Captain Stacy Winters let out a sigh of disbelief as she stared at the screen on her desk. Displayed on her screen was a report from her Chief Engineer and it was not a pleasant one. A sudden chirping noise woke her from the report as she realized someone was at her door.
"Come in."
The door open to allow her first officer Commander Linda Mills in. "Has the report come in from Engineering yet captain?"
"I'm afraid it has," she answered gloomily, "The anomaly caused major damage to our star drive and damaged parts that are too big to be carried on a star ship our size. Normally we would call a rescue ship to take us to a nearby star base for repairs but since this nebula messes with our communication equipment we have no choice but to travel at sub light speed until we reach Amazodion."
Mill's let out her own sigh of disbelief as she heard the news. "A one week trip will now take us three months, and thanks to our special cargo we can't expect any rescue ships to come after us."
"Well sitting around is not going to help us," the Captain said shortly, "Inform the crew of our dilemma and let them know we will be alright."
"Yes Mam." Mills responded. With that the Commander got up and left the room.
The Captain got up out of his chair and walked over to a full length mirror. A 32 year old blonde woman dressed in a red uniform stared back at her. Her uniform was a standard military, a long sleeve jacket with the zipper open enough to show an ample amount of cleavage, mini skirt, and boots that reached up to her calves. Two crystal blue eyes stared back at her and Winters swore she saw the worry she felt in them.
It was suppose to be a straightforward mission, the Empress herself had brief them on it before they left. On a nearby mining colony a man had been found in a cryofreeze chamber. One of the miners happen to have linguistics as a hobby and was able to identify that the person in the chamber as an Alpha Male. The Empress wanted to to study the Alpha Male and see if they were able to apply some of their genetic reconstruction to her own warriors without the side effects.
Pickup had gone smoothly and soon they had the chamber on board. To avoid any unwanted attention from the other superpowers they were ordered to take a shortcut though the Athena Nebula, which was usually avoided due to the effects the nebula had on communication. Things, however, had gone haywire as an unrecognized anomaly hit the ship causing them to be stuck traveling at sub light until they were out of the nebula and back at their home world. The Captain reminded herself that it was still doable and that there was no point in worrying. As long as the cargo remained in tact they should be fine.
*****
Chief Security Officer April Smith was making her rounds in the cargo hold. This task would usually be left to one of her underlings, but due to the secrecy of their mission they were operating with a skeleton crew so all of them had to pull a little extra weight. The anomaly that hit their ship had caused several systems to go haywire so she was going though all the levels checking to make sure everything was OK, so far everything was in place, all that was left was the cargo hold.