“Barrett here, Captain.”

“I’m forwarding you our new orders, but from what I see we can tolerate no holdups due to technical trouble with the Icarus,” Celesta said as she began packaging and forwarding a copy of the orders to her department heads. “Please have Commander Graham physically decouple the RDS pod from the main power MUX. Tell him that while I admire his perseverance and skill when it comes to the new drive I cannot afford for it to act up again and delay us. We’ll be flying on the mains while in real-space until further notice.”

“Understood, ma’am,” Barrett said. “I’ll go down now and speak with him.” She frowned as the intercom beeped softly to tell her the channel was closed. Why would Barrett leave the bridge during his watch to go to Engineering? When she looked at the clock on her office wall that displayed ship’s time she realized that Barrett had likely been in bed and she’d been sitting at her desk for hours longer than she realized. She quickly logged off her terminal and straightened up her desk before heading to her own quarters to catch at least a few hours of sleep before first watch began.

****

By the time the Icarus had reached her final rally point before the warp flight directly to the Xi’an System six different com drones had caught up with them, each providing a little more detail about the political chaos within the former Confederacy and the not-so-secret meeting with a new alien species, but almost nothing about what was awaiting them on the Frontier.

Celesta was somewhat relieved to learn that Augustus Wellington, formerly Senator Wellington of the Terran Confederate Senate and Chairman of the Fleet Operations Committee, had moved quickly and decisively to consolidate his powerbase and use it as leverage to bring all the other factions to the table. The powerful politician from New America was wasting no time hammering out a restructuring deal while most of the major pieces of the old system were still intact. Despite the loss of Haven, much of the old administrative apparatus had survived as well as a fully functioning CENTCOM along with Starfleet. If he could get everyone to agree quickly there might even be some opportunities opened up for the other enclaves to step in with the loss of the ESA’s production and manufacturing power, something they’d never wanted to compete with in the past. Celesta’s fervent hope was that the politicians did what politicians always did: look out for their own best interests. If they were able to strike a new set of accords quickly and restructure the remaining planets within the Confederacy’s sphere of influence, there was less chance for more splintering and unrest among the civilian population.

“Captain, we’re receiving a standard hail, no encryption,” the com officer, Lieutenant Ellison, called. “Source is a CIS Prowler.”