Jonathan A Countyman
patreon
Interlude The Lodge: Expected Visitors
🕑 Added 2025-07-13 21:29:51 +0000 UTCThe young man sighed as he stepped into the command center. A younger girl noticed him immediately, “Hylix! Did you hear!? We are going to have visitors!”
He blinked, “Visitors? Who when? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
The girl deflated instantly, “Sorry, but your...”
He sighed, “It’s fine. I was seeing to my grandmother. So who are we expecting?”
“The mysterious phantoms that have been the subject of the rumor mill lately.”
“Someone found them? They actually exist?”
“Yeah, the Stormwolf encountered them after being knocked off course into Raider space.”
“Right right, I heard that, an eddy opened almost on top of them. Captain Felki nearly burned her engines out avoiding it. We sent a few ships out to get her, but the storm had already carried her ship off.”
“Well, they fixed the engines but not until after a small raider fleet found them. We picked up the distress call, but so did our Phantoms. They actually intervened and drove off the raiders. Felki’s sent us an update, they are about a day out now and had a second raider encounter.”
“A second? How’d that go?”
“A strategic victory, Stormwolf took down a light cruiser, our new friends however sank two battleships.”
“Two!? What, do they have a dreadnought?”
The girl brought up the scan data, “She’s big but I don’t think so.” She highlighted the weapon mounts and hangers, “High-yield compression particle cannons, multiple particle beam arrays, fore and aft torpedoes, along with turreted missile launchers and the hanger complement of a light carrier. According to Stormwolf, she deployed twelve squadrons during that skirmish.”
Hylix frowned, “Deployed!? You mean they are crazy enough to fly in that? Can they shield their fighters or something?”
“Apparently they are immune to Isanir radiation, Felki wasn’t very clear on the details, but she did say something about them engineering it.”
“Don’t say a word about that to anyone, understand?”
She frowned, “huh?”
“Do you have any idea what such an immunity would mean?”
Her face brightened then she paled, “Oh, shit! My lips are sealed but um... I may have uh...”
“Told your sister? Or your mother?”
“Uh... both?”
“Why is that a question?” he let out a breath, “Dammit Lira you can’t keep doing this to me. How’d my grandmother ever keep you from spreading vital secrets is beyond me.”
She started wagging her tail, “Are you going to spank me!?”
“I should stuff you in a small closet, and I’m not going to spank you, you damn masochist!”
‘Oh, come on, it would be fun!”
He glared at her, and after a moment she pouted. Hylix kept glaring until she stopped and let out a breath.
“Fine, fine, but you don’t know what you are missing.”
“Just update me on our friends.”
“Yes Hylix,” she breathed, and then got on to giving him the rest of the update. The name however felt most important to him. EFS Enterprise, flagship of the Sol Refuge. It sounded like a fairly important ship to have ended up in the Storm. Then again, this wasn’t the first flagship to be swallowed, hell the Storm took their entire colonization fleet, or so he’d been told. He’d barely been three at the time, so he didn't really remember anything before the storm.
“So who is the Sol Refuge anyway?”
The girl shrugged, “No idea, but we don’t know every interstellar power out there.”
