A shake to Drevin’s shoulder brought the ferret out of what might, for lack of a better word, be termed a doze.<\/p>\n
Blinking cobwebs out of his eyes, if not entirely out of his mind, he shifted himself closer to upright in his command chair. \u201cMmnf,\u201d he greeted the universe at large. \u201c’s going on?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey’re repositioning,\u201d said the vac-suited snow leopard who’d awoken him, taking the liberty to touch the controls on the arm of Drevin’s chair and bring up the tactical plot.<\/p>\n
Drevin stared at the blips and lines, trying to make enough sense of them to decide if he ought to take another stim. He’d already had so many of the damn things that he’d need to detox once they got out of this mess \u2013 if<\/i> they got out of it \u2013 and they made his memory altogether too<\/i> sharp.<\/p>\n
For the moment, he kept looking over the plot with bleary eyes, tracing a few choice trails with a fingertip, the thin lines of the projector beams glittering over his claw. \u201cHmm. Vree, you seem more alert than me, give me some confirmation here \u2013 but it looks here,\u201d he touched the traces of the Sakkarn point elements, \u201clike these interceptors are in more of a rear guard posture. Watching us, but like that’s not the point of what they’re up to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vree frowned, spinning the plot a bit on two axes and peering closer. \u201cYou know, I think you’re right.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking for something behind them?\u201d Drevin hazarded.<\/p>\n
A few more taps brought up a passive sensor overlay for that area of space, and the cat nodded at what it showed. \u201cBackscatter and sensor ghosts would seem to confirm it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn’t one of theirs; the SLA elements, dishearteningly few in number, were spread out in clusters here and there, but they were all in entirely the wrong quarter of space to give nearly a strong enough reflection to warrant this kind of shift in posture. \u201cIt doesn’t look like a SAR deployment,\u201d Drevin noted, touching a few signatures that belonged to battle-ready fighters on alert, not recovery ships. \u201cBut maybe that’s just how the Sakkarn do things, or maybe it is when they’re this deep in our territory. My best guess is that one of their ships had more combat damage than they realized, and fell out of position, and they don’t quite know which way it went.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe,\u201d was Vree’s dubious reply; glancing up at him, Drevin could see that the cat was struggling to put things together into some other form. Ultimately, though, he failed in that, and shook his head. \u201cI don’t know. I can’t think of a better option, but it still feels a little bit off.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo long as they’re not bearing down on us, I think I’ll take it,\u201d the ferret said, glancing over at the projected countdown. Still nineteen hours until they could even begin to expect reinforcements, damn it \u2013 and that was by an optimistic<\/i> appraisal of how long those reinforcements would take to muster. \u201cCarry on as we have been \u2013 keep quiet and run on low emissions, except with enough force behind course changes to let them know we’re still out here watching.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGot it.\u201d Vree patted his shoulder, hard enough to be felt through his suit if little harder. \u201cI’ll nudge you again if anything changes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRight.\u201d Drevin tried to arrange himself a bit more comfortably again.<\/p>\n
Fatigue was wearing on him; it took mere minutes for him to slip into troubled slumber.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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