Celesta walked down the port main access tube, past Engineering, on her way to the drone launch bays. Unlike the shuttle launch bay on the starboard side of the ship, the drone bay was built so that individual craft could be pulled into a pressurized maintenance area without the hassle of bringing them in through an airlock. Even the largest drone, the Jacobson, was small enough that Flight OPS crews would simply seal the launch hatch and pressurize the entire launch tube before pulling the holding cradle into the bay. The Icarus currently only had four drones left onboard thanks to the Darshik showing up before she could recall them from her impromptu sensor network, but they were Jacobsons and they had plenty of mission modules aboard so her plan was still technically feasible, if just.

When she walked into the main unmanned space/aero vehicle (USAV) maintenance hangar, Commander Severn’s crews already had both Jacobsons sitting in the middle of the floor on their cradles, access hatches open and cables snaked into the machines from the associated support equipment that had been moved into place. She could also see the sealed crates that held the scalable mission modules had already been brought up from storage and were being inspected by another team of techs. The meeting hadn’t let out all that long ago and Celesta appreciated the sense of urgency with which Flight OPS was going about their business.

“Captain on deck!”

“As you were,” Celesta shouted to be heard over the noise in the hangar. “Where is Commander Severn?”

“Tech center, Captain,” a spacer third class called out and, unnecessarily, pointed to a closed hatch near a bulkhead that had cables passing through and running over to the waiting spacecraft. Celesta waved her thanks and walked over to the hatch.

The tech center was a quiet, isolated room where specialists could work in relative peace to complete the often-complicated programming that went into a drone prior to launch. It also allowed them to monitor the spacecraft once it had been handed off to the CIC or OPS on the bridge.

“Captain,” Severn nodded as she walked in. “We’re compiling the program for the first drone and my people are working on the second. That one is a bit less involved so I expect it to be done shortly. We’ll be running the programs through the simulators and then, if they check out, installing them in the Jacobsons.”

“And the com drone?”

“I have a team inspecting the drone itself and Lieutenant Commander Washburn’s people are helping program that one along with Commander Graham’s team,” Severn said. “My coders don’t have any experience with that system.”

“Of course,” Celesta nodded. “I’m not here to needlessly harass your people, Commander. I just want to be plugged in on every aspect of this operation. There could be … ramifications … if we pull it off successfully and make it back to Terran space.”