Ensign Moulin, tac officer of the aging, Solarian-designed, ESDF corvette Lion, reports calmly, “Ma’am, we have three contacts that just came over the alpha wall, roughly a light minute away… They don’t look like freighters, though.”

 

“Explain, Sean.” Lt Commander Caitlin Ó Conor, the CO of the corvette, replies, matter-of-factly.

 

He replies, as he types things into his console, “They seem to be carrying too much velocity over the alpha wall to be freighters, they are too small to be freighters… and they… They appear to be a light cruiser, a destroyer and a frigate.”

 

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Elvana wasn’t supposed to be attacked. But the initial colonists had planned ahead, and had built up a Navy, which had gradually expanded from a few corvettes and frigates, to now having a couple of destroyers, and even a Solarian-designed light cruiser. They had known about the risks of pirates, and had developed a Navy designed to deal with single corvette to even destroyer (maybe light cruiser, on a day when everything was functional) level threats.

 

“Tracking?” Lt Commander Ó Conor queries, perfectly by the book.

 

The tracking officer, an red haired Ensign named Stephanie Murray, replies, “Ma’am, they’re on a vector towards Elvana and Siun, and appear to have made a crash translation, though they split the limit, to give themselves an out.”

 

So, probably pirates. But, on the off chance that these were some Republican Navy ships that thought it would be a good time to do a port call at Elvana, on their way to who-knows-where, and forgot to ask permission of the system government before crossing the twelve-minute limit, she’d rather double-check things.

 

Lt Commander Ó Conor turns to her com officer, and orders, “Com, record and transmit a message reporting these… visitors to Loyalty, Cletiné, and HQ. So they know what’s coming for them, and can decide what they want to do about it. Also, what’s the verdict on the IFF query?”

 

“They’re not using any allied codes. Republican, Manticorian, Casan, I checked them all twice.”

 

“Put that in the message, too. Given what we know, it appears we will have to treat these warships as hostile. Unfortunately, the only fleet units in the area are us, the Loyalty, and the Cletiné. That’s two corvettes, and a frigate, against an opsforce of a light cruiser, a destroyer and a frigate. It’d take hours to get even the Eithne and her escort out here, one of our frigates is out of system, hunting other pirates, the Róisin is undergoing refits, and I don’t know what the Lúin, or the Laoise, or the rest of the fleet, is up to for sure, but the Maev was escorting our senator to Haven.” She picks up the all-ship intercom, and says something that most ESDF COs, unless they were lucky enough to be allowed to go hunt pirates, would only ever say in drills, “All hands, battle stations.”

 

As she orders battle stations, she wonders if she’ll be lucky enough to get out of this disaster alive.

 

Her com officer speaks next in the chaos, while waiting for his replacement to appear, so he could get vac-suited up, “Ma’am, Cletiné has sent us a tac plan. We’re to attempt to ‘flee’, with Loyalty, and we’re going to work with Loyalty to separate and take out the frigate, while Cletiné tries to separate the DD and CL, and take out the destroyer. According to Commander Kerr, the rest of the fleet will have to deal with the CL itself, because HQ won’t be able to send reinforcements in time to make a difference, and we can’t take out the CL, even working together. But, every ship we destroy or cripple is one more the rest of the fleet doesn’t have to deal with.”

 

“Understood.”