Lost in Time

Vol 1: The Valley of Shadows

When the Sun's shine turns crimson, and the sheen upon the face of it swells,

The sons of men will be forlorn, their tears in torrents will imbue wells,

When the Earth they move, the Earth will and they not,

As they jump across the groove, their mortal forms will rot....

"Stand down Commander, that's a freaking order!" Admiral Salva rasped through Commander Nia's broken earpiece.

His voice was a sour, icy and disdainful bellow chockfull of wrath and wraith. It thumped against Nia's eardrums like the thunderous thud of a bass drum.

She didn't say a thing; she bided her time, unwavering, unflinching. She'd been in this situation before-many times before. A bigoted superior officer stamps his authority down, his muddy boot-usually a Wellington- looming perilously above a junior officer's neck. She wasn't shaken, wasn't so junior either.

She considered all possible responses, ran them through her techno-pathic neural interface, Noin. There was a 93.57% chance that whichever response she cast through the secure channel would only serve to agitate the Admiral, fan his flames, further fuel this feud.

None of them would be plausible, at least not in the weirdly-shaped polygonal head of a hard-ass, five-star, super superior officer (half a dozen levels superior).

So without inviting room for a second thought she stoically swiped left on the imaginary monitor of her mind, muting herself away. Perhaps the good sir would take the crackles of static as the short range wave traversed in ripples through the dead of space as a lost connection.

As it curled and curved, in dips and drops , it would pirouette in a celestial dance to the tune of the song of the spheres. Mayhap amidst the hopping and skipping it would get caught in a gravitational turbulence, ensnared and entangled, unable to reach the mother ship.

Well, maybe not. These short range dudes were pretty powerful, and there was no gravitational wave powerful enough in a two-light-day radius. But at this point she really didn't give a fuc...hsia. (Ahem, pardon the ill-timed sneeze).

This wasn't the typical conduct of officers in the Galactic Federation, but there's always a first. Anything that can happen will happen, right? Given the right circumstances, extenuating beyond bear, you can breed a baleful beast out of a beauty.

Besides, her AI Interface, Noin, which boosted her neural function by over a thousand percent ran an algorithm and gave her a prediction in real time. There was really nothing to say.

Danger path activated. Something of a self-assessing part of her brain seemed to sound a warning to her. She'd been at a crossroads, and the path she was walking now ran through literal valleys of shadows of death. There was no turning back from this. Like a tight rope, the only way was forward.

This was it Nia.

"You are disobeying a direct order from a superior officer commander; you understand the ramifications?" Salva grumbled again, this time louder, austere and on edge (damn, was he closer to the comm unit?).

She treated him another dose of stale silence. She knew he'd fume, froth and toss some more threats onto the already growing pile.
"This is treason Commander, lese majesty, reckless ..." Stuff like that.
Actually it would be high treason, Admiral, try reading your field manual...sir. She thought to herself amusedly, simulating the lookalike of a response she'd never give. She then twitched her mouth to wipe away the smug smirk that was starting to build in the corners of her luscious lips.