Episode 7.5: The Alexandra's Patrol
Stardust Falcon
Legendary Creature - Bird Wizard
- Location
- The Infinite Sorrow
On Fluttering Wings
Episode 7.5:
The Alexandra's Patrol
Episode 7.5:
The Alexandra's Patrol
Scars of the many wars that had occurred in the past littered the region of the Dimensional Sea that the TSAB claimed as its jurisdiction. Unspent munitions, lost and sunken ships, fallout from exotic weaponry, and more reminders of previous ages of strife littered the space between dimensions in various stages of inertness, buffeted about by the currents of the Sea.
For the most part, the Bureau's policies of resource prioritization left what amounted to so much garbage unchecked. If and when cosmic happenstance or deliberate intervention brought a particularly dangerous Lost Logia to a place where it was capable of enacting harm, it was dealt with. Otherwise, given the sheer vastness of space, proactively trawling for such objects was generally considered to be a losing proposition; an unreasonable commitment of effort towards something that might never become a problem at all, or worse yet, a self-fulfilling prophecy where attempts to prevent a future crisis instead caused that very same crisis.
Part of the impetus for patrols within TSAB space was to ensure that any such drifting objects of mass destruction were located and isolated when they got too close to inhabited worlds for comfort. It was, after all, far easier for a ship like the Alexandra to open up with its full arsenal against something unmoored from reality, adrift in the Sea where the output from the TSAB's own impressive portfolio of strategic weapons could not harm anyone that they weren't being aimed at. An impressive portfolio that seemed to grow a little bit more every day, fueled by inventive minds both within and without the Bureau's ranks, despite the fact that the worlds and all their peoples were enjoying an almost unprecedented era of peace.
There were days in which Fate considered that fact and dismayed over it.
"Attention all hands. An unidentified Category 4 object has been detected on long range scanners. Proceed to battle stations."
...Today, it seems, would not be one such day.
Measured footsteps carried her through the warship's passageways towards the bridge. Keeping an even stride was important here. It wouldn't do at all to rush, or to be seen rushing. As the senior Enforcer on ship, she was looked to as a bastion of strength, as a source of confidence, as an inspiration for those she sailed with. Anything that seemed to suggest panic on her part would invite panic into the rest of the crew and harm morale.
Category 4 objects were not sufficient reason to panic.
Objects encountered adrift in the Sea were categorized based on their apparent physical size and energy output. What the Alexandra had picked up on its scanners would be either the size of a large cruiser or putting out comparable levels of power. Likely a derelict ship from some long-sunk fleet, in other words, exactly the sort of thing that the TSAB's heaviest warships were built to handle.
Striding into the bridge, the blonde offered polite nods to the rest of the assembled command crew. Her eyes quickly locked onto the central display screen as she came to a stop at the Captain's right shoulder. The object displayed on screen was indeed a derelict ship of some sort. Likely a carrier, based on the shape of the remaining parts of the hull. She didn't need to look at the life signs scanner to confirm that they hadn't detected anybody on board the ship. With huge rents torn into its side, the Sea on the opposite side of the ship visible in places through where some other ship's weaponry had punched through cleanly, life support within the wreck would have been incredibly challenging at best, and more likely simply impossible now.
The ship wasn't totally inert, however. Other sensors were picking up energy output of some kind. Fate was an expert in many things, but warship engineering was not one of them. She wouldn't be able to tell what the energy readings they were picking up meant, if they even meant anything. Fortunately, she didn't have to be. "Status report?"
"We've been holding at maximum range since we first acquired its signal," Captain Lily Maybach responded. Young but ambitious, Maybach had been a recent installation to this ship, having earned a promotion from her previous duties serving as XO on the Claudia. It was, in fact, a favor to her dear brother Chrono that had seen the adopted Harlaown taking the assignment to the Alexandra in the first place, in order to look after one of his dear subordinates as the younger girl came into her own as a ship captain.
"Its energy profile suggests that something - or several somethings - are still active on the ship," came the lilting voice of the ship's Chief Science Officer. "Hard to tell what from this distance, but moving closer has its own risks."
Fate nodded at this, casting a quick glance around the bridge. Every position was occupied by a senior officer in charge of one of the ship's departments. They'd just be waiting for confirmation from the various departments themselves that all of the rank and file sailors were ready to go.
Said confirmation came in moments later, as though prompted by her thoughts, the strong voice of the Alexandra's Executive Officer ringing out across the bridge. "Everyone's in position, Captain!"
"Alright, then," confirmed Captain Maybach, doing an admirable job to suppress the nervousness that the senior Enforcer knew she was feeling over the prospect of her first actual engagement in full command of a warship. "Let's go have us a closer look at our ghost ship."
"No change in behavior yet!"
"Roger! Continuing our approach!"
Slowly, steadily, the Alexandra crept closer to the derelict, her crew intent on learning as much as they could about the long-forsaken relic. Fate tuned out the rote calls and responses of the bridge crew as the ship moved. Her burgundy eyes remained locked on the main viewscreen, where augmented visual scans of the distant wreck were steadily growing to dominate the field of view, in time with the numerical representation of their distance apart ticking down.
They'd been approaching it at what passed for a sedate pace in terms of dimensional travel, out of an abundance of caution and a respect for its unknown capabilities. Some of its systems were demonstrably still active, working at some unknown purpose that engineering had yet to clarify.
"Vital scan completed. No detectable signs of life on board the unknown vessel!"
Ship automation had been just one of the many fields in which lost Alhazard's technology had excelled beyond the limits of reason. Legends told of mighty fleets comprised of warships operated by single mages the same way a modern sailor would operate her Device. They'd seen enough examples of Lost Logia which barely required more than a warm body to function that the blonde Enforcer had a hard time dismissing such legends as impossibilities. And even a pale imitation of such technology cobbled together by one of the civilizations that followed in Alhazard's wake would undoubtedly be able of a level of independent action that was years ahead of modern auto-piloting.
Charging in blindly was an open invitation to disaster, in other words. Just because the ship was as devoid of life as expected did not mean it was any less of a threat.
"I don't like this," Captain Maybach muttered under her breath, and Fate turned her attention away from the viewscreen to watch the young bluenette aggressively adjusting her tie in what any Enforcer could have easily recognized as a nervous habit. "We're practically in spitting range. Why hasn't it done anything yet?"
An excellent question that engineering had yet to provide an answer for. So far the extent of their knowledge regarding this derelict was a long list of what it wasn't doing. No attempts to communicate on any known frequency, no matches to any known form of scanning or weaponry, and no lives to preserve on board.
With a start, the Captain realized that she had caught the blonde's attention. "Oh! Sorry. It's just... A feeling I've got. Like something's about to happen."
"Something?"
"Energy spike!" The Chief Tactical Officer cried out before Lily could elaborate.
"I have it," confirmed the Chief Science Officer, "it doesn't match any of the previous readings!"
Both women's eyes narrowed as they turned back towards the viewscreen. Parts of the wreckage previously flagged as inert were now aglow with the visualization of the energy spike that the Alexandra's scans had picked up. The Enforcer's attention was drawn to what appeared under the highlighting to be an oddly-shaped gun, more elliptical than rounded.
"That's a launcher," Captain Maybach declared after a moment, projecting enough confidence to bury her own nerves. Not that anyone would have blamed her for admitting to nervousness, least of all Fate, who was now entirely too aware of the likelihood that the Captain would shortly be entering her first live combat scenario at the head of her own ship.
"Our ghost ship is about to launch something, then?"
"Probably. I suspect we're not lucky enough to find out that our ghosts have nothing to launch." The young bluenette swallowed all the fears and doubts she was not about to broadcast out to the entirety of the crew, and then, "We're going to be ready in case whatever comes out of that launcher does so swinging. Seal the bridge and prepare for combat!"
"Roger!" A chorus of affirmations echoed around the bridge in response.
Energy continued to build in the ghost ship for several moments. The Captain's wintergreen eyes stayed fixed on the viewscreen, her grip on her chair's armrests tightening until her knuckles began to turn white. Her nervousness was understandable. This would be her first time engaging in ship combat as a Captain, with nobody to fall back on.
But there was hardly enough time to worry about that fact before the energy finally released and several drones were launched into the space between the two warships.
Wide, flying wings, with no real body to speak of, broken up only by the eight propellers positioned along the backs of the drones. A tremendous amount of effort had clearly been taken towards minimizing the amount of material needed to produce these, with anything that wasn't absolutely vital to propulsion stripped away to make room for more weapons. And there were quite a lot of missiles strapped to the underside of the drones, alongside several turrets. Each was no doubt capable of raining destruction across a very wide area if left unchecked.
Fate watched with narrowed eyes as the drones broke free from the main ship, counting off ten in total, moving with inhuman synchronicity. Perhaps the main ship was providing central coordination? It didn't matter either way.
None of these drones would be allowed out of the area intact. The Alexandra and her crew would make certain of that.
For a moment, there was a perfect and unnatural stillness in the space between the Alexandra and her quarry, as both sides readied for combat. Targeting locks were achieved on hostiles one through eleven, shields were brought to bear, and everyone seemed to be waiting for somebody else to blink first.
Captain Maybach let out a long breath, exhaling the last of her doubts and hesitations, and gave the order. "Open fire."
A volley of lasers streaked out from the TSAB warship in answer, disrupting the enemy drones' formation but accomplishing little else as they gracefully rolled out of the line of fire. The main carrier made absolutely no effort towards evading the shots. There was apparently no need for it to do so with two of the drones launching missiles to intercept the incoming fire, producing several harmless detonations in the middle of the empty space between the two ships. Those same drones fell backwards into guard positions around the main carrier, with the remaining eight advancing on the superdestroyer in an attempt to surround her.
But for all that she was one of the TSAB's heaviest warships, the Alexandra was deceptively nimble, and her crew was entirely unwilling to sit still and let themselves be hemmed in. Another volley of lasers issued forth, focused on the drone that had been attempting to line up beneath them. The hostile's shields flared into visibility for a moment underneath the strain before it was forced to break off into evasive maneuvers.
Inertial negators kept the bridge and her occupants still and comfortable even as the large ship dove out of the forming cordon and into pursuit of their chosen target. Picking the enemy drones off one at a time would be the key to victory here, Fate knew. Their warship was easily capable of neutralizing and capturing a single drone at a time. All they had to do was keep the rest of the drone swarm from pinning them down while they focused fire on each target in turn.
As though realizing escape would be impossible for it, the fleeing drone suddenly flipped into an Immelmann turn, its nose coming to point at the Captain through the viewscreen in what was almost a display of defiance. Then, alarms began to blare throughout the bridge, angry red warnings flooding the viewscreen in concert with the drone flooding the space around itself with more missiles and lasers than its frame could have possibly held.
The Alexandra's point defense array came to life immediately, but the assembly of anti-missile guns was not nearly large enough to eliminate more than a third of the incoming firestorm. Now it was the superdestroyer's shields that flared into visibility as the much heavier craft weathered the enemy's dying alpha strike, even as her own main weapons array struck a killing blow in reprisal.
"Shields holding at 82%!" Somebody called out from the bridge, the Enforcer paying the barest minimum of attention to the words in favor of watching the cloud of scrap that had formerly been an attack drone drift out of coherence. "Hostile nine confirmed destroyed!"
One down, nine to go. But at this rate...
Not content to wait and allow the TSAB forces to pick them off one at a time, three more drones broke from the pack, moving to keep the warship penned in along its current course. A fourth drone meanwhile dumped its entire payload in another alpha strike. Fate heard the order given to evade distantly, disregarding it in favor of watching with hawk eyes as the offending drone peeled back towards its carrier, hopefully confirming for her crew exactly how much firepower each drone could bring to bear at a time.
Useful information in an academic sense. Still, they needed to do something to avoid losing the battle to simple attrition, to avoid being beaten by nothing more than numerical superiority. But the Alexandra just didn't have the capacity to target more than two of the drones at any given time. They'd have needed more guns for that, or an escort ship, or...
A memory surfaced in her mind then, of a battle fought long ago, and of her birth mother reaching out across dimensions to launch a powerful attack fueled by a dimensional reactor. The younger Testarossa wouldn't dream of being able to replicate that feat in its entirety, but then again, she didn't need to.
Fate had an entire crew to lean on to make up the difference.
"Captain? I believe that I can shoot down some of the hostiles directly, with assistance. Permission to transfer to engineering?"
"Granted," without hesitation, and the bridge melted away in a flash of her power.
Bardiche was already setting up in her hands as the ship's engineering section materialized around her. A quick mental nudge had the dutiful Intelligent Device pulling up the relevant research notes that had been compiled on cross-dimensional spellcasting theory. Another sent notifications to the ship's available engineers to be ready to switch priorities towards casting assistance.
The Enforcer trusted her device to delegate and convey information as needed, freeing her to focus on preparing to cast the spell itself, the most important part of this task.
"Please tell me that you're joking."
"I believe that we can do this, Doctor." Fate responded, not bothering to look back over her shoulder at the source of the complaint. Everyone who served on the Alexandra for any length of time would recognize the voice of her lead doctor, a slightly neurotic man who had been serving in the TSAB for longer than Fate herself had been alive. Him being here wasn't much of a surprise. Medical would've been informed about any major undertaking like the one she was about to engage in, and Doctor McCoy's nature demanded that he be on hand personally in case any of the thousand things he could imagine going wrong did.
Despite that, he was one of the best in the Bureau, and she wouldn't begrudge him for his personality.
He fell into step at her left shoulder, leoprine ears pressed back in a display of nervousness, gesturing for emphasis. "Oh, sure. Never you mind that this is something we've never practiced with about twenty different moving parts, it'll just work!"
"It will," the Enforcer agreed, "we'll make it work."
Presea Testarossa had been many things, a meticulous researcher not the least among them. Everything she'd done had been thoroughly documented with care taken towards ease of understanding, and most of that documentation had been recovered by the Bureau for analysis. Some of it had been implemented, and other parts had been buried as abhorrent knowledge, but the treatises on cross-dimensional spellcasting hadn't fallen into either category; the practical requirements were beyond all but the strongest of mages, and a standard cannon could tie the necessary supporting infrastructure together just as easily without demanding the participation of one of the few S-Class mages counted among the ranks of the Navy.
But in this case, one such S-Class mage was available, and an extra gun was not.
"Yeah, I know that tone. There's no talking you out of this, huh?" He sighed loudly, and the ship chose that moment to shudder under the increasing strain of the combat they were still embroiled in, prompting a second sigh. "Alright, fine. But you're going to be explaining this to Nanoha during the medical leave you're going on when all this is over."
"Of course," she nodded, "When all this is over."
Sliding doors opened to reveal an auxiliary power control room with a window overlooking the Alexandra's main core. Inside, two engineers were busily setting a makeshift firing platform up, barely pausing long enough to offer polite nods in greeting to the Enforcer and the Doctor. McCoy returned an equally terse nod before busying himself with double-checking tolerances and flow projections. Fate calmly strode up to the center of the platform as the activity continued around her, turning the calculations Bardiche was relaying over in her mind.
Firing across dimensions required a tremendous amount of both power and control. The cartridge system was theoretically capable of providing enough power to puncture the dimensional barrier on its own. However, it did so in the form of a single-shot infusion of mana that gave up any reasonable degree of control in exchange for the dramatic leaps in both firepower and casting speed that the system was known for; using cartridges to power a cross-dimensional bombardment was therefore far more likely to result in a spell that unraveled long before actually connecting with its target.
What was needed instead was a way to continually pour energy into a sustained spell matrix at a constant rate. Cartridges simply weren't capable of that regardless of how their consumption was managed. However, a more stable power supply that was designed to be constantly drawn from, such as a ship's dimensional reactor, would be capable of providing the requisite energy to the spell without precluding the necessary level of control over the resulting effect.
Essentially, they were plugging Bardiche into the Alexandra's systems and then rerouting power to him away from some combination of non-essential secondary systems, allowing the Device and his master to use their own bombardment magic as an analogue for an additional set of gun installations. Doable, but not entirely without risk, especially given the lack of practice, something which the Enforcer silently resolved to correct alongside another silent apology to her wife. Nanoha had always stressed the importance of careful practice and safe repetitions before attempting any kind of major spellwork. One of the few ways a student could actually truly fail in her lessons was to recklessly try something that they'd seen or read about one time.
The voice of one of the engineers cut in to her thoughts before they could continue. "Everything looks good on our end, ma'am!"
"Bridge is sending us targeting information now." Came the voice of the other engineer.
Fate nodded in acknowledgement, most of her focus still fixed to her Device and to the notes and formulae that she was about to execute on. Rereading the research multiple times was a poor substitution for any kind of practice, but there would be plenty of time to make it up to her wife for setting such a poor example later.
"Still not too late to go back to the planning board for a better idea..." Doctor McCoy muttered, trailing off as a dangerous rattling passed through the ship briefly as though the Alexandra herself was refuting him. "Alright, alright. Medical is signing off on this reckless spellcasting action."
The Enforcer did him the kindness of pretending not to hear what had been muttered under his breath.
Letting the targeting information flow from the ship and through the patchwork systems into her, the blonde dug her back heel into the casting platform, bracing herself as the diverted power from the reactor suddenly rushed into the impromptu pathways and threatened to knock her over under the sheer force. A moment taken to find her bearing again, another moment taken to re-confirm her targets.
In his own way, Bardiche offered his own support, smoothly intoning an unnecessary but not unwelcome request to [Get set.]
Fate was set and a bright yellow casting circle spinning up from her feet let everyone around her know it.
Another moment passed, the tense silence disrupted only by the low whirr of the background machinery and the sound of building charge as her entire world reduced down to the glaive in her hands and the math in her mind.
And then the silence broke. "[Thunder Rage ODJ]!"
Lightning tore across the calculated targeting vector and into the targeted drone. The recoil from the initial burst of energy needed to actually open a path for the attack to flow down was enough to cause her back knee to buckle, dropping the veteran roughly to the floor, but it quickly stabilized and sustaining the effect past that point was hardly any more demanding than sustaining a more conventional bombardment. She held the effect for several seconds, energy arcing through critical enemy systems, paralyzing the drone and preventing it from launching any sort of retaliatory strike.
"Target destroyed!" Spoke an indistinct voice that sounded like it was coming from miles away. Fate nodded in acknowledgement, pushing herself back up to her feet, smoothly resetting her stance as she selected another target, and fired again. She fared no better with the recoil from the second shot, but her second target met the exact same fate as the first one had.
Through it all, the Alexandra's bridge had hardly been idle, her dedicated weaponry working to eliminate the rest of the remaining drones. The blonde's head felt oddly stuffed as she took stock of the situation while resetting for a third shot. Seven of eight attacking drones destroyed, leaving the main carrier and the two drones that had posted to guard positions around it along with the final attacker that was moving to reinforce. Their own shields had taken a pummeling but were not completely fried, and the Bureau warship was already moving to close on the main hostile. Much better odds than what they'd faced a few minutes ago.
But taking out that last attacker in the throes of its withdrawal would make their odds better still. "[Thun-"
A loud coughing noise interrupted her mid-cast. Fate whirled around, ready to scold whichever of the engineers had gotten entirely too close to her based on how loud said noise had been in her ears, but nobody was there. Another cough forced the realization that it was her own coughing she was listening to, her off hand moving from Bardiche to politely cover her mouth and prompting a wince at the odd wet feeling which resulted.
The coughing subsided quickly but not nearly quickly enough. She became dimly aware of the fact that all the connections she would have needed to finish casting a third Thunder Rage ODJ had been cut. And then she became dimly aware of a hand locked around her wrist belonging to the ship's esteemed Doctor as he finished examining the flecks of blood there and shifted his attention to the rest of her.
"Mana poisoning!" He announced after a long moment, voice tinged with the unmistakable false cheer of an angry medical professional reminding somebody that they'd told them so. "Alright, let's go get this taken care of."
Fate nodded agreeably, allowing herself to be half-dragged off the platform in the direction she vaguely remembered the medical bay being.
There is a certain inherent aesthetic quality shared by all medical facilities. A low and incessant background track comprised of the beeps and whirs of the machinery. Pungent antiseptic odors mixing with the aroma of sickness and injury. Though the precise nature of each component may change, though efforts can be made to stifle or baffle the whole, 'Hospital Feel' can never truly be eliminated.
And by virtue of this single subtle binding tying every hospital together, from the most prestigious campuses all the way down to any given military sickbay, it was easy enough when confined to a hospital birth to imagine being anywhere else in the universe. It wouldn't even feel that different.
Fate hated that about hospitals. Hated it even more for the fact that it was she herself confined to mandatory bedrest, gaining a newfound appreciation for what it must have been like when it was her beloved wife in a bed just like this one with friends and loved ones worrying over her.
"I'm not going to say you made the right choice here."
The senior Enforcer's thoughts turned at the sound of Doctor McCoy's voice from somewhere beyond the foot of her bed. Lifting her head up slowly to establish eye contact with the man after a moment of silence, she prompted, "But...?"
"But nothing!" He snapped back. "Never mind that there were any number of worse outcomes that you and we avoided today. This was still such a reckless action that I forgot which Takamachi I had under my care for a minute."
That drew a wince from the bedridden blonde.
"If you do something like this again, I guarantee you'll be in for something worse than stage two mana poisoning and the host of minor strains you developed. Having said that. You did manage to avoid suffering any permanent damage and we are all still sailing the Dimensional Sea, so congratulations are in order. I'm told that thanks in part to your actions the bridge was able to confirm all hostiles neutralized or destroyed. They're preparing a party to investigate the wreckage as we speak."
She nodded and moved to pull herself fully upright and out of the bedding. "Understood. When should I-"
"You are going to do nothing more demanding than walking to the terminal for the next two weeks." McCoy interjected, causing her to abort her attempt to leave bed halfway through. "Captain Maybach has already confirmed your leave and requested a shuttle to tow our single casualty and some of the more interesting bits of space flotsam back to Mid."
Considering that her last vacation had been cut somewhat short, she supposed that getting another vacation wasn't the worst thing in the world, even if it was an enforced vacation due to medical concerns.
"Very well," the Enforcer offered in acquiescence. The doctor nodded, a small smile gracing his face for a moment.
Then his smile turned vicious. "Oh, and when you get a chance, your wife wants to talk to you. She's holding on line three."
Fate winced again before nodding in wordless dismissal, and turning to the berth's built in communication node, preparing herself to face the music.
