Catchy Catchy

After waiting five minutes for further development, Don hit the send button.

It had been centuries since anyone used envelopes for personal messages, and yet it was still the indicator for send.

Fatigued from his vigilance, he turned in for the 'night'. He had included notice that he would be asleep at the end of his communication, so he would not be interrupted unless it was urgent.

- - - - -

As Donovan was losing consciousness within sight range of the flock of enemies, Admiral Adirondack was running through her options in search of a way out of this predicament.

Using her carrier's strike craft was out of the question. Those were ships designed with the express purpose of defending against small craft. Few though they may be, they are too effective at their jobs to throw her highly experienced but extremely limited in number pilots at.

The capital ships were just too damn slow. If they tried to close the distance to get a shot on them they would just run away. They had made clear their intention to not engage when she ordered the Ranger to slow down and act as bait.

The heavy cruisers would have nothing to fear from ships of this size, but they were just a tad too slow to catch them off guard.

If she sent in any of the light cruisers, frigates, corvettes, or pickets she would have to send them ALL in. The way their offensive and defensive systems worked required their mutual assistance from one another.

Furthermore, she was tearing her hair out over what to do with Don and his black brick. As far as she had been told, it was fully capable of taking hits from everything the enemy had. But did she want to test that assumption? Did she want to risk exposing its existence this early?

"No. I can't let them start thinking about countermeasures."

She couldn't risk damage to Don and his ship either. She did not have the proper facilities to repair it. As a matter of fact she didn't have the proper facilities to repair anything.

"FUCK!" She slammed her fist on the table, causing the ornamental bird she kept as a decoration to tip over.

"Did I come at a bad time?" Thompson was standing in the doorway to the admiral's quarters, wine bottle in hand. It was the wine Don had been gifted, exchanged for the tablet he was using to read books on. "We just finished our post-flight checks, so I was hoping to pop open a bottle. It tastes better with company."

"...Fine. Tearing myself apart isn't getting me anywhere. Plenty of time to think."

She picked the pair of glasses that sat above the door, the best set she had.

"Really? Taking out those cups? I thought they were just decoration."

"Only two of us. Plus, the goods look to be of exceptional quality this time around. Wine is meant to be drunk, and glasses are meant to be drunk from." She took a seat at the table opposite of the star pilot. "Are you not going to share this bounty with the rest of your squadron."

"They wouldn't be able to appreciate the quality. Of those in the squadrons, I only think Red 3, Yellow 5, Green leader, Green 2, and myself would understand the intricacies. Naturally, I have gifted them all a bottle as props for a job well done."

"Fair enough, though I imagine I won't understand any of the intricacies either."

"You will find the taste to be better than the norm at the very least. Besides, the Admiral is a little bit different than some random pilot fresh off an adrenaline rush. I imagine you needed something for the nerves?"

She had known him long enough to understand this was him sucking up to her for something. If he fucked up his bomber, she would be pissed. A little bit of a drunken stupor would lessen the blow.

At the same time he was completely right, she was on edge and needed to slow down. Nothing better than some fine wine and company for that.

As Thompson poured the wine, she took note of its color. It was an extremely rich red, somewhere in the range of Maroon and Crimson.

"So what ails ye cap'n?"

There it was. His stupid pirate voice. It had been a while since the last time it appeared, but there was no stopping it once he started.

He had DEFINITELY been drinking prior to this. How Adirondack hadn't noticed that until now was a complete mystery to her.

"We have a tail, and I have no way of cutting it off without bleeding out."

"Have you tried shooting them?" It was a naïve and stupid suggestion, but Adirondack passed it off with a laugh.

"If they were close enough to shoot at we wouldn't have a problem. Even with Beacon's god-like assistance, the fact of the matter is that they are beyond the range of our weapons."

"Then get clozer! Just get right up close to em and pop em right in the nose."

"They're too fast for that!"

"Then do it faster! Our heavy croozers can warp can't they? Have Beacon find some good jump coordinates and then send them in. They'll never know what hit them."

It was stupid. Incredibly stupid. Any commander worth their salt would notice the incoming jumps and send in missiles to interrupt the process.

"I might regret this, but how fast were your jump times with Beacon in comparison to your jumps without."

"We dropped frum ten seginds to the instant we slapped the big red buddon." He had a shit eating grin on his face, proud of a feat that was due in no part to his own efforts. "See, how it works is that the computer runs a bunch of very, VERY, complex equations based on the zones we need to jump to in order to find safe spots. Those can take up to eight seconds. After that therz about a two second delay where the computer double and triple checks that we won't be coalescing in front of a big ol space rock. Then BLAM, there we are."

"How fast do you think our Heavy cruisers could make a jump with Beacon's help?"

"I don have a good estimate cuz I don fly a cruiser, but I'd say cutting the whole process down to a hundredth of normal would be a good starting point."

To the best of her knowledge it took a grand total of 5 minutes for a heavy cruiser to do a jump. 300 seconds divided by 100 was three. If several thousand tons of materiel could be warped within three seconds then it would be impossible for them to interrupt it. Even 20 seconds was a short enough period of time to rush past a defense.

If this plan worked she would kiss this man on the spot. If it failed she would take the punishment in stride.

Professionals are predictable, but drunk and arrogant jocks think the unthinkable.