Starship captains were given a lot of leeway when it came to how they executed their orders. CENTCOM knew it was fairly pointless to try and micromanage the operations of vessels that were lightyears away with no way to reach them except dispatching a comparatively slow and costly message via one of Tsuyo Corp’s com drones. As such, Celesta Wright was accustomed to orders that could almost be vague suggestions that CENTCOM would appreciate it if her ship were in a certain area at roughly the time they required.

The orders that had arrived from the Amsterdam as the Icarus made her way out of the unnamed system were different, however. These were the type of orders she’d expect when they were on wartime footing, not a reconnaissance flyby in a system that had no habitable worlds … at least not anymore. The Phage had begun their savage tear through Terran space by first annihilating everything on the surface of Xi’an and then later destroying the planet completely in a display of firepower that still gave the veterans who’d witnessed it nightmares.

Admiral Marcum’s staff had cut orders that required her ship to hit specific and precise rendezvous at such an aggressive pace that if there was a single maintenance delay with the Icarus they’d miss it completely. The knot that had formed in her stomach at the mention of the Xi’an System refused to go away in the face of these unusually specific orders, at least specific for a time of relative peace. Humanity was in the midst of a post-war upheaval that looked to be a prolonged situation as the remaining enclaves restructured their agreements with each other even as others broke away completely and shunned all contact with the remnants of the Confederacy.

Celesta read through her orders one more time as the Icarus flew her first warp flight back to the Columbiana System and a new worry began to gnaw at her. They would stop in the New America capital system to be joined by six other ships before pressing on to the Frontier, all of them newer warships with veteran captains. Marcum had specifically said it wasn’t the Phage, but was there a new enemy at the gates that just happened to pick the Xi’an System as well?

Even as she realized how virtually impossible that scenario was a new, possibly worse fear arose. Xi’an was still under control of the Asianic Union and therefore was within the Eastern Star Alliance, Starfleet ships were not given permission to freely travel there. Could the ESA be ready to capitalize on the Confederacy’s downfall and gain a few more worlds in the confusion? The idea of fighting humans, while it would at least be familiar, seemed repugnant after the horrors of the Phage War. She hoped she was wrong.

“Commander Barrett,” she said, raising her voice unnecessarily and waiting for the computer to route her intercom request.