Read StarFight 1: Battlestar for Free Online

talked.
    “Does not look as if the two groups are understanding each other,” Jacob said, sounding calm but determined.
    “Maybe Lieutenant Branstead knows what is happening. I just watched on my seat’s repeater screen, alert for any incoming signals,” the Communications chief said, his tone indifferent.
    Daisy respected Branstead. The woman had a Ph.D. in molecular synthesis of biological polymers and led a deck of 51 specialists in the natural and social sciences. Which included Jacob’s friend Lori, a specialist in exobiology.
    “I’m sure you were alert. That sparkle at the top! Is that the incoming eleventh shuttle?”
    She fixed on what Jacob had noticed. The view from the back of the clear geodesic dome allowed a view of the landscape and sky in front of and above the dome. At the very top of the holo was a tubular image that shone silvery. As she watched, the tube quickly became an alien shuttle. In seconds it extruded six stick-like legs from its bottom hull, hovered on belly jets, then landed on the flame-fused brown soil of the meadow. It rested just ten meters to the side of the original alien shuttle.
    “What’s happening on its roof?” Jacob asked quickly.
    Daisy, like everyone on the Bridge, was fixed on these last images of their senior officers. Who seemed intent on running through a series of numbers filling their holo, which might have been from a SETI common language program. None of them paid attention to the new arrival. Which, she now saw, was opening up its top. The alien shuttle’s roof split open down the middle, then two hull flaps rose up vertically. In two seconds something round or . . . or globular, she now saw, lifted up slowly from the inside of the shuttle. She could not tell how big the globe was, other than by comparison to the shuttle itself. Daisy guessed the balloon-like globe was perhaps two meters wide. Which meant it was half as wide as the shuttle itself. The globe lifted up higher, then higher still, its rise steady. Was it a weather balloon? Something filled with helium or hydrogen? There were no jets or fans or propellers showing on the globe’s exterior.
    “That globe is rising from the inside of the new shuttle,” Osashi said, answering Jacob’s query.
    “What is that thing?” Jacob asked sharply, his tone intense.
    “Maybe a weather monitoring station?” Osashi said, sounding puzzled. “When I first saw it I wondered what it might be. Perhaps the aliens were concerned for a local weather change. Or something. I’m no meteorologist. Sir.”
    “Understood.”
    She watched the globe rise up and beyond the view angle of the tablet held by the ensign who was transmitting the meeting actions to the spysats above for retransmission to—
    “Damn!”
    A bright yellow-white light flashed down into the holo image. Then the image went dark.
    “What the hell was that light flash?” Jacob said.
    “I have no idea,” Osashi said. “Maybe Chief Petty Officer Steinmetz can tell us. He’s our science . . . expert.”
    She looked right to Willard Steinmetz, someone she knew only by name and rank and the fact he ran one of the Bridge function posts. The forty-something CPO gave a shrug, which made his large belly shake a bit.
    “Acting Captain, I have no idea. Before this event, the air above the meeting site was calm, with a few scattered clouds and no sign of a storm or low pressure front approaching,” the man said thoughtfully. “One of my jobs was monitoring the meet site for bad weather. Got a second undergrad degree in meteorology. This planet has normal weather. Equator is warmer than the poles. Primary winds come from the northwest. The meet site is distant from any ocean or sea. I saw no natural source for the light event.”
    “Nothing natural,” murmured Jacob from behind her, his tone musing.
    Behind Daisy the hatch that gave entry to the Bridge hissed as its pressure seal released. Those would be Jacob’s friends. And hers too. She liked them and