Admiral entered his house. It was late night by the Sirian Galactic Time although there was no sunlight reaching the surface for the past thirty hours. Akabatian day and night cycle would not translate well even into the local time as Nebet’s passage through the sky still blotted out the star and would continue to do so for at least consecutive four more hours.
Connection time was painstakingly long. Gaia was not a planet close to the neural net bearing trade and gate network and many communication satellites fell in the Gallic blitz. Meg’s signal however reached suitable transmitter and ventured forth though Sirius faster than light communications towards Dublin.
Wolfish pet followed Michal like a shadow, stalking him anytime he would be planetside either for rest or duty. First thing he would had done since changing his officer uniform to more casual attire was to feed this wolfdog hybrid he called Weiss due to complexion of its fur. Within seconds, incoming call bounced across shortest possible path though Freeports and infrastructure laid out by first Zoner settlers in the Omega region.
It wasn’t long until dedicated buoys laid out by The Order traced data packages forth the Omicrons, transmitting burst to heart of The Order’s hegemony: moon-world of Akabat. Sheer distances involved, meticulous encryptions and firewalls governed by near sentient algorithms and limited throughput of edge worlds networking capacity all contributed to rather poor initial quality of the transmission.
He was not expecting a private call at this time and wondered who would be bothering him at his precious down time. It was separate account, albeit just as heavily encrypted and secured as official Order channels that not many had privilege to know about. Quick glance showed him the reason for all the commotion. This mad woman Ishikawa was contacting him from uninhabited planet so far from The Order Protectorate even he was surprised she had sufficient reception to put up more than rudimentary distress beacon.
The connection was made and choppy video appeared on screen of his computer. He pulled a military headset on for as clear voice recording as he felt it would be necessary to maintain comprehensive understanding with such spartan conditions.
“You smell nice”
The second voice that joined the conversation several dozen light years across the universe was not belonging to her and it was clear he was not meant to hear that particular line. Both of them appeared injured and patched up inside cramped starfighter clearly not meant to be inhabited by two people at the same time. Golanski started transmitting, with the camera showing not only him but Weiss beast eyes as the pet crawled adjacently to him out of pure curiosity. With the mic on, he cleared his throat and said a typical line to make it known to the oblivious sender that they are now in fact online.