House of Reeds

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Chu-sa Mitsuharu Hadeishi, captain of the Henry R. Cornuelle, was sitting in the ruins of the senior officers' wardroom when his personal comm chimed. The thin little Nisei gentleman set down his cup of tea on a utility table covered with departmental readiness reports and tapped his comm-band live. "This is Hadeishi." "Bridge, kyo. We've picked up a Fleet message drone on long-range scan." The ensign standing third-watch communications didn't bother to hide his anticipation. The Cornuelle had been out in the wasteland of stars beyond the frontier for nearly nine months. The tachyon relay on the Imperial Mйxica Navy Astronomer-class light cruiser wasn't quite good enough to punch through to the big receivers at Ctesiphon Station or Tadmor. Unrepaired battle damage to the ship's systems had further degraded their ability to correspond in realtime with Fleet. The prospect of fresh news from home would be very welcome to everyone aboard. Though we're not suffering cabin fever, not yet. Hadeishi felt the crew had fallen into a good routine over the last six to seven weeks. Everyone was still sharp – no one was making silly mistakes or starting fights – and there was a certain confidence in the crisp way they'd dealt with the last two 'incidents.' The Megair weren't used to Imperial patrols ranging so far out from the frontier. "Is the drone intact?" Hadeishi reached to key up the main comm panel in the mess, but found an empty cavity in the wall instead. A Khaid penetrator had burrowed into his ship far enough to incinerate everything in the officers' dining room and surrounding passageways. Some amenities had been restored by looting the port-side Marine ready-room, but there weren't any spare comm panels to go around, not this far from a Fleet depot. "Hai, kyo.

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