2952-08-07 – Tales From the Service: Unease at Hausen's 

Less than two hours after Admiral Donnell’s ships destroyed the lone Tyrant cruiser present in Hausen’s and scattered the smaller elements of the Incarnation defenses, Ernest Espinoza started its orbital insertion maneuver. 

There wasn’t much for anyone on the bridge to do once the navcomputer was executing the deceleration routine, so several of Espinoza’s bridge crew stood and stretched their cramped limbs. Most of the observers hanging around at the rear of the over-large space had already departed by this time, except for Lieutenant Commander Namgung, who was still technically on duty, and two off-duty techs who had been huddled in excited conversation for most of the previous hour. 

Captain Coretta Fuentes stood at the center of the bridge with her arms folded behind her back, her eyes on one of the secondary status displays. “Open port and starboard bays. Charge all deployment rails.” 

Bleary-eyed Lieutenant Kanzaki, who had refused to surrender his console to the second-shift ensign, tapped out a few commands, reached up to the second level of his console and flipped a series of hardware switches. “Charging rails.” 

Coretta nodded. To power the system, a cruiser-grade star-drive had been broken up for its capacitor arrays; these would take at least a few minutes to charge. “Mister Rademaker, clear the bays.” 

“The last techs are evacuating now, Captain.” Basil Rademaker’s voice came from the speaker system; he was below, supervising Espinoza’s special deployment machinery from a command annex adjacent to the machines themselves. 

“Time to orbit?” Coretta turned to the helm station. 

The ensign at the helm glanced down at her console. “A little over six minutes.” 

Coretta turned away and beckoned to Namgung. “Commander, I apologize for taking over your duty shift. You may proceed.” 

Namgung stood and saluted. “Aye, Captain.” He looked around the bridge. “Do you want to be recalled when we are ready to deploy?” 

Coretta shook her head. “Execute whenever Donnell gives the order. I’m going below.” 

The solitude of the slow civilian-model lift left Corretta plenty of time to think. The cold ballistic course gamble had been a clever one, but it didn’t feel right to her that it was the best option left for the Incarnation to defend such a strategic outpost as Hausen’s World. The Incarnation never gambled, not when it didn’t need to – it coldly arranged favorable battles and worked to extricate itself from unfavorable ones. Even the raids at Sagittarius Gate were not so much a gamble as they were a constant pressure which succeeded at interfering with Seventh Fleet operations even if they did no damage; the damage they inflicted every so often seemed to be almost a bonus in their calculations.  

Again, she returned to the question of why the enemy force in Hausen’s had fought at all. From the looks of things, that cruiser had been a cripple anyway, its escape unlikely, but the crews of several perfectly serviceable frigates and who knew how many strike pilots had been sacrificed to give that wounded beast more hope for its final charge. That seemed almost like a sentimental decision rather than a tactical one. 

Fortunately, Coretta was only a ship captain; she needed not divine the chip-twisted thoughts of Incarnation admirals. When the lift disgorged her onto Deck Six, she was nowhere nearer solving the puzzle than when she had started. With a sigh, she headed forward to the ship’s gym, hoping she had time for a short workout before turning in. 

The problem was still bothering her when she finished changing out of her uniform into exercise attire, so Coretta connected her earpiece to the bridge. “Commander, I’ve got this feeling Nate’s not done with us yet. Are we still doing regular sensor sweeps?” 

“The escorts are.” Namgung paused, as if realizing this meant a negative answer. “I’ll have one done every ten minutes.” 

“Thank you.” Coretta cut the channel, switched her earpiece over to music, and stepped out into the gym compartment. In Espinoza’s civilian career, the space had been some sort of social hall, and it had excellent viewpanels facing forward, which now framed the blue-green orb of Hausen’s world. Coretta took a long moment to appreciate the sight. She’d never seen a planet, living or dead, from Espinoza. The last one she’d seen from any ship was Maribel, dwindling away behind Sable Diver as it started the long trek across to Sagittarius Gate. Looking down at it, she could almost feel cool grass between her toes, and feel a gentle breeze rustling her hair. 

Coretta froze. Her trained spacer’s eye had picked up movement between Espinoza and the inviting orb far below. She stepped up to the viewpanel and pressed her forehead to it, as if a meter’s difference might bring the object close enough for inspection. There was definitely a dark mote down there, in a lower and roughly perpendicular orbit to the one her ship was settling into, but she couldn’t see any detail from such a long distance. 

Once again, Corretta called in a channel to the bridge. “Mister Namgung, what’s in orbit below us right now?” 

“Not much. A few launch-scale survey craft from the escort force.” Namgung paused. “Why?” 

“Saw something out the viewpanel. It could be one of those launches. Sensors don’t show anything out there?” 

“Nothing that doesn’t have a Seventh Fleet IFF code.” 

Coretta sighed. There was no way the sensors on even a second-line ship like Espinoza could miss anything close enough to be visible to the naked eye. “Understood. Carry on.” 

The speck was gone by the time Coretta signed off the connection to Namgung, but she kept her eyes glued on the viewpanel for the entirety of her exercise routine. She couldn’t shake the feeling that Nate had one last card to play at Hausen’s World. 

If the Incarnation did indeed have additional tricks up its sleeve to foil Operation HELLESPONT, these tricks were never employed; the operation continued as planned after the defenders were driven out of the system, and the small Incarnation depot on the planet’s surface was found to be bare and devoid of garrison. 

The feeling that things went too well stuck with many of the participants who I have spoken to, and even though the enemy was able to mitigate the impact of the success of this offensive, few of those involved really believe that the attack was unexpected. It is a strange quirk of this conflict that, though the Confederated Worlds is undoubtedly winning at this stage, those fighting on the front line believe that the enemy planners are several steps ahead.