“There was another oddity,” Cheryl observed. “This I found about just before heading over here, from drinking at the bars used by the Warp Point Defense Fortress crews. Someone measured the power curve on the Peaceful Harmony, practice test, which pulled rather few gees while arriving and leaving.”

“This is surprising for a first starship?” Waters asked.

“They had warship-grade power curves,” Cheryl answered. “Actually, and they were staying at very low throttle, they had better curves than the Imperial Fleet does. I didn’t believe it, but the fellow I chatted up had a copy of the curves, so I paid off my bet and bought his first three drinks. They also had a strange warp point emergence burst.” She put the images she had copied up on a screen.

The five of them looked at each other. “Strange people, multiple sightings, warship grade ship?” Waters said, “This is worth a message ball to Earth, four copies, full encryption. On the same line, I received a private message. The Langley has completed its Imperial Fleet Service, and will be here eventually.”

Chapter

Warp Point Prime Defense Fortress

Barham System

Martingale 5, 853 AIS

“Emergence. Emergence. I have an emergence.” Senior Technician Ninth Class Roger Abernathy looked up from his displays and tapped the ‘Warning Acknowledged’ button. “Warp zone three, extreme northwest quadrant.”

Abernathy waited for his AI systems to tell him what was going on. That part of the warp zone corresponded to red dwarf R2578.3194.639A – so said the display – from which there was almost never inbound traffic. The star was utterly undistinguished beyond being one of the 50 billion stars of the Solarian Imperium. Anywhere you could reach from there could be reached more rapidly on a different path. If the star hadn’t had a warp link to Barham, the Imperium might have taken forever and a day to survey it.

The AIs were taking their own sweet time about identifying the new ship. They should be faster than that, Abernathy thought. System Defense Command had, to the great annoyance over large numbers of people, been ordered to do a complete recalibration of the system’s gravitronic detectors, meaning the system’s half dozen warp-capable corvettes had spent several months making warp transitions to distant places and then transiting back again at different speeds. The wear and tear on their conventional and warp drives had been substantial, as a result of which all six of them were now scheduled for major time in the yards. However, with recalibration the detectors were appreciably better, even if the hardware was obsolete junk.