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6

When Clement arrived on the command deck the day of the caravan’s departure, there was a noticeable buzz of excitement in the air. The officer of the deck called out “Admiral on the bridge!” and everyone stopped what they were doing and stood to attention, saluting him. He returned the salute and then stepped up to the command platform and proceeded to greet Colonel Lubrov at the main console. He looked around the huge room, taking in the large spaces and the bustle of activity, noting each of the duty officers at their different stations.

“Exciting day, Admiral,” said Lubrov.

“Indeed it is, Colonel. I’m looking forward to it. Um, do you happen to know where Captain Yan is right now?”

“I believe she’s in her office, sir,” said Lubrov.

Clement nodded. “Of course. I guess I should have checked there first.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please send out notice to all department heads that we will be meeting in the conference room in fifteen minutes. This will be our final go/no go meeting and everyone has to be there, including you.”

“Of course sir,” she said. Clement noticed she had changed her look. She was now very prim and proper, with her hair trimmed and pinned back in a ponytail and out of the way. Clement thought that it was better to have her looking like she was now instead of distracting the crew by looking like a runway model. He also noted that she had heeded his advice on her grooming, which was the sign of a well-disciplined officer. He had also heeded her advice, and was now sporting a freshly clean-shaven face.

Clement gave her a nod and then preceded back to Yan’s office, there to find her hunched over her plasma display. He knocked twice on her door. “Come in,” she answered cheerily, without taking her attention away from her screen.

“Full staff meeting in fifteen minutes, Captain,” he said to her.

“It is on the schedule, Admiral,” she said, glancing up at him with a slight smile.

“Looking at you I’m just wondering if you’ll be able to tear yourself away from your com reports long enough to attend.”

At that Yan turned and smiled at him. “It’s called multitasking, Admiral. And I just happen to know that the conference room is forty-two steps from here and will take me less than twenty seconds to traverse, if you’re worried I’ll be late.”

“I just don’t want you to miss all the fun.”

“I won’t,” she said, then turned back to her screen.

Clement looked at his watch. “Fourteen minutes, Captain,” he said, then left the room.


At precisely 1000 hours, Admiral Clement sat down at the head of the table in the command deck conference room. Around him were all of his principal flag officers, as well as some lesser crew members that were still necessary to the go/no go conversation. On the main room display were the faces of the transport commanders and others who couldn’t be in the room for the meeting.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” began Clement with enthusiasm, “I’ve called this meeting as our final check before our go/no go decision on the interstellar convoy to the Trinity system. Each of you has the authority over your own ship or area of expertise, and each of you has the responsibility to declare with one hundred percent confidence that this mission is ready to proceed. If you do not have one hundred percent confidence, then you must state so and relay to this entire team your reasons for not having full confidence in the mission. Do you all understand your orders?”

There were nods all around the table and on the display screen, so Clement proceeded with the roll call. He turned to Captain Yan on his right. “Captain?”

Agamemnon is a one hundred percent go, sir,” she said.

Clement nodded. He looked across the table in the other direction to Marine Colonel Lubrov.

“Colonel?”

“Marines are go, Admiral,” she said in her forceful Ukrainian accent.

Next he looked to Hassan Nobli. “Engineer?”

“Go, sir, no hesitation,” said Nobli. Another nod in response.

“Captain Samkange of the Corvallis.”

Corvallis is a go, sir,” replied Samkange. The call went on like that all around the table, and eventually on the screen, where Clement had to refer to his list of officers’ names more than once. The ship captains and commanders all certified that they were ready to go, and Clement replied to each with a nod. When the roll was finished, he stood and addressed the command staff again.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have now reached a monumental decision point, both in the history of the Five Suns Alliance and in the history of humanity. We are undertaking the first interstellar migration from Five Suns Alliance space to the Trinity system. Thank you all, captains and commanders. Please proceed to your ships and prepare to disembark from the docks at 1300 hours today. From there we will form up in our migration pods and proceed to the designated LEAP point. Good luck, and good sailing. Be well. Dismissed!” he finished with a flourish.

There were nods all around the table and more than a few congratulatory handshakes as the flag officers left the conference room and the visual display shut down. Clement did his share of glad-handing and then turned his attention back to his remaining officers, the primary senior crew of the Agamemnon. This group included Yan, his helm officer Mika Ori and her husband, navigator Ivan Massif, plus Nobli, Lubrov, and Lieutenant Commander Pomeroy, his primary technical and communications officer. They all re-sat themselves at the near end of the room, close to the admiral’s chair.

Clement sat back down when the room had cleared and the doors were shut again. He looked up. “It’s all on us now, people,” he said, “to get this convoy to Trinity. I’d like status reports from each of you, starting with Captain Yan.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Yan. “All systems and stations aboard Agamemnon confirm ready to depart at your order, sir. This ship is as good as we can make her, and I have full confidence in her systems and her crew.”

Clement nodded and then looked to Colonel Lubrov, who reported without being prompted. “We have Marines dispersed around the fleet, with fifty stationed on each of the transports. That should be enough to handle any disputes among the migrants. We have a full company of two hundred Marines split into twenty platoons stationed here on the Agamemnon. The other five companies are dispersed around the fleet at the discretion of the LEAP bubble cruiser commanders, captain Samkange of the Corvallis and captain Son of the Yangtze. All will maintain their designated stations for the length of the interstellar traverse. We haven’t yet determined whether Marine shuttles can be used to transport troops from ship to ship inside a LEAP bubble. That is quite obviously Engineer Nobli’s department,” she concluded.

“Hassan?” asked Clement, looking to his chief engineer, and frankly, the miracle worker of his entire fleet.

“I don’t recommend transporting troops inside a LEAP bubble,” said Nobli flatly. “Frankly, we don’t really know that much about LEAP space yet.”

“I thought we were in normal space inside a LEAP bubble,” stated Clement.

Nobli shrugged, his seemingly favorite gesture. “Technically, it is normal space, but it has trillions of quantum particles passing through and around everything inside. We just don’t know how that would effect an unshielded ship, like a shuttle, that’s not protected by a LEAP reactor field. It would be an unnecessary risk, in my opinion.”

“I agree,” said Clement. He looked back to Lubrov. “I think we’ve done all that we can do to make sure we have enough Marines aboard each of the transports. I’m less concerned about the Navy ships for obvious reasons. We do have some discipline within this navy, maybe not as much as I would like, but I think it’s an acceptable level.”

“I agree, Admiral,” said Lubrov.

“Noted. What about coms?” Clement said to Nobli.

“We’ve had success with communications between multiple ships that are static inside a single LEAP bubble in testing, but even though we perceive the LEAP bubbles being composed of normal space, we have all that quantum soup to deal with. Coms between ships were a bit sketchy even in the tests without forward motion. What will happen at superluminal speeds is anybody’s guess. My best guess is that we should rely on the quantum tether technology at all times.”

“Which will limit us during the interstellar traverse phase of the mission, correct Lieutenant Adebayor?”

“Correct, sir,” said Adebayor. “Radio waves just don’t travel in any sort of a straight line in the quantum LEAP field, sir. But as Engineer Nobli said, we can get in contact with other ships in our bubble by burning a tether through the ‘soup,’ and we can also link through a tether to the other bubble groups, though only to a single ship running the primary LEAP reactor.”

“Theoretically,” popped in Nobli. “There wasn’t really time to test that part of the theory, but any quantum tether will likely seek out the nearest ship with a functioning LEAP reactor.”

“How will it distinguish between one ship, or one signature, and another?”

“The tether is a closed loop between two vessels. If we send it out, likely it will search for the next open port to make a connection.”

“But we don’t know, one hundred percent?”

“As I said, it’s still a theory until it’s tested under actual flight conditions.”

“Well, thirty-four days is ample time to conduct in-service tests. Each bubble group commander has orders on how to operate autonomously from the Agamemnon if there’s no coms available. I’ll want all this tested early on in the superluminal part of the mission, and a full report from you, Lieutenant. Once we establish a communications protocol that works, I’ll want links established at routine times every day with both the ships in our bubble and the Corvallis and Yangtze flotillas. I expect a full report of the previous day’s coms on my desktop every morning, at 0700 ship time. Understood?”

“Aye, sir,” said Adebayor.

Clement then turned to his helm officer. “Mika, how do you find the helm system of the Agamemnon?” he asked.

“Well, it’s not like the Beauregard, obviously. Agamemnon is not nimble in any way, but she’s very powerful and she responds well to commands. This helm system is different than piloting a gunship, for sure, but I anticipate she will meet all the mission parameters that were set for her by her designers. Just don’t ask me to skim her off any atmospheres or cut between any asteroids. Remember, she’s built for power, not speed.”

“Understood. Thank you, Mika.” Clement then turned to his navigator. “Are we ready for this journey, Ivan?”

“I think we are, sir,” said the tall Russian. “Plotting a course for a group of ships in a large LEAP bubble is different than doing the same thing for a small and nimble gunship. Having said that, interstellar travel is more about getting the general direction right then it is about landing on a precise point in space. Our survey missions have actually optimized our travel route through interstellar space to the point that we can now get there in thirty-three days, three hours. We’ll come out of the LEAP bubble approximately six hundred AUs from the Trinity star, probably very close to our initial arrival point when we flew the Beauregard there. After that we should be able to proceed in on thrusters as a group, arriving at Bellus in about twelve hours through normal space, sir.”

“Thank you, Ivan,” said Clement. He looked then to Laura Pomeroy, his chief technical officer. “Do you want to tell us about your plans after we arrive on Bellus?”

Pomeroy nodded. “I’ve set up an expedition for five days after our landing to check out the pyramids, or the mountains, or whatever they are, up at the Hill Place near the original settlement where we met the native Mary and her group.”

“It will be good to see her people again,” chimed in Yan. Clement gave her a look, knowing she and “Mary,” as they had called the native girl, had spent some intimate time together on their previous mission. Yan showed no sign of anything other than innocent intent at that statement, though, so he let it pass without a word. Clement continued with Pomeroy.

“As you might expect, Commander, I will be taking a place on that mission. I’m just as curious as you are to find out what lies inside those artificial structures.”

“It should be a great opportunity to gain knowledge, perhaps even discover some unknown technologies that we ourselves don’t yet have,” replied Pomeroy.

“That would be a boon to our mission, undoubtedly,” said Clement, then he looked around the table one last time. “I guess that’s going to have to be good enough for now.” He stood and his officers stood with him. “All stations, prepare for lunch at 1300 hours station time.” There was a chorus of yes sirs around the table and then Clement dismissed his crew. Just one more step for his fleet to take. And they seemed as ready as they could be.

And that was good enough for Clement. It had to be.


At exactly 1300 hours Admiral Clement opened the intra-ship com, it’s claxon blaring three times to alert the crew of an incoming message.

“This is Admiral Jared Clement. All hands to launch stations. All passengers secure yourselves in your cabins as instructed by your quartermasters. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. All hands to launch stations.” He hung up the com then and looked out over his console from the con position to the helm station manned by Mika Ori; then to the nav with Ivan Massif; Kayla Adebayor at Coms; and even Nobli at the engineering console. It was a tight and experienced crew that he had supreme confidence in.

Captain Yan was at his left in her standard second position and Colonel Lubrov was at his right. He turned to Yan. “Captain,” he said, “you are master of this ship and I am merely the commander of this mission. The Agamemnon moves at your command. Please give the departure order.”

“With pleasure, Admiral,” said Yan. “Helm,” she called out.

“Helm here, Captain,” replied Mika Ori.

“Clear all moorings. Release all lines. Give me a green light on all doors and hatches.”

“All moorings and lines show clear. All hatches and doors are green,” said Ori. Yan, of course, already knew the moorings and lines had been released thirty minutes prior, but the command was part of Navy ritual and as such it had significant symbolic meaning to the crew.

“Thrusters at minimum. Take us away from the dock, Pilot,” Yan ordered, using the archaic term that Clement favored for his helm officer. Yan turned to Lieutenant Adebayor at the communications station. “Lieutenant, send to all ships in the fleet that they are ordered to be free and clear of the docks and to follow the Agamemnon to our designated embarkment point.”

“Aye, Captain,” said Adebayor.

“Clear of the docks,” reported Ori.

“Give her one ten-thousandth light toward the embarkment point, Pilot.”

“Sir. One ten-thousandth light.”

“Are we on the correct course, Navigator?” Yan asked of Massif.

“We are, Captain. Estimate three hours to the embarkment point.”

“Very good. And the rest of the fleet?”

“Moving out as specified in their deployment orders, sir.”

“Excellent.”

At that Yan turned to Clement to report.

“Admiral, the fleet is under way to the designated embarkment point. All is well and we are on course.”

“All is well. Thank you, Captain,” replied Clement. At that everyone took a deep breath and the command deck broke out in spontaneous applause.

“Captain Yan,” said Clement over the din of celebration.

“Sir.”

“Captain, you have the con. I will be in my office until we reach the embarkation point. Please recall me fifteen minutes prior to that time.”

“Aye, Admiral, I have the con.”

“Thank you, Captain.” Then he shook her hand, and the room broke out in applause again as he left the command platform and Yan assumed the commanding officer’s station at the console.

Clement smiled as he walked away.


Two and a half hours later Clement was gently snoozing in his office chair when he got a knock on the door. It was the OOTD, Lieutenant Sean Shepherd.

“Per your orders, sir,” said Shepherd, “the captain wishes to inform you that we are arriving at the Trinity embarkment point a bit early.”

Clement roused himself and cleared this throat to address the young officer.

“How early?”

Shepard checked his wrist watch. “Eighteen minutes, sir.”

“Well, thank the captain for her efficiency in getting Agamemnon to the point early. Tell her I will be on the command platform presently.”

“Sir,” said Shepherd, snapping to attention and then walking off.

Five minutes later Clement walked onto the command deck of the CAC and was announced again by OOTD Shepherd. Everyone snapped to attention as Clement gave a half-hearted wave salute to the crew so they could quickly return to their jobs. He was getting tired of all the protocol, but he was the one who had instituted it for disciplinary reasons and felt at least some obligation to follow through on his own orders.

He assumed the command position at the main control console with Yan yielding and moving to the other side. “Great job on getting us here early,” he said to Yan.

“The ship did most of the work,” replied the Agamemnon’s captain cheerily.

Clement smiled and nodded his head, then looked down to his personal display, already set up on the console, Yan again anticipating his needs. Clement pulled up the navigation and propulsion displays so they were floating in the air above the console directly at his eye level. He looked at the relative positions of the three different pods in his fleet and was pleased with what he saw. All three groupings of ships where indeed at their embarkment coordinates and ready to make the leap to interstellar travel. “Well done, Captain,” he said out loud so the crew could hear him praise her. “I don’t think we could have asked for more efficiency than what you’ve managed to produce here. Send out orders to each of the pod commanders to organize their ships and prepare for the LEAP bubble transformation in . . . twenty minutes, by my mark.” He looked up at the ship’s clock and waited till it hit 1410 hours. “Mark,” he declared.

Yan used the intercraft com to call Captain’s Samkange of the Corvallis and Son of the Yangtze and gave them their final formation orders. She also sent out a batch com to each of the individual ship commanders in the Agamemnon’s travel pod and ordered them to form up by 1630 hours.

Clement watched on the main CAC display as all of the ships swam toward their leaders like young fish to their mothers. When everything was satisfactory, Clement nodded to Yan.

“Order all ships to station-keeping,” said Clement. “We fire up the LEAP drive in eight minutes.”

Agamemnon’s group was the largest of the three at eleven ships, with the battlecruiser itself, two light cruisers and four destroyers, trailed by four of the ten transport ships. The other two pod groups were at a distance of ten kilometers each, port and starboard from the Agamemnon, with two light cruisers, two destroyers and three transports each.

The next few minutes passed quietly and quickly, the ships all closely formed now to their primary leaders. At exactly 1630 hours Clement called down to Nobli in the main reactor room. “Are you ready to fire up my universe destroyer?” he asked.

“She’s warm and ready, Admiral,” replied Nobli. “Universal destruction to commence at your order.”

“Thank you, Engineer,” he replied, then cut off the line and turned to Yan again. “Send orders to the fleet, Captain. All ships prepare for LEAP transport within the Agamemnon bubble. Please return confirmations.”

“Aye, sir,” replied Yan in a professional manner. A few minutes later she reported all ships were in position and reported ready.

Clement stepped back from the command console. “Please give the order, Captain. All lead ships activate their LEAP drives. All ships to accelerate in pace with the Agamemnon or their lead ship.”

Yan got on the fleet-wide com and gave the orders. Aboard the Agamemnon they felt the low rumble of the massive twin LEAP reactors as they came to life. There was a rush of static ionized air through the CAC. As he watched the navigation display Clement saw the Agamemnon’s LEAP bubble forming in front of them and expanding to envelope her pod of ships.

“All ships report LEAP bubbles are active. All ships safely inside the Agamemnon or lead ship bubble perimeters. All ships ready for superluminal acceleration,” said Yan.

“Thank you, Captain, you may release the hounds.”

Yan raised her arm and then pointed to the Propulsion team at their station, and at that moment all ships within the three pods began moving, surfing on a quantum-fluid wave generated by their LEAP drives.

“One-tenth light,” reported Yan, then paused. “One-fifth light,” she reported seconds later. It was a longer stretch to her next report, but, “one-half light, Admiral,” eventually came. The ship quickly accelerated to more than ninety-nine percent light speed. Yan looked to Clement for confirmation.

“Go,” he said.

Yan waited a few seconds and then finally reported in. “Superluminal speeds achieved, Admiral. All ships within our bubble are safe and sound. Acceleration will continue to increase until we reach maximum cruising speed.”

“Well done,” said Clement, and then he gave Yan a round of applause. He was quickly joined in by the rest of the command deck crew. A few whoops and cheers spontaneously broke out. Clement stopped clapping then and waved his hands down to get the crew to refocus on their jobs. He picked up the ship’s com.

“All hands, we are now traveling at faster-than-light speed, a feat once thought scientifically impossible. Our next stop, in about thirty-three days, is the planet Bellus in the Trinity system. Congratulations to all of you!” he said enthusiastically. “And just so you know, all members of the crew will be receiving a silver star pin as a commemoration, indicating that you have officially joined the most exclusive club in the Five Suns Navy, the Superluminals!” There was quick applause at that, and Clement brought over OOTD Shepard to pass out the pins to the command deck crew. He personally gave the pins to both Yan and Lubrov, who put the pins on each other, and also pinned one on Shepard’s chest. Yan returned the favor for him.

After that little ceremony was over it was back to business. He went to the communications station and Lieutenant Adebayor. “Please begin the process of validating the quantum tether connections with each of the ships in our pod, then see if we can raise the Corvallis and the Yangtze through the quantum tether.”

“Aye, sir,” she replied.

“And if there’s any problems, don’t be afraid to call Engineer Nobli over there.”

“Sir.”

He returned to the platform and went then to Colonel Lubrov. “Please place in the log the time and date that the ship first went superluminal, and add a note from the admiral. All is well,” he said to Lubrov.

“Aye, Admiral, all is well,” she said.

Clement turned his attention back to his console, a true smile on his face.


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