“Not what you were expecting, ma’am?” Evans asked, turning his attention back to the ambassador.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” Bair said, annoyed with herself at having sighed loudly enough to be heard, but hiding it. “The bridge is more quiet than I would have assumed.”
“The bridge crew has worked together for a long time,” Evans said. “And you have to remember that they pass a lot of information internally.” Bair looked over to Evans with an arched eyebrow at this; Evans smiled and pointed a finger to his temple.
Oh, right, Bair thought. Captain Basta and the rest of the bridge crew were all members of the Colonial Defense Forces. This meant that aside from the obvious distinguishing genetically-engineered characteristics of green skin and a youthful appearance, each of them had a computer called a BrainPal nestled up inside their brains. CDF members could use their BrainPals to talk or share data with one another; they didn’t have to use their mouths to do it. The murmuring indicated that they still did, however, at least part of the time. CDF members used to be normal people without green skin or computers in their heads. Old habits died hard.
Bair, who had been born on the planet Erie and had spent the last twenty years stationed out of the Colonial Union home planet of Phoenix, had neither green skin nor a computer in her head. But she had spent enough time around CDF members during her diplomatic travels that they no longer seemed particularly notable among the variety of humans she worked with. She sometimes forgot that they were, in fact, a genetically-engineered breed apart.
“One minute to skip,” said the Polk’s executive officer. Bair’s brain popped up a name: Everett Roman. Aside from Commander Roman’s notation of the time, nothing else on the bridge had changed; Bair suspected the announcement was for her and Roberts’s benefit. Bair’s eyes flicked over to the large monitors to the fore of the room. They were still dark.
“Commander Roman,” Evans said, and then motioned his head toward the monitors when he had gotten the executive officer’s attention. The XO nodded. The monitors sprang to life, one with an image of a star field, the other with a simple schematic of the Polk.
Commander Roman counted off the last ten seconds of the skip. Bair trained her eyes on the monitor showing the star field. When Roman counted zero, the stars in the field seemed to shift at random. Bair knew that the stars hadn’t actually shifted. These were entirely new stars. The Polk had, without fuss or noise, instantly traveled light-years.
Bair blinked, unsatisfied. If you thought about what just happened in terms of what was physically accomplished, it was a staggering event. As a personal human experience, however…
“So that’s it?” Roberts asked, to no one in particular.
“That’s it,” Evans said.
“Not very exciting,” Roberts said.
“Not exciting means we did it right,” Evans said.
“Well, where’s the fun in that?” Roberts joked.
“Other people can do fun,” Evans said. “We do precise. We get you where you need to go, on time. Or ahead of time, in this case. We were asked to get you here three days ahead of the Utche arrival. We delivered you three days, six hours early. Here you are, ahead of time twice.”
“About that,” Bair said. Evans turned his head to the ambassador to give her his full attention.
The deck of the bridge leaped up at the trio, with violence.
Voices on the bridge suddenly became very loud, detailing damage to the ship. Hull breaches, loss of power, casualties. Something had gone very wrong with the skip.
Bair looked up from the deck and saw that the images on the monitors had changed. The schematic of the ship now featured sections blinking in red. The star field had been replaced with a representation of the Polk in three-dimensional space. It was at the center of the representation. At the periphery of the representation was an object, heading toward the Polk.
“What is that?” Bair asked Evans, who was picking himself up off the deck.
Evans looked at the screen and was quiet for a second. Bair knew he was accessing his BrainPal for more information. “A ship,” he said.
“Is it the Utche?” Roberts asked. “We can signal them for help.”
Evans shook his head. “They’re not the Utche.”
“Who are they?” Bair asked.
“We don’t know,” Evans said.
The monitors chirped, and then there were multiple additional objects on the