A couple notes before the story.
This symbol * means a jump in perspective, three spaces mean a...
This symbol * means a jump in perspective, three spaces mean a...
The Pirates of Fresha Mil-sci-fi-Fan short story.
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A couple notes before the story.
This symbol * means a jump in perspective, three spaces mean a jump to a later time, a space-*-space means a jump in time into a different perspective.
This short story (Which I'll be posting the parts of over time) is meant to be an introduction to my scifi series which I've yet to figure out a name for. If you notice any spelling mistakes or grammar blunders just let me know.
Feel free to leave a comment, constructive criticism is welcome and sought for.
Emergency Message
Type: SU-SCEC/T-41
Subject: Redeployment Orders.
To: Captain Alexander Urserin of the USS Excalibur
From: Admiral Hansen of Third Fleet.
>Message Begin
Captain, I have a new assignment for you and the Excalibur. The solar system Fresha, one of the Hiranji's systems, is having a bit of a problem.
Pirates have been raiding their freighters and mining ships and stations throughout the system. Thus far, they've stolen nearly two million tonnes of polycirium, the metal used for starship hull armour and frames, and seven and a half million tonnes of other assorted material and export. They've been attacking for around two months though we've only just received word, I want to know why.
I want the Excalibur to put an end to these attacks, you may be wondering how you're expected to destroy an entire pirate fleet on your own, you are not. You'll be given temporary flag status and command of the Fresha system's defence ships, I'm also directing another Union starship your way. If you leave today, you'll get there before them, see that you do.
Keep me appraised of your status, Captain, I expect this issue to be dealt with quickly and efficiently. Oh and don't leave the Hiranji's out of the loop, if we want them to fully integrate into the Union, they must be made comfortable with their fellow sapients.
I've attached all the possible data sheets and information we have on the situation and the vessels that will be involved. Good luck, captain.
Message End<
That message had arrived to Captain Alexander Urserin's personal data-slate three hours ago, the three hours after that had been spent bringing the Excalibur out to the system edge, so they could activate the Starjump drive.
The USS Excalibur had been in the inhabited Union system of Laern, a system owned by the Triffol—a small dog-like social species which provided a fair amount of maintenance workers for the Union Star navy.
The Excalibur's purpose for being in that system was simply, showing the flag, so to say. Civilians tended to get worried when their system wasn't patrolled by Union warships, despite many systems having their own 'militia' defence force.
Not that Urserin could blame them for wanting the actual Union warships around, most system defence ships tended to be horribly outdated with old weaponry, though they tended to have a lot of energy weapons, which gave them the appearance of being up to date.
That was only because most colony worlds couldn't afford to outfit their ships with actual kinetic weapons—railguns, coilguns, mass driver, accelerators, etc—or ordnance weapons. Thus they used energy weapons, which allowed them to avoid having to spend a large amount of their GDP on ammunition.
Actual star nations didn't favour any single weapon type, the Union used Directed energy weapons, exotic energy weapons, kinetic weapons, ballistic munition weapons, ordnance weapons, directed energy ordnance weapons, etc. Favouring any single weapon type made a star nation's naval forces far to vulnerable to that weapons weaknesses.
Just like a stare nation's ground side forces used a variety of AFV and waterborne assets together along with artillery to fight in the most efficient manner, star navies did the same.
"Captain," Lieutenant Markus Laernin, sensors officer, said. "We have just left the celestial shadow zone, we may engage Starjump drives at any time."
"Thank you, Sensors." Urserin said, then turned to helm officer, Lieutenant Riden Ferra. "Helm, take us forward, activate Starjump drives once you have plotted a course."
"Aye, aye Captain." She replied. "Speed of Starjump?"
"Full power, helm." Urserin said, and leaned back in his command throne.
From Laern to Fresha it was around twelve light years, a three day journey for the Excalibur with Mk 2 Starjump drives. Urserin had yet to receive the order calling him back to the nearest star yards to replace the aging Mk 2 drives for the newer Mk 3s.
While the entirety of the Excalibur was getting somewhat long in the tooth, the rest of the heavy destroyer was still competitive in the modern field of space combat. Her starjump drives definitely needed an overhaul, they were nearly seventy years old, the Mk 3 Starjump drives had been invented thirty years ago.
The Mk 2 drives went four light years a day, the Mk 3 went at five light years a day. The Mk 1s were even slower at only two light years a day.
"Course plotted, Captain, engaging starjump in five seconds." After saying that, Lieutenant Ferra began to count down from five, all across the bridge the various officers went about checking last minute reports from their respective station.
Once reaching zero, the helm officer pressed a holographic button on the terminal before him and the Excalibur leaped ahead, tearing open a hole in space-time to enter Etherspace-1. The cameras showing the stars all about went black, then flashed brightly into white and purple before finally settling on an amalgamation of purple, white, orange and green light flashing by in all directions in wild helix patterns and swirling vortexes. They were now in Etherspace-1.
"Starjump entered correctly, captain, en route to the Fresha system, E.T.A three days, count down begins." As the helm officer said this, a chronometer appeared on the bridge's primary tactical screen, counting down the time until they returned to real space.
"Exec," Urserin said, looking to his executive officer, "Take care of crew shift tables, I want a freshly rested A shift ready for any possible action the moment we shift into the Fresha system. I will be retiring to my quarters for the remainder of this day, I want to be kept informed of all happenings on the ship." Rising from his chair, Urserin motioned for his executive officer Sarah Iollmil to also rise. "Exec, you have tthe bridge."
Nodding, she said. "Aye, Captain, I have the bridge."
Alexander Urserin left the bridge promptly without any more naval pomp, but nor did he make it seem he was rushing out. A captain must always remain calm and collected before his or her crew and must never show weakness of any kind.
Leaving the bridge, Urserin made his way more slowly through the Excalibur's halls. Nodding and returning the greetings of the enlisted star navy personal he passed. Smiling he spoke a few words of encouragement to his crew he passed at their duty stations. It was also important for the Captain to keep his ship's crew's morale up.
While what he had said to the commander had been correct, Urserin was not immediately retiring to his quarters. Firstly, he wanted to stop by and speak to the Excalinur's chief engineer, master chief petty officer Derin Hammil.
Urserin found the Master chief in the Excalibur's primary engineering section, just forward of the Hyper-plasmium reactors and within a short hop of the grav engines and Starjump drive. The master chief was in his office in primary engineering, seated at his desk, going over a few files.
Looking up at the sound of his office door cycling open, the master chief stood and said. "Skipper, who do I have to thank for the honour of your visit."
"Just stopping by Master chief, I wanted a update on the old girl's fangs and shielding. We'll be going into combat with pirates in a couple days and I need to know what I'm working with."
"Who sent the order bringing us into combat?" The master chief snarled, clearly pissed the old ship was going to be brought into combat. "They should know the Excalibur ain't as she once was."
"Admiral Hansen, master chief, he knows we're not up to snuff in terms of combat capabilities. He's giving me command of the Fresha system's defences and another Union starship, he knows master chief."
"Doesn't mean I have to like it, this ship hasn't been fully functioning at one hundred percent for years, Skipper."
"Just give me the run down, master chief. I have to go over the tactical files the Admiral gave me."
Shrugging the master chief reached into one of the lower drawers of his desk and pulled out a small folder. Cracking it open the master chief said, "of our three Photon E-torp launchers, only the center one is working, the other two have burnt out grav coils. I sent in a request form for replacement, but I've yet to hear back.
"Of our two forward Laser arrays, the port has a damaged multi-lens, it can fire, but not at full power. Our ventral laser array and dorsal laser array are in perfect working order. Our three star board and three port light rail autocannons are also fully functional, though we only have eighty percent of our full ammunition load." Sighing the master chief shook his head, "I would prefer not to bring her into battle captain, out laser arrays are older M703s, and our E-torp is a Mk 7. these are outdated captain, we could do damage with them, but not close to the damage of a fully modernized version like the Yacartia."
Urserin nodded, well aware of what he and the rest of the crew of Excalibur was missing out on. The Yacartia was one of the Excalibur's sister ships, she was the first to undergo their classes modernization program of the year 567 FA, eleven years ago.
A large amount of the Union's Unity-class Heavy destroyers had been destroyed in the Union-Federation war of 512-530. Those that remained were a pitifully small number, though some new hull were constructed until service time of the Excaliburs had ended in 558 FA.
Service time pretty much meant that while the Unity-class was still in use in the fleet with the remainder of them serving in rear detachment positions or in wolf-packs, they were no longer actively constructed at any fleet yards, though they were repaired.
Plenty of Union fleet officers began their careers on old outdated starships, plenty of which never saw combat and in the rare circumstance they did, it was against privateers or pirates or corsairs.
Of course, certain situations existed that forced older ships to be put into active combat and for mothballed ships to be pulled into active service. A particularly devastating war was one such possibility, the Union-Federation war of 512-530 hadn't been that bad that the Union had need of outdated ships, but things had gotten damned close during that war.
"We're going up against pirates, master chief, we won't have to worry about our old pea shooters failing to damage them. We'll have more then enough firepower to get the job done, I'm more worried about our friendly ship that coming in. The state we're in and they're going to see us in."
From Urserin's tone and specific words, as well as his facial expressions, he made it seem like it was going to b slightly embarrassing for other Union star navy personnel to see them in the old Exclibur. While in reality he was thinking they'd have far different thoughts, such as 'why is the captain of a rusted old junk bucket of a ship the flag officer of their operation'.
Smiling suddenly, Urserin said. "Ah, oh well, the old girl's served us well. If they say anything about her old frame we'll crack a few skulls together."
"Aye, skipper, that we will."
Turning to leave the chief engineers officer, Urserin was at the door when he suddenly stopped an turned around. "Hey, master chief, you mind if I take those reports detailing our current equipment situation?"
"Go for it, skipper."
Urserin nodded, "thank you," he said as he took the folder from Hammil's offered hand and left the master chief's office.
Now he actually did make his way to his quarters, with a folder containing the information on all systems of his ship under one arm and his data-slate with the tactical reports and other data the Admiral had collected under the other arm.
Once he was sealed in his own personal quarters, Urserin sat himself down at his own desk and cleared some room on the top. Shoving aside a cluster of billet forms and requests for shore leave, requests he would have to deny during the trip, at least until they made it back to Laern. But even then he might deny them shore leave, fifteen Union space marines and the star navy crew gallivanting around a Triffol world on shore leave was a thought that could keep a commanding officer up at night.
With a few deft jabs of his right index finger, Urserin navigated through a couple screens to the tactical data regarding his soon to be flag command.
Fresha's defence force was a grand total of three century old corvettes, each a hundred and seventy five meters long. All were of the same class, Hiranji Ibeliask-class corvettes. Two laser arrays and a single forward E-torpedo launcher. On their own, each of these individual corvettes weren't that big of a threat, but grouped together, they had a fair amount of damage capability.
They'd been built at the Shipyards of Gaia, one of the Union's farthest Crown worlds, and one of the farthest shipyards as well. Though Hellgate was probably even farther, to be absolutely truthful, though, Urserin had never checked to be sure.
It was kind of curious that the Ibeliask corvettes had been built at the Gaia shipyards. Gaia had some of the largest shipyards around with half a dozen slipways each, that Crown world could construct an enormous amount of heavy ships at once, why contract them to build a bunch of corvettes.
And not even that many, the information Admiral Hansen had provided also gave him the number of Ibeliask corvettes that had been made. That number was a pitiful eighty, why was only a tiny amount built. The Unity-class had nearly six hundred ships built and the original commissions had called for over seven hundred Unity-class Heavy destroyers.
Of the eighty Ibeliask-class corvettes that had been built, sixty were destroyed, four were decommissioned and six were missing. That left ten corvettes that the Hiranji used as improptu system defence boats to patrol their systems. Impressively, despite their age, the three corvettes Urserin was to command, seemed in remarkable shape. All their systems were running, all their weapons worked—that gave them a heavier E-torpedo launch then the Excalibur—their shields were fully functional and their fusion reactors fully powered.
That was the other issue Urserin had with the Ibeliask, they were powered by fusion reactors instead of the more powerful Hyper-plasmium reactors the Union had made standard. This meant they had Impulse drives and not Warp drives for quick in system travel—though that itself wasn't necessarily better or worse—and fusion shields instead of Deflector shields.
While fusion and plasma shields were older then the newer deflector shields—newer as in they were invented in the year 493 FA—they weren't necessarily bad. While deflector shields could take more punishment from enemy fire, they consumed more power and recharged fairly slowly once they fell. Plasma and fusion shields in comparison, consumed less power and were well known for their incredibly quick recharge rates.
Thus, Plasma and fusion shields weren't useless in a modern battlescape, not yet at least. Technically, the same was true for fusion powered ships using impulse for in system movement, especially if all the ship was supposed to do was sit around and defend a specific system.
The next data page Urserin looked into, was a page detailing the Union starship that was being deployed to assist him and the corvettes in destroying the pirates.
The USS Talon, a light frigate of the Freedom-class. Ships of that class were missile frigates, their main missiles being Union standard Starfire M3 Cruise missiles for long range bombardment, the Freedom had six launchers for these—three per broadside—and for closer range combat had tac-missiles—six launchers per broadside—and a pair of Laser arrays, one ventral and one dorsal.
Urserin frowned at the page detailing the USS Talon, why was her crew complement classified, he wondered. It seeemed a particularly strange piece of information to keep from others, and a Union fleet officer to boot.
Shrugging he continued onto the next data report, this one had to do with the pirates themselves. The sensors and corvettes in the Fresha system had caught the signals of around five pirate ships, though they'd only seen three of these at close enough range to identify them. The other two had remained to far away and had only vaguely seen them on Thermal, gravity and mass sensors.
Of the three pirate ships that had been close enough to identify, only one of them had actually been identified by class and type. The other two ships had been placed as a corvette-type ships.
The actual ship who had been identified was an Antlion I-class frigate, Urserin wasn't actually that majorly worried about this ship, since the Antlion I-class had mainly been designed as an anti-starfighter and anti-strikecraft ship.
The Antlion I's actual ship-to-ship weapons was only two laser arrays, everything else was designed to do the Antlion I's assigned duties. Though some countermeasure weapons—the overarching terms for flak, PD and CIWS weapons—could technically be used against hostile starships.
The flechette shotgun was categorized as primarily an anti-starfighter hull weapon—that meant it was primarily used against a starfighter once its shields were dropped—could be used to blast away an enemy starships sensors and various external weaponry. It wasn't strong enough to actually pierce starship armour, but not everything could be behind armour plating.
Because plenty of people tended to underestimate flak ships, these defence ships have actually scored quite a couple mission kills and combat kills by attacking a ship directly, like the enemy wouldn't expect if they were arrogant enough to assume the flak ship couldn't hurt them.
Urserin wasn't even worried about the two corvettes that had attacked alongside the Antlion I, what he was worried about were the two larger ships. He knew they were lager through some simple deductive reasoning, and the mass sensor readings. When the pirates fled after their last raid, the two mystery ships joined the frigate and corvettes in running, however somethings became obvious as the pirates made their escape.
The corvettes took the front of the fleeing group, as they were the fastest, with the Antlion next and the two other ships trailing behind. The distance they were trailing behind added with their mass readings made him believe those two secret ships had to be either destroyers or heavy destroyers and there was two of them.
While both forces had five ships, Urserin had three corvettes, a frigate and a heavy destroyer; the enemy had two corvettes, a frigate and two heavy destroyers. The enemy had a tonnage advantage over his force and who bloody well knew what kind of weapons the pirates had.
All their raids up to this point had been on civilian freighters, who generally don't need a lot of convincing to heave to when an armed ship demands them to. Such was the reality of free, civilian run, trade; pirates were more cocky in attacking civilian ships.
The primary counter civilian freighter captains used was getting an armed escort, whether that be star nation military, colonial fleet militia, mercenaries, or whomever was available. Another counter was to create a Q-ship. Armed and armoured freighters.
Freighters themselves were humongous vessels, unlike in ancient times when freighters sailed on a sea, the distances between two planets were much larger and the required goods much higher. Freighters needed to be huge in order to carry the necessary goods.
Because of their huge size, a freighter could actually slap on a shield generator and a few weapons and some armour fairly easily and not cut too deeply into their allotted cargo space. This wasn't done more often because the freighters were captained by civilians and no star nation just went around giving their civilians weaponry capable of killing the life on a planet all willy nilly, even if they'd have to get through a world's shield first.
The Union was incredibly strict on which civilian freighter captains it allowed to arm their vessels, because of a freighters size, if someone—like a pirate—went all out in arming and armouring one, they would create an ungodly powerful ship, even with the outdated technology most pirates could only get their hands on.
Some of the Union's most powerful ships and most deadly of carriers were converted from freighters, which with the equipment of a full on star nation had been turned into the first superdreadnoughts and superbattleships.
For a modern star nation, there was indeed a difference between a battleship and dreadnought, and a dreadship—which is related to both—a dreadnought is generally built in a specific way, to focus all firepower in one direction, generally forward. A battleship by comparison, doesn't focus its firepower in any one direction, in fact it doesn't focus on anything. Battleships are jacks-of-all-trade.
The super versions of both are just oversized versions of those smaller ships, there was also a superdreadship as well. A super ship—excluding supercruisers and supercarriers—were fairly rare massive ships—the union had around a dozen superbattleships—that stood out as some of the heaviest and most dangerous ships around.
The pirates in Fresha had managed to get a hold of two heavy destroyers or the equivalent ship type, which while not as bad as those few pirates who had fully armed and armour freighters, was still pretty bad.
While on a one for one basis, Urserin would rate a star nation ship higher then the equivalent tonnage pirate ship, even if that state ship was old like the Excalibur, there were two heavy destroyers in this scenario.
The tactical issue they were faced with was thus, while the Excalibur would be able to most assuredly destroy one pirate heavy destroyer in a head to head clash, it would probably not win against two. All the pirates had to do was destroy the Excalibur with both heavy destroyers and the send them to join the fight with the rest of the Union flotilla and then destroy them.
It was something he'd have to think over, there had to be some manner by which he could even the odds more in his flotilla's favour. But how, he wondered. With only a single working E-torp launcher he couldn't send out nearly as heavy of a E-torp barrage as his pirate counterparts—assuming they even had torpedoes, whether or not they were energy or physical torpedoes was another thing entirely—and of his other weapons, only really the light rail autocannons were in position to deal a huge amount o hull damage. The laser arrays had been designed more for precision fire against certain targets on an enemy ship and until he could get an active and correct image scan of the pirate ships, he couldn't plan out targets for the laser arrays.
While the laser arrays were ship-to-ship weapon systems, they weren't heavy damage dealers. They wouldn't crack the armour and hull of a heavy enemy combatant, the E-torps and rail autocannons did that.
Though there was a possibility the pirates didn't have that much armour, while logic dictated that a heavy destroyer or similar vessel have about ten to twelve centimeters of armour, when ships were removed from military service and placed on the civilian market, they were stripped of ninety eight percent of their armour. And the armour that remained was lower quality anti-micro impacts armour.
While it wasn't impossible for a pirate or even a civilian to get their hands of armour grade Polycirium, it was expensive and any non-military personnel that bought it had to go through a background check and various other pains in the neck. Not to mention most nations tended to keep an eye on who bought them and why, a few probes in the right places could show any curious star nation what those individuals were up to with the armour.
The reason for this was simple, you didn't need armour grade polycirium to protect against micro-asteroids and other space debris, regular civilian grade polycirium did that just fine. Armour grade was for stopping atual kinetic impacts and energy weapons fire and explosions, things civilian ships shouldn't be coming into contact with in a perfect galaxy.
But it wasn't a perfect galaxy and star nations did sell armour grade polycirium, its expense helped keep it in check. It wasn't even because of markup, armour grade polycirium was difficult to make, while not entirely, Urserin corrected, it wasn't difficult, just time consuming.
Urserin decided that once he arrived at Fresha, he was going to go through the systems records of all armour grade polycirium that it had sold or had stolen. He anted to know if he was going to come up against armoured ships, because if he did, he needed a better way to crack armour.
There were a lot of things he needed to do once he arrived at Fresha, all of which were going to be extraordinarily tiresome to do. But such was the life of a fleet captain, or just a fleet officer in general. Things had gotten incredibly more complex ever since humanity took to the stars, who knew how many thousands of years ago.
This symbol * means a jump in perspective, three spaces mean a jump to a later time, a space-*-space means a jump in time into a different perspective.
This short story (Which I'll be posting the parts of over time) is meant to be an introduction to my scifi series which I've yet to figure out a name for. If you notice any spelling mistakes or grammar blunders just let me know.
Feel free to leave a comment, constructive criticism is welcome and sought for.
Emergency Message
Type: SU-SCEC/T-41
Subject: Redeployment Orders.
To: Captain Alexander Urserin of the USS Excalibur
From: Admiral Hansen of Third Fleet.
>Message Begin
Captain, I have a new assignment for you and the Excalibur. The solar system Fresha, one of the Hiranji's systems, is having a bit of a problem.
Pirates have been raiding their freighters and mining ships and stations throughout the system. Thus far, they've stolen nearly two million tonnes of polycirium, the metal used for starship hull armour and frames, and seven and a half million tonnes of other assorted material and export. They've been attacking for around two months though we've only just received word, I want to know why.
I want the Excalibur to put an end to these attacks, you may be wondering how you're expected to destroy an entire pirate fleet on your own, you are not. You'll be given temporary flag status and command of the Fresha system's defence ships, I'm also directing another Union starship your way. If you leave today, you'll get there before them, see that you do.
Keep me appraised of your status, Captain, I expect this issue to be dealt with quickly and efficiently. Oh and don't leave the Hiranji's out of the loop, if we want them to fully integrate into the Union, they must be made comfortable with their fellow sapients.
I've attached all the possible data sheets and information we have on the situation and the vessels that will be involved. Good luck, captain.
Message End<
That message had arrived to Captain Alexander Urserin's personal data-slate three hours ago, the three hours after that had been spent bringing the Excalibur out to the system edge, so they could activate the Starjump drive.
The USS Excalibur had been in the inhabited Union system of Laern, a system owned by the Triffol—a small dog-like social species which provided a fair amount of maintenance workers for the Union Star navy.
The Excalibur's purpose for being in that system was simply, showing the flag, so to say. Civilians tended to get worried when their system wasn't patrolled by Union warships, despite many systems having their own 'militia' defence force.
Not that Urserin could blame them for wanting the actual Union warships around, most system defence ships tended to be horribly outdated with old weaponry, though they tended to have a lot of energy weapons, which gave them the appearance of being up to date.
That was only because most colony worlds couldn't afford to outfit their ships with actual kinetic weapons—railguns, coilguns, mass driver, accelerators, etc—or ordnance weapons. Thus they used energy weapons, which allowed them to avoid having to spend a large amount of their GDP on ammunition.
Actual star nations didn't favour any single weapon type, the Union used Directed energy weapons, exotic energy weapons, kinetic weapons, ballistic munition weapons, ordnance weapons, directed energy ordnance weapons, etc. Favouring any single weapon type made a star nation's naval forces far to vulnerable to that weapons weaknesses.
Just like a stare nation's ground side forces used a variety of AFV and waterborne assets together along with artillery to fight in the most efficient manner, star navies did the same.
"Captain," Lieutenant Markus Laernin, sensors officer, said. "We have just left the celestial shadow zone, we may engage Starjump drives at any time."
"Thank you, Sensors." Urserin said, then turned to helm officer, Lieutenant Riden Ferra. "Helm, take us forward, activate Starjump drives once you have plotted a course."
"Aye, aye Captain." She replied. "Speed of Starjump?"
"Full power, helm." Urserin said, and leaned back in his command throne.
From Laern to Fresha it was around twelve light years, a three day journey for the Excalibur with Mk 2 Starjump drives. Urserin had yet to receive the order calling him back to the nearest star yards to replace the aging Mk 2 drives for the newer Mk 3s.
While the entirety of the Excalibur was getting somewhat long in the tooth, the rest of the heavy destroyer was still competitive in the modern field of space combat. Her starjump drives definitely needed an overhaul, they were nearly seventy years old, the Mk 3 Starjump drives had been invented thirty years ago.
The Mk 2 drives went four light years a day, the Mk 3 went at five light years a day. The Mk 1s were even slower at only two light years a day.
"Course plotted, Captain, engaging starjump in five seconds." After saying that, Lieutenant Ferra began to count down from five, all across the bridge the various officers went about checking last minute reports from their respective station.
Once reaching zero, the helm officer pressed a holographic button on the terminal before him and the Excalibur leaped ahead, tearing open a hole in space-time to enter Etherspace-1. The cameras showing the stars all about went black, then flashed brightly into white and purple before finally settling on an amalgamation of purple, white, orange and green light flashing by in all directions in wild helix patterns and swirling vortexes. They were now in Etherspace-1.
"Starjump entered correctly, captain, en route to the Fresha system, E.T.A three days, count down begins." As the helm officer said this, a chronometer appeared on the bridge's primary tactical screen, counting down the time until they returned to real space.
"Exec," Urserin said, looking to his executive officer, "Take care of crew shift tables, I want a freshly rested A shift ready for any possible action the moment we shift into the Fresha system. I will be retiring to my quarters for the remainder of this day, I want to be kept informed of all happenings on the ship." Rising from his chair, Urserin motioned for his executive officer Sarah Iollmil to also rise. "Exec, you have tthe bridge."
Nodding, she said. "Aye, Captain, I have the bridge."
Alexander Urserin left the bridge promptly without any more naval pomp, but nor did he make it seem he was rushing out. A captain must always remain calm and collected before his or her crew and must never show weakness of any kind.
Leaving the bridge, Urserin made his way more slowly through the Excalibur's halls. Nodding and returning the greetings of the enlisted star navy personal he passed. Smiling he spoke a few words of encouragement to his crew he passed at their duty stations. It was also important for the Captain to keep his ship's crew's morale up.
While what he had said to the commander had been correct, Urserin was not immediately retiring to his quarters. Firstly, he wanted to stop by and speak to the Excalinur's chief engineer, master chief petty officer Derin Hammil.
Urserin found the Master chief in the Excalibur's primary engineering section, just forward of the Hyper-plasmium reactors and within a short hop of the grav engines and Starjump drive. The master chief was in his office in primary engineering, seated at his desk, going over a few files.
Looking up at the sound of his office door cycling open, the master chief stood and said. "Skipper, who do I have to thank for the honour of your visit."
"Just stopping by Master chief, I wanted a update on the old girl's fangs and shielding. We'll be going into combat with pirates in a couple days and I need to know what I'm working with."
"Who sent the order bringing us into combat?" The master chief snarled, clearly pissed the old ship was going to be brought into combat. "They should know the Excalibur ain't as she once was."
"Admiral Hansen, master chief, he knows we're not up to snuff in terms of combat capabilities. He's giving me command of the Fresha system's defences and another Union starship, he knows master chief."
"Doesn't mean I have to like it, this ship hasn't been fully functioning at one hundred percent for years, Skipper."
"Just give me the run down, master chief. I have to go over the tactical files the Admiral gave me."
Shrugging the master chief reached into one of the lower drawers of his desk and pulled out a small folder. Cracking it open the master chief said, "of our three Photon E-torp launchers, only the center one is working, the other two have burnt out grav coils. I sent in a request form for replacement, but I've yet to hear back.
"Of our two forward Laser arrays, the port has a damaged multi-lens, it can fire, but not at full power. Our ventral laser array and dorsal laser array are in perfect working order. Our three star board and three port light rail autocannons are also fully functional, though we only have eighty percent of our full ammunition load." Sighing the master chief shook his head, "I would prefer not to bring her into battle captain, out laser arrays are older M703s, and our E-torp is a Mk 7. these are outdated captain, we could do damage with them, but not close to the damage of a fully modernized version like the Yacartia."
Urserin nodded, well aware of what he and the rest of the crew of Excalibur was missing out on. The Yacartia was one of the Excalibur's sister ships, she was the first to undergo their classes modernization program of the year 567 FA, eleven years ago.
A large amount of the Union's Unity-class Heavy destroyers had been destroyed in the Union-Federation war of 512-530. Those that remained were a pitifully small number, though some new hull were constructed until service time of the Excaliburs had ended in 558 FA.
Service time pretty much meant that while the Unity-class was still in use in the fleet with the remainder of them serving in rear detachment positions or in wolf-packs, they were no longer actively constructed at any fleet yards, though they were repaired.
Plenty of Union fleet officers began their careers on old outdated starships, plenty of which never saw combat and in the rare circumstance they did, it was against privateers or pirates or corsairs.
Of course, certain situations existed that forced older ships to be put into active combat and for mothballed ships to be pulled into active service. A particularly devastating war was one such possibility, the Union-Federation war of 512-530 hadn't been that bad that the Union had need of outdated ships, but things had gotten damned close during that war.
"We're going up against pirates, master chief, we won't have to worry about our old pea shooters failing to damage them. We'll have more then enough firepower to get the job done, I'm more worried about our friendly ship that coming in. The state we're in and they're going to see us in."
From Urserin's tone and specific words, as well as his facial expressions, he made it seem like it was going to b slightly embarrassing for other Union star navy personnel to see them in the old Exclibur. While in reality he was thinking they'd have far different thoughts, such as 'why is the captain of a rusted old junk bucket of a ship the flag officer of their operation'.
Smiling suddenly, Urserin said. "Ah, oh well, the old girl's served us well. If they say anything about her old frame we'll crack a few skulls together."
"Aye, skipper, that we will."
Turning to leave the chief engineers officer, Urserin was at the door when he suddenly stopped an turned around. "Hey, master chief, you mind if I take those reports detailing our current equipment situation?"
"Go for it, skipper."
Urserin nodded, "thank you," he said as he took the folder from Hammil's offered hand and left the master chief's office.
Now he actually did make his way to his quarters, with a folder containing the information on all systems of his ship under one arm and his data-slate with the tactical reports and other data the Admiral had collected under the other arm.
Once he was sealed in his own personal quarters, Urserin sat himself down at his own desk and cleared some room on the top. Shoving aside a cluster of billet forms and requests for shore leave, requests he would have to deny during the trip, at least until they made it back to Laern. But even then he might deny them shore leave, fifteen Union space marines and the star navy crew gallivanting around a Triffol world on shore leave was a thought that could keep a commanding officer up at night.
With a few deft jabs of his right index finger, Urserin navigated through a couple screens to the tactical data regarding his soon to be flag command.
Fresha's defence force was a grand total of three century old corvettes, each a hundred and seventy five meters long. All were of the same class, Hiranji Ibeliask-class corvettes. Two laser arrays and a single forward E-torpedo launcher. On their own, each of these individual corvettes weren't that big of a threat, but grouped together, they had a fair amount of damage capability.
They'd been built at the Shipyards of Gaia, one of the Union's farthest Crown worlds, and one of the farthest shipyards as well. Though Hellgate was probably even farther, to be absolutely truthful, though, Urserin had never checked to be sure.
It was kind of curious that the Ibeliask corvettes had been built at the Gaia shipyards. Gaia had some of the largest shipyards around with half a dozen slipways each, that Crown world could construct an enormous amount of heavy ships at once, why contract them to build a bunch of corvettes.
And not even that many, the information Admiral Hansen had provided also gave him the number of Ibeliask corvettes that had been made. That number was a pitiful eighty, why was only a tiny amount built. The Unity-class had nearly six hundred ships built and the original commissions had called for over seven hundred Unity-class Heavy destroyers.
Of the eighty Ibeliask-class corvettes that had been built, sixty were destroyed, four were decommissioned and six were missing. That left ten corvettes that the Hiranji used as improptu system defence boats to patrol their systems. Impressively, despite their age, the three corvettes Urserin was to command, seemed in remarkable shape. All their systems were running, all their weapons worked—that gave them a heavier E-torpedo launch then the Excalibur—their shields were fully functional and their fusion reactors fully powered.
That was the other issue Urserin had with the Ibeliask, they were powered by fusion reactors instead of the more powerful Hyper-plasmium reactors the Union had made standard. This meant they had Impulse drives and not Warp drives for quick in system travel—though that itself wasn't necessarily better or worse—and fusion shields instead of Deflector shields.
While fusion and plasma shields were older then the newer deflector shields—newer as in they were invented in the year 493 FA—they weren't necessarily bad. While deflector shields could take more punishment from enemy fire, they consumed more power and recharged fairly slowly once they fell. Plasma and fusion shields in comparison, consumed less power and were well known for their incredibly quick recharge rates.
Thus, Plasma and fusion shields weren't useless in a modern battlescape, not yet at least. Technically, the same was true for fusion powered ships using impulse for in system movement, especially if all the ship was supposed to do was sit around and defend a specific system.
The next data page Urserin looked into, was a page detailing the Union starship that was being deployed to assist him and the corvettes in destroying the pirates.
The USS Talon, a light frigate of the Freedom-class. Ships of that class were missile frigates, their main missiles being Union standard Starfire M3 Cruise missiles for long range bombardment, the Freedom had six launchers for these—three per broadside—and for closer range combat had tac-missiles—six launchers per broadside—and a pair of Laser arrays, one ventral and one dorsal.
Urserin frowned at the page detailing the USS Talon, why was her crew complement classified, he wondered. It seeemed a particularly strange piece of information to keep from others, and a Union fleet officer to boot.
Shrugging he continued onto the next data report, this one had to do with the pirates themselves. The sensors and corvettes in the Fresha system had caught the signals of around five pirate ships, though they'd only seen three of these at close enough range to identify them. The other two had remained to far away and had only vaguely seen them on Thermal, gravity and mass sensors.
Of the three pirate ships that had been close enough to identify, only one of them had actually been identified by class and type. The other two ships had been placed as a corvette-type ships.
The actual ship who had been identified was an Antlion I-class frigate, Urserin wasn't actually that majorly worried about this ship, since the Antlion I-class had mainly been designed as an anti-starfighter and anti-strikecraft ship.
The Antlion I's actual ship-to-ship weapons was only two laser arrays, everything else was designed to do the Antlion I's assigned duties. Though some countermeasure weapons—the overarching terms for flak, PD and CIWS weapons—could technically be used against hostile starships.
The flechette shotgun was categorized as primarily an anti-starfighter hull weapon—that meant it was primarily used against a starfighter once its shields were dropped—could be used to blast away an enemy starships sensors and various external weaponry. It wasn't strong enough to actually pierce starship armour, but not everything could be behind armour plating.
Because plenty of people tended to underestimate flak ships, these defence ships have actually scored quite a couple mission kills and combat kills by attacking a ship directly, like the enemy wouldn't expect if they were arrogant enough to assume the flak ship couldn't hurt them.
Urserin wasn't even worried about the two corvettes that had attacked alongside the Antlion I, what he was worried about were the two larger ships. He knew they were lager through some simple deductive reasoning, and the mass sensor readings. When the pirates fled after their last raid, the two mystery ships joined the frigate and corvettes in running, however somethings became obvious as the pirates made their escape.
The corvettes took the front of the fleeing group, as they were the fastest, with the Antlion next and the two other ships trailing behind. The distance they were trailing behind added with their mass readings made him believe those two secret ships had to be either destroyers or heavy destroyers and there was two of them.
While both forces had five ships, Urserin had three corvettes, a frigate and a heavy destroyer; the enemy had two corvettes, a frigate and two heavy destroyers. The enemy had a tonnage advantage over his force and who bloody well knew what kind of weapons the pirates had.
All their raids up to this point had been on civilian freighters, who generally don't need a lot of convincing to heave to when an armed ship demands them to. Such was the reality of free, civilian run, trade; pirates were more cocky in attacking civilian ships.
The primary counter civilian freighter captains used was getting an armed escort, whether that be star nation military, colonial fleet militia, mercenaries, or whomever was available. Another counter was to create a Q-ship. Armed and armoured freighters.
Freighters themselves were humongous vessels, unlike in ancient times when freighters sailed on a sea, the distances between two planets were much larger and the required goods much higher. Freighters needed to be huge in order to carry the necessary goods.
Because of their huge size, a freighter could actually slap on a shield generator and a few weapons and some armour fairly easily and not cut too deeply into their allotted cargo space. This wasn't done more often because the freighters were captained by civilians and no star nation just went around giving their civilians weaponry capable of killing the life on a planet all willy nilly, even if they'd have to get through a world's shield first.
The Union was incredibly strict on which civilian freighter captains it allowed to arm their vessels, because of a freighters size, if someone—like a pirate—went all out in arming and armouring one, they would create an ungodly powerful ship, even with the outdated technology most pirates could only get their hands on.
Some of the Union's most powerful ships and most deadly of carriers were converted from freighters, which with the equipment of a full on star nation had been turned into the first superdreadnoughts and superbattleships.
For a modern star nation, there was indeed a difference between a battleship and dreadnought, and a dreadship—which is related to both—a dreadnought is generally built in a specific way, to focus all firepower in one direction, generally forward. A battleship by comparison, doesn't focus its firepower in any one direction, in fact it doesn't focus on anything. Battleships are jacks-of-all-trade.
The super versions of both are just oversized versions of those smaller ships, there was also a superdreadship as well. A super ship—excluding supercruisers and supercarriers—were fairly rare massive ships—the union had around a dozen superbattleships—that stood out as some of the heaviest and most dangerous ships around.
The pirates in Fresha had managed to get a hold of two heavy destroyers or the equivalent ship type, which while not as bad as those few pirates who had fully armed and armour freighters, was still pretty bad.
While on a one for one basis, Urserin would rate a star nation ship higher then the equivalent tonnage pirate ship, even if that state ship was old like the Excalibur, there were two heavy destroyers in this scenario.
The tactical issue they were faced with was thus, while the Excalibur would be able to most assuredly destroy one pirate heavy destroyer in a head to head clash, it would probably not win against two. All the pirates had to do was destroy the Excalibur with both heavy destroyers and the send them to join the fight with the rest of the Union flotilla and then destroy them.
It was something he'd have to think over, there had to be some manner by which he could even the odds more in his flotilla's favour. But how, he wondered. With only a single working E-torp launcher he couldn't send out nearly as heavy of a E-torp barrage as his pirate counterparts—assuming they even had torpedoes, whether or not they were energy or physical torpedoes was another thing entirely—and of his other weapons, only really the light rail autocannons were in position to deal a huge amount o hull damage. The laser arrays had been designed more for precision fire against certain targets on an enemy ship and until he could get an active and correct image scan of the pirate ships, he couldn't plan out targets for the laser arrays.
While the laser arrays were ship-to-ship weapon systems, they weren't heavy damage dealers. They wouldn't crack the armour and hull of a heavy enemy combatant, the E-torps and rail autocannons did that.
Though there was a possibility the pirates didn't have that much armour, while logic dictated that a heavy destroyer or similar vessel have about ten to twelve centimeters of armour, when ships were removed from military service and placed on the civilian market, they were stripped of ninety eight percent of their armour. And the armour that remained was lower quality anti-micro impacts armour.
While it wasn't impossible for a pirate or even a civilian to get their hands of armour grade Polycirium, it was expensive and any non-military personnel that bought it had to go through a background check and various other pains in the neck. Not to mention most nations tended to keep an eye on who bought them and why, a few probes in the right places could show any curious star nation what those individuals were up to with the armour.
The reason for this was simple, you didn't need armour grade polycirium to protect against micro-asteroids and other space debris, regular civilian grade polycirium did that just fine. Armour grade was for stopping atual kinetic impacts and energy weapons fire and explosions, things civilian ships shouldn't be coming into contact with in a perfect galaxy.
But it wasn't a perfect galaxy and star nations did sell armour grade polycirium, its expense helped keep it in check. It wasn't even because of markup, armour grade polycirium was difficult to make, while not entirely, Urserin corrected, it wasn't difficult, just time consuming.
Urserin decided that once he arrived at Fresha, he was going to go through the systems records of all armour grade polycirium that it had sold or had stolen. He anted to know if he was going to come up against armoured ships, because if he did, he needed a better way to crack armour.
There were a lot of things he needed to do once he arrived at Fresha, all of which were going to be extraordinarily tiresome to do. But such was the life of a fleet captain, or just a fleet officer in general. Things had gotten incredibly more complex ever since humanity took to the stars, who knew how many thousands of years ago.
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- Location
- Prince George
Part two
"All hands, now hear his," Commander Iollmil said over the ship-wide comms. "We are about to exit Etherspace-1 in T minus seventy six seconds, report to you duty stations and stand by for maroon alert."
Throughout the execs entire speech, Urserin didn't say a word, he trusted Sarah enough to know the basic procedures for exiting a starjump, instead he busied himself with staring at the primary view screen and occasionally the holo-pool.
Maroon alert was stand procedure for a ship exiting a starjump. In laymen terms it meant, 'we have no idea whatever the hell could be around us when we exit etherspace-1, all crew get ready for combat but don't go to full red alert'.
Halfway through the chronometer countdown that showed how much time was left until they arrived, Urserin called out. "Guns, verify all available weapons are ready."
"Aye, sir," Lieutenant Frennish, the only non-human on the Excalibur, a Revin'iol. "All weapons available are at one hundred percent and ready to fire at a moments notice."
"Helm, grav engines."
"Grav engines are at one hundred percent and ready to move."
"Shields."
"Deflector shield capacitors charged and ready to raise shields as soon as we leave etherspace-1." Lieutenant Gallin Orit said.
"Good," Urserin said and leaned back in his command throne, all his needed systems were ready for the moment they immediately left etherspace-1. Because shields could not be raised during a starjump, a lot of research had been put into detecting were a ship was going to emerge so as to ambush them immediately after they emerged.
This wasn't a fool proof system, your ship had to be within at least a hundred thousand kilometers of the ship roughly four hours before it emerged. Outside of being in such close range, only very specialized and very powerful sensors on purpose built platforms could detect a ship leaving a starjump.
Alongside this were the conspiracy theorists that thought most star nations were actually researching weapons that could be used during a starjump on another ship in a starjump. Those theorists who thought this were almost always the basement dweller types who had no idea about the actual mechanics of a starjump. They generally had no idea about the distances and speeds involved, no ship had ever met another ship during a starjump.
It was actually theoretically possible to do so, intersect a ship during a starjump. That was the thing though, in theory, it had never been done simply because of the damned distances and speeds involved. Then again, Urserin wasn't in the habit of declaring certain things impossible, for had faster then light travel not once been considered impossible. So, there was always the chance sometime in the future that someone of some star nation would discover a way to catch up to and battle with another ship during a starjump.
Throughout the ship, a low vibration began to emit, it shuddered through every person on the USS Excalibur. Many were the personnel that had grown used to the feeling of emerging from a starjump. Others had to grit their teeth and grab hold of something as they rode out the emergence.
The view screens all showed the Union's star map of the Fresha system and not the view outside the Excalibur, it was an exceedingly bad idea to look out into Etherspace-1.
There were five primary celestial bodies of the Frssha system and passed them an asteroid field. The asteroids were mostly nickel-iron, none of which held any importance for just about any star nation, with a few polycirium asteroids, though these ones had mining stations on them.
Of the five celestial bodies of the star system of Fresha, only Fresha III was inhabited, the first two were the opposite sides of a coin in terms of boiling hot and blisteringly cold. The last two bodies were a gas giant and ginormous rock, it could have been a full on planet in maybe a million years or so, but as it was, a barren rock with no really important materials, it held no interest for the hiranji. There weren't that many places for a pirate group to be hiding out in Fresha, it had to be on one of the asteroids.
But where, he thought, the hiranji had estimated that the Fresha systems asteroid field held approximately thirteen billion objects larger then a four meter cube. And while, yes with the amount and size of the pirate ships that did help cut down the number of possible hiding places, it still left roughly ten thousand objects. With forty or so being dwarf planets. Ten thousand objects, that was impossible to search with a force his size.
Made even worse in that they couldn't use warp in it, while a real asteroid belt's objects were actually kilometers away from each other and it was highly unlikely you would crash into one in real space, the important part of that was 'real-space'. Warp also entered etherspace-1 to allow a ship to accelerate quickly and move around a solar system quickly. The problem being, how did a ship know what was in front of it when it left warp, what was in the same space as it when it exited warp.
If a ship were to exit warp inside, say, an asteroid or comet the result would be very explosive. The ship would most likely explode or crumple or shatter into millions of pieces, all of which were detrimental to the survival of the ship's crew.
With what felt like the universe being torn in two, the Excalibur emerged from Etherspace-1. To immediate messages popping up from a nearby relay station.
"Skipper," Lieutenant Yanithal Arnoril said seconds after they emerged, "we're being beamed a number of vocal status reports, sir."
"Give me the short and sweets, comms."
"There has been another attack, sir, the pirates hit a freighter roughly sixty thousands kilometers from our current position, just on the outside of the asteroid belt."
"Sixty thousand," Urserin said, "that's damn close to the Celestial shadow zone, how far are we from the system primary, sensors?"
"About forty seven AU, skipper."
"That's not a very long distance all things considered." Urserin muttered.
Sarah shrugged, "it's not a very big system, skipper."
"Helm, take us to the position of the attack, I want to see where it happened."
"Aye, skipper," the Exec said and turned to the helm officer. "Helm, take us ahead, grav speed on a direct course for the attack site. ETA to arrival?"
"Thirteen seconds, Commander." Lieutenant Ferra said.
"Thank you, helm," Sarah turned to Urserin and said. "Plot calculated, captain, awaiting further orders."
"Thank you, Exec, take your place at the CIC section."
"Aye, captain, taking command of the CIC." Sarah stepped back and down the dais upon which his command throne sat upon. Behind the bridge was a series of transpharasteel shutters, on the other side of these was a room of terminal upon terminal along with a number of view screens and holo-tables like the bridge.
The CIC was were the majority of the bridge crew was situated, the battlebridge was were the ship's captain and his or her main officers sat and controlled the ship. In CIC, more minute things were performed, they watched various data, worked out various sensor locks and weapon lock ons among other things.
Generally, the CIC couldn't run the ship on their own, but the bridge could run the ship on their own.
Generally a ship's exec remained within the CIC for a number of reasons, from making sure both a ship's first and second highest officers weren't killed in the event of the bridge being perforated by enemy fire, to various other reasons.
Thirteen seconds was not remotely that long, not by any standards and the excalibur arrived shortly after the exec had moved over into CIC.
"Captain, we are approaching the attack site," Lieutenant Ferra called out.
"Helm, bring us close, within one thousand kilometers. Tactical, get me a picture on the primary view screen, I want to see the extent of the damage."
"Aye, aye, sir, bringing up image now." Said Lieutenant Verandi Grosslen.
With a blink, an image had appeared on the primary view screen, the image was a live feed from one of the Excalibur's external hull cameras, whichever one had the best shot.
Reaching down, Urserin pressed down a comm button on his command throne and said. "Exec, what is that freighter's class, size and mass?"
"She was the UCS Ripporat, civilian according to the ship prefix, part of the Hiranji civilian freighter trade and a member of the Frishok-class. She's eight hundred and twenty six meters long, masses around one hundred and fifty thousand tonnes, though considering she's pretty much a set of engines, bridge and habital section all crammed inside of a giant empty box, her mass isn't that shocking."
"What is shocking exec is that the Ripporat is missing around a hundred meters off her stern side, engines, starjump drive, everything. The pirates didn't even take the ship's cargo, why?"
"That, I don't know, sir, but whatever it is the pirates are up to, it can't be good."
Drumming his fingers against his command throne's left armrest, Urserin frowned as he stared at the still mostly intact freighter. If the pirates hadn't taken the cargo, of which there was a huge amount, that meant they'd purposely attacked the Ripporat just to take its engines and starjump drive and Impulse drive.
"Exec, could the pirate's be lacking in FTL engines, perhaps that is why they have taken the engine block from thee Ripporat and nothing else."
"It's possible, skipper, I believe Union standard practice is to remove a warships FTL drive before placing it on the market. The pirates could have bought their warships legally and then started getting their missing components illegally via piracy."
"Did the Hiranji report any other attacked ship missing their engine block?"
"One moment, sir, I'll check the records." Urserin's ear piece comm went quiet as the Exec checked. While he was busy doing that, Urserin clicked another comm button on his command throne, one that went to a different area and said.
"Sergeant Urelin, this is the captain."
A brief moment of silence, then the commanding officer of the Excalibur's marine contingent, which during peace times was only fifteen marines, though they could carry a full thirty during war time, said. "Aye, sir, this is sergeant Urelin, what do you need, skipper?"
"Get your marines readdy, sergeant and report to the primary landing bay. You will be boarding the wreakage of the UCS Ripporat, a cargo ship, to look for any possible survivors."
"Aye, aye, skipper, we'll get it done, we'll make the landing bay in three ninutes."
"Roger that, sergeant, Urserin out."
The moment Urserin ended the conversation with the sergeant, he heard a click of a connecting comm line and Sarah was speaking.
"Captain, i looked through all the reports, in the seven previous attacks, no engine blocks were cut off of the ships and they were all in fairly good shape. With maybe a few scorch marks on them from warning shots, the pirates took all the cargo though."
"What kind of cargo?"
"Polycirium, both armour grade and civilian grade. Grav engine parts and supplies, impulse engine parts and supplies, starjump parts and supplies. Cadalen crystals and other weapons and supplies. Shield generators, rifles, body armour, personal shields, vehicles and more war-fighting equipment."
"What the hell were they transporting all this weaponry and equipment for?"
"According to Fresha Orbital Watch, they were builing weapons and equipment on planet and shipping them off to some various other worlds for assembly and distribution."
"For how long has Fresha been supplying and building weapons?"
"Two months, apparently."
Urserin snorted and cracked the knuckles of his right fist into his left hand, feeling suddenly furious. "I don't like coincidences, Exec. How likely do you think it is for pirates to begin attacking at the same time Fresha starts changing around their exports, weapons, something pirates dearly desire."
"That could be why they attacked, skipper, to take the weapons Fresha is exporting."
"That could have happened, but not as quickly as it did, Fresha didn't have piracy problems before this and they have around two dozen polycirium mining stations, these are generally juicy targets for pirates. If the pirates were already here, I could see them jumping on the weapons quickly, but they weren't, how did they find out so quickly, Exec?"
"I have to admit, skipper, when you put it like that, it does seem fairly unlikely."
Urserin watched the destroyed Ripporat, his feelings of fury slowly rose the more he thought over this entire situation. He suddenly cursed the admiral for sending him into this entire situation. He couldn't bring the Hiranji in on this, someone on Fresha was leaking information and taking a check from the pirates, if they were pirates.
He now needed to send a new hypercomm message to Admiral Hansen. Let the admiral know there was some trickery going on in this system.
His comm buzzed, looking down to identify the point of origin, he said. "Hold one, exec." Switching channels he said, "status sergeant?"
"Armoured and armed up and waiting in Wasp-1's troop bay, sir."
"Roger that, sergeant, launch as soon as the pilot is ready and the blast doors have been dropped."
"Aye, aye sir, getting ready for launch."
Once again switching comm channels, he said. "Exec, drop primary landing bay blast doors with a ten second warning to everyone near them. The marines are going over."
"Aye, aye sir, I'll get it done."
Now, he thought, was just a matter of waiting.
"All hands, now hear his," Commander Iollmil said over the ship-wide comms. "We are about to exit Etherspace-1 in T minus seventy six seconds, report to you duty stations and stand by for maroon alert."
Throughout the execs entire speech, Urserin didn't say a word, he trusted Sarah enough to know the basic procedures for exiting a starjump, instead he busied himself with staring at the primary view screen and occasionally the holo-pool.
Maroon alert was stand procedure for a ship exiting a starjump. In laymen terms it meant, 'we have no idea whatever the hell could be around us when we exit etherspace-1, all crew get ready for combat but don't go to full red alert'.
Halfway through the chronometer countdown that showed how much time was left until they arrived, Urserin called out. "Guns, verify all available weapons are ready."
"Aye, sir," Lieutenant Frennish, the only non-human on the Excalibur, a Revin'iol. "All weapons available are at one hundred percent and ready to fire at a moments notice."
"Helm, grav engines."
"Grav engines are at one hundred percent and ready to move."
"Shields."
"Deflector shield capacitors charged and ready to raise shields as soon as we leave etherspace-1." Lieutenant Gallin Orit said.
"Good," Urserin said and leaned back in his command throne, all his needed systems were ready for the moment they immediately left etherspace-1. Because shields could not be raised during a starjump, a lot of research had been put into detecting were a ship was going to emerge so as to ambush them immediately after they emerged.
This wasn't a fool proof system, your ship had to be within at least a hundred thousand kilometers of the ship roughly four hours before it emerged. Outside of being in such close range, only very specialized and very powerful sensors on purpose built platforms could detect a ship leaving a starjump.
Alongside this were the conspiracy theorists that thought most star nations were actually researching weapons that could be used during a starjump on another ship in a starjump. Those theorists who thought this were almost always the basement dweller types who had no idea about the actual mechanics of a starjump. They generally had no idea about the distances and speeds involved, no ship had ever met another ship during a starjump.
It was actually theoretically possible to do so, intersect a ship during a starjump. That was the thing though, in theory, it had never been done simply because of the damned distances and speeds involved. Then again, Urserin wasn't in the habit of declaring certain things impossible, for had faster then light travel not once been considered impossible. So, there was always the chance sometime in the future that someone of some star nation would discover a way to catch up to and battle with another ship during a starjump.
Throughout the ship, a low vibration began to emit, it shuddered through every person on the USS Excalibur. Many were the personnel that had grown used to the feeling of emerging from a starjump. Others had to grit their teeth and grab hold of something as they rode out the emergence.
The view screens all showed the Union's star map of the Fresha system and not the view outside the Excalibur, it was an exceedingly bad idea to look out into Etherspace-1.
There were five primary celestial bodies of the Frssha system and passed them an asteroid field. The asteroids were mostly nickel-iron, none of which held any importance for just about any star nation, with a few polycirium asteroids, though these ones had mining stations on them.
Of the five celestial bodies of the star system of Fresha, only Fresha III was inhabited, the first two were the opposite sides of a coin in terms of boiling hot and blisteringly cold. The last two bodies were a gas giant and ginormous rock, it could have been a full on planet in maybe a million years or so, but as it was, a barren rock with no really important materials, it held no interest for the hiranji. There weren't that many places for a pirate group to be hiding out in Fresha, it had to be on one of the asteroids.
But where, he thought, the hiranji had estimated that the Fresha systems asteroid field held approximately thirteen billion objects larger then a four meter cube. And while, yes with the amount and size of the pirate ships that did help cut down the number of possible hiding places, it still left roughly ten thousand objects. With forty or so being dwarf planets. Ten thousand objects, that was impossible to search with a force his size.
Made even worse in that they couldn't use warp in it, while a real asteroid belt's objects were actually kilometers away from each other and it was highly unlikely you would crash into one in real space, the important part of that was 'real-space'. Warp also entered etherspace-1 to allow a ship to accelerate quickly and move around a solar system quickly. The problem being, how did a ship know what was in front of it when it left warp, what was in the same space as it when it exited warp.
If a ship were to exit warp inside, say, an asteroid or comet the result would be very explosive. The ship would most likely explode or crumple or shatter into millions of pieces, all of which were detrimental to the survival of the ship's crew.
With what felt like the universe being torn in two, the Excalibur emerged from Etherspace-1. To immediate messages popping up from a nearby relay station.
"Skipper," Lieutenant Yanithal Arnoril said seconds after they emerged, "we're being beamed a number of vocal status reports, sir."
"Give me the short and sweets, comms."
"There has been another attack, sir, the pirates hit a freighter roughly sixty thousands kilometers from our current position, just on the outside of the asteroid belt."
"Sixty thousand," Urserin said, "that's damn close to the Celestial shadow zone, how far are we from the system primary, sensors?"
"About forty seven AU, skipper."
"That's not a very long distance all things considered." Urserin muttered.
Sarah shrugged, "it's not a very big system, skipper."
"Helm, take us to the position of the attack, I want to see where it happened."
"Aye, skipper," the Exec said and turned to the helm officer. "Helm, take us ahead, grav speed on a direct course for the attack site. ETA to arrival?"
"Thirteen seconds, Commander." Lieutenant Ferra said.
"Thank you, helm," Sarah turned to Urserin and said. "Plot calculated, captain, awaiting further orders."
"Thank you, Exec, take your place at the CIC section."
"Aye, captain, taking command of the CIC." Sarah stepped back and down the dais upon which his command throne sat upon. Behind the bridge was a series of transpharasteel shutters, on the other side of these was a room of terminal upon terminal along with a number of view screens and holo-tables like the bridge.
The CIC was were the majority of the bridge crew was situated, the battlebridge was were the ship's captain and his or her main officers sat and controlled the ship. In CIC, more minute things were performed, they watched various data, worked out various sensor locks and weapon lock ons among other things.
Generally, the CIC couldn't run the ship on their own, but the bridge could run the ship on their own.
Generally a ship's exec remained within the CIC for a number of reasons, from making sure both a ship's first and second highest officers weren't killed in the event of the bridge being perforated by enemy fire, to various other reasons.
Thirteen seconds was not remotely that long, not by any standards and the excalibur arrived shortly after the exec had moved over into CIC.
"Captain, we are approaching the attack site," Lieutenant Ferra called out.
"Helm, bring us close, within one thousand kilometers. Tactical, get me a picture on the primary view screen, I want to see the extent of the damage."
"Aye, aye, sir, bringing up image now." Said Lieutenant Verandi Grosslen.
With a blink, an image had appeared on the primary view screen, the image was a live feed from one of the Excalibur's external hull cameras, whichever one had the best shot.
Reaching down, Urserin pressed down a comm button on his command throne and said. "Exec, what is that freighter's class, size and mass?"
"She was the UCS Ripporat, civilian according to the ship prefix, part of the Hiranji civilian freighter trade and a member of the Frishok-class. She's eight hundred and twenty six meters long, masses around one hundred and fifty thousand tonnes, though considering she's pretty much a set of engines, bridge and habital section all crammed inside of a giant empty box, her mass isn't that shocking."
"What is shocking exec is that the Ripporat is missing around a hundred meters off her stern side, engines, starjump drive, everything. The pirates didn't even take the ship's cargo, why?"
"That, I don't know, sir, but whatever it is the pirates are up to, it can't be good."
Drumming his fingers against his command throne's left armrest, Urserin frowned as he stared at the still mostly intact freighter. If the pirates hadn't taken the cargo, of which there was a huge amount, that meant they'd purposely attacked the Ripporat just to take its engines and starjump drive and Impulse drive.
"Exec, could the pirate's be lacking in FTL engines, perhaps that is why they have taken the engine block from thee Ripporat and nothing else."
"It's possible, skipper, I believe Union standard practice is to remove a warships FTL drive before placing it on the market. The pirates could have bought their warships legally and then started getting their missing components illegally via piracy."
"Did the Hiranji report any other attacked ship missing their engine block?"
"One moment, sir, I'll check the records." Urserin's ear piece comm went quiet as the Exec checked. While he was busy doing that, Urserin clicked another comm button on his command throne, one that went to a different area and said.
"Sergeant Urelin, this is the captain."
A brief moment of silence, then the commanding officer of the Excalibur's marine contingent, which during peace times was only fifteen marines, though they could carry a full thirty during war time, said. "Aye, sir, this is sergeant Urelin, what do you need, skipper?"
"Get your marines readdy, sergeant and report to the primary landing bay. You will be boarding the wreakage of the UCS Ripporat, a cargo ship, to look for any possible survivors."
"Aye, aye, skipper, we'll get it done, we'll make the landing bay in three ninutes."
"Roger that, sergeant, Urserin out."
The moment Urserin ended the conversation with the sergeant, he heard a click of a connecting comm line and Sarah was speaking.
"Captain, i looked through all the reports, in the seven previous attacks, no engine blocks were cut off of the ships and they were all in fairly good shape. With maybe a few scorch marks on them from warning shots, the pirates took all the cargo though."
"What kind of cargo?"
"Polycirium, both armour grade and civilian grade. Grav engine parts and supplies, impulse engine parts and supplies, starjump parts and supplies. Cadalen crystals and other weapons and supplies. Shield generators, rifles, body armour, personal shields, vehicles and more war-fighting equipment."
"What the hell were they transporting all this weaponry and equipment for?"
"According to Fresha Orbital Watch, they were builing weapons and equipment on planet and shipping them off to some various other worlds for assembly and distribution."
"For how long has Fresha been supplying and building weapons?"
"Two months, apparently."
Urserin snorted and cracked the knuckles of his right fist into his left hand, feeling suddenly furious. "I don't like coincidences, Exec. How likely do you think it is for pirates to begin attacking at the same time Fresha starts changing around their exports, weapons, something pirates dearly desire."
"That could be why they attacked, skipper, to take the weapons Fresha is exporting."
"That could have happened, but not as quickly as it did, Fresha didn't have piracy problems before this and they have around two dozen polycirium mining stations, these are generally juicy targets for pirates. If the pirates were already here, I could see them jumping on the weapons quickly, but they weren't, how did they find out so quickly, Exec?"
"I have to admit, skipper, when you put it like that, it does seem fairly unlikely."
Urserin watched the destroyed Ripporat, his feelings of fury slowly rose the more he thought over this entire situation. He suddenly cursed the admiral for sending him into this entire situation. He couldn't bring the Hiranji in on this, someone on Fresha was leaking information and taking a check from the pirates, if they were pirates.
He now needed to send a new hypercomm message to Admiral Hansen. Let the admiral know there was some trickery going on in this system.
His comm buzzed, looking down to identify the point of origin, he said. "Hold one, exec." Switching channels he said, "status sergeant?"
"Armoured and armed up and waiting in Wasp-1's troop bay, sir."
"Roger that, sergeant, launch as soon as the pilot is ready and the blast doors have been dropped."
"Aye, aye sir, getting ready for launch."
Once again switching comm channels, he said. "Exec, drop primary landing bay blast doors with a ten second warning to everyone near them. The marines are going over."
"Aye, aye sir, I'll get it done."
Now, he thought, was just a matter of waiting.
- Location
- Prince George
Part three
*
With a thunk, the attachment arm of the Excalibur detached from the light dropship designated Wasp-1, though it was more commonly referred to as The Cheetah Bucket by its flight crew of five.
In the Cheetah Bucket's troop bay, the fifteen Space marines of Richard Urelin's squad were getting themselves ready for the boarding action. They had all trained for this, though their training had mainly involved invading an enemy ship using boarding pods or something like that, not just flying on over with a dropship.
It almost seemed to easy to Urelin, to just ignore the majority of their training and fly over. If the Excalibur had had boarding pods, he would have asked the captain of they could use them. Alas, the Unity-class was a mainline heavy destroyer, not a heavy destroyer boarder designed for carrying an extensive amount of boarding equipment.
Sighing in quiet disappointment, Urelin checked his Laser rifle's power supply, the M3S/SM was a fairly standard weapon used by Space marines boarding parties. Punching a hole through the hull and voiding everyone into space was generally a bad idea. Even though Space marines had a variety of power armour available to them, unlike planetary infantry who had PA only for specialist support or heavy units. Their armour was the Model-2 Hunter Powered Extra vehicle combat armour, it was a fairly light armour and not 'heavy' power armour. Those were the Model-3 to model-5s.
The difference between light and heavy power armour was fairly small. Light power armour was generally treated like heavy infantry and indeed, that was the official designation of infantry in power armour, heavy infantry. You wielded rifles and wore webbing in light power armour, had grenades at your belt and generally acted like a normal infantrymen.
Heavy power armour by comparison was more like a vehicle wrapped around an infantrymen, these super-heavy infantry often had built in weapons and increibly thick armour. Often they couldn't fight prone and had extensive sensor arrays and sometimes very small—pistol sized—laser CIWS alongside incredibly power shields for infantry.
They both had their uses, their advantages and disadvantages like everything that hass ever exsisted. But generally, Urelin preffered heavy power armour. Only reason he hadn't had his squad outfit themselves with a few of these—never the whole squad, someone needed to remain light, hell sometimes he'd known space marines wear non-PA during boarding—was because the Excalibur didn't have any suits on bard, nor did they have the required dropships to carry them.
Because super-heavy infantry generally couldn't sit down, at least not fully and not like someone outside of armour. They couldn't use the normal dropship and shuttle crashseats and sometimes the transport had to take evasive manuevers and throw their passengers around. That meant the SH infantry couldn't simply stand.
The work around for this problem was a type of specialised infantry holder, they were generally put in alongside normal crashseats. They were called standing restrainers and how they worked was simple. A super-heavy infantryman stood in a specific spot and a trio of heavy 'arms' with durathium crash bars and clamped around the infantryman, holding him or her in place.
The M103 Wasp was a light dropship, it didn't really have the room to fit standing restrainers in it, not without removing something. If Urelin remembered correctly, the Military design bureau of the Union had been looking at some ideas of modifying some Wasps by removing the room they reserved for armoured vehicles and planting standing restrainers there.
He didn't know how well that was going since the Excalibur had been deployed to Laern. And after going to Laern, they were now here and he'd only remembered the Bureau's plans because of the flight to the Riporat.
The voice of the pilot of Cheetah Bucket came through Urelin's ear-comm. "We'll be making a rear entrance, all the Ripporat's umbilicals, docking tubes, docking modules and landing bays are all destroyed, killed by what appears to be missile impacts. They're a mess, we won't be able to use them, but what we can use is the torn off segment of the Ripporat."
"Will the Cheetah Bucket fit, lieutenant?"
"I've been looking at the deck plans of a Frishok-class civilian cargo ship—why didn't they just call it a freighter—and the decks are too small. We'll have to hover in close and turn to point our ass to the Ripporat and let you and your marines jump out the back."
"EVA insertion, hell, I forgot my jetpack."
"Ha ha, I'll get you as close to the Ripporat as I can without my exhaust frying your boys."
"I thought you had gravity engines?"
"Everything space worthy has gravity engines, it was a phrase, sergeant." There was a pause over the comm, then. "I'll get you as close to the Ripporat as I can without my drive's gravity column pasting your boys against the ship's hull. Better?"
"Aye, lieutenant, much better." Urelin clicked off the comm channel before he heard lieutenant Yara Frisenlon's retort. Lieutenant Frisenlon was a good pilot, he was a veteran of the federation-union war, at least the most recent one and was well known for his abilities to insert a marine or space marine or army group into any battleground without getting shot down. After blasting down a half dozen federation pilots during the battle of Zine in 515 FA, he'd been awarded ace status.
How he ended up on the Excalibru was anyone's guess though, probably only Frisenlon knew the answer to that and it was doubtful he'd share.
Frisenlon's voice came over the comm again after a few moments of silence, this time it wasn't a private channel with him, but a channel with the whole squad so they could all hear. "we are on final approach, get ready for Vac-entrance in T minus six minutes and thirty seconds, starting....now."
Grunting, Urelin unlatched his crash bar and pushed it up over his head, engaging his mag-boots he rose to his feet despite the rumbling through the Wasp's frame and barked into his come. "Jerahs, Malkov, you two are our ropes, get tethers on you and line up."
The job of the ropes in a Vac-entrance operation was fairly simple. Two or more troops would line up with mag-tether ropes attached to their armour—and they'd also be holding the ropes just incase—and the ship or transport would open their ramp or whatever, flushing out the atmosphere.
Once that had been accomplished, the ropes would deactivate their mag-boots and push themselves off in a leap toward whatever their group was trying to board. They often didn't need to put a lot of muscle effort into this, since it was space. An object in motion would stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force, space had no outside force. Thus, the trooper—whatever they were—would float off toward whatever they'd jumped toward and hopefully hit their target in the first.
If not, the group back on the transport would reel them back and try again. Once the rope had completed his job and made it to where the group wanted to go, they'd attached the mag-tether to a nearby surface and the rest of the group would use the tether as a guide to help pull themselves across.
That was Jerah and Malkovs job, they were the most qualified, outside of himself, for full on zero-g vac-operations, so they'd do it. Urelin had to be here to keep an eye on things, he was a squad leader, then generally involved a fair amount of babysitting. Couldn't do that if he was floating around space trying to grab the ass end of a starship.
On Urelin's HUD there was set of blinking white numbers counting down the time until they arrived in position for them to do their thing. The clock was currently at 4:12 and counting.
"Four minutes space marines, get yourselves ready."
Once again running a check throughout all his armour's systems, Urelin found nothing out of the ordinary and judging by the lights blinking into being on his HUD next to his squad's names, they also found nothing amiss.
When the countdown timer reached fifteen the pilot began speaking over the comm again. "Dropping ramp in...ten, nine, eight," and he continued counting down until upon reaching zero the ramp began opening.
There wasn't some humongous explosion of decompression, nor did any of them brace against being sucked out. The air left the troop bay of the Cheetah Bucket with a kind of sad Swip sound.
Urelin waited until the ramp had fully opened and said, "Alright ropes, you are up, move."
Both the space marines assigned to being ropes walked forward until their boots were on the ramp and they could see the target..
"Do you have any specific target, sarge?" Jerahs asked.
The bottom most level, we'll work our way up one floor at a time."
"Aye, aye sir." With no further adieu both crouched and leaped, their forms disappearing out the troop bay and flying toward the immobile Ripporat, which by itself was fairly curious.
Urelin couldn't help but wonder at which point the ship had stopped spinning, it couldn't have on its own, and while energy weapon impacts generally didn't throw ships around like munition, kinetic or ballistic impacts did. And there were definitely missile impacts all across this ship. Not to mention whatever had sheared the engine block off, though that could have been done with a DEW cutter.
Had the pirates ceased the Ripporat's spin before they'd left, or had the Hiranji ship's who'd discovered the destroyed cargo carrier.
Looking out at the field of cargo containers floating in a rough sphere around the Ripporat, the ship was certain spinning. The cargo wouldn't have floated out like that on its own, though considering how slow the containers were moving the Ripporat hadn't been spinning quickly. Which he found exceedingly curious, since if they weren't moving quickly, that meant the ship hadn't been spinning very quickly, if that was the case why were all the containers in a roughly equal position.
Some of them should have started to over take their fellows that had gotten lost on the other side, yet they were near uniform. That spoke to Urelin of a set up, someone had moved these containers to make them look like they'd been thrown from the Ripporat after its engines had been cut and they'd gone drifting off.
But if the pirates had actually attacked, and those missile impacts were very real, why had they decided to put on this act of spreading cargo containers. To what purpose did it achieve for the pirates to go to all this effort.
Even from the distance between him and the two ropes, Urelin could already see they'd missed their first jump, not that surprising really when one didn't have any thruster packs to help move around. A piece of space marine equipment the Excalibur also lacked.
"Pull back, you missed this one." Urelin said into the squad comm. Receiving the curses of the two ropes in reply as they made known their displeasure at not perfecting the jump the first time. "Reel them back," Urelin said to a pair of PFCs near the Mag-tether pulley system.
When the two ropes finally finished their job by actually reach the requested level of the Ripporat, a full three minutes had passed, during which the ropes had had to have been reeled in at least five times.
None of the other memebrs of the squad commented on this though, they'd all gone through the prelimanary courses for zero-g vac-operations. They were all aware how tricky these sorts of things were, especially when you were lacking basic devices like thruster packs. Some of them had barely made it through those preliminary courses and they'd had thruster packs.
With the Mag-tethers tethered to the Ripporat, Urelin began sending his marines over in twos. With fifteen marines on the Excalibur as standard, though it could carry far more, it did not take them very long for all their fellows to get over to the Ripporat.
Unsurprisingly, the Ripporat was without power and gravity, since generally the reactor that powers the ship's system is in the engine block, and so is the gravity generator, sometimes. The Excalibur's gravity generator was amidships, fairly close to the bridge actually.
It would seem tht the Ripporat's gravity generatorr had been in the engine block, because if it didn't there should have still been enough emergency power to keep its gravity generator on for at least two days.
It was doubtful the Ripporat had been sitting here for three days either, someone would have come along and started collecting the crates of cargo in that amount of time.
Urelin's boots touched down on thee bottom of the Ripporat's lower deck with a dull clank, all around hiim the other members of his squad were also touching down. Jerahs and Malkov were slightly ahead of their landing position, crouched beside the walls aiming their laser rifles down the corridor. Covering their squad members coming on board.
Once the squad had been assembled, Urelin split them up into three fireteams of five, with Urelin leading one, Corporal Tassinhok leading another and the last being led by Corporal Ferndin.
With the fireteams hashed out, they assembled around the rent in the Ripporat, were they'd made their entrance and Jerah and Malkov began unpacking a number of devices from the large backpack they were wearing. These devices were zero-g rapple guns and mag-tether rope, only good for about eight meters. This wasn't that big of a deal though, since the Ripporat and all Frishok cargo carriers only had three decks. These decks went from the engine block to a dozen or more meters forward, where it opened into the cavornous cargo bay and at the ships prow the three decks once again materialised.
The third deck, the one Ferndin's squad would be dealing with was much taller and wider then the bottom two, because it was this one that was used for moving cargo around and it was also were the cargo containers were spilling out of the Ripporat from.
Jerah and Malkov were going to tether a series of mag-tethers up along the jagged edge of the Ripporat, up into the other decks so the other two fireteams could get up to their sections. Thus each fireteam could begin from roughly the same place and advance deeper.
*
With a thunk, the attachment arm of the Excalibur detached from the light dropship designated Wasp-1, though it was more commonly referred to as The Cheetah Bucket by its flight crew of five.
In the Cheetah Bucket's troop bay, the fifteen Space marines of Richard Urelin's squad were getting themselves ready for the boarding action. They had all trained for this, though their training had mainly involved invading an enemy ship using boarding pods or something like that, not just flying on over with a dropship.
It almost seemed to easy to Urelin, to just ignore the majority of their training and fly over. If the Excalibur had had boarding pods, he would have asked the captain of they could use them. Alas, the Unity-class was a mainline heavy destroyer, not a heavy destroyer boarder designed for carrying an extensive amount of boarding equipment.
Sighing in quiet disappointment, Urelin checked his Laser rifle's power supply, the M3S/SM was a fairly standard weapon used by Space marines boarding parties. Punching a hole through the hull and voiding everyone into space was generally a bad idea. Even though Space marines had a variety of power armour available to them, unlike planetary infantry who had PA only for specialist support or heavy units. Their armour was the Model-2 Hunter Powered Extra vehicle combat armour, it was a fairly light armour and not 'heavy' power armour. Those were the Model-3 to model-5s.
The difference between light and heavy power armour was fairly small. Light power armour was generally treated like heavy infantry and indeed, that was the official designation of infantry in power armour, heavy infantry. You wielded rifles and wore webbing in light power armour, had grenades at your belt and generally acted like a normal infantrymen.
Heavy power armour by comparison was more like a vehicle wrapped around an infantrymen, these super-heavy infantry often had built in weapons and increibly thick armour. Often they couldn't fight prone and had extensive sensor arrays and sometimes very small—pistol sized—laser CIWS alongside incredibly power shields for infantry.
They both had their uses, their advantages and disadvantages like everything that hass ever exsisted. But generally, Urelin preffered heavy power armour. Only reason he hadn't had his squad outfit themselves with a few of these—never the whole squad, someone needed to remain light, hell sometimes he'd known space marines wear non-PA during boarding—was because the Excalibur didn't have any suits on bard, nor did they have the required dropships to carry them.
Because super-heavy infantry generally couldn't sit down, at least not fully and not like someone outside of armour. They couldn't use the normal dropship and shuttle crashseats and sometimes the transport had to take evasive manuevers and throw their passengers around. That meant the SH infantry couldn't simply stand.
The work around for this problem was a type of specialised infantry holder, they were generally put in alongside normal crashseats. They were called standing restrainers and how they worked was simple. A super-heavy infantryman stood in a specific spot and a trio of heavy 'arms' with durathium crash bars and clamped around the infantryman, holding him or her in place.
The M103 Wasp was a light dropship, it didn't really have the room to fit standing restrainers in it, not without removing something. If Urelin remembered correctly, the Military design bureau of the Union had been looking at some ideas of modifying some Wasps by removing the room they reserved for armoured vehicles and planting standing restrainers there.
He didn't know how well that was going since the Excalibur had been deployed to Laern. And after going to Laern, they were now here and he'd only remembered the Bureau's plans because of the flight to the Riporat.
The voice of the pilot of Cheetah Bucket came through Urelin's ear-comm. "We'll be making a rear entrance, all the Ripporat's umbilicals, docking tubes, docking modules and landing bays are all destroyed, killed by what appears to be missile impacts. They're a mess, we won't be able to use them, but what we can use is the torn off segment of the Ripporat."
"Will the Cheetah Bucket fit, lieutenant?"
"I've been looking at the deck plans of a Frishok-class civilian cargo ship—why didn't they just call it a freighter—and the decks are too small. We'll have to hover in close and turn to point our ass to the Ripporat and let you and your marines jump out the back."
"EVA insertion, hell, I forgot my jetpack."
"Ha ha, I'll get you as close to the Ripporat as I can without my exhaust frying your boys."
"I thought you had gravity engines?"
"Everything space worthy has gravity engines, it was a phrase, sergeant." There was a pause over the comm, then. "I'll get you as close to the Ripporat as I can without my drive's gravity column pasting your boys against the ship's hull. Better?"
"Aye, lieutenant, much better." Urelin clicked off the comm channel before he heard lieutenant Yara Frisenlon's retort. Lieutenant Frisenlon was a good pilot, he was a veteran of the federation-union war, at least the most recent one and was well known for his abilities to insert a marine or space marine or army group into any battleground without getting shot down. After blasting down a half dozen federation pilots during the battle of Zine in 515 FA, he'd been awarded ace status.
How he ended up on the Excalibru was anyone's guess though, probably only Frisenlon knew the answer to that and it was doubtful he'd share.
Frisenlon's voice came over the comm again after a few moments of silence, this time it wasn't a private channel with him, but a channel with the whole squad so they could all hear. "we are on final approach, get ready for Vac-entrance in T minus six minutes and thirty seconds, starting....now."
Grunting, Urelin unlatched his crash bar and pushed it up over his head, engaging his mag-boots he rose to his feet despite the rumbling through the Wasp's frame and barked into his come. "Jerahs, Malkov, you two are our ropes, get tethers on you and line up."
The job of the ropes in a Vac-entrance operation was fairly simple. Two or more troops would line up with mag-tether ropes attached to their armour—and they'd also be holding the ropes just incase—and the ship or transport would open their ramp or whatever, flushing out the atmosphere.
Once that had been accomplished, the ropes would deactivate their mag-boots and push themselves off in a leap toward whatever their group was trying to board. They often didn't need to put a lot of muscle effort into this, since it was space. An object in motion would stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force, space had no outside force. Thus, the trooper—whatever they were—would float off toward whatever they'd jumped toward and hopefully hit their target in the first.
If not, the group back on the transport would reel them back and try again. Once the rope had completed his job and made it to where the group wanted to go, they'd attached the mag-tether to a nearby surface and the rest of the group would use the tether as a guide to help pull themselves across.
That was Jerah and Malkovs job, they were the most qualified, outside of himself, for full on zero-g vac-operations, so they'd do it. Urelin had to be here to keep an eye on things, he was a squad leader, then generally involved a fair amount of babysitting. Couldn't do that if he was floating around space trying to grab the ass end of a starship.
On Urelin's HUD there was set of blinking white numbers counting down the time until they arrived in position for them to do their thing. The clock was currently at 4:12 and counting.
"Four minutes space marines, get yourselves ready."
Once again running a check throughout all his armour's systems, Urelin found nothing out of the ordinary and judging by the lights blinking into being on his HUD next to his squad's names, they also found nothing amiss.
When the countdown timer reached fifteen the pilot began speaking over the comm again. "Dropping ramp in...ten, nine, eight," and he continued counting down until upon reaching zero the ramp began opening.
There wasn't some humongous explosion of decompression, nor did any of them brace against being sucked out. The air left the troop bay of the Cheetah Bucket with a kind of sad Swip sound.
Urelin waited until the ramp had fully opened and said, "Alright ropes, you are up, move."
Both the space marines assigned to being ropes walked forward until their boots were on the ramp and they could see the target..
"Do you have any specific target, sarge?" Jerahs asked.
The bottom most level, we'll work our way up one floor at a time."
"Aye, aye sir." With no further adieu both crouched and leaped, their forms disappearing out the troop bay and flying toward the immobile Ripporat, which by itself was fairly curious.
Urelin couldn't help but wonder at which point the ship had stopped spinning, it couldn't have on its own, and while energy weapon impacts generally didn't throw ships around like munition, kinetic or ballistic impacts did. And there were definitely missile impacts all across this ship. Not to mention whatever had sheared the engine block off, though that could have been done with a DEW cutter.
Had the pirates ceased the Ripporat's spin before they'd left, or had the Hiranji ship's who'd discovered the destroyed cargo carrier.
Looking out at the field of cargo containers floating in a rough sphere around the Ripporat, the ship was certain spinning. The cargo wouldn't have floated out like that on its own, though considering how slow the containers were moving the Ripporat hadn't been spinning quickly. Which he found exceedingly curious, since if they weren't moving quickly, that meant the ship hadn't been spinning very quickly, if that was the case why were all the containers in a roughly equal position.
Some of them should have started to over take their fellows that had gotten lost on the other side, yet they were near uniform. That spoke to Urelin of a set up, someone had moved these containers to make them look like they'd been thrown from the Ripporat after its engines had been cut and they'd gone drifting off.
But if the pirates had actually attacked, and those missile impacts were very real, why had they decided to put on this act of spreading cargo containers. To what purpose did it achieve for the pirates to go to all this effort.
Even from the distance between him and the two ropes, Urelin could already see they'd missed their first jump, not that surprising really when one didn't have any thruster packs to help move around. A piece of space marine equipment the Excalibur also lacked.
"Pull back, you missed this one." Urelin said into the squad comm. Receiving the curses of the two ropes in reply as they made known their displeasure at not perfecting the jump the first time. "Reel them back," Urelin said to a pair of PFCs near the Mag-tether pulley system.
When the two ropes finally finished their job by actually reach the requested level of the Ripporat, a full three minutes had passed, during which the ropes had had to have been reeled in at least five times.
None of the other memebrs of the squad commented on this though, they'd all gone through the prelimanary courses for zero-g vac-operations. They were all aware how tricky these sorts of things were, especially when you were lacking basic devices like thruster packs. Some of them had barely made it through those preliminary courses and they'd had thruster packs.
With the Mag-tethers tethered to the Ripporat, Urelin began sending his marines over in twos. With fifteen marines on the Excalibur as standard, though it could carry far more, it did not take them very long for all their fellows to get over to the Ripporat.
Unsurprisingly, the Ripporat was without power and gravity, since generally the reactor that powers the ship's system is in the engine block, and so is the gravity generator, sometimes. The Excalibur's gravity generator was amidships, fairly close to the bridge actually.
It would seem tht the Ripporat's gravity generatorr had been in the engine block, because if it didn't there should have still been enough emergency power to keep its gravity generator on for at least two days.
It was doubtful the Ripporat had been sitting here for three days either, someone would have come along and started collecting the crates of cargo in that amount of time.
Urelin's boots touched down on thee bottom of the Ripporat's lower deck with a dull clank, all around hiim the other members of his squad were also touching down. Jerahs and Malkov were slightly ahead of their landing position, crouched beside the walls aiming their laser rifles down the corridor. Covering their squad members coming on board.
Once the squad had been assembled, Urelin split them up into three fireteams of five, with Urelin leading one, Corporal Tassinhok leading another and the last being led by Corporal Ferndin.
With the fireteams hashed out, they assembled around the rent in the Ripporat, were they'd made their entrance and Jerah and Malkov began unpacking a number of devices from the large backpack they were wearing. These devices were zero-g rapple guns and mag-tether rope, only good for about eight meters. This wasn't that big of a deal though, since the Ripporat and all Frishok cargo carriers only had three decks. These decks went from the engine block to a dozen or more meters forward, where it opened into the cavornous cargo bay and at the ships prow the three decks once again materialised.
The third deck, the one Ferndin's squad would be dealing with was much taller and wider then the bottom two, because it was this one that was used for moving cargo around and it was also were the cargo containers were spilling out of the Ripporat from.
Jerah and Malkov were going to tether a series of mag-tethers up along the jagged edge of the Ripporat, up into the other decks so the other two fireteams could get up to their sections. Thus each fireteam could begin from roughly the same place and advance deeper.
- Location
- Prince George
Part Four
Two and a half hours had passed since Jerah and Malkov had set up their little rope bridge up to the other floors. Nbow each fireteam was deep inside the Ripporat. In fact, the first two floor teams were waiting for their third counterpoint to catch up, then they would enter the cargo area. Hundreds of meters of open ship, nearly two hundred meters high and three and a half hundred meeters wide. The entire area was crisscrossed with catwalks for access to various levels of cargo.
Thus far, they had seen no sign of anyone alive, no blood stains or corpses, no spent rounds or power packs, no scorch marks or bullet holes, nothing. According to a private from Urelin's squad, this was creepy. That could simply be chalked up to the young blood jumping at shadows, nothing magical or psionic was going on on the Ripporat. And though the Excalibur lcked the means to confirm this, it was still unlikely.
To Urelin, the fact they had seen nothing ths far meant either the fighting had gone on in the forward compartment, the cargo bay or the engine block. It was a far more probable explanation then the pirates having a rogue psionic or witch with them.
"Sergeant," Corporal Ferndin's voice said over the comm, "We are in position."
"Roger that, corporal, all firetams set up for breach, blow the door and scan your surroundings. Don't step out into you've confirmed there are no hostiles nearby, use thermals."
Green status lights blinked on his HUD, all the other squad members had received and understood the order, good.
Urelin nodded to his breach team, a private named Haedley and a PFC named Daruth. Both of the breaching members were armed similar to Urelin, his fireteams heavier weapons was Assault space marine Heridan, armed with a Assault laser rifle and grenadier Raeryl.
As the two marines he'd chosen for breaching lined up, Urelin broadcasted over the squad comm. "Breach in seven seconds, starting, now." He keyed up a countdown with the amount of time left and braced himself for any possible incoming fire.
When the countdown timer reached zero, he yelled through the comm. "Breach, breach, breach." Even as he was speaking, all three of the breach teams were already in motion.
Haedley threw open the door and then leaned out, laser rifle up, while Daruth crouched and also leaned out. Not a huge distance, just enough so they could use their rifles to cover themselves and scan with their helmets.
Urelin waited a full five seconds and when no one started shooting, said, "Anyone have anything mildly interesting?"
A second passed and then Jerah spoke, "I have what appears to be directed energy weapon impacts up on the third floor, on a nearby crate, one of the four meter ones."
"It didn't destroy one of the sides?"
"Oh it did, sergeant. Cored the poor crate, through one side and out the other, the impact zone included the majority of the crate's faces. There's only maybe a few centimeters of material on the sides that were hit."
"Roger that, lance corporal, keep your eyes peeled everyone." Urelin said, feeling a small knot of dread begin to tie itself in his gut. There were very few weapons capable of piering a full cargo crate through and through with one shot, coring it Jerah had said. Energy weapons had their own advantages and disadvantages compared to ballistic and kinetic with one of the disadvantages being that they could not pierce.
When an energy weapon hits something, whatever it hits tends to take the full amount of the DEW's shot, it impacts and spreads out vaporizing whatever it hits but not doing anything beyond that. This was because most energy weapons used either light or some manner of particle.
There were a few energy weapons that went against this general rule, plasma weapons, charge weapons, things like that. Which did have mass and the ability to effectively pierce whatever it hits.
If the crate had been cored with one shot and not multiple, it meant they were dealing with pirates that had either plasma weapons or other incredibly dangerous directed energy weapons.
Though it could have been a shot from a charge rifle, though the amount of damage was quite a bit too much for a mere charge rifle.
Waiting in position for another few seconds, Urelin started into the cargo room and said into the comm. "all fireteams adva—," he clamped his mouth shut as a sickly purple blob impacted against the wall to his left, spraying molten rivulets of metal in cone outwards from the impact zone.
"Back inside," Urelin managed to bark into his comm as he rushed back into the previous corridor. As soon as he was in and clear of the line of fire, Heridan and Haedley leaned out around the door and began laying down suppresive fire.
Laser bolts flashed out, invisible to the naked eye, but showing up brightly on his thermals. The lasers from both rifle and assault laser slammed into crates, giving off painfully bright flashes of vaporizing parts of the crates they were hitting.
Despite this withering amount of fire, another purple blob lanced out from somewhere ahead—the cargo area was surprisingly dark with only emergency lighting—and slammed into the ground in front of Haedley.
"Pull back you two," Urelin said, "fireteam take cover behind the walls." Switching the channel from fireteam to squad, he said. "Status report, all fireteams."
"We're under fire," Ferndin said, "Kasslis was hit, but her shield held, we've taken cover and are returning fire though we can't see what's shooting at us, thermals are blank."
"We are also under fire, sergeant," Tassinhok said. "Bandilr was hit a handful of times, his shield fell, sergeant."
"Status?"
"WIA, we're being hit by a plasma gun and what appears to be a couple lasers, Bandilr was hit by one of the lasers. The laser burned off the upper parts of his right rib's plating, he's got third and second degree burns across his right rib area, he's in pain but conscious and capable of continuing."
"We'll ave to casevac him," Urelin said, "but we can't be dragging him back through the way we came, with his armour compromised I want him off this ship as soon as possible. All fireteams, be advised ditch thermals, they're not showing and I want to know why, scan around. But do not reveal yourselves to plasma fire."
Hanging back from the door, Ureliin was surprised that the enemy fire had stopped nearly as quickly as it had started. Their opponents—pirates, he assumed—had fired, quickly and sort of accurately, at him when he'd first exited the corridor. Then they'd taken a shot at Haedley and nearly hit, burning the wall instead.
Yet, no more shots were coming in, that wasn't how you fought. You didn't fire until the enemy had pulled back, you kept firing, it forced the enemy to keep their heads down. With their heads down, they couldn't fire back and they couldn't watch what you were doing.
He didn't expect the pirates to be masters of all military stratagems, but covering fire to force the enemy to remain down was a fairly universal concept. One even civilians could explain with reasonable accuracy.
Frowning toward the door, Urelin couldn't help but feel something wasn't entirely right. Why were the pirates still on board, they'd hit the Ripporat and taken what they'd wanted from the cargo carrier. Why would they leave their own behind to wait for an ambush against whoever came to explore the cargo ship. None of it made any sense, so if there weren't pirates, then what was shooting at them.
Survivors of the Ripporat's crew. Why would they instantly start shooting then and with plasma cannons. That didn't seem likely, not unless the Ripporat was flying with illegal weapons filling its hold. A civilian could get a laser rifle or bullet firing rifle fairly easily, but a plasma rifle, no way. There was no possible way for a civilian to get their hands on a plasma weapon unless they got it from smugglers or the black market.
All their helmets had a recorder built into them, it helped for after action reports and the such. Allowing officers to watch the footage of their troops in action instead of merely listening to a report.
Opening a small window on his HUD, with the footage recorded by his helmet up to this point on it. Urelin rewound the recording until he reached the point when he had been entering the cargo room, he slowed the footage to a crawl as the plasma bolt spat out. Looking closer, he saw the plasma bolt light up its surroundings as it left the weapon that had fired it.
The same weapon that was attached to a series of metal arms, with a tank of plasma attached on the rear and a trio of targeting cameras placed about the gun and its mounting.
Sudden realization dawned on him, "an autoturret."
*
"Sir, incoming message from the marines." Lieutenant Arnoril said, looking up from her communications terminal. "They report they've come under fire and have identified their attackers as automated security turrets. They're requesting that Wasp 1 cut their refueling cession short and launch munitions at this position," she highlighted a section of the Ripporat. It was a quarter of the way from were the marines had entered the cargo carrier, they seemed to still have a bit to go yet.
"Permission granted for fire mission, communications send a message to Wasp 1, they are to load up with the maximum amount of APB-7s and volley them at the requested position. Then, warn the marines of what's coming in."
"Aye, aye, sir; orders are on their way."
*
"—advised, Wasp 1 will be carrying Advanced Plasma Bomb 7s, you are advised to take cover." Urelin snorted in mild amusement, ask for some artillery and receive nuclear missiles. That was roughly equivalent to the captain sending the Wasp in with APB-7s
"Alright people," Urelin said into his comm. "I want each fireteam to pull back sixty meters from the door, the skipper is sending in Godfathers."
Without wasting anymore time, he turned and hightailed it out of there with his fireteam, noting in his HUD's personal map that his other two fireteams were doing the same. There were only four symbols representing the second fireteam on his map, though one of them was substantially larger then the other two, someone was carrying Bandilr.
They arrived at the sixty meter mark just in time. As they were slowing down from their frantic running, Urelin felt a massive shudder ripple through the Ripporat, a second even stronger one soon followed and the third threw him against the wall. The fourth was just overkill at that point, but it too bounced the squad around.
Laying against what appeared to be the ceiling, Urelin listened to the Excalibur's communications officer say, "Precision bombing run complete, Wasp 1 is returning to Excalibur, you may proceed sergeant."
Groaning, Urelin pushed himself away from the ceiling and set down his boots, activating his mag-boots. "Roger that, lieutenant, We'll keep going." Helping his fireteam back to their feet, Urelin said over squad-comm. "All fireteams report in."
"Second all present and accounted for."
"Third, ditto."
"All fireteams, advance back to the doors into the cargo area and hold, our first order of business is to figure out if there are any turrets left. Then we can call for a casevac to get Bandilr out of here."
Green status lights winked and the squad set off. Arriving back to the door into the cargo hold a lot slower then they'd left it, Urelin motioned for his fireteam to crouch and hang to the sides. Remaining crouched in the center of the corridor, Urelin advanced until he was in the door way, stood and counted.
When he reached five seconds, he figured things were probably safe. He stepped out of the doorway and onto the catwalk, beyond.
At one point, the cargo room had been filled to the brim with neatly stacked cargo containers, held in place by small metal 'cages' meant to hold them in place. Most of these cages had broken during th pirates attack, the remaining ones had then either been blown to smithereens by the Cheetah Bucket or had also broken apart.
The remaining crates that had still been in place had now broken free and were floating about the area. The room previously had been rectangular, now it had an enormous gaping hole in its side. Engaging magnifiers, Urelin could even vaguely make out the Excalibur in the distance, though it appeared as a sparkling dot—most likely the ship's grav engines.
The amount of destruction throughout the cargo area was fairly massive, four APB-7s had been volleyed into the cargo ship. Those ship killers were made to punch through thick armour grade polycirium, it had obliterated the cargo area.
Urelin couldn't see a spot of the cargo area that hadn't been devastated. Previously intact cargo containers had either been blasted apart by the bombs, some had been thrown into each other, spilling their contents all over. The deck—at least the parts of it that had survived—had buckled all over, jagged pieces were sticking up in all directions while other pieces floated about or were embedded in the walls. Some had even torn straight through the walls.
It was a miracle the Ripporat was even still in one piece, to Urelin the only part of the cargo ship that was still holding it together was a bit of the ventral side, a very small piece of the dorsal and the port side wall.
"All fireteams," Urelin said over squad-comm, "advance further into thee cargo area, remain alert for any sign of surviving autoturrets. If you come across autoturrets, the grenadiers will deal with it."
*
The holo-table was showing the Wasp 1 on its attack approach toward the Ripporat. Because of the presence of nearby friendlies, the pilot had taken them slightly farther away then the requested target position to launch APB-7s.
The pilot also waited until his craft was a mere four and a half hundred kilometers from the impact point, to make certain he hit exactly were he was aiming.
Another icon appeared as the pilot of Wasp 1 fired his first APB-7, to pierce the outer hull and open the cargo ship up for additional bombing. As the bomb accelerated away—the Wasp 1 had come in fairly slowly and they'd modified the APB-7 to approach slowly—a series of data streams poped into being beside the icon representing the Ripporat. Scrolling text detailing an active sensor sweep, directly for the Wasp 1 and its bomb.
With muscles honed by combat, the Wasp 1 pilot swung his craft around to face the source of the sensor blip, farther forward, and lobbed a single bomb and after waiting for three seconds lobbed another.
While these two new bombs were en route, the Wasp's original bomb hit the Ripporat and exploded. Swinging back around, the Wasp launched its second bomb toward the gaping wound in the cargo ship's hull. Before the second bomb hit the original coordinates, the second pair struck were the sensor emissions were coming from and stopped said emissions in a flash. Then the last bomb hit and destroyed the space marine's requested target.
Standing beside Urserin, the Excalibur's exec frowned down at the holo-table as it began to replay the same scene over. "Lieutenant Frisenlon is extraordinarily lucky the ship didn't have any hidden weapons, that sensor sweep was a classic prelude to an attack. The modified APB-7s wouldn't have done anything in time to save the Wasp 1, especially if the enemy had interception weapons available."
Urserin nodded his agreement in silent contemplation. Normally, anti-ship APBs and their fellows of other types, were designed with an incredibly dense and hard tips that—along side the APBs speed from its own thrusters and the carrying craft's speed—would pierce starship armour, at least a bit and then explode. Dealing an immense amount of more damage then if the APB had detonated in a surface detonation like they had with the ones the Wasp 1 had just been carrying.
Those four bombs had been modified to be incredibly slow compared to their normal states, they had allies in that ship, firing a quartet of APB-7s with working armour piercing modes would have spelled an immense amount of danger to Urelin and his squad.
Somethings just weren't adding up here, who had left the autoturrets behind and who had left the active sensors intact enough andd then triggered an active sweep as the APB came in.
The sensor could have been a automated system that had survived the pirate's attack, but then the question was why hadn't it started scanning as soon as the Excalibur popped up nearby, or when the Wasp went to drop off the Space marines.
"This ship is bizarre," Urserin said finally.
"How so, sir?" Iollmil asked.
"According to the reports we've received from Fresha orbital watch, all the previous attacks have been fairly standard for pirates, with the exception of the specific cargo involved. Yet, with all these previous standard attacks, we are now before the Ripporat and its attack is anything but regular. The million credit question is, why is the Ripporat so different."
"I truly don't know, sir." Iollmil said.
"You may return to CIC, exec." Urserin eventually said, his eyes straying from the holo-table to look to Iollmil before returning.
"Aye, sir, returning to CIC." She said, snapped a salute and spun about heel to return to CIC. Once again alone standing beside the holo-table, Urserin briefly glanced down to the control panel for the holo-table. A few presses on the control panel later and he'd brought up a data sheet detailing the cargo of the ships that had thus far been hit by the pirates.
All in all, seventeen ships had been raided by the pirates, with the Ripporat being the eighteenth. The previous ships had suffered no losses of life for their crew, they had suffered minimal damage and only the loss of their cargo and sometimes their engines. But not because they'd been taken, but instead because they hadn't complied and had taken a shot to the engines.
The cargo of the ships was fairly similar really: weapon components, munitions components, engine components, various ground side equipment, shield emitters, etc. The Ripporat's cargo was different, it was listed a Polycirium X, was that to mean armour grade polycirium, or something completely different. He'd have to remember to have the marines throw one of the surviving cargo crates out the rent in the Ripporat's hull, or he could just take one of the ones floating around the ship.
"Sir," Lieutenant Arnoril said, "Receiving communications message from sergeant Urelin."
"What is it?"
"They've found the Ripporat's central database and have access to its recorders and external cameras, during the pirate attack. They've identified one of the pirate destroyers. Sir, you're going to want to see this."
All of Urserin's previous theories for why the pirates were doing what they were, were suddenly very wrong. Indeed, as he started at the characteristic shape and then the close up image of a Federation Emerald Sea-class destroyer.
They were an older type of destroyer, having served the Federation for many years, since their commencement in 512 FA. But unlike the Union's Unity-class, the Emerald Sea was still in active service. Despite being a destroyer and not a heavy destroyer, the Emerald Sea's firepower was fairly impressive.
Armed with a spinal mass driver cannon, two forward laser arrays and a pair of E-torp launchers, the Emerald sea had a hell of a lot of forward firepower. It also had mid ship mounted graser arrays and a quartet of coil deck autocannons.
If all of the Excalibur's systems were fully functional, she'd have heavier firepower then the somewhat smaller Emerald Sea. But Excalibur's systems weren't fully functional, a lot of her weapons weren't working. The Old girl's heaviest weapons, her three forward photon e-torp launchers weren't all working. She had a severe lack of heavy firepower, a firepower deficiency that wasn't made up in the three other ships under Urserin's command.
Now more then ever, he needed his ship to get to Fresha, so he could use the planet's hypercomm network to contact Admiral Hansen and request additional forces. This was no longer the attacks of mere pirates, this was the work of privateers.
Two and a half hours had passed since Jerah and Malkov had set up their little rope bridge up to the other floors. Nbow each fireteam was deep inside the Ripporat. In fact, the first two floor teams were waiting for their third counterpoint to catch up, then they would enter the cargo area. Hundreds of meters of open ship, nearly two hundred meters high and three and a half hundred meeters wide. The entire area was crisscrossed with catwalks for access to various levels of cargo.
Thus far, they had seen no sign of anyone alive, no blood stains or corpses, no spent rounds or power packs, no scorch marks or bullet holes, nothing. According to a private from Urelin's squad, this was creepy. That could simply be chalked up to the young blood jumping at shadows, nothing magical or psionic was going on on the Ripporat. And though the Excalibur lcked the means to confirm this, it was still unlikely.
To Urelin, the fact they had seen nothing ths far meant either the fighting had gone on in the forward compartment, the cargo bay or the engine block. It was a far more probable explanation then the pirates having a rogue psionic or witch with them.
"Sergeant," Corporal Ferndin's voice said over the comm, "We are in position."
"Roger that, corporal, all firetams set up for breach, blow the door and scan your surroundings. Don't step out into you've confirmed there are no hostiles nearby, use thermals."
Green status lights blinked on his HUD, all the other squad members had received and understood the order, good.
Urelin nodded to his breach team, a private named Haedley and a PFC named Daruth. Both of the breaching members were armed similar to Urelin, his fireteams heavier weapons was Assault space marine Heridan, armed with a Assault laser rifle and grenadier Raeryl.
As the two marines he'd chosen for breaching lined up, Urelin broadcasted over the squad comm. "Breach in seven seconds, starting, now." He keyed up a countdown with the amount of time left and braced himself for any possible incoming fire.
When the countdown timer reached zero, he yelled through the comm. "Breach, breach, breach." Even as he was speaking, all three of the breach teams were already in motion.
Haedley threw open the door and then leaned out, laser rifle up, while Daruth crouched and also leaned out. Not a huge distance, just enough so they could use their rifles to cover themselves and scan with their helmets.
Urelin waited a full five seconds and when no one started shooting, said, "Anyone have anything mildly interesting?"
A second passed and then Jerah spoke, "I have what appears to be directed energy weapon impacts up on the third floor, on a nearby crate, one of the four meter ones."
"It didn't destroy one of the sides?"
"Oh it did, sergeant. Cored the poor crate, through one side and out the other, the impact zone included the majority of the crate's faces. There's only maybe a few centimeters of material on the sides that were hit."
"Roger that, lance corporal, keep your eyes peeled everyone." Urelin said, feeling a small knot of dread begin to tie itself in his gut. There were very few weapons capable of piering a full cargo crate through and through with one shot, coring it Jerah had said. Energy weapons had their own advantages and disadvantages compared to ballistic and kinetic with one of the disadvantages being that they could not pierce.
When an energy weapon hits something, whatever it hits tends to take the full amount of the DEW's shot, it impacts and spreads out vaporizing whatever it hits but not doing anything beyond that. This was because most energy weapons used either light or some manner of particle.
There were a few energy weapons that went against this general rule, plasma weapons, charge weapons, things like that. Which did have mass and the ability to effectively pierce whatever it hits.
If the crate had been cored with one shot and not multiple, it meant they were dealing with pirates that had either plasma weapons or other incredibly dangerous directed energy weapons.
Though it could have been a shot from a charge rifle, though the amount of damage was quite a bit too much for a mere charge rifle.
Waiting in position for another few seconds, Urelin started into the cargo room and said into the comm. "all fireteams adva—," he clamped his mouth shut as a sickly purple blob impacted against the wall to his left, spraying molten rivulets of metal in cone outwards from the impact zone.
"Back inside," Urelin managed to bark into his comm as he rushed back into the previous corridor. As soon as he was in and clear of the line of fire, Heridan and Haedley leaned out around the door and began laying down suppresive fire.
Laser bolts flashed out, invisible to the naked eye, but showing up brightly on his thermals. The lasers from both rifle and assault laser slammed into crates, giving off painfully bright flashes of vaporizing parts of the crates they were hitting.
Despite this withering amount of fire, another purple blob lanced out from somewhere ahead—the cargo area was surprisingly dark with only emergency lighting—and slammed into the ground in front of Haedley.
"Pull back you two," Urelin said, "fireteam take cover behind the walls." Switching the channel from fireteam to squad, he said. "Status report, all fireteams."
"We're under fire," Ferndin said, "Kasslis was hit, but her shield held, we've taken cover and are returning fire though we can't see what's shooting at us, thermals are blank."
"We are also under fire, sergeant," Tassinhok said. "Bandilr was hit a handful of times, his shield fell, sergeant."
"Status?"
"WIA, we're being hit by a plasma gun and what appears to be a couple lasers, Bandilr was hit by one of the lasers. The laser burned off the upper parts of his right rib's plating, he's got third and second degree burns across his right rib area, he's in pain but conscious and capable of continuing."
"We'll ave to casevac him," Urelin said, "but we can't be dragging him back through the way we came, with his armour compromised I want him off this ship as soon as possible. All fireteams, be advised ditch thermals, they're not showing and I want to know why, scan around. But do not reveal yourselves to plasma fire."
Hanging back from the door, Ureliin was surprised that the enemy fire had stopped nearly as quickly as it had started. Their opponents—pirates, he assumed—had fired, quickly and sort of accurately, at him when he'd first exited the corridor. Then they'd taken a shot at Haedley and nearly hit, burning the wall instead.
Yet, no more shots were coming in, that wasn't how you fought. You didn't fire until the enemy had pulled back, you kept firing, it forced the enemy to keep their heads down. With their heads down, they couldn't fire back and they couldn't watch what you were doing.
He didn't expect the pirates to be masters of all military stratagems, but covering fire to force the enemy to remain down was a fairly universal concept. One even civilians could explain with reasonable accuracy.
Frowning toward the door, Urelin couldn't help but feel something wasn't entirely right. Why were the pirates still on board, they'd hit the Ripporat and taken what they'd wanted from the cargo carrier. Why would they leave their own behind to wait for an ambush against whoever came to explore the cargo ship. None of it made any sense, so if there weren't pirates, then what was shooting at them.
Survivors of the Ripporat's crew. Why would they instantly start shooting then and with plasma cannons. That didn't seem likely, not unless the Ripporat was flying with illegal weapons filling its hold. A civilian could get a laser rifle or bullet firing rifle fairly easily, but a plasma rifle, no way. There was no possible way for a civilian to get their hands on a plasma weapon unless they got it from smugglers or the black market.
All their helmets had a recorder built into them, it helped for after action reports and the such. Allowing officers to watch the footage of their troops in action instead of merely listening to a report.
Opening a small window on his HUD, with the footage recorded by his helmet up to this point on it. Urelin rewound the recording until he reached the point when he had been entering the cargo room, he slowed the footage to a crawl as the plasma bolt spat out. Looking closer, he saw the plasma bolt light up its surroundings as it left the weapon that had fired it.
The same weapon that was attached to a series of metal arms, with a tank of plasma attached on the rear and a trio of targeting cameras placed about the gun and its mounting.
Sudden realization dawned on him, "an autoturret."
*
"Sir, incoming message from the marines." Lieutenant Arnoril said, looking up from her communications terminal. "They report they've come under fire and have identified their attackers as automated security turrets. They're requesting that Wasp 1 cut their refueling cession short and launch munitions at this position," she highlighted a section of the Ripporat. It was a quarter of the way from were the marines had entered the cargo carrier, they seemed to still have a bit to go yet.
"Permission granted for fire mission, communications send a message to Wasp 1, they are to load up with the maximum amount of APB-7s and volley them at the requested position. Then, warn the marines of what's coming in."
"Aye, aye, sir; orders are on their way."
*
"—advised, Wasp 1 will be carrying Advanced Plasma Bomb 7s, you are advised to take cover." Urelin snorted in mild amusement, ask for some artillery and receive nuclear missiles. That was roughly equivalent to the captain sending the Wasp in with APB-7s
"Alright people," Urelin said into his comm. "I want each fireteam to pull back sixty meters from the door, the skipper is sending in Godfathers."
Without wasting anymore time, he turned and hightailed it out of there with his fireteam, noting in his HUD's personal map that his other two fireteams were doing the same. There were only four symbols representing the second fireteam on his map, though one of them was substantially larger then the other two, someone was carrying Bandilr.
They arrived at the sixty meter mark just in time. As they were slowing down from their frantic running, Urelin felt a massive shudder ripple through the Ripporat, a second even stronger one soon followed and the third threw him against the wall. The fourth was just overkill at that point, but it too bounced the squad around.
Laying against what appeared to be the ceiling, Urelin listened to the Excalibur's communications officer say, "Precision bombing run complete, Wasp 1 is returning to Excalibur, you may proceed sergeant."
Groaning, Urelin pushed himself away from the ceiling and set down his boots, activating his mag-boots. "Roger that, lieutenant, We'll keep going." Helping his fireteam back to their feet, Urelin said over squad-comm. "All fireteams report in."
"Second all present and accounted for."
"Third, ditto."
"All fireteams, advance back to the doors into the cargo area and hold, our first order of business is to figure out if there are any turrets left. Then we can call for a casevac to get Bandilr out of here."
Green status lights winked and the squad set off. Arriving back to the door into the cargo hold a lot slower then they'd left it, Urelin motioned for his fireteam to crouch and hang to the sides. Remaining crouched in the center of the corridor, Urelin advanced until he was in the door way, stood and counted.
When he reached five seconds, he figured things were probably safe. He stepped out of the doorway and onto the catwalk, beyond.
At one point, the cargo room had been filled to the brim with neatly stacked cargo containers, held in place by small metal 'cages' meant to hold them in place. Most of these cages had broken during th pirates attack, the remaining ones had then either been blown to smithereens by the Cheetah Bucket or had also broken apart.
The remaining crates that had still been in place had now broken free and were floating about the area. The room previously had been rectangular, now it had an enormous gaping hole in its side. Engaging magnifiers, Urelin could even vaguely make out the Excalibur in the distance, though it appeared as a sparkling dot—most likely the ship's grav engines.
The amount of destruction throughout the cargo area was fairly massive, four APB-7s had been volleyed into the cargo ship. Those ship killers were made to punch through thick armour grade polycirium, it had obliterated the cargo area.
Urelin couldn't see a spot of the cargo area that hadn't been devastated. Previously intact cargo containers had either been blasted apart by the bombs, some had been thrown into each other, spilling their contents all over. The deck—at least the parts of it that had survived—had buckled all over, jagged pieces were sticking up in all directions while other pieces floated about or were embedded in the walls. Some had even torn straight through the walls.
It was a miracle the Ripporat was even still in one piece, to Urelin the only part of the cargo ship that was still holding it together was a bit of the ventral side, a very small piece of the dorsal and the port side wall.
"All fireteams," Urelin said over squad-comm, "advance further into thee cargo area, remain alert for any sign of surviving autoturrets. If you come across autoturrets, the grenadiers will deal with it."
*
The holo-table was showing the Wasp 1 on its attack approach toward the Ripporat. Because of the presence of nearby friendlies, the pilot had taken them slightly farther away then the requested target position to launch APB-7s.
The pilot also waited until his craft was a mere four and a half hundred kilometers from the impact point, to make certain he hit exactly were he was aiming.
Another icon appeared as the pilot of Wasp 1 fired his first APB-7, to pierce the outer hull and open the cargo ship up for additional bombing. As the bomb accelerated away—the Wasp 1 had come in fairly slowly and they'd modified the APB-7 to approach slowly—a series of data streams poped into being beside the icon representing the Ripporat. Scrolling text detailing an active sensor sweep, directly for the Wasp 1 and its bomb.
With muscles honed by combat, the Wasp 1 pilot swung his craft around to face the source of the sensor blip, farther forward, and lobbed a single bomb and after waiting for three seconds lobbed another.
While these two new bombs were en route, the Wasp's original bomb hit the Ripporat and exploded. Swinging back around, the Wasp launched its second bomb toward the gaping wound in the cargo ship's hull. Before the second bomb hit the original coordinates, the second pair struck were the sensor emissions were coming from and stopped said emissions in a flash. Then the last bomb hit and destroyed the space marine's requested target.
Standing beside Urserin, the Excalibur's exec frowned down at the holo-table as it began to replay the same scene over. "Lieutenant Frisenlon is extraordinarily lucky the ship didn't have any hidden weapons, that sensor sweep was a classic prelude to an attack. The modified APB-7s wouldn't have done anything in time to save the Wasp 1, especially if the enemy had interception weapons available."
Urserin nodded his agreement in silent contemplation. Normally, anti-ship APBs and their fellows of other types, were designed with an incredibly dense and hard tips that—along side the APBs speed from its own thrusters and the carrying craft's speed—would pierce starship armour, at least a bit and then explode. Dealing an immense amount of more damage then if the APB had detonated in a surface detonation like they had with the ones the Wasp 1 had just been carrying.
Those four bombs had been modified to be incredibly slow compared to their normal states, they had allies in that ship, firing a quartet of APB-7s with working armour piercing modes would have spelled an immense amount of danger to Urelin and his squad.
Somethings just weren't adding up here, who had left the autoturrets behind and who had left the active sensors intact enough andd then triggered an active sweep as the APB came in.
The sensor could have been a automated system that had survived the pirate's attack, but then the question was why hadn't it started scanning as soon as the Excalibur popped up nearby, or when the Wasp went to drop off the Space marines.
"This ship is bizarre," Urserin said finally.
"How so, sir?" Iollmil asked.
"According to the reports we've received from Fresha orbital watch, all the previous attacks have been fairly standard for pirates, with the exception of the specific cargo involved. Yet, with all these previous standard attacks, we are now before the Ripporat and its attack is anything but regular. The million credit question is, why is the Ripporat so different."
"I truly don't know, sir." Iollmil said.
"You may return to CIC, exec." Urserin eventually said, his eyes straying from the holo-table to look to Iollmil before returning.
"Aye, sir, returning to CIC." She said, snapped a salute and spun about heel to return to CIC. Once again alone standing beside the holo-table, Urserin briefly glanced down to the control panel for the holo-table. A few presses on the control panel later and he'd brought up a data sheet detailing the cargo of the ships that had thus far been hit by the pirates.
All in all, seventeen ships had been raided by the pirates, with the Ripporat being the eighteenth. The previous ships had suffered no losses of life for their crew, they had suffered minimal damage and only the loss of their cargo and sometimes their engines. But not because they'd been taken, but instead because they hadn't complied and had taken a shot to the engines.
The cargo of the ships was fairly similar really: weapon components, munitions components, engine components, various ground side equipment, shield emitters, etc. The Ripporat's cargo was different, it was listed a Polycirium X, was that to mean armour grade polycirium, or something completely different. He'd have to remember to have the marines throw one of the surviving cargo crates out the rent in the Ripporat's hull, or he could just take one of the ones floating around the ship.
"Sir," Lieutenant Arnoril said, "Receiving communications message from sergeant Urelin."
"What is it?"
"They've found the Ripporat's central database and have access to its recorders and external cameras, during the pirate attack. They've identified one of the pirate destroyers. Sir, you're going to want to see this."
All of Urserin's previous theories for why the pirates were doing what they were, were suddenly very wrong. Indeed, as he started at the characteristic shape and then the close up image of a Federation Emerald Sea-class destroyer.
They were an older type of destroyer, having served the Federation for many years, since their commencement in 512 FA. But unlike the Union's Unity-class, the Emerald Sea was still in active service. Despite being a destroyer and not a heavy destroyer, the Emerald Sea's firepower was fairly impressive.
Armed with a spinal mass driver cannon, two forward laser arrays and a pair of E-torp launchers, the Emerald sea had a hell of a lot of forward firepower. It also had mid ship mounted graser arrays and a quartet of coil deck autocannons.
If all of the Excalibur's systems were fully functional, she'd have heavier firepower then the somewhat smaller Emerald Sea. But Excalibur's systems weren't fully functional, a lot of her weapons weren't working. The Old girl's heaviest weapons, her three forward photon e-torp launchers weren't all working. She had a severe lack of heavy firepower, a firepower deficiency that wasn't made up in the three other ships under Urserin's command.
Now more then ever, he needed his ship to get to Fresha, so he could use the planet's hypercomm network to contact Admiral Hansen and request additional forces. This was no longer the attacks of mere pirates, this was the work of privateers.
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- Location
- Prince George
*tumbleweed blows by*
Huh, guess I kind of forget about this didn't I, whelp, new update! A smaller one since I've just gotten my PC back and haven't had the chance to write a bunch yet.
The office of high exalted planetary administrator—one of several Hiranji who held that position—Frishol'loshil Aukc was extraordinarily extravagant, with actual silken curtains strewn about. And expensive Durmour fur rugs covering the normally freezing cold stones that constituted the primary government building of Fresha's floor.
Indeed, plenty of Hiranji buildings in the old areas of a colony, those places where the first colonists had landed, were built like traditional homes on the Hiranji's homeworld of Mandura. It was a sign of both tradition and prestige.
Frishol'loshil knew of plenty Hiranji colonies where the old area bore not the traditional homes, much shame had been heaped upon the head of the one who had governed the colony during that time. The governor's career had been ruined and he or she'd been thrown out onto the cold cobbles of homelessness. That was the price one payed for not upholding the traditional way, and for those who would come to call the colony home in the generations of its existence, shame would be within their hearts. For they knew their colony lacked the traditional old area.
Despite their traditional basis and that they were the heart of Hiranji society, there were times when Frishol'loshil hated the tiles. A day like today, or just about any day on Fresha, when the world was cold, the heat was sapped from the building, despite the heaters best attempts, by the stone flooring.
On days were the floor was particularly cold, Frishol'loshil hurried along the cold floor, glaring at the few human xenorelations officers walking briskly through the halls—the Hiranji had started building their buildings' roofs higher to accommodate other species—completely oblivious to the cold flooring. The reptilian Hiranji had never invented shoes, their scales had always provided safety from sharp rocks and such, and their home world was a very warm one.
Their winters were short and mild, Fresha however had actual snowfall. To counter some of the cold issues, claw wraps had been created by the Hiranji for Hiranji for use on a variety of worlds chiller then Mandura. There was just one problem. These were cloth—and sometimes leather—and were only made for short trips across cold ground, not walking through the freezing halls of Fresha's traditional buildings or crossing a snow filled courtyard enroute to a separate governance building.
There were other types that fully covered a hiranji's lower claws, like the ones that the Hiranji military wore, but those were surprisingly difficult to get a hold of. Needlessly so.
Frishol'loshil was standing near one of the windows of his office when another Hiranji burst in.
This hiranji was a female, with golden scales and a panicked look upon her snout. "High Exalted," she said, gasping as she entered the room. "The human ship has arrived and reconnoitred the Ripporat, they are on their way here now."
Leisurely turning, Frishol'loshil eyed his, one of his, accomplices. "You felt that this information was so pertinent for me to know that you sprinted through the halls, drawing who knows how much attention onto yourself. To deliver something I already know."
Jalsias'Iorsus Fusc gaped open mouthed and said, "How did you know already, the planetary sensors couldn't get an accurate reading passed all the asteroids."
More like passed the planet's shield, Fresha's sensor suites were not top of the line and shields well known for causing interference with sensor and communications systems. You generally needed top of the line equipment to pierce the shield and get your message or reading out with minimal interference. Fresha's decades old—installed before the shield had been put up—sensors were not up to the job of piercing through the shield for long range scans.
They did okay at close range, around fifty million kilometers out, but everything passed that the shield interference was too much for the antiquated sensors. It was habit for the hiranji running the sensor system to blame their systems failings on any sort of natural celestial occurrence.
'The comet's passing frizzled sensors', 'the asteroids are making scanning difficult', and dozens more Frishol'loshil had heard. They could get fairly accurate readings from the asteroids, all they had to do was send a message to one of the platforms or satellites in orbit—or hells, one of the ships in orbit—and ask them to scan the belt.
A proper planetary sensor system hoowever was immensely more powerful then a ship, but Fresha's was only as powerful as a ship's, and a fairly old one at that, one that hadn't been updated with the new systems.
Motioning to a data-slate on his desk, Frishol'loshil said. "I got a message from our friends up north, they had a drone sitting nearby watching what was going on, when the Ripporat did its distraction, the drone beamed a message to the waiting Q-ship."
"What are we going to do about it?"
"Nothing," Frishol'loshil said. "There is nothing we can do, there are merely four of us on Fresha, our capabilities of helping our new friends is reserved for more information feeding. Nothing we can do to stop the Union from coming in, they are wary of the ship the Union has sent, they fought many of its ilk during their war with the Union, they are aware of its power and are rightfully wary of it."
"Exalted, I have a question that has been bothering me. Why did our friends from north reveal who they are on the Ripporat?"
"That, I couldn't tell you Jalsias'Iorsus, I myself am not entirely privy to their plan. They don't want to risk a leak or someone listening in and giving their plans away, thus they have been very sparse with information." Frisol'losil waved a clawed hand, "Now, enough of this. Tell me of the arming program, how many Q-ships have we managed to construct."
"Fresha itself, around seven, but we only have access to one, with many more being modified as we speak. The UCS Jirdungom, when the final stage of the plan begins, I am confident we can get our friends onto this ship."
"We need access to more, they have enough crew for at least three ships like Jirdungom. Two more ships, that is how many ships they believe they need to break through Fresha's orbital defences without bringing their proper warships in."
This part of the plan, Frishol'loshil was still nervous about, their friends' warships would distract the Union ships farther out, while the three Q-ships they had would attack the planet's orbital defences. Fresha was not a massively wealthy world, but it still had had enough wealth to afford a decent orbital protection grid, about seven satellites defended Fresha in orbit. And three platforms sat further out, not linked to the planet's orbit and capable of very limited movement on their own but also being capable of being towed by a ship nearby to re-position.
How were they so confident that their three Q-ships would be able to defeat the orbital defences, Frishol'loshil mused, the weapon platforms were small but even still. There were ten of them all together and only three Q-ships. What manner of weaponry was the Federation having them install in those Q-ships that they figured they could eliminate the planet's defences.
"I know one of the Hiranji engineers modifying the Frishok cargo carriers being turned into Q-ships. I could call in a favour he owes me, I could make up a story of why I needed one of the access codes for one of the Q-ships and see were we go from there." Said Jalsias'Iorsus
"Make certain it is one of the Q-ships being modified with Fed weapons." Frishol'loshil said.
"I will make certain, I cannot and will not fail, not now in our moment of triumph."
"Good, go and see to things." Frishol'loshil said, motioning for Jalsias'Iorsus to leave him, which she did, after a rather extravagent bow. "Close the door behind you." He reminded her and watched his primary partner in crime leave his office.
Once again alone in his office, Frishol'loshil sighed and sat at his desk, looking at the data-slate containing all pertinent information the Feds could gather on the incoming Union starship.
The drone that had sent the message informing the Feds of the Union ship taking the bait had also snapped off a few photos of the Union ship in question. Bringing up one of these images, Frishol'loshil gazed at the aft starboard side of the Union ship, proudly displayed upon the armour was the words USS Excalibur.
Drumming the claws of his right hand against his actual wooden desk, Frishol'loshil navigated through various screens on his data-slate with the other hand. Staring at the home screen for the Union star navy database, the public version obviously—since he lacked the ability to look through the actual military database—and typed in USS Excalibur in the database's search bar.
Seconds later, he was scanning through the results, which were a grand total of two results. One was a orbital port called the Excalibur and the other was a eighty year old cruiser called the Excalibur.
Neither of which was a heavy destroyer, so that left Frishol'loshil with a situation. Someone had scrubbed the Union's database pertaining to the destroyer taking command of the Fresha defence group, so far as the database was concerned the heavy destroyer Excalibur did not exist. Yet it clearly did, so how to rectify the situation, that was what he needed to do.
Bringing up the image of the Excalibur once again, Frishol'loshil eyed the marginally grainy image and attempted to eyeball its weaponry. Those glowing, ringed half-sphere tubes on the front were definitely energy torpedo launchers, he could also make out a few laser arrays scattered around the ship's hull and some kinetic or ballistic weapons.
It was all fairly standard for a Union heavy destroyer. The Union tended to favour the array as its primary energy weapon mount type for its massive field of fire, though it was admittedly lacking in raw firepower. The bank was the mid way point for energy weapon mounts. The turret was the heaviest energy weapon mount—relatively speaking—they tended to deal out the most firepower per shot, but had to be traversed around. Thus making them vulnerable to quick enough enemy ships, or multiple opponents. Of course there were other types of weapon mount styles, he was far from a military epert and only knew the basics.
If there were two enemies to the eleven o'clock and one o'clock of a turret, the turret would only be able to hit one. Whereas an array could hit both, and in that range of fire so could a bank.
The comm panel built into Frishol'loshil's desk chimed suddenly. Startled, Frishol'loshil hissed and snapped around to glare at the comm panel. How beautiful it would look smashed into pieces, he thought. Then thinking better of that, he activated the comm panel, but not before checking from whence the communication was coming.
"What is it Yarmus'Krissos?" He asked, his tone making it perfectly clear he was annoyed at being interrupted.
"Sorry to bother you, High Exalted, but we just received word that the Human starship will arrive at Fresha in five and a half hours and they have requested to use Fresha's hypercomm array."
"Did they say for what reason?"
"No, high exalted, they merely requested permission to use it."
"Grant them it, dump someone else out of the cue to work them in after they arrive if they have to. They're here to help save us from these damned pirates, least we could do was give them what they ask for. Especially when it's something as simple as a call home." Frishol'loshil was glad his desk mounted communicator lacked a built in camera, or else the entire communications section would be able to see his—what the humans would call—shit eating grin.
It was rather amusing he thought, how no one else on this planet could see through his lies and onto the game he was playing. Perhaps that was why he'd originally accepted the Fed's offer instead of turning in the sleeper agent to Union authorities back when he'd first turned coat.
"Understood, high exalted, I will convey your words upon the Union ship arriving in orbit." With that, the communications official assigned to Frishol'loshil's area signed off, leaving Frishol'loshil alone in silent contemplation once again.
While Frishol'loshil was rather curious about what the Union starship wanted to use the Hypercomm for, he still had to focus on the issue of identifying the Union starship. His federation friends were well acquainted with that specific class, it had wrecked untold havoc on their ships during the Union-Federation war, but they did not know its specifics. That, he needed to find out, but how.
The Federation didn't have a listing of this type of heavy destroyer's weapons because of the simple fact of how difficult it was to gather info in the middle of battle, which was the only time all of the heavy destroyers weapons would be in play. Added to that was the fact that apparently the Union had changed that destroyer's armament a few times throughout the war, this all led to them having a miserable list of capabilities for this specific heavy destroyer.
The Federation knew this heavy destroyer type—called the Fang-class by the Federation—had a trio of forward photon E-torpedo launchers and in fact these were its most deadly weapons. The heavy destroyer's E-torps were its most damaging part of its known armament, who needed laser arrays when you had an E-torp launcher.
Course, actual solar combat was quite a bit more complicated then that; but it was a thought carried by even a number of star navy personnel. Grunting, he rose from his desk, and stopping to collect his data-slate, left his office. He had a plan for how to get data about the Fang-class coming in to Fresha, but he'd need to be careful with his questions.
*
"We are exiting warp in T minus three minutes." Lieutenant Ferra said, her voice easily raising above the clamour of murmuring voices upon the bridge.
"Understood, helm, continue." Urserin said, standing in front of the bridge's primary viewscreen, watching the footage taken from the Ripporat. Once again on the footage, an Emerald Sea appeared behind the Ripporat and fired a warning shot.
The Beam of a laser flashed through the interstellar void, being picked up by the cameras thermal function, and splashed harmlessly against the Ripporat's aft shielding. But the weapon firing was enough, the Ripporat slew to a halt and hang motionless in the void as the Emerald Sea approached.
Since the Emerald Sea couldn't and didn't carry any sort of missiles of its own, another ship had to be nearby, one armed with missiles. Antlion I's also couldn't carry or launch missiles, thus one of the unidentified corvettes or the other destroyer or heavy destroyer equivalent was the one packing the missiles.
Sergeant Urelin had estimated the missile impacts to be Tac-missile level, precision strikes with little explosive—relatively speaking—within them, so most likely plasma Tac-missiles, definitely not the more powerful fusion and anti-matter ones. And absolutely not the fairly weak nuclear tac-missiles, which were used for orbitaal support for ground conflicts on worlds either without shields or lacking AO defences.
Tactical, Lieutenant Grosslen, had drawn up the Federation's attack vector for when they'd come in on the Ripporat. Based on the footage taken from the Ripporat, the cargo carrier had been on its journey out of the system and had just left the asteroid field when a nearby asteroid, a couple thousands of kilometers distant, had rotated to reveal the Federation ship blasting off from it.
No other shop had joined the Emerald Sea in approaching, thus the missile armed ship was most likely ahead of the initial confrontation. They had most likely fired off a few missiles sometime after the Ripporat had been boarded and the Feds had finished doing whatever it was they'd done on board.
Sensors had piked out a half dozen possible places where a ship, either a destroyer or corvette, could have been hiding.
However, one thing was certain at this point, mere pirates were not the instigators of these attacks, the Federation was. And the person on Fresha who was leaking information wasn't just a profit hungering bastard, they were a treasonous bastard now, and union justice would give him or her just what they deserved, of they coulld be caught.
Urserin needed more ships, the gods only knew how many Federation ships were lurking about.
Though there were a few points that didn't quite make sense to him. If the Federation was going to be bold enough to raid Union systems with one of their current heavy destroyers, the Emerald Sea which just about every Union Spacer could identify, why would they procure an old Union ship—the Antilion I—and use that. Why not simply give themselves as much of a technological edge over the defending Union forces as possible.
And more importantly, why Fresha of all places. Why not masquerade as pirates in a more important system. To be fair, they wouldn't last in a crown or the throne system, but colony systems came in many flavours and Fresha was fairly poor in comparison to some.
Garden worlds specialized in biological products, Smelter worlds focused on mass scale smelting and casting of materials, etc; these were far more juicy targets for a pirate—or hostile star nation—then mere colony worlds.
Not only was Fresha a fairly unimportant place strategically, it was in a extremely defensive position to boot. Fresha was in the central area of Union territory, the areas most heavily patrolled and with the most ships passing around. One of the colony worlds in the Union's northern territories would have been a far more militarily intelligent choice. But, there was no point in being bothered over why of the situation. Not when the Federation was clearly here, all that was left to wonder over was the how, how to deal with them.
"We are about to exit Warp in six seconds." Lieutenant Ferra called out over the bridge.
Six seconds later, the Excalibur emerged from warp with a collosal flash of purple and silver light. For one one trillionth of a second, the Exalibur existed in both the physical plane and the wild reaches of Etherspace, and then she was sixty thousand kilometers from the planet Fresha.
"Did we receive a return message from Fresha, comms?" Urserin asked.
"Aye, aye sir, we did. They've directed us toward one of the planet's orbital ports, where we can dock and await our go with the Hypercomm."
"Did they mistake the priority one stamp on the damned message as a sign to put me in a que?"
"No sir, they have to get everyone else out of the hypercomm first."
"Very well, helm take us to the provided coordinates and dock with the...Comms, what's the orbital port's name?"
"The Revian, sir."
"Take us to the Revian, helm."
Lieutenant Ferra nodded, "aye, sir," and went to the task. It only took thirteen seconds for them to arrive at the orbital port, and when they did the bridge crew of the Excalibur stared in awe at the scale of what they were seeing.
"Sensors," Urserin said, his eyes never leaving the primary view-screen and the magnified image being broadcast upon it. "What are we looking at?"
"Seventeen Frishok cargo carriers being converted into Q-ships, sir." Lieutenant Laernin said, his voice tinged with shock.
"That's what I thought it was." Urserin said and shook his head. How, he screamed internally, how in the name of all the hells was Fresha able to do this. It was a mere colony world, not even one of the more strategically important ones, like garden worlds. It shouldn't of had the industrial capacity to retrofit seventeen cargo carriers simultaneously.
It should take the world at least double digit months to outfit a single cargo carrier for Q-ship duties, at least over forty months.. Not seventeen simultaneous retrofitting jobs.
What was going on in this system. How had Union officials not caught onto this. Sure, of all the species of the Union, the Hiranji tended to be more independent and secretive, but they shouldn't of been able to keep this kind of industrial capability secret for very long.
A study by the Union Civilian Space Command showed that in each system on average, around ten ships passed by in a week. From traders to asteroid prospectors from various mining guilds to many others. These ships would then go to other systems, and dock in some of them, there the crew would mingle with others and probably spread out rumours of what they'd heard and seen. This would include colony worlds with the industrial capabilities of a lesser Crown world. You couldn't hide the paper trail either, the amount of workers and tools required to simultaneously retrofit seventeen cargo carriers for Q-ship duties had to come from somewhere and if you wanted the Q-ships to be halfway decent you'd need experts—designers and engineers—and they wouoldn't be found in a place like Fresha. Nor would the materials.
Urserin's supicouns regarding this assignment had just rocketed to previously unheard of levels. What in the hells was going on in this system.
A sudden beeping at the communications console snapped everyone on the bridge out of their reverie.
"Lieutenant Arnoril, who's communicating with us?"
"Fresha, sir," the female lieutenant said. "They sent us a text only message, signed by the planet's governor and planetary administrators; they are curious if after you've used the hypercomms, if you would care to join them for supper in one of the planets more traditional restaurants."
"Reply back to them," Urserin said, "and tell them I would be overjoyed to break bread with them, it'll allow me to get some answers to what's going on."
Huh, guess I kind of forget about this didn't I, whelp, new update! A smaller one since I've just gotten my PC back and haven't had the chance to write a bunch yet.
Part Two
7/4/578 FAThe office of high exalted planetary administrator—one of several Hiranji who held that position—Frishol'loshil Aukc was extraordinarily extravagant, with actual silken curtains strewn about. And expensive Durmour fur rugs covering the normally freezing cold stones that constituted the primary government building of Fresha's floor.
Indeed, plenty of Hiranji buildings in the old areas of a colony, those places where the first colonists had landed, were built like traditional homes on the Hiranji's homeworld of Mandura. It was a sign of both tradition and prestige.
Frishol'loshil knew of plenty Hiranji colonies where the old area bore not the traditional homes, much shame had been heaped upon the head of the one who had governed the colony during that time. The governor's career had been ruined and he or she'd been thrown out onto the cold cobbles of homelessness. That was the price one payed for not upholding the traditional way, and for those who would come to call the colony home in the generations of its existence, shame would be within their hearts. For they knew their colony lacked the traditional old area.
Despite their traditional basis and that they were the heart of Hiranji society, there were times when Frishol'loshil hated the tiles. A day like today, or just about any day on Fresha, when the world was cold, the heat was sapped from the building, despite the heaters best attempts, by the stone flooring.
On days were the floor was particularly cold, Frishol'loshil hurried along the cold floor, glaring at the few human xenorelations officers walking briskly through the halls—the Hiranji had started building their buildings' roofs higher to accommodate other species—completely oblivious to the cold flooring. The reptilian Hiranji had never invented shoes, their scales had always provided safety from sharp rocks and such, and their home world was a very warm one.
Their winters were short and mild, Fresha however had actual snowfall. To counter some of the cold issues, claw wraps had been created by the Hiranji for Hiranji for use on a variety of worlds chiller then Mandura. There was just one problem. These were cloth—and sometimes leather—and were only made for short trips across cold ground, not walking through the freezing halls of Fresha's traditional buildings or crossing a snow filled courtyard enroute to a separate governance building.
There were other types that fully covered a hiranji's lower claws, like the ones that the Hiranji military wore, but those were surprisingly difficult to get a hold of. Needlessly so.
Frishol'loshil was standing near one of the windows of his office when another Hiranji burst in.
This hiranji was a female, with golden scales and a panicked look upon her snout. "High Exalted," she said, gasping as she entered the room. "The human ship has arrived and reconnoitred the Ripporat, they are on their way here now."
Leisurely turning, Frishol'loshil eyed his, one of his, accomplices. "You felt that this information was so pertinent for me to know that you sprinted through the halls, drawing who knows how much attention onto yourself. To deliver something I already know."
Jalsias'Iorsus Fusc gaped open mouthed and said, "How did you know already, the planetary sensors couldn't get an accurate reading passed all the asteroids."
More like passed the planet's shield, Fresha's sensor suites were not top of the line and shields well known for causing interference with sensor and communications systems. You generally needed top of the line equipment to pierce the shield and get your message or reading out with minimal interference. Fresha's decades old—installed before the shield had been put up—sensors were not up to the job of piercing through the shield for long range scans.
They did okay at close range, around fifty million kilometers out, but everything passed that the shield interference was too much for the antiquated sensors. It was habit for the hiranji running the sensor system to blame their systems failings on any sort of natural celestial occurrence.
'The comet's passing frizzled sensors', 'the asteroids are making scanning difficult', and dozens more Frishol'loshil had heard. They could get fairly accurate readings from the asteroids, all they had to do was send a message to one of the platforms or satellites in orbit—or hells, one of the ships in orbit—and ask them to scan the belt.
A proper planetary sensor system hoowever was immensely more powerful then a ship, but Fresha's was only as powerful as a ship's, and a fairly old one at that, one that hadn't been updated with the new systems.
Motioning to a data-slate on his desk, Frishol'loshil said. "I got a message from our friends up north, they had a drone sitting nearby watching what was going on, when the Ripporat did its distraction, the drone beamed a message to the waiting Q-ship."
"What are we going to do about it?"
"Nothing," Frishol'loshil said. "There is nothing we can do, there are merely four of us on Fresha, our capabilities of helping our new friends is reserved for more information feeding. Nothing we can do to stop the Union from coming in, they are wary of the ship the Union has sent, they fought many of its ilk during their war with the Union, they are aware of its power and are rightfully wary of it."
"Exalted, I have a question that has been bothering me. Why did our friends from north reveal who they are on the Ripporat?"
"That, I couldn't tell you Jalsias'Iorsus, I myself am not entirely privy to their plan. They don't want to risk a leak or someone listening in and giving their plans away, thus they have been very sparse with information." Frisol'losil waved a clawed hand, "Now, enough of this. Tell me of the arming program, how many Q-ships have we managed to construct."
"Fresha itself, around seven, but we only have access to one, with many more being modified as we speak. The UCS Jirdungom, when the final stage of the plan begins, I am confident we can get our friends onto this ship."
"We need access to more, they have enough crew for at least three ships like Jirdungom. Two more ships, that is how many ships they believe they need to break through Fresha's orbital defences without bringing their proper warships in."
This part of the plan, Frishol'loshil was still nervous about, their friends' warships would distract the Union ships farther out, while the three Q-ships they had would attack the planet's orbital defences. Fresha was not a massively wealthy world, but it still had had enough wealth to afford a decent orbital protection grid, about seven satellites defended Fresha in orbit. And three platforms sat further out, not linked to the planet's orbit and capable of very limited movement on their own but also being capable of being towed by a ship nearby to re-position.
How were they so confident that their three Q-ships would be able to defeat the orbital defences, Frishol'loshil mused, the weapon platforms were small but even still. There were ten of them all together and only three Q-ships. What manner of weaponry was the Federation having them install in those Q-ships that they figured they could eliminate the planet's defences.
"I know one of the Hiranji engineers modifying the Frishok cargo carriers being turned into Q-ships. I could call in a favour he owes me, I could make up a story of why I needed one of the access codes for one of the Q-ships and see were we go from there." Said Jalsias'Iorsus
"Make certain it is one of the Q-ships being modified with Fed weapons." Frishol'loshil said.
"I will make certain, I cannot and will not fail, not now in our moment of triumph."
"Good, go and see to things." Frishol'loshil said, motioning for Jalsias'Iorsus to leave him, which she did, after a rather extravagent bow. "Close the door behind you." He reminded her and watched his primary partner in crime leave his office.
Once again alone in his office, Frishol'loshil sighed and sat at his desk, looking at the data-slate containing all pertinent information the Feds could gather on the incoming Union starship.
The drone that had sent the message informing the Feds of the Union ship taking the bait had also snapped off a few photos of the Union ship in question. Bringing up one of these images, Frishol'loshil gazed at the aft starboard side of the Union ship, proudly displayed upon the armour was the words USS Excalibur.
Drumming the claws of his right hand against his actual wooden desk, Frishol'loshil navigated through various screens on his data-slate with the other hand. Staring at the home screen for the Union star navy database, the public version obviously—since he lacked the ability to look through the actual military database—and typed in USS Excalibur in the database's search bar.
Seconds later, he was scanning through the results, which were a grand total of two results. One was a orbital port called the Excalibur and the other was a eighty year old cruiser called the Excalibur.
Neither of which was a heavy destroyer, so that left Frishol'loshil with a situation. Someone had scrubbed the Union's database pertaining to the destroyer taking command of the Fresha defence group, so far as the database was concerned the heavy destroyer Excalibur did not exist. Yet it clearly did, so how to rectify the situation, that was what he needed to do.
Bringing up the image of the Excalibur once again, Frishol'loshil eyed the marginally grainy image and attempted to eyeball its weaponry. Those glowing, ringed half-sphere tubes on the front were definitely energy torpedo launchers, he could also make out a few laser arrays scattered around the ship's hull and some kinetic or ballistic weapons.
It was all fairly standard for a Union heavy destroyer. The Union tended to favour the array as its primary energy weapon mount type for its massive field of fire, though it was admittedly lacking in raw firepower. The bank was the mid way point for energy weapon mounts. The turret was the heaviest energy weapon mount—relatively speaking—they tended to deal out the most firepower per shot, but had to be traversed around. Thus making them vulnerable to quick enough enemy ships, or multiple opponents. Of course there were other types of weapon mount styles, he was far from a military epert and only knew the basics.
If there were two enemies to the eleven o'clock and one o'clock of a turret, the turret would only be able to hit one. Whereas an array could hit both, and in that range of fire so could a bank.
The comm panel built into Frishol'loshil's desk chimed suddenly. Startled, Frishol'loshil hissed and snapped around to glare at the comm panel. How beautiful it would look smashed into pieces, he thought. Then thinking better of that, he activated the comm panel, but not before checking from whence the communication was coming.
"What is it Yarmus'Krissos?" He asked, his tone making it perfectly clear he was annoyed at being interrupted.
"Sorry to bother you, High Exalted, but we just received word that the Human starship will arrive at Fresha in five and a half hours and they have requested to use Fresha's hypercomm array."
"Did they say for what reason?"
"No, high exalted, they merely requested permission to use it."
"Grant them it, dump someone else out of the cue to work them in after they arrive if they have to. They're here to help save us from these damned pirates, least we could do was give them what they ask for. Especially when it's something as simple as a call home." Frishol'loshil was glad his desk mounted communicator lacked a built in camera, or else the entire communications section would be able to see his—what the humans would call—shit eating grin.
It was rather amusing he thought, how no one else on this planet could see through his lies and onto the game he was playing. Perhaps that was why he'd originally accepted the Fed's offer instead of turning in the sleeper agent to Union authorities back when he'd first turned coat.
"Understood, high exalted, I will convey your words upon the Union ship arriving in orbit." With that, the communications official assigned to Frishol'loshil's area signed off, leaving Frishol'loshil alone in silent contemplation once again.
While Frishol'loshil was rather curious about what the Union starship wanted to use the Hypercomm for, he still had to focus on the issue of identifying the Union starship. His federation friends were well acquainted with that specific class, it had wrecked untold havoc on their ships during the Union-Federation war, but they did not know its specifics. That, he needed to find out, but how.
The Federation didn't have a listing of this type of heavy destroyer's weapons because of the simple fact of how difficult it was to gather info in the middle of battle, which was the only time all of the heavy destroyers weapons would be in play. Added to that was the fact that apparently the Union had changed that destroyer's armament a few times throughout the war, this all led to them having a miserable list of capabilities for this specific heavy destroyer.
The Federation knew this heavy destroyer type—called the Fang-class by the Federation—had a trio of forward photon E-torpedo launchers and in fact these were its most deadly weapons. The heavy destroyer's E-torps were its most damaging part of its known armament, who needed laser arrays when you had an E-torp launcher.
Course, actual solar combat was quite a bit more complicated then that; but it was a thought carried by even a number of star navy personnel. Grunting, he rose from his desk, and stopping to collect his data-slate, left his office. He had a plan for how to get data about the Fang-class coming in to Fresha, but he'd need to be careful with his questions.
*
"We are exiting warp in T minus three minutes." Lieutenant Ferra said, her voice easily raising above the clamour of murmuring voices upon the bridge.
"Understood, helm, continue." Urserin said, standing in front of the bridge's primary viewscreen, watching the footage taken from the Ripporat. Once again on the footage, an Emerald Sea appeared behind the Ripporat and fired a warning shot.
The Beam of a laser flashed through the interstellar void, being picked up by the cameras thermal function, and splashed harmlessly against the Ripporat's aft shielding. But the weapon firing was enough, the Ripporat slew to a halt and hang motionless in the void as the Emerald Sea approached.
Since the Emerald Sea couldn't and didn't carry any sort of missiles of its own, another ship had to be nearby, one armed with missiles. Antlion I's also couldn't carry or launch missiles, thus one of the unidentified corvettes or the other destroyer or heavy destroyer equivalent was the one packing the missiles.
Sergeant Urelin had estimated the missile impacts to be Tac-missile level, precision strikes with little explosive—relatively speaking—within them, so most likely plasma Tac-missiles, definitely not the more powerful fusion and anti-matter ones. And absolutely not the fairly weak nuclear tac-missiles, which were used for orbitaal support for ground conflicts on worlds either without shields or lacking AO defences.
Tactical, Lieutenant Grosslen, had drawn up the Federation's attack vector for when they'd come in on the Ripporat. Based on the footage taken from the Ripporat, the cargo carrier had been on its journey out of the system and had just left the asteroid field when a nearby asteroid, a couple thousands of kilometers distant, had rotated to reveal the Federation ship blasting off from it.
No other shop had joined the Emerald Sea in approaching, thus the missile armed ship was most likely ahead of the initial confrontation. They had most likely fired off a few missiles sometime after the Ripporat had been boarded and the Feds had finished doing whatever it was they'd done on board.
Sensors had piked out a half dozen possible places where a ship, either a destroyer or corvette, could have been hiding.
However, one thing was certain at this point, mere pirates were not the instigators of these attacks, the Federation was. And the person on Fresha who was leaking information wasn't just a profit hungering bastard, they were a treasonous bastard now, and union justice would give him or her just what they deserved, of they coulld be caught.
Urserin needed more ships, the gods only knew how many Federation ships were lurking about.
Though there were a few points that didn't quite make sense to him. If the Federation was going to be bold enough to raid Union systems with one of their current heavy destroyers, the Emerald Sea which just about every Union Spacer could identify, why would they procure an old Union ship—the Antilion I—and use that. Why not simply give themselves as much of a technological edge over the defending Union forces as possible.
And more importantly, why Fresha of all places. Why not masquerade as pirates in a more important system. To be fair, they wouldn't last in a crown or the throne system, but colony systems came in many flavours and Fresha was fairly poor in comparison to some.
Garden worlds specialized in biological products, Smelter worlds focused on mass scale smelting and casting of materials, etc; these were far more juicy targets for a pirate—or hostile star nation—then mere colony worlds.
Not only was Fresha a fairly unimportant place strategically, it was in a extremely defensive position to boot. Fresha was in the central area of Union territory, the areas most heavily patrolled and with the most ships passing around. One of the colony worlds in the Union's northern territories would have been a far more militarily intelligent choice. But, there was no point in being bothered over why of the situation. Not when the Federation was clearly here, all that was left to wonder over was the how, how to deal with them.
"We are about to exit Warp in six seconds." Lieutenant Ferra called out over the bridge.
Six seconds later, the Excalibur emerged from warp with a collosal flash of purple and silver light. For one one trillionth of a second, the Exalibur existed in both the physical plane and the wild reaches of Etherspace, and then she was sixty thousand kilometers from the planet Fresha.
"Did we receive a return message from Fresha, comms?" Urserin asked.
"Aye, aye sir, we did. They've directed us toward one of the planet's orbital ports, where we can dock and await our go with the Hypercomm."
"Did they mistake the priority one stamp on the damned message as a sign to put me in a que?"
"No sir, they have to get everyone else out of the hypercomm first."
"Very well, helm take us to the provided coordinates and dock with the...Comms, what's the orbital port's name?"
"The Revian, sir."
"Take us to the Revian, helm."
Lieutenant Ferra nodded, "aye, sir," and went to the task. It only took thirteen seconds for them to arrive at the orbital port, and when they did the bridge crew of the Excalibur stared in awe at the scale of what they were seeing.
"Sensors," Urserin said, his eyes never leaving the primary view-screen and the magnified image being broadcast upon it. "What are we looking at?"
"Seventeen Frishok cargo carriers being converted into Q-ships, sir." Lieutenant Laernin said, his voice tinged with shock.
"That's what I thought it was." Urserin said and shook his head. How, he screamed internally, how in the name of all the hells was Fresha able to do this. It was a mere colony world, not even one of the more strategically important ones, like garden worlds. It shouldn't of had the industrial capacity to retrofit seventeen cargo carriers simultaneously.
It should take the world at least double digit months to outfit a single cargo carrier for Q-ship duties, at least over forty months.. Not seventeen simultaneous retrofitting jobs.
What was going on in this system. How had Union officials not caught onto this. Sure, of all the species of the Union, the Hiranji tended to be more independent and secretive, but they shouldn't of been able to keep this kind of industrial capability secret for very long.
A study by the Union Civilian Space Command showed that in each system on average, around ten ships passed by in a week. From traders to asteroid prospectors from various mining guilds to many others. These ships would then go to other systems, and dock in some of them, there the crew would mingle with others and probably spread out rumours of what they'd heard and seen. This would include colony worlds with the industrial capabilities of a lesser Crown world. You couldn't hide the paper trail either, the amount of workers and tools required to simultaneously retrofit seventeen cargo carriers for Q-ship duties had to come from somewhere and if you wanted the Q-ships to be halfway decent you'd need experts—designers and engineers—and they wouoldn't be found in a place like Fresha. Nor would the materials.
Urserin's supicouns regarding this assignment had just rocketed to previously unheard of levels. What in the hells was going on in this system.
A sudden beeping at the communications console snapped everyone on the bridge out of their reverie.
"Lieutenant Arnoril, who's communicating with us?"
"Fresha, sir," the female lieutenant said. "They sent us a text only message, signed by the planet's governor and planetary administrators; they are curious if after you've used the hypercomms, if you would care to join them for supper in one of the planets more traditional restaurants."
"Reply back to them," Urserin said, "and tell them I would be overjoyed to break bread with them, it'll allow me to get some answers to what's going on."