“You’re …. you’re actually thinking of turning down a top-of-the-line battleship?” Marcum’s mouth was hanging open. “What is it that makes you destroyer captains all batshit crazy? Or was it simply the proximity to Wolfe for too long that scrambled your good sense?” He sucked in a breath and let it out slowly.

“The New York is still inbound,” he said quietly. “Please take a couple days to think it over and we’ll talk again.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” Celesta said uncomfortably, rising as she realized that had been a dismissal. “I really am honored you think—”

“Just keep this in mind,” Marcum cut her off. “I place people where they can do the Fleet the most good, and by extension where they can do the Federation the most good, and by further extension where they can do humanity the most good. Your loyalty to your ship and crew is commendable, but as a Starfleet officer you have a higher duty. Dismissed, Senior Captain.”

Chapter 7

Celesta had to constantly keep referring to the updated map on her comlink as she walked the corridors of the immense station. New Sierra was quite a bit larger than even Jericho Station had been due to the fact it had been built for heavy construction and large-scale production rather than maintenance and administration. CENTCOM had hastily converted the shipyard to its new headquarters, a move Celesta still didn’t understand. The ability to quickly field new starships seemed far more important than housing the administrative arm of the Fleet. For that matter, why did they even need to be in orbit at all? Housing and headquartering them on the planet’s surface seemed much more practical. She sighed as she walked. The war had taught them many hard lessons, but apparently they still had a long way to go.

She’d been walking down to the docking arm complex to meet the New York when she was docked, but her chirping comlink kept distracting her. It was a repeating text-only message from an unknown address asking that she make her way to crew processing as quickly as possible. All official Fleet communications were specifically formatted so she assumed the messages were either a glitch or something else. Either way, she ignored them. The next anonymous message, however, she couldn’t ignore.

Damnit Wright… you’d have made a shitty intel officer. Get down to crew processing and wait there. I need to speak with you immediately.

She began to have suspicions about who was playing games with the com system, so when she was almost to the arching entry that led to the crew processing section she was surprised when it was Agent Uba who intercepted her.