Read Synchronicity War Part 1, The for Free Online Page A

more at a later time. I don’t want to
take any more of your sleep time.”
     
    After the XO left, Shiloh looked at the partially written
report on his computer screen. The blow-by-blow account was essentially
complete. It was time to move on to the more important part of the report.
     
    “Start new section entitled Analysis. First paragraph …” He
started to talk. Over the following days, he did a lot of talking.
     
                                                                ***
     
    The short refueling stop was uneventful. Shiloh did his best
to answer the barrage of questions that the base commander fired at him. Space
Force bases were not especially well armored or armed as a rule. Pirates and
smugglers tended to keep well away from them, for obvious reasons. Humanity
hadn’t come in contact with another space faring race until now, so there wasn’t
a perceived need for heavy – and expensive – defenses at fixed stations. The
shock of the station personnel at hearing the news of the battle brought home
to Shiloh just how unprepared Humanity was for this encounter. By the time 344
emerged from Jumpspace beyond the orbit of Jupiter, he and his Executive
Officer had discussed the implications of the alien encounter in considerable
depth, and they both agreed that the Space Force had to plan for a major war.
What worried Shiloh was whether the civilian Oversight Committee members to whom
Space Force answered would see the urgency. The Human Race had to mobilize for
war, and that might be just too much for the committee members to accept and
authorize since they had their own agendas to consider.
     
    By the time the ship received a reply to its warning message,
344 was considerably closer. HQ had ordered them to head for one of the
asteroid shipyards for repairs, with a fast transport tasked with bringing
Shiloh and his crew back to Earth asap. When 344 was safely snuggled within the
deep recesses of the hollowed out asteroid that served as a shipyard, Shiloh
took a few minutes to fly over the damaged sections in a small craft used by
shipyard workers. He was shocked by the transformation of his beautiful, sleek
ship into an ugly, wounded lump of metal. It wasn’t unusual for crewmembers to
form a bond with their ships, of a kind that had started back in the days of
sailing ships. Seeing his ship damaged like this evoked the same emotions he
had felt when he visited his injured crew on the way home. The notion that an
inanimate object had a personality and could feel pain was completely
irrational, but quite common nonetheless. It was with great reluctance that he
boarded the fast transport ship along with the rest of the ship’s crew. Because
of the relative orbital positions of the asteroid and Earth, the trip would
last another 10 hours. Many of the crew took the opportunity to sleep. Even
though he was desperately tired after being awake for almost 20 hours, another
4 hours passed before he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
     
    It was early morning at Headquarters, located in Geneva,
Switzerland, when they arrived at Earthdock. There was a shuttle waiting to
take them to the surface. The trip down was just long enough for Shiloh and his
people to eat a hasty meal. Shiloh knew that HQ already had all of the data,
logs, messages and reports that had been transmitted when 344 emerged from Jumpspace,
but he couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that he had forgotten to bring
something.
     
    When the shuttle landed, there was quite the delegation
waiting to greet them. Shiloh and his crew had been told what would happen
next. All personnel would be debriefed separately. The debriefing would be
short for most of them, since they hadn’t been on the Bridge or at any key station
during the battle. Bridge personnel and all Officers and NCOs would go through
a more thorough debriefing. As his crew were sorted and directed to a waiting
convoy of ground