The Honour of the Knights (First Edition) (The Battle for the Solar System)

XX - Hawke's Ambition

On the bridge of Ifrit, helmsman Alan Cox stood waiting patiently as an engineer took a look at his console. It was not behaving as it should: the touch-sensitive surface seeming to be off by a few inches. Every time he tapped at the screen, there was a chance that a different control to the one he wanted might be activated. He had started to become concerned when some of the more delicate operations he needed to perform while the carrier continued to search for the missing Griffin became more difficult to execute. For a time, he had traded places with the controller across from him, so that he could continue his duty. But now that the carrier was holding position, pausing in its search, he had taken the opportunity to have the problem dealt with.

"Looks like one of the calibration relay nodes has given out," the engineer said from beneath the console, pulling out a small circuit board.

"Do you have a spare?" Cox asked, toying with a screwdriver the engineer had used to remove the bottom panel of the console.

"Plenty. I can go and get one and be back up soon. Shouldn't take more than ten or fifteen minutes. Do you need it urgently?"

"So-so," the navigator replied. "The captain has ordered us to hold position here. According to him, Griffin should be somewhere close by. But so far we haven't detected anything, not even on the long-range scanners."

The way Hawke had been acting had set Cox on edge. He had voiced these concerns with some of the other crew once his captain had departed the bridge, on his way to his private office to receive a communication that had come in from CSN HQ. Though they did not talk for long, it became evident that the rest of the crew shared his feelings.

Upon his return, Hawke had ordered that they jump to an adjoining star system, in which they would at last find Griffin. But within minutes of Ifrit arriving at its destination, the commodore had once again departed.

Following the allied forces' failed attempt to retake Dragon, and the unusual disappearance of Griffin, Hawke had ordered Meyers to return to Spirit alone. He had then taken Ifrit and begun a systematic sweep of the nearest adjacent star systems to Aster, in case Griffin had become stranded in one of those. But though they had hunted for many hours, their search had turned up nothing, the likelihood of finding Griffin close by diminishing with each system they came to.

It was as they scanned their fifth system that Hawke had received the message from naval headquarters. It had informed him that Griffin had been located and, as luck would have it, was drifting in a star system alongside the one they were currently scanning. Hawke had ordered that Ifrit make that their destination. But upon arriving, the crew had been greeted by nothing except another empty system, the only highlight of the region being the twisted hues of the nebulas that were so prominent in that part of the galaxy. Hawke had returned to his private office to watch the message again, so as to, as he had put it, "ensure that he had not made a mistake".

After his lack of commitment to the previous battle, the crew were beginning to question his command. Cox was not about to challenge the man's authority, however; the thought of a stay in the brig and a court-martial were not high on his list of priorities.

"Are you sure we're in the right place?" the engineer wanted to know, emerging from beneath and console and looking out the thick glass windows of Ifrit's main viewport, to the empty space beyond. "You could have punched the wrong destination into the console? Wouldn't be surprising the way this thing is so out of whack."

"I was using that one," said Cox, indicating the console across from his own.

"Maybe I should check that one, too?" the engineer suggested.

At that moment, Cox heard the bridge lift doors open and looking around he saw Hawke come striding down the long aisle, people on either side turning in anticipation of what Ifrit's captain would say about the situation.