Star Carrier 6: Deep Time by Ian Douglas
Author:Ian Douglas [Douglas, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780062184054
Amazon: 0062184059
Barnesnoble: 0062184059
Publisher: HarperVoyager
Published: 2014-12-31T17:00:00+00:00
Chapter Thirteen
5 August, 2425
Admiral’s Quarters
USNA Star Carrier America
M44, the Beehive Cluster
2215 hours, TFT
“Do you think they made it, Trev?”
They lay together in bed, naked, reveling in the afterglow and the warmth of their embrace. With no word yet from the ships sent through the TRGA hours before, Gray had relinquished the flag bridge to Cameron, a junior officer on his staff, with orders to call him the instant anything, anything appeared to be happening in or around the alien artifact. The ship’s AI, of course, would keep him in the loop and wake him if necessary, but Gray preferred having a human on the command deck to make immediate and critical decisions. AIs were good, very good, but Gray had never been entirely certain that their priorities in any given decision-making tree were his.
He’d had dinner alone, in his quarters; Laurie had arrived not long after, asking if she could stay. He’d considered turning her away. It had been a long watch and a high-stress one, taking the task force in close to the TRGA and sending the little flotilla of fighters and wasps off into the unknown, and he was exhausted.
Besides, the incident with the electronic ping in the officers’ mess that morning had him edgy and on guard. He was well aware of the shipboard gossip about him and Laurie . . . and that filename he’d glimpsed—“Admiral’s Girlfriend”—was highly suggestive.
But as he’d looked down into Laurie’s expectant eyes, he’d taken her into his arms and invited her in.
“Well,” he said after a long moment’s thought, “we didn’t detect any energy release from the TRGA’s interior. And the battlespace drone following them showed empty space on the other side. So . . . yeah. I think they got through. We won’t know what was waiting for them, though, until they send back a courier.”
The drone had only gone as far as the end of the rotating cylinder, close enough to look along the line of sight toward where the flotilla was traveling. The view it had transmitted back had been curiously empty—black space with a very few stars scattered here and there. America’s astrogation department was of the opinion that the TRGA path led to a region out on the thin, ragged edge of the galaxy, out toward the Rim.
It emphatically did not look like the N’gai Cloud Gray remembered from twenty years ago: jam-packed with nearby suns and laced through and through with dense nebulae.
As always, the waiting to hear something definitive was the hardest part of this job.
She cuddled closer.
“Laurie?”
“Mm?”
“We need to talk. . . .”
She drew back, looking into his face. “Uh-oh. That sounds ominous.”
“Not really. It’s not meant to be.”
“What, then?”
“I’m concerned about the rumors.”
“About what? Us?”
He nodded. “It looks bad, an admiral sleeping with a commander. That’s a five-level jump.”
“That’s your Prim past talking, you know. Monogie prudery.” His face must have shown the brief stab of pain, because she hugged him again. “I’m sorry, Trev. I didn’t mean that to hurt.”
“I know.” He thought for a moment.
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