Time passed as it always does. Terazed command assigned a new engineer, a Persied warrant officer named Hahne. He was competent of course, Dylan had never met an incompetent Persied, crazy on occasion or at least obsessive, but never incompetent. He didn't have whatever spark had made Harper, well Harper, though. Whether he was a genius as he often proclaimed or more likely insane as a Nightsider in broad daylight he had been truly one of a kind, and his absence was missed. Still life always went on and it wasn't long before Andromeda and her command crew was besieged by what seemed daily crises. This was how Dylan had come here, to Admiral Telemachus Rahde's office on Terazed.
"Admiral Rhade. Dylan was able to pull a credible salute to his one time subordinate.
"Captain Hunt." Telemachus stepped around the imposing desk that he had inherited from the last, unlamented head of fleet operations and pulled his former commander and on occasion best friend into the kind of rough bear hug he once wouldn't have dreamed of bestowing on anyone outside his pride.
"How is everyone doing?" He asked as he stepped back.
Dylan would have had to admit to a certain shock from the greeting, Nietzscheans were, in his experience, highly reserved to non pride members. He wasn't sure how to answer the question, everyone had seemed, off somehow since Harper left.
"Ok, not the same, but ok."
"I would never have imagined Harper leaving Andromeda. I always thought he would have to be carried off on his back."
"It seems none of us knew him as well as we thought." Dylan winced inwardly at the obviousness of that.
"Unfortunately I didn't ask you here to catch up, well at least not just to catch up." He settled his weight on the front corner of the desk and reached for a flexi. "There's been a lot of activity in Drago-Kazov territory these past few months, none of it aimed specifically at us it seems, but with Nietzscheans that can change in a heartbeat." A half shrug and scowl was all the indication he gave of his thoughts about the non-Commonwealth members of his race. "So we ordered a survey by a long range recon patrol. This is some of what they found."
He slid the flimsy in front of Dylan and activated it. At first it showed just empty space but the view slowly"swung" around as the LRS reoriented its sensors. What appeared as the pictured changed was a fleet or the remains of one anyway. Dylan recognized the hulks of Gilgamesh class cruisers, Garuda class attack craft and pieces of half a dozen other ship classes, nearly two hundred ships all together.
"What happened? He'd seen worse of course, no High Guard captain worth the commission these days had got there without being in more than one scrape. What was shocking was that it was a Nietzschean fleet. To his knowledge no one had handed the Nietzscheans a defeat on this scale since Witch head nebula.
"Good question, this is the answer we think. The patrol picked up a signal, took awhile to decode it, the encryption was extremely dense." He reached for a second flexi and handed it over. There was no video, just an audio recording.
"This is Bunker Hill. We are the Human Liberation Army, the sons and daughters of a murdered world. We will not be robbed of our rightful place in the universe anymore. We stand together, one people, one voice and say to all who think they have the right to enslave and exterminate us, never again! This is Bunker Hill signing off."
"We've decoded dozens more since this one, all audio only; all code names, most drawn from human history, Bunker Hill, Kursk, El-Alamein, Tuetenberg, fifty or so all together. Whether they're people or places we're not sure. Intel believes that Drago-Kazov is fighting a full fledged insurrection of its slave worlds, possibly all nine-hundred but certainly a significant portion. Of course they're not sure of that, it could be propaganda, misdirection or almost anything else.
"Let me guess, that's where Andromeda comes in."
"Pretty much, the Commonwealth just doesn't have the resources to send more than one ship to investigate and Andromeda is the best we have."
"So what is the mission profile, exactly?" Dylan had a reasonably clear idea, but wanted all the facts before he started planning what was sounding like an incursion into the territory of a hostile major power.
"Basically, take a look around Dragan territory and see what's really happening. Assess the situation and determine whether the Commonwealth should or even can take any action and what that action should be."
"Am I dismissed then Admiral?" Dylan straightened to attention and made the request in formal military fashion, though with a half smile.
"Dismissed Captain Hunt, Rhade answered with his own half smile. Good hunting Captain, and Dylan?" Hunt turned from the door. "Watch yourself; we don't have that many captains left, we can't afford to waste you."