Chapter 38 - The Advisor[]
LCS Beagle
Explorer Vessel
Deep Periphery
July, 3158
[Six months out of the Inner Sphere...]
The ship was a one-off. Not a cutter, or a destroyer, or a cruiser, not a battleship.
LCS Beagle was not unarmed but, war wasn't why this compact-core ship was built. It was still possible, that they would be dragged into a fight, and the ship could fight if it needed to, but that wasn't why it was built.
"Admiral Ngo, we've got incoming from...it has the Archon's seal, mum. and it's eyes-only."
"I'll take it in my sea cabin, Jason." Admiral Sharon Ngo had been freed to do what she wanted. However, you're never completely free once you knew the secrets she knew.
She went to her Sea Cabin. The 'Admiral's office' so much nicer than a bunk on the command deck of a battleship and infinitely better than the accommodations on a Cutter.
She unsealed the electronic seals and typing in the complex equations based on the orbits in the Kowloon system necessary for a closest-approach to her Grandmother's homeworld today.
The summaries were listed in menu format, but the header said it all.
=========================================================================================================================================[]
Blessed are the peacemakers,
We're all going to hell.
Come home.
=========================================================================================================================================[]
Sharon opened the attached files one at a time, and watched the summaries, the file footage, and the outlines.
"****** them." she swore. "****** THEM!!!" she punched the wall leaving a dent in the metal. Sending her mirror floating in shards. Absently, she collected the debris with a vac-hose before heading up to CIC to give everyone the bad news.
She left the files open, and stepped out of her sea-cabin. "Send to the exploration task-force, set best course and speed for home."
"Mum?"
"If we're lucky, I get to scream at Trillian Steiner for over-reacting, but we're probably going to be walking into a war. I want all crew drilling for combat conditions across the task-force...and contact my uncle, I need to know what's waiting for us when we reach Kowloon."