The second Jacobson drone, the primary, had all sensors trained on the small flotilla and lattice structure that surrounded the Super Alpha when three Shrikes slammed into the organic hull of the Phage combat unit. The tertiary boosters flared briefly to further imbed the warheads before the powerful nuclear devices detonated, annihilating the Super Alpha. In turn, everything in the vicinity was also destroyed. The drone transmitted everything it had recorded and then began a real-time telemetry stream to the com drone until a Darshik ship finally came around and began to bear down on it. The Jacobson sent one last confirmation and then self-destructed.

Once it received the final confirmation from the remaining Jacobson drone, the com drone, flying under an entirely new set of operational parameters, fired its plasma engine. The tiny spacecraft streaked up to transition velocity in less than three minutes and vanished in a little wink of light, leaving behind a system roiling with chaos and weapons fire.

****

“Transition complete, position verified. We’re in the Juwel System.”

The words were met with an almost audible sigh of relief on the bridge. It had been a long, long flight fleeing from the Darshik system. They’d entered the Tango system and had an easy enough time outrunning the three cruisers still there, skirting around the periphery without them being able to get even close. Celesta had fired her remaining Shrikes on the way out, but they’d already hit the Juwel jump point before the weapons intercepted the Darshik ships. What had alarmed her was that they seemed to already be putting the trap back together; three dummy formations had been flying around the target planet’s orbit just like those that had lured them in.

“OPS, go ahead and fire up all our transponders and reconfigure the Icarus for normal flight,” Celesta ordered. “Coms, get a sitrep as soon as you can.”

“Aye, ma’am,” the two officers said in unison.

Celesta was mentally and physically exhausted and they weren’t even close to being back to home port. The com drone should have passed through here already as it was much faster than a starship, but there was no way to know since once it hit the platform and forwarded its data package it would be reprogrammed, refueled, and deployed to wherever the automated system sent it. She knew it wasn’t even worth the trouble to try and see if their particular drone had hit the platform.

“Ma’am, we have a message coming in from CENTCOM,” Lieutenant Ellison said. “They must have sent it as soon as they received our transponder signal. It’s text only.”

“That’s never good,” Barrett mumbled, rubbing his bloodshot eyes.

“Send it to my terminal,” Celesta said, pulling her monitor around. The message was short and to the point and left little doubt that her com drone had indeed managed to get its content out of Darshik space.