Failed Assignment

Back aboard the Romulus, Colonel Grills was resting back in his chambers, He hadn't fallen asleep yet, but he was getting close, As his eyelids began to shut themselves, putting him into the blissful embrace of sleep, He heard a small beep. 

His eyes quickly snapped open at the sound. He looked to his left as he saw the hologram of the notification. 

It seemed that something was going on, And it was related to the Jeager, There was no specifics on what exactly, but regardless, he got up and quickly got prepared before heading towards the bridge. 

As he reached the bridge, He was greeted by his assistant. 

"Sir, You're here!"

"What's going on with the Jeager? What are they doing?" He asked as he walked past the assistant and entered the bridge. 

As he took his seat, he looked at his assistant expectedly. There were a few other surrounding them, all officers in charge of different stations. Everyone had a glum look on their face.

It seemed that something had went wrong.

Seeing that he was struggling to say what he wanted to say, he quickly ordered. 

"Speak!"

That managed to open his mouth. 

"Sir, The Jeager.... It suddenly sped up." He spoke as he broke down in cold sweat. His combat suit worked actively to keep him cool when it noticed the sudden spike in temperature. 

"What?!?  What do you mean by suddenly sped up?" He barked.

"Sir... Please watch this." The assistant said as he played a recording of the jeager. 

The projection showed the Jeager flying through at blazing speeds. It was currently moving faster than any other ship in the vicinity, and outside of FTL, it could very well have been one of the fastest ship at that moment. 

"Sir, as you can see, The Yeager started to suddenly gain more speed than what was predicted. The methods of how it achieved such speeds are still unknown." The assistant reported. 

Colonel Grills' eyes went bloodshot after hearing this, He saw the jeager speed up by an order of magnitude over the short span of 15 minutes. 

He wasn't sure what technology was able to achieve a feat like this, But he had a feeling that the answer wasn't as simple as that.

"Where's the Jeager right now?"  He asked as he looked at his assistant for answers. 

"its...."

"WHERE IS IT?" The Colonel roared. 

"It's nearing the LaGrange point, It'll be there within 5 minutes." He spoke as his voice went numb towards the end. 

He knew that his colonel was gonna be quite pissed about this. He had specifically ordered him to keep the Jeager from leaving the empire at all costs. And now,  he had failed. 

"WHAT!" He stood up. Shaking with anger he asked. 

"How did they get there? Why didn't you fire the missiles? What were you doing sitting on your chair lazing around?" He asked, His tone clearly furious. 

"Sir.. We tried to fire the EMP missiles once we noticed it's unusual behavior. But..."

"But what?"

"But the guidance system couldn't lock onto them. They were simply moving too fast." Spoke another officer from behind. He was in charge of aiming and firing the missiles. 

"What the hell were you guys doing? Why are you in charge of stuff on this ship if you can't even contain a single cruiser? How do you all expect to defend the borders of the empire if you unable to do such a simple task?" Colonel Grills spoke as he looked at all the officers lined up before him. 

'Useless, all of them' He thought to himself. 

"Have you tried contacting them?"

"Yes, but they've denied our hail time and time again."

"Just like we did theirs's huh."

Everyone was silent. They didn't have any answer. 

"Show me their current location and get me in touch with their leader. Don't fail me this time." He ordered as he sat back down on his seat. He turned his eyes towards the huge projection in front of him. 

It instantly turned to the Projection of the Jeager. 

As the distance from the Romulus was quite great, The live feed wasn't great. 

But he could clearly make out the small silhouette of the ship. 

"Where's the target LaGrange point?" He asked. 

A single point lit up in the projection showing the point. 

"That's weird, How did they get here in the first place? Weren't they supposed to be way off their target?" He asked. Noticing that something was off, The Jeager wasn't supposed to reach here directly in the first place. 

"That's actually an anomaly sir, We're not sure how it managed to reach here. Our models showed their trajectory far away from their destination."

"Hmm, Show me their trajectory after the gravity assist."

The projection expanded and showed a line that represented their trajectory. It seemed that half way through they were suddenly able to change their direction without losing any speed! Instead, they even gained a bit!

"What the hell! What's going on?" The Colonel exclaimed. It wasn't possible to suddenly change their direction like that, Specially while moving so fast!

"Sir, It seems that they somehow was able to take advantage of a small asteroid that was just passing through and change their trajectory." Another officer spoke.

He changed the projection to show the asteroid in question. It was a really small asteroid and the Jeager only passed through the outskirts of it's gravity well, And that was enough to get the change in direction that it wanted. 

"That piece of...." The Colonel wanted to curse at the genius of the maneuver. He was impressed at whoever was responsible for that plan. But he refrained from cursing out loud. 

The projection change back to the Jeager. Although it had began to slow down a bit as it was reaching it's target, It still was going quite fast. 

"Can we stop them right now?" He asked.

"Even if we fire right now, The missiles won't reach fast enough. They'll be long gone before it reaches them."

"Damn bastards." The colonel cursed under his breath. He had failed his assignment. And that meant that he would need to give answers to a lot of people.

He silently watched as the Jeager quickly transitioned into FTL as soon as it reached the LaGrange point. 

"Huh! Don't they need to come to a halt to transition into FTL?" The colonel asked curiously as he lokoed at his assistant. 

"That's.... Normally the case. But.."

"But they somehow managed to transition into FTL while moving 3 times their normal speed."

"That seems to be the case."

"Interesting." The colonel said as he wondered what kind of technology was used to achieve this feat. And wondered whether this was what his superiors were after. 

Perhaps, he wasn't meant to know the answer.