“Ma’am, we have an … anomaly … down near the Super Alpha,” Adler said as the Icarus slogged through her lazy turn. “Passives have been able to tentatively identify one of the ships near that lattice structure; the computer is making it as a Foster-class heavy cruiser with a forty percent degree of accuracy.”

“The Leighton,” Barrett said. “They brought her here.”

“Is that ship under power?” Celesta asked sharply.

“It doesn’t appear so, ma’am,” Adler said. “The anomaly is reading as cold. No engines, no thermal exhaust, no discernable lights.”

Celesta frowned. Like most Terran starships the Foster-class was capable of running “cold” for a limited time, but under normal operations an older ship like that would have a visible thermal plume from the cooling systems as well as the regular discharge of plasma over-pressure from the powerplant. She couldn’t imagine that the Leighton still had any survivors on it if it was reading as cold as surrounding space. Even if they had inexplicably decided to switch over to closed loop cooling right as the Icarus transitioned in, there would still be hot patches on the hull that wouldn’t have cooled that quickly. The ship just wasn’t designed or built for that level of stealth.

Her presence did throw Celesta’s plan into flux, however. She could assume that there was no living crew aboard the Leighton, but she couldn’t assume that they were all dead. It was equally likely they’d been removed from the ship and were detained somewhere else. What would happen to them when her operation went live? She could still quietly recall her assets and just hope the small burp of EM radiation that required would escape notice, but then what? There was zero chance the Icarus and her small contingent of Marines could find the crew, effect a rescue, and escape so deep in Darshik territory, but would their operation sign their death sentence?

All these questions flitted through Celesta’s head in less than a second as she realized there was still really only one option open to her. The crew of the Leighton had signed up for the same dangers her crew had, and while they deserved every chance for a rescue, there wasn’t a chance for that with one destroyer.

“The op is still a go,” she said. This drew a few looks from her crew, some incredulous, others concerned, but she ignored them.

“You heard the captain,” Barrett said sharply. “That ship is a derelict and we all know it. We have work to do, so let’s get to it.”