Mara sat at the console in the yard’s back room with her hand flat on the table’s edge, listening to the hiss between the voices.
It was past the third hour. She had been at the link desk since the fleet’s relay went silent at the second hour and Sera’s voice came back on the emergency band saying patrol cutter struck, drive lost, turning back. Eshel had come in from the yard bench a few minutes after, in his shirt, with his slate. Tavin had come to the doorway, and stood there, and gone, and come back.
Now Eshel was at the end of the desk reading the tension graph aloud.
Before that, there had been an hour of nothing. The relay down, the board frozen, the fleet’s emergency band crackling with voices Mara could not make out. She had sat at the desk with her hand flat and listened to the crackle and not known whether the fleet was whole. Eshel had worked the relay’s settings until the Bellwether’s channel came through clear, and then the tension graph after it, and only then had she been able to put a shape to what was happening out there in the dark.
