Synchronicity War Part 1, The by Dietmar Wehr Read Free Book Online Page A

support ships were coming with them.
The base, known as SFB Bradley, had dispatched a message drone to HQ as soon as
the frigates and support ships had emerged from Jumpspace. Shiloh wanted to
know what Omar’s force had found in the battle system. The aide didn’t know.
She passed on the Admiral’s request, an order really, that Shiloh and Johansen
come to the Headquarters by 0900 hrs. When the aide terminated the call, Shiloh
turned to his XO, who was seated at the same table.
     
    “The CSO wants us back at HQ by 0900. Omar’s ships are on
their way back.”
     
    Johansen’s eyes widened at the mention of the frigates. “Any
word on what happened to them?”
     
    “The Admiral’s aide didn’t know, or wouldn’t say. I’m hoping
we’ll find out when we get there. Let’s finish eating. I don’t want to be
late.”
     
    The XO nodded. So much for lingering over another cup of
coffee.

Chapter 3 Now What Do
We Do?
     
     
     
    Shiloh and Johansen arrived at HQ by 0900, as requested, and
then they were kept waiting in the conference room for almost an hour. Typical
Space Force snafu. Hurry up and wait. What irritated Johansen the most was that
she could have had a second coffee, with plenty of time to enjoy it, if someone
had thought to offer them one. But no one did. Finally Admiral Howard and two
other flag officers, who Shiloh remembered from the arrival delegation the
previous day, entered the room and sat down at the large oval table opposite to
him and the XO. Their expressions were grim. All three opened bright red
folders, and Howard cleared his throat.
     
    “Thank you for being here on time. Unfortunately when you’re
the CSO you sometimes have to be late. As my aide told you, we received word by
message drone from SFB Bradley that four frigates under Commander Omar, plus
the Support Group, were on their way back here. What my aide didn’t know, when
she spoke with you this morning, was what Omar found when he took those ships
back to the system where the battle took place.”
     
    He turned to his right and said, “Sergei, we have to find a
name for that system. We can’t keep calling it the system where the first
battle took place.”
     
    He turned back to Shiloh and Johansen. “I asked you and Commander
Johansen to come here this morning so that we” – he indicated the other two
flag officers – “could pick your brains about the next step. What do we do now?
That’s the question that I’m going to have to go to the Oversight Committee
with answers to, and I need as much input as I can find. But before we get to
that, you both deserve to know the latest situation. While Cmdr. Omar displayed
questionable judgment in returning to the battle system, going against Squadron
Leader Torres’ orders to retreat, he redeemed himself, in my eyes at least, by
his actions once he got there. Upon arrival there was no sign of any Space
Force vessel. No distress signals, no energy emissions of any kind, nothing. Commander
Omar decided to make a short jump to the opposite side of the system in order
to approach the last known location of the 319, 301 and 299 with a vector that
could easily be modified into a jump vector back to the staging system and the
waiting Support Group. But before actually taking his ships to the site of the
ambush on Torres’ ships, he deployed a spread of recon drones at high speed to
actively scan the area in question. His theory was that if the alien ships had
left the vicinity of the ambush, it would be safe to use active scanning. If they
were still there, then the active scanning would detect them. That’s what
happened. The active scanning detected nine ships. Two were apparently adrift
and more or less close together, and the other seven were strategically placed
around the first two. Preliminary analysis of the scan data suggests that the
two drifting ships were the 319 and either the 301 or 299. The other seven are
assumed to be alien vessels waiting for another