything like the nosebleed that he’d gotten she was grateful for the bucket he held in front of her face right as she returned to a normal perception of space-time. Wincing a moment later and accepting a bottle of water proffered by Bleu, the pilot glanced up at the three of them and grinned. “Hell of a rush… shit, sorry…” Her face turned sickly and she grabbed for the bucket again.

“Sammie handled that marginally worse than you, adjusting for the difficulty of the jump and the fact she did not have to scan for a route beforehand, husband. But still well within acceptable parameters. I recommend Sola fly us across the system to the next jump point - that should give Sammie time to rest so that she can try again if she is ready; one or two more weave jumps and the nausea should subside.” That comment by Meli got a thumbs up and a weak grin over the top of the bucket from the pilot, before she returned to holding her head in her hands and the container between her knees. True to the Velca’s word the next jump was much better on the pilot’s senses, and while she waved off Naera’s cooking in favour of exceptionally bland food from the automat for breakfast, by the following evening she was back to normal.

It was a few days of hard flight later that the entire senior staff gathered around the ready room table. They were only one jump out from their destination now with the last of the fleet having joined them. The destination ahead of them was a system that had nothing much to note about it save for the fact that it was close to a world that had recently requested aid with establishing an agricultural outpost on one of it’s moons. Normally, Dustin would have flagged that as a possible mission for them even in their present circumstances, but with their current chase he was glad when Meli informed him that the task had already been taken. “By the Yurans, surprisingly. I didn’t realise we were in the same area of space as Ambassador Prd’r.” She’d mused, before turning back to the topic at hand.

So far the group had gone over everything they could think of regarding the following day’s jump into the target system, and whatever they might or might not find there. They’d gone back over all the recordings and data they’d found from both the abbey and previous encounters before Dustin suddenly remembered something. Turning to Yril’k, he gestured at the shaky helmet camera footage from one of the security recruits who had come with them into the abbey that was currently paused on the display in the middle of the table.

“That thing we fought - you froze up for a second when we saw it clearly. Any idea why?” He asked, trying hard to sound curious rather than annoyed as he said it. The insect woman flickered her eyes sideways at Trea’k as if worried about something before nodding. “Apologies, captain - it was foolish’k of me, but the shape of the thing’k… It looked like a Ry’k’ith.” At the warrior’s words, Dustin could hear Trea’k’s intake of breath. Glancing over, he noticed his lovebug was now staring intently at the recording, the look of worry on her face an echo of the one Yril’k had shown down in the tunnels.