Into the Black

(BSS Starlight Raven, Alpha Centauri System)

Carissa poked her head into the cockpit while Sheila and I were going through the final launch prep with Raven. The princess was actually turning into a capable navigator, which was good for me. Sure, I’d set myself up so that I could do anything aboard the Starlight Raven that needed doing, but that didn’t mean I could do everything at once. Having people who I could trust to take some of the load was a good thing.

Carissa, on the other hand, had become a very qualified Ship’s Doctor, even though we rarely needed her services. Her services as my secretary/manager, however, were a boon beyond compare, frankly, because she was a genius administrator, as one might expect of someone who had gotten to level 80 primarily through office work and bed work.

“Shearah wanted me to pass the word that the engines are ready and everything checks out. Everyone else is set and ready to go, and we’ve got stores aboard to last us three months, just in case some craziness happens.”

I nodded to her, and said, “Good, we just finished our checklists, so let everyone know that we’ll be heading for Sol in—”

Raven’s voice cut in from the speakers, “Captain, we’re receiving a priority message through the FTL comms from the Dimiya base!”

Well, that sounded bad. Nothing good ever came from priority messages just as you were about to leave port. With a sigh, I said, “Put it through.”

What came up was a report on the intel my people had been sifting through when they hit the Empire’s black research station. The marines had pulled all the data and collared several of the VIPs, so the research and development they’d bene doing there was all ours now. Unfortunately, a lot of it was stuff that rated as war crimes. A couple of those projects would get you buried under a mountain somewhere if you ever tried to use one on the same planet as a civilian population! I wasn’t naïve enough to say that the US didn’t have projects like that back in RL, but having those kinds of things in my hands was a scary thought. That kind of power just begged to be used. Of course, doing that led you down the path of the bastard who created the Legion on Jagloth.

Speaking of said bastard, it seemed his work just wouldn’t die and go quietly into the abyss. Before the quarantine, an Imperial spy had apparently gotten a sample of his early work, and shipped it to the Empire for testing. That much was to be expected. The fact that the Imperials had been playing with the stuff and developing it on a different design path was not, though I guess it should have been. Researchers get blinded by the research, and not the implications of the research.