Free StarFight 1: Battlestar by T. Jackson King

aliens arrive, if they are able to plot our vector track and deduce the star we are headed for. Understood?”
    “Understood, sir. I will provide Acting Captain Renselaer with the coordinates and vector track to Kepler 10. Sir, do you plan to visit the Bridge?”
    Ah. A sneaky fem this woman is. Has she already slept with the Renselaer youth? “There is no need for my presence on the Bridge. I will monitor the All Ship transmissions from the Bridge in case my assistance is needed. Carry out your duties.”
    “Thank you, lieutenant commander,” Slaughter said, her tone sounding relieved. “Good day sir.”
    “Good day to you, Chief Petty Officer Slaughter.”
    The tablet went silent. The image of Slaughter disappeared.
    Well, that should keep the bitch out of his hair. Meanwhile, he must sound out the other officers, CPOs and CWOs who ran the other decks. Were any of them as bothered by the arrogance of Ensign Renselaer as he was?
     
    ♦   ♦   ♦
     
    Jacob watched the holo in front of him that depicted the twelve wasp ships. They were arranged in two groups of six. Holding a fixed orbit above the meeting site, none of the ships had done anything since the lightning storm, the end of tablet contact, his launch of the Cloud Skimmer and his assumption of command of the Lepanto and the battle group. The spysat that O’Hara had sent up toward those ships now passed within 10,000 kilometers of the largest wasp ship. Nothing happened. Surely they were aware of the spysat’s approach. What did the lack of action mean?
    “Acting Captain,” O’Hara called from her function post. “Spysat imagery in normal light, ultraviolet, infrared and radio waves now going up on the wallscreen.”
    He watched as a series of different colored views of the 12 ships took shape alongside the images of the wasp ships. The local star’s white-yellow light was strong at 1.1 AU out. It gave the wasp ships a silvery look, leastwise on the sides that faced the star. Being at geosync meant the wasp ships were out of the shadow cast by the planet below. His battle group ships lay on the opposite side of the world, with the star behind them as they viewed the daylight side of the world below. Their geosync orbit had allowed them to maintain position directly opposite the alien ships.
    “Captain!” called Oliver from his Weapons post. “The wasp ships are ejecting little pods! Dozens of them. Each ship is ejecting them. Uh, the pods appear to be on a freefall trajectory down toward the planet.”
    His heart slowed its fast beating. This was not an attack on the spysat, but something else. What? These pods were half the size of the transports that had landed at the meeting site. Which meant they could only carry ten or so wasp people. Surely the wasps were not bombarding the planet. Were these colonizing ships? Earth’s shuttles that carried down colonists were the size of frigates. Seventy people could fit inside one of those colonizing shuttles. But who said the wasps had to send down colonists the way humans did it?
    “Chief Warrant Officer Diego y Silva, thank you for that information. I do not see any cause for alarm in these pods.” He looked over to O’Hara at Tactical. The woman controlled all sensors on the spysats and comsats that orbited on the far side of the world below. “Chief Petty Officer O’Hara, what do your sensors say about those pods?”
    The woman looked down at her control pillar, then up at her tactical graphic hologram that depicted their ships, the planet below, the wasp ships on the far side, every spysat and comsat launched by humans or wasps, and nearby space out to a hundred thousand kilometers. “Acting Captain, infrared says each pod is warm. Warm enough for people to be inside. Ultraviolet says there are chemical rockets on the nose of the pods. Maybe for attitude control. Each pod resembles a metal cone with its rounded base aimed toward the planet. The bases may be re-entry heat shields. There are