by Martin HC
So it was only natural for them to feel true fear as they witnessed Fleet Commander Wai, their most fearsome and gifted war hero explain that there was no victory against this enemy.
They continued to watch him, incapable of looking away as his twenty seven kilometre long command carrier came apart around him, the entire time not a single glimmer of fear was seen in his eyes.
The final transmission of the Darkspace expedition war fleet ended as the last ship, commanded by the Supreme Fleet Commander Ellam Ertoris Wai himself, died in fire whilst singing its song of death.
“Has the Emperor been informed of this?” The grand inquisitor asked the room, in a semi choked voice as the holo display switched itself off.
There was no answer, only silence as everyone continued to stare at the empty space which just moments before shook them so deeply.
Raising himself and looking around the room he commanded an answer in a much more assertive and authoritative voice, “I asked a question, I will not ask a question twice.”
“No,” the chancellor replied quietly.
“When was this transmission received?” The grand inquisitor demanded to know.
It was the fleet ultimate high commander who answered, “the encrypted packet was picked up by expedition command in the Atios system four days ago, from there it was redirected and arrived here five hours ago, it took thirty minutes to decrypt and then this emergency meeting was assembled,” he told the various assembled faces. “Outside of Atios, this is first time it has been viewed by anyone but myself, and we watched the events in real time.”
The grand inquisitor sat silently, his stone-like face showing no glimmer of emotion as he processed this information.
“We lost the entire expedition fleet in less than one hour? Over nine thousand ships, in one single hour?” anger teetered in the edges of his voice as he demanded to know.
“Yes, that is correct, there has also been further developments.”
It took another few seconds for the grand inquisitor to respond, this time the strain in his face broke through visibly, only slightly though as he quickly recomposed himself and replied quietly.“
Further developments... explain.”
“The systems responsible for the fleet's staging and communications, Atios, Cerenion and Torros, have gone dark,” the commander explained to the room, he continued. “Communications from these systems stopped only hours ago, we are currently assembling small investigatory fleets, we intend to have a presence in each of the three systems within the next eighteen hours.”
“Is it even necessary to investigate, we all know what the communications blackout means, I think it's clear what's going on, we only risk aggravating them further by sending more ships their way,” it was the minister for expansion who spoke next.
“Your cowardice surprises me Minister,” the commander spat out. “Do you suggest we simply wait for the enemy to come knocking here at our door.”
“Cowardice, how dare you Commander, did you not watch what happened? Pray tell what would you suggest we do?”
“I did watch it Minister and may I remind you all, for perspective, before now the most ships this Empire has ever lost in a single fight was at the battle for Ma'riem. We deployed a fleet of six and a half thousand, and took losses of just over two thousand. The main differences being, the fighting went on across seven star systems for several days, and we won.”
“No one is here for a lesson in history Commander, and I note you didn't answer the question,” the Minister replied scathingly.
“I would recommend we investigate the communication blackouts and immediately redeploy the fleets,” the commander answered flatly, not rising to the minister's taunts.
“Isn't that a little premature?” the chancellor spoke. “Think of the cost.”
“The cost, Chancellor. Whoever they are, whatever they are, have come out of their hiding space to respond to our intrusion,” he dutifully informed them. “A decision which I may add, I was against.”
“I don't see the relevancy of who was for or against the expedition at this point, Commander,” replied the minister for expansion.
“Well you should Minister, as I recall you pushed fervently with the Chancellor together for this expedition to take place. With losses of this magnitude the Emperor will demand honour in blood,” the grand inquisitor stated bluntly, staring down the minister as he spoke, who seemed to visibly shrink in his chair.
The room fell into silence.
The grand inquisitor being the right hand to the Emperor, was in every respect the second most powerful individual within the Empire, so when he spoke, no-one else did and those who'd learned to listen between his lines, which was everyone in the room, understood that the chancellor and the minister for expansion were just handed an execution sentence.
There were another seven individuals seated, it was very clear however that no one else had anything worthwhile to add, and the grand inquisitor with his decision made decided to end the meeting.
“One hour, it took one hour for this new enemy of the Empire to annihilate our expedition, the most powerful fleet ever assembled by mankind as we know it. Now three of our systems bordering the Darkspace has gone silent,” looking to the commander he spoke further. “Investigate our silent systems, redeploy the fleets and begin reactivating the reserve, we are already at war, it just hasn't been declared.”
“I will inform his Highness the Emperor, that is my duty.”
With that the meeting ended, only the chancellor and minister for expansion remained seated as the empire's most powerful and key members left the room, not one single person looked in their direction as they exited.
An Unfortunate First Meet
“Bloody what, we only sent out the distress signal thirty four minutes ago Serena, nothing should be here for days yet, we're too far out.”
“Someone is here Damon, they're asking us what's wrong, and I'm getting no hard data link or positive lock on their position.”
The Ophelia was built as a military mini runner over sixty years ago, today she has a crew of six and is no longer in service. The AI Serena, through an android avatar wrapped in a material very lifelike to human skin, handles most bridge functions, but the others take part where necessary, and things were getting necessary.
“Why would there be a hard data link or pos lock? We're not close enough to anything.”
“Well, they're close enough to us, they're out there.”
“How do you know? There's nothing on radar.”
“When they answered the SOS our comms system made an immediate return, there was no lag and that's not possible, not unless someone generously installed a quantum comms array while we all slept.”
“So our engines stall in the middle of nowhere and it just so happens there's a person here to help,” the captain stopped, worry creasing his features. “This is not good, those people are pirates of some kind, it's too convenient.”
Damon didn't think pirates had stealth tech, no one used stealth tech but something was seriously wrong, at fifty six he'd captained the Ophelia for most of his adult life, and lived aboard her for all of it. Damon was a tall dark eyed man and clever, he needed to be, no smuggler captain could survive long on the fringes if they were anything less than highly intelligent.
“Bring up the active radar, we're getting nothing on passives and call Jill up here to sit on weapons, we don't want to get caught with our pants down.”
“We'll be lit up like a night light Damon, they'll see us as clear as day if we fire up the radar.”
“They've made comms outside our front door and we can't see them... they're already looking at us.”
Serena, agreeing with Damon's instincts and wondering who they could be, did as ordered.
As they waited for the radar to return Jill arrived on the bridge and moved straight to her chair, she had a strong but graceful walk that oozed presence, tall but not as tall as Damon, and always appeared to be someone th
at was looking through you, rather than at you, which was also likely given that underneath her muscled and toned skin, was an augmented weapon, nano treatments to her body were applied as a child which more than doubled her reflex speed and strength, she could change her hair colour at will and behind her piercing eyes were artificial implantations, a blinder bomb took her eyesight when she was just a child.
Several minutes later, the radar signal reached its limit and returned a blank screen.
“There's nobody here, this isn't right, we're getting nothing at all.”
“We just received another message, verbal this time,” Serena calmly informed them.
“Verbal, that fast?” Damon replied. “They can't be that close.”
“I have a verbal message here all the same, shall I play it?”
“Put it through the ECM first, we don't want a cold and get onto engineering, find out what Arlan and the kid are saying about the drive.”
As if reading his mind and already opening the channel, Serena activated the internal comms and asked the ship's engineer.
“Arlan what's going on down there, is this sabotage?”
His response was a little delayed, but he answered confidently.
“We don't think it's sabotage, the kid found the problem and it's wear and tear, why are we thinking sabotage?”
“Things are a bit off up here, comms has picked up a ship beside us and someone's trying to talk to us but we're getting zero on radar, active radar,” Damon cut in.
“There must be a problem somewhere, either comms or radar is wrong,” Arlan confirmed. “The star drive fails and this, I'm starting to get a chill down my spine, feels like sabotage and I won't have any pirates running around my decks, none.”
“Kid says wear and tear though,” Serena stated, although it sounded more like a question, “the kid's never wrong, right?” this time it was a question. “They just pinged us again with another verbal, let us know what you find Arlan,” quickly she cut the comms to engineering.
“Damon...?” It took a second for the captain to tear his attention away from the radar display and look at Serena. “Damon, should I open a channel?”
“I'm getting very itchy here,” Damon told them quietly. “Jill, bring our missile's online, anyone shows up we don't like, give them a nose bleed.”
Intellect alone isn't enough to survive, it took something else in the fringes, that sixth sense which tells you to turn back or sends a chill down your neck when something is just wrong, learning to listen to that sixth sense and when to act upon it had saved Damon's life more than once.
“Open an audio channel Serena, not video,” Damon ordered.
Serena opened the channel as Jill brought up the ship's defensive suites.
“Hello... hello... are they getting this?” A male voice spoke.
“Yes,” came a female's reply.
“They are..., hello, are you getting this? Why are they not answering?”
“There doesn't appear to be an issue with their external communications but they are bringing their weapon systems online,” The female voice answered. “Perhaps they just don't want to talk.”
“Why would they send an SOS then start a fight? Should we leave?” the male asked.
“Is this a recording?”
“No this is live, they are transmitting real time,” Serena answered.
Figuring that speaking to a stranger was better than fighting empty space, or having a protectorate patrol eventually explore his ship, Damon told Serena to open a return link.
“Yes, we hear you,” Damon stated. “Why are you here?”
“Someone's answered, you sent out an SOS? what's your name?” the voice asked.
After looking at his radar and still getting nothing back, he replied, “I'm Damon Osthorpe, Captain of the Ophelia.”
Damon was not particularly aggressive but he understood where the line was, space had never been a friendly place after all, especially since the Fall and so he nodded to Jill, who in turn knew the nod and understood. She would open fire if anything came up on radar, six nuclear plasma warheads should be enough to send most pirates running. There was also a laser suite for anti-missile defence but the range and power was nothing compared to what the missiles could throw out.
“Damon,” the voice answered. “OK, do you need help of some kind?”
He reopened the internal link to his engineering department, “Arlan, can we get back to the blaze yet?”
“We can't,” the engineer answered, leaving a lead ball in Damon's stomach.
“How soon until we can?”
“Again, we can't, one of the gravity suspension couplers has burned out, we would need to replace it Damon, but unfortunately we don't have anything to replace it with,” the answer was more of an accusation than a statement of fact, after all, the kid only told them about the potential issue months earlier, and she was never wrong.
“If we need to run, is there anything we can run with?”
“We can't run Damon, at all, the gravity side of the star drive is out, we don't even have sub light, only manoeuvring.”
It took a second to process and Damon cut the channel, everything in him felt like he'd killed everyone, led them into a pirate trap, a fitting end for a smuggler's ship he thought.
He wasn't really being fair to himself though, he was no smuggler, born on the outside of all major governments and not registered to any, he was technically classified as a smuggler for transporting goods without a license, and already on some of the minor wanted lists for doing so, but always considered himself more of a small items courier.
Reaching over he reopened the external link to the stranger, it wouldn't be good for Jill to see his uncertainty after all.
“OK you have us,” he stated, admitting defeat. “We have nothing of value on board, we're between jobs, so what do you want?” he demanded to know.
The answering voice was slow, uncertain and unclear.
“Did you not want help? We picked up an SOS.”
“Yes okay,” Damon conceded. “We're dead in the water, what do you want?”
“Oh... sorry, I thought we could help, we can leave if you have other help coming.”
“How can you help, we can't even see you,” Damon growled at the stranger.
“Oh yeah, I keep forgetting about that, we're just out in front of your ship.”
Damon took another few seconds to think over this answer, but he finally spoke to his AI pilot.
“Serena, bring up the front cameras.”
The holographic display on the wall burst to life and a vessel in front of them materialised, it was enormous in comparison to their own, at least over three times in size and it looked deadly, pointed and built for killing, most frightening though was that it sat just over two hundred meters away from their nose.
The panic was immediate as Serena attempted to manoeuvre the Ophelia out of the oncoming ship's path, Damon realising too late what Jill's answer to this would be, managed to stop her from launching all six loaded warheads.
Only two left their tubes, two wasn't a lot and they were low yield, not modern military grade, but then again the target vessel was only an arms reach away, they would probably survive that, however given the distances involved all six would have killed them all, like firing a rocket inside an elevator.
He watched the two blips on the radar as they blinked out of existence as fast as they'd entered it, there was no chance to talk, no chance to take cover, or cry for all hands to brace, the Ophelia lurched and shook as both the missiles detonated together.
The violence of the shock waves throughout the ship were immediate, Damon had twice been attacked in skirmishes although never at this magnitude. He was reminded of a feral fear, every spacer that had ever served aboard a Ferren, Exelseon Mergence or Sciesin warship would likely experience. They were conscripted or had signed up unaware but it would catch them all off guard sooner or later, to be in a pressurised metal box with someone shooting
at you and nothing but hard vacuum on the other side, he knew first hand what this felt like.
Alarms blared confusing him, his vision blurred making it difficult to orientate himself and warm blood fell down his face from the fall, the Ophelia's AI was in full panic mode while he climbed back onto his chair.
Checking the systems interface Damon confirmed that main power, communications, all external radar and passive sensors were gone, his cracked and damaged, damage display flagged up so much red that he struggled to look up.
The nuclear warheads had detonated early but he knew they must have struck the unknown ship, they were simply not far enough away to miss and yet too near for his own ship to evade. The Ophelia being built as a runner was fast and nimble, but this time not enough, the payloads stripped the Ophelia's armoured hull of everything, from sensors to weapons mounts.