338-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the Stars
December 3rd, 2552 – Evasion Blues
Escape Pilot Kat James Reporting
It’s interesting when you get to the point that you finally have direction and you’re fighting to get a job done, only to find out you’re about six months too late.
We were following the edge of the void, carefully looking for signs of the fleet, trying all the tricks and codes we could come up with and we got bupkis. In fact, the only thing I found was that the Gumbo was starting to get more and more wear on her the longer we stayed near the void. We were losing hope, and decided if we couldn’t find the fleet that we’d have to try and find Valhalla.
We’d just started to turn tail when I caught a beacon pointing away from the void.
The beacons were hard to notice, even harder to understand unless you knew a lot of human history. It was like a scavenger hunt and trivia game rolled into one.
We got to the fleet after nine-hours of following breadcrumbs and were almost blown out of existence because we didn’t have the proper recognition codes. Fortunately, the Gumbo has a very distinctive profile and the Valkyrie’s View was one of the first craft to see our approach.
As we landed I tried to explain what was going on only to be debriefed with a simple, “We know.”
They found out about 6 months ago- their time, I think that it was yesterday by mine. We were late with the information, but in time for repairing the Gumbo.
The next surprise was that Adalgisa and the other Parataph with us were welcomed with open arms and notification had been sent to a ship that had been hiding in the center of the formation that several of their missing people were back.
So, not only does the fleet know about the void – they’ve made an alliance with the Parataph.
It would seem they thought of everything.
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