Blackbirds

And then her eyes snapped open. The Ship had woken her up. It seemed that she always had strange dreams while she slept and the Ship joined with her subconscious mind to pilot its course. Maybe someday she'd get used to it. It was two weeks now since Astra (Now Commander Astra Blackbird-One) had joined with a Ship and been promoted to leader of Blackbird Squadron on the basis of her action at Arktos, which they said was heroic. She was a member of the Royal Family. By her age, many other members of the Royal Family had been promoted to High Command without every seeing a battlefield, but she had been determined to serve Great Terra and earn her position. She'd lost her old family name and when she joined with her Ship, her skin color changed to match the color of the Ship. Everyone was equal here. Or was supposed to be.

The twenty-four Ships of Blackbird Squadron had reached their goal, the Kelos system, a dismal backwater in the Third Arm with no resources to speak of. But its place in the Webwork meant that it had Threads leading to many important worlds, and you could launch a major attack on many of the Core Worlds from here. So Great Terra kept a base here. A base which had recently lost contact with Great Terra. The Seers had predicted a 74% chance of a Silent One attack on this system in 30 days. Astra knew exactly how much the Seers' predictions were worth. But you couldn't take any chances the way things were now.

1. Blackbird One and three other Ships touched down on Kelos Three, the world the base was kept on, a planet too minor to even have a proper name.
2. Then the Ships detected something traveling through the Webwork into this system.

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