“I believe that Captain Weston would be polite enough to call ahead by this point,” Senthe said doubtfully.

“I agree. Confirm the identity of the vessels, but do not risk your ship unnecessarily, Captain. I will see what can be done to secure backup for you. However, we have no free Heroics at this time . . . and normal cruisers . . .”

Senthe nodded. He didn’t need to be told.

Unlike the new Heroic Class of starship, normal cruisers were both underpowered and, far more importantly, too slow to be of help.

“Do you have imagery yet?” Tanner asked.

“No. We’re still some time out before their light reaches us,” Senthe said.

Tanner stared through the screen. “And they already see you. I am familiar with the peculiarities of faster-than-light tactics. Very well, Captain. You have your—”

The image of the admiral suddenly broke up into scrambled patterns as the computer tried to reconstitute the signal but failed.

“What happened?” yelled Senthe, looking around. “Get the admiral back!”

“System-wide scrambling, below the atomic level, Captain. We can no longer connect to the relay network!”

Senthe cursed. He didn’t even know that it was possible to scramble the relay network, as the link was buried deep below the atomic level. There wasn’t technically even a signal to scramble! The relays were linked subatomically, directly from one particle to another.

Scrambling the link to the relay, that was possible, but there was no sign of that, and the unknown ships were still too far out for such a maneuver.

“Break through the signal scrambling. I don’t care how you do it,” he said.

►►►

IBC Shion Thon, Flagship, Third Reconnaissance Squadron, Outer System, Por-Que

► “Local system has been scrambled, Navarch.”

“Excellent,” Misrem said. “That takes care of their relays. The rest is too slow to matter.”

“I believe that they did get a signal out, Navarch.”

She nodded to her sub-captain. “Yes, but we know from intelligence that there are no Oather vessels within response range. We have all the time we need to deal with Captain Aymes’ little anomaly.”

“Yes Navarch.”

She turned her attention to the imagery on her strategic displays, set up against the gravity telemetry feeds they were also watching.

“Now to deal with you, little anomaly,” she said firmly. “I wonder how much trouble one ship can possibly cause?”

►►►

Ranquil System Command, Priminae Capital, Ranquil

► “Get them back!”

“The entire system is off the grid, Admiral. We can’t.”

Tanner scowled. “How close are the nearest ships?”

“Days away, Admiral.”

“Heroics then,” he insisted. “They can transition into the system.”

“We only have one in contact, and it is assigned to Ranquil system coverage,” his aide responded.

Tanner winced.