Hal didn’t likeany of the options in front of him.
He rose from the captain’s chair on the bridge and walked to look over Voa’s shoulder at her screen. His exploration officer’s console showed absolutely nothing.
Except that wasn’t what their sensors were telling them.
“It must be invisible,” she said. “Because there is clearly something there.”
“Or they’ve found a way to mess with our sensors. To make us chase our tails.” He didn’t like wondering if the Garmman had that capability, because it meant they had found some tech they hadn’t shared with the UC, and were using it against their allies.
“Or that,” Voa agreed. “What’s more likely?”
“It’s an even balance right now,” Hal said. “Ask Battle Center if they’ve encountered anything like this before.”
“I have. I’m still waiting for a response.” Voa lifted her hands. “They’re probably hunting the databases for something.”
No probably about it, Hal thought.
The sensors sounded another warning, as if they were coming in close to a large number of solid objects.
“The profile is of three or four battleships the size of our own, or a cluster of similar sized asteroids.” Chel was pacing in front of the main screen.
“If we keep going forward, we’ll hit them, according to our instruments,” Voa said.
“If we keep going forward, we’ll cross the space boundary.” And while being just over the line wasn’t usually a big deal, especially not among allies, it would make them at fault if something was there and they bashed into it.
“Back up?” Chel asked.
“Yes. We stay in our airspace.”
Chel looked like he wanted to argue.
“We’re not going to do nothing,” Hal said calmly. “Either we hit whatever’s potentially out there or we don’t, but we won’t be hitting it with theIllium.” He turned to Yiko, his engineer. “Release a maintenance pod and send it straight for one of the objects.”
Yiko tapped her screen and they all watched the tiny pod head straight out in front of them.
“Five, four, three, two, one . . .” Chel murmured, but the pod sailed on, unimpeded.
“So it’s our instruments we can’t trust, not our eyes,” Hal said.
And then the pod slammed into something, shuddering to a stop and then bounced back.
“Our instrumentsandour eyes.” Voa sounded shocked.
“Two officers need to go out there.” Hal desperately wanted to be one of them, but he could not leave his command just because he was curious.
Chel tapped his earpiece. “Rial and Favri, report to the bridge.”
They arrived in less than a minute.
In the meanwhile, the pod had tried to keep going, and was busy being bumped back for a third time when two of his best officers arrived.
“What’s it bumping into?” Favri asked.
“That’s for you to find out, and to let us all know,” Chel said. “Suit up.”
The two shared a grin.
“No heroics,” Hal warned them. “If it looks dangerous or anything seems off, get back.”
