"That's interesting, but I need something more immediately actionable," Jackson said. "I need a target. What are they planning? We have conflicting reports of taskforces crisscrossing through Federation space, fleet build-ups along the border that never attack, and all of these half-assed operations like the one here at Exeter Base. Are they mad geniuses, or is it just a disorganized clusterfuck with nobody at the helm?"

"That's the scary part," Pike said seriously. "We can't analyze their movements and discern any type of plan, but there definitely seems to be one. These people are smart, ruthless, and patient. Those qualities, along with their access to power on the capital world, make them dangerous. My personal opinion is they don't fall into the trap of thinking we're stupid. They know we have people just as smart as they are watching them, so they're doing things that are just confusing the shit out of us. At least their Exeter operation camp up empty handed."

"Not quite," Jackson said somberly. "You'll hear about this later, but we lost the Jericho. She took down two dozen of their ships, but they swarmed her under. No survivors." Pike fell silent, one of the few times since Jackson had known him where he was speechless.

"This isn't good," he finally said. "I can't imagine that operation was just to get that ship, especially considering what it cost them, but that battleship was one of our main deterrents. You were the other, but most people think you were demoted from Taskforce Vega and sent slinking away into retirement."

"It's less than optimal, that's for sure," Jackson said, forcing himself not to dwell on the thousands of spacers who had lost their lives. "Marcum is trying to find a safe haven for Project Bluebird. In the meantime, I need you to stay on this cabal business and see if there's something we can use to get Trapp talking."

"Will do. Anything else?"

"Let me talk to my kids for a minute," Jackson said. "It'll calm them down…probably."

For the next fifty-three minutes, Jackson enjoyed the miracle of high-bandwidth superluminal communications as he had an excited, animated conversation with two children growing up without him. It was the hard, cruel reality of serving aboard starships. You were gone so long and so often that, if you had children, they grew up only seeing brief messages from you when you were fortunate enough to get space on a com drone. Jackson almost felt guilty indulging himself when he knew so many aboard his ships wouldn't have that same chance before the taskforce went into battle.

24

It had taken far longer than Jackson would have liked to transfer all the Marines and equipment back and forth to get them to their proper ships. He sat on the bridge and forced himself to remain impassive as Ellsworth argued with the other captains about how to best dock the destroyers together to get the job done most efficiently.

The ship captains of Taskforce Wolfpack were skilled and courageous shipmasters who had no problem doing whatever was necessary to complete the mission, but their egos came out in full force when it came to mundane tasks like cargo transfers. Rather than wade into it and have the crews see him belittling their COs, Jackson just sat back in his seat with a tile and finished putting together the message he was sending to the chief engineers of the Saber, Broadhead, and Nemesis. Since Barrett would be joining the taskforce, Jackson wanted the warp-hop capability for the Nemesis re-activated.