“Now the real wait begins,” Barrett said softly. “Twelve hours before the Shrikes fire their engines, nearly two full days for the Jacobsons to get in position.”

“OPS,” Celesta ignored her executive officer, “inform Engineering that we’re ready to begin prepping the mains for start. We’ll be moving the Icarus soon and we cannot afford any slips in schedule due to malfunctions.”

“Aye, ma’am,” Accari said.

****

“All sections have checked in, Captain,” Barrett said as he put down his com link. “The Icarus is ready to get underway.”

“Not a moment too soon,” Celesta said. “Helm, come about to your first course change; ahead one-quarter and maintain low-output mode on main engines.”

“Ahead one-quarter, low-output, aye,” the helmsman said. When he throttled up the mains the vibration was so muted through the deck that it could hardly be felt. The course her nav team had plotted out kept the Icarus in open space and away from any stellar body that the Darshik might be using to hold a detection satellite in orbit. They would fly out in a long, lazy arc down within the orbit of the seventh planet before coming about sharply and surging to transition velocity. If they timed everything right, their engine thermal bloom might be overlooked when things kicked off down near the Super Alpha.

They’d been able to confirm through the passive sensors that the Phage combat unit was surrounded by some sort of grid or scaffolding, and that there were at least fifteen other ships parked in orbit very close to it, some active and some looking like nothing more than derelicts. The presence of other ships had given her pause when it came to executing her plan, but ultimately she pressed ahead. It wouldn’t be long now … the drones and weapons had been cold-coasting through the system for the better part of two days, and so far there was no indication they’d been spotted, but Celesta took no solace in that. A Darshik cruiser had managed to sneak up right behind them without the passives detecting it, so the fact there wasn’t any overt sign down in the system that they’d been spotted didn’t lessen her anxiety.

“Executing next course change,” the helmsman said without prompting nearly seven hours later, veering them down into the system and beginning the wide loop that would eventually bring them back around with just enough room to accelerate, deploy the warp drive, and transition out. So far so good. It wasn’t that Celesta really expected to escape undetected, but their only option was to fly back through the system they’d just fled from, so she decided to roll the dice and hope against hope that the Icarus could sneak back out without the ships still in that system getting advanced warning.