“Want to talk about it?” Grey asked standing beside him, duplicating Mace’s crossed-arm posture.
Mace lifted his eyebrows at him. Was he a therapist now? Shaking his head, Mace remained silent.
After a few minutes of watching the tyros, he glanced at his vambrace. “Nia’s shift is almost over.”
“Ah.”
“Ah?” Mace looked at him. “What does ‘Ah’ mean?”
“Just ‘Ah.’ Nothing else.”
Eyes narrowed at his friend, Mace refused to fall into whatever verbal trap his friend wanted to lay, and instead backed away with a tilt of his head, leaving the tyros in Grey’s capable hands. If he hurried to Nia’s medical bay a bit faster than was warranted, he wouldn’t dwell on it.
Dismissing Elec, he leaned against the bulkhead, nodding to Sorley when the man acknowledged him. Nia stood beside the med bed furthest away from the door, tending a small child, probably no older than two. The child was watching the scanner with a leery eye, but Nia had turned it into a game, hiding it, then making it talk.
The little girl giggled. For someone who’d resisted family medicine like it was plague-ridden, Nia appeared to be a natural with kids.
“I’m Mrs. Scanner.” She pitched her voice high as she opened and closed the device. “I’m going to make a funny beeping noise. Beep boo beep.” Somewhere in there the scanner actually beeped, taking the girls stats. “Bye, bye,” the scanner said before Nia placed it on the work table.
“Bye, bye,” the girl said, waving at it.
Mace pressed his fingers to his sternum, a sudden tightness there. Was he developing a gastrointestinal reflux condition?
After Nia gave instructions to the girl’s father, the pair left with the girl saying “beep boo beep” over and over again.
Then Nia noticed him standing there. She straightened, face flushing pink. “Is it that time already?”
“Yeah.”
With a slight nod, she smoothed the front of her white jacket, took a glance around at the last two medics on duty, then walked towards him. Once she’d hung her medical jacket on an available hook, he pressed the control on his vambrace to bind her hands.
An awkward silence descended between them on the return trip to his quarters. Nia kept casting him glances, like she wanted to say something, then decided better of it. He waited while she sorted through her thoughts.
On the lift, halfway between the atrium level to his quarters, the lights changed, pulsing yellow. Battle readiness whipped through him. As soon as the lift door opened, he took Nia’s upper arm in a firm grip and ushered her toward his quarters at a near jog.
“What’s going on?” she asked over the noise of the alarm.
“Proximity alert.” The door to his quarters opened. He disengaged her bonds and was already jogging back towards the lift before the door closed.
The ride to the command center was too slow. Mace checked for updates on his vambrace on the way. When he finally stepped into the command center, every cell of his body was ready for the fight to come. Commodore Cache stood at the holotable, half of the commanders also present, everyone with their eyes glued to the three-dimensional image hovering above the table.
“A Guardian,” Cache said as he joined her. “They’re scanning.”
A collective hush descended as they waited to see what the Guardian would do. It had been a long while since a warship had entered the area. Too large to traverse the minefield without blowing itself up, it could only rely on scans to gain information within the field.
The CORE themselves set up numerous fields just like this one as a way to corral Tellusians in certain sectors. Centuries ago, while the CORE remained unaware, the Tellusians gradually claimed this field for themselves, one mine at a time—the perfect place to shroud the existence of their deep-space station on the edge of CORE space.
The Guardian’s scans would only show the minefield, nothing more.Orion’sfaceted shielding had kept this location secure for a hundred years.
But a wary feeling infused Mace’s body, his instincts flaring. Something was off. “My recommendation would be to prep the station for relocation, sir,” he said, voice low under the hush of the quiet.
“It would flag our position. We wait,” Cache said, eyes never leaving the image.
More commanders joined the group, the tension climbing with each passing second. Mace wanted to suggest again they power up—it took a long time to get a beast like this moving—but Cache didn’t need the reminder. She knew her options.
The Guardian remained outside the field for thirty minutes, scanning, adjusting trajectory, then scanning again. Eventually, it moved off at a slow pace.
Everyone released a collective breath.
