“Wolfe here. This better be good,” Cdre. Gregory Wolfe muttered as he thumbed open the communication terminal in response to the insistent tone.

“Sorry to wake you, Commodore, but we have a message pulse from the Odyssey here.”

Wolfe threw his covers off, grabbing for his clothing as he hit the deck. “I’ll be right there. Wolfe out.”

As he dressed, he checked the clock. Almost twenty-six hours to the minute, just the amount of time for a signal to reach them by radio pulse. He finished getting dressed, checking his uniform only briefly in the mirror, then headed up to the command and control deck.

Once there, he accepted command and settled in to his secure terminal station in order to access the message.

What he had expected to be little more than a greeting from an old friend, with maybe a few bits of fascinating trivia to be shared just between them, turned out to be something entirely different. Wolfe paled at the security encryption, notating that the message was coded and tight beamed directly to him, not broadcast to Fleet Command.

He decoded it as fast as the computer could and started to read through the initial summary.

“Holy shit,” he whispered a moment later, his hand slamming down on an alert key, calling his best cryptographer.

A few seconds later, a groggy voice was on the line. “Commodore?”

“Sorry to wake you, Johnson, but I need a secure link to Fleet Command. What’s the latest on the security of the FTL pulse system?”

“Intel says that it’s still secure, Commodore.”

“What do you think?” Wolfe demanded.

The voice hesitated a moment, then came back. “Commodore…What kind of importance are you attaching to this stuff? Your mom’s secret recipe for chili or the plans for the fourth-generation adaptive armor?”

“Try something more along the lines of God’s phone number,” Wolfe replied.

Johnson actually gulped, falling silent for a long time. “Commodore, I think I’d use one of the laser systems.”

“I was afraid you’d say that. All right, go back to sleep.”

“Are you kidding me, sir?”

Wolfe just shut the line and punched up another channel, linking him to the communications officer. “Jeff, you’d better get me a coded tight beam to Fleet Command.”

“Ah, yes, sir. The admiralty base is behind Earth at this time, Commodore…Do you want to use a satellite bounce?”

“How long until we can bounce a signal right off of them directly?”

“Four hours, sir.”

Four hours. As much as he hated to waste the time, four hours just didn’t mean squat in the scheme of things. Wolfe considered. “I’ll wait. Thanks, Jeff.”

“No problem, Commodore. I’ll have it queued for you, sir.”

The channel was cut and Wolfe went back to the report.

“Eric, my old friend, when you step in it, you really step in it,” he muttered, opening the file to the first page of the complete report and starting to read.