CHAPTER 38 - AFTERMATH
DATE POINT: MAY 11th, 7 A.U. (AFTER UNIFICATION)
LOCATION: SOL SYSTEM, ABOARD UTRN INDOMITABLE WILL
CAPTAIN HENRY O’TOOLE
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Henry and Chantal walked together into the hangar bay. Before them, a heavily modified gunship awaited. The myriad arms installed and folded up against its exterior identified it as one of the repair skiffs they had on board. An ensign ran up to meet them with a salute.
“Captain on deck!” He shouted out, causing multiple heads to turn. “Good to see you, Sir! My name is Ensign Peters, and I’ve been assigned to take you out to inspect the damage for yourself.” The man said, speaking quickly and with a slightly nervous air.
“At ease, Ensign. Pleased to meet you. We’re ready when you are.” Henry said, returning the salute.
“Thank you sir! If you're all ready to go, then, follow me I guess.” He hurried off towards the lowered gangplank. Henry followed close behind him, eager to end the churning in his guts over the unknowns regarding the level of damage to his ship.
The interior of the repair skiff had been completely gutted and replaced compared to the gunships Henry was more familiar with. Rather than an open floor plan with cargo rails, weapons consoles, and standing acceleration couches lining the walls, there was a single central corridor with multiple stations that each had a dedicated technician seated. Each station controlled a repair arm or multipurpose drone. Farther in, there was a bulkhead which had to be where the spare parts storage bays were located, accessible from the exterior.
Henry and Chantal were led into the cockpit, where a single extra seat was available beside the pilot. After a quick silent conversation performed by staring into each other’s eyes, the type that only in-tune couples were capable of, Chantal sighed and took the seat. Henry grabbed onto a convenient spot on the bulkhead and braced himself for the inevitable liftoff.
“Alright, take us out. Nice and easy now, I want to get a really good look.” Henry said.
Ensign Peters nodded, flipped a few switches, and then hit the comms button.
“STC this is RS four requesting permission for liftoff.”
“Copy that, RS four, you are clear for liftoff. Proceed to launch bay three.”
“Roger that, launch bay three it is, RS four out.”
Henry buckled his knees slightly as they lifted off the deck and the center of gravity shifted, trusting his sea legs and mag boots to keep him steady. The ship glided smoothly into the gunship sized airlock marked launch bay three. The inner door closed behind them, and the atmosphere was sucked from the enclosure while the launch lights switched from red to yellow and finally to green as the outer door opened.
“Hold on to your hat!” A much more confident sounding ensign said, clearly now in his element, as they shot from the tube and curved through space.
Even at this distance, Jupiter was easily visible for a moment on the wide view screen display as they arced around towards the damaged prow of the Indomitable Will. Henry felt a pang of nostalgia for a moment, a yearning for the simpler days when he was a mere middling captain amidst the command of the larger Jupiter fleet under Admiral Young.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Chantal asked, looking concerned. His emotions must have been showing on his face more than he realized.
“Nothing much, just remembering my time in command of the Bull Run.” Henry said with a small, sad smile. “I guess I was getting a bit nostalgic for the good ole days. I have a lot of memories attached to that view.” He said while gesturing towards Jupiter.
“Wishing you could go back?” She asked, cocking her head slightly.
“No, not really. Such thoughts can only hold one back, glorifying an imaginary past where one focuses on the best times, while forgetting the bad. That traps you in a fog of regret that blinds you to the best that life has to offer you in the present. Plus, why would I ever want to? Back then I didn’t have you.” Henry said, smiling shamelessly at her.
“Good answer.” She smirked and twirled her hair absentmindedly as she stared at him. “I wouldn’t go back either, not in the least bit because then I’d lose you, but for other reasons too. I can’t help but feel that in spite of the challenges we face today, we are on an incredible adventure. I can’t wait to see how it turns out for us. So long as we get to face it together.”
Henry put his hand on her shoulder, giving it a squeeze as their ship glided through space on momentum alone. Powerful flood lights illuminated the exterior of the Indomitable Will as they approached the site of the damage. The drone bay was a large hexagonal extension extending out from the semi-ovoidal crew and engineering main section of the ship attached behind it.
The forward corner section had taken the plasma torpedo at an oblique angle. Had they dodged just a bit faster or more aggressively, or activated their barrier just a second sooner, they likely would have avoided the damage altogether. Chantal’s hand covered his and gave him a comforting squeeze. He realized he had been gripping her shoulder and the back of her chair a little too hard, so he eased up on the pressure.
The plasma torpedo had melted away the whole corner, fusing the exterior drone bay door shut. Henry could see into the interior of the tertiary drone storage. It was clear multiple drone flights had been vaporized along with the rails that they rode upon to reach the launch bay. A whole section of launch bay was exposed, and the interior wall had been melted away, allowing plasma to fuse and distort the interior surfaces.
“Well… fuck. This is going to require a complete rebuild of the entire port side drone bay, isn’t it? All of those sections are slagged.” Henry said as the brutal reality of the situation fully internalized itself in his mind.
“Worse than that, hon, the tolerances on most of the ship’s component sections are cut to the thousandth of an inch. When you have hundreds or thousands of parts assembled together like that, such precision is absolutely necessary. That level of melting will have thrown off the entire balance. There’s a good chance we will have to cut away much more than what is even visible now just to bring the ship back into tolerance. Otherwise, we can make all the replacement parts to spec that we want, but they simply won't fit together again.”
“Can’t we compensate for that, maybe weld custom plates on there temporarily? What you are describing will keep the Indomitable Will out of the fight for a long time. That's a luxury we may simply not be given.”
“We don’t’ have the manufacturing capability to create large metallic plate sections like that, not at least until we build the tools to make the larger casting and forging machines that can produce them. Even in the best case scenario it will take months of asteroid mining and round the clock work to create the correct factory equipment to hammer out even the most basic large steel plates. Those are tier two technologies on the colony creation plan.” Chantal replied, shutting down any hope Henry had for an easy fix.
“Don’t we have spare hull plate on board?” Henry asked, desperately looking for a way out of the grim proclamation.
“Yes, we have some in the storage bay of this very ship, but those are modular plate sections meant to replace outer and inner hull sections for small hull breaches after being hit by cannon fire, micro-meteor impacts, or perhaps a missile strike. We don’t have anything that can fix a hole like that without significant dry dock time. She’s absolutely right in her assessment.” Ensign Peters replied glumly.
“I see why you all wanted me to come see this myself…” Henry replied. “Can we fly and fight in this condition?”
“I wouldn’t recommend firing the port side C.L.A.P.P.E.R until we can shore up the structural integrity. The chance of the recoil vibrations causing additional superstructure damage is too high. The starboard unit should be safe enough to use, but even then we should avoid a fight until we can reinforce the area. We definitely should avoid atmospheric flight as well as high gee force maneuvering. Sorry to be the bearer of such bad news, hon, but this is much worse than I thought.” Chantal replied sympathetically.
“Why? The ship still seems pretty solid, mostly intact, surely we can still maneuver. What's the worst case scenario as to what could happen?” Henry asked.
“Worst case scenario is the whole ship tears itself apart, though that is far from a foregone conclusion. More likely is there will be additional damage, stress fractures, warping and the like. Basically, more damaged areas that we will have to cut out and replace once we have a full scale foundry and steel plant running.” Chantal replied.
“So we have to lay low for a few months as well then is what you are saying.” Henry replied.
“Yes, best thing we can do is get to work hollowing out one of the larger asteroids caught in Jupiter’s wake to hide in and to use as a temporary dry dock.”
“We’ll have to use the frigates and our drones to perform missions in local space then while we make repairs. We still have the starboard side drone launch and recovery system intact. Not so bad, I suppose.” Henry said.
“What missions?” Chantal replied.
“Doctor Silvar’Esh seems to think there is some kind of starship parts factory they have here in local space. He mentioned there was likely to be one here by Jupiter and one orbiting Venus, and that Horus might be able to use it to help him with repairs to his Ur-Uatchti. I'm thinking if we take it for ourselves we can use it for our own purposes, and thus prolong or prevent their own repair while we hunt for their hiding place.” Henry said, arms folded.
“That’s a lot of speculation, do we even know where this facility is, or what its specific purpose is? How sure is he that it even exists?” Chantal asked.
“Unfortunately, we don't have any of those answers in a concrete form. Logic states they have to have ore processing and machining capabilities somewhere in system. There is no way they could operate high technology out here without something of the sort available to them. The Alderei intelligence, limited as it is, seemed to agree with that assessment.”
“Then why haven’t we found any evidence of it in our own timeline? That’s the thing about all of this that is the most confusing to me of all. I mean, the Jupiter fleet construction program had begun processing those very same asteroids I’m suggesting we use now, and you all constantly patrolled the entirety of local space. Did you ever find any kind of anomalous structures or evidence of ancient mining activity?” Chantal asked.
“No, we didn’t, but we had barely been active in the area for a year or so, and Ganymede station was just two years old. We only had begun mining out the two most promising asteroids so far. There are hundreds of usable asteroids caught in Jupiter’s wake, and the size of local space around Jupiter is almost incomprehensibly large, as you know. There could easily have been an old and cold facility from thousands of years ago that was yet to be discovered. That same facility should show up now on thermals if it has been in use anytime in the recent past in this current timeline. Our search will be a lot easier now, especially since we are now aware there is something to be looking for.” Henry said, after a moment of thinking through his answer carefully.
“You make some good points, I guess that makes sense. We had no reason to suspect there would be old bases, so unless we stumbled across one we would simply never know of their existence. That’s hardly a comforting thought to be honest. Just imagine all there is out there in the cold reaches of Sol waiting to be discovered.” Chantal replied.
“Well at least we can find them easier now, they should be easily visible in the infrared spectrum if they have been active in recent history. Once we locate and clear these bases, we cam pass the information along to HighComm through the Q-Comm.” Ensign Peters said.
“Sure, we can do that, but the NAUDF will just sit on any information we pass along. It’s not like they can admit to how they got the information without revealing the existence of our mission. Best they can do is perhaps subtly engineer a patrol route through embedded agents that would lead to an accidental discovery. This is still an intel op at the end of the day, let’s not forget that, lest we get too far ahead of ourselves.” Chantal replied with a scoff.
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“Oh, right…. I guess I didn't think about that part.” The ensign replied, visibly deflating.
“Even though we cannot control what they do with the information, but we can absolutely still pass it along. It’s the right thing to do, regardless.” Henry replied, smiling at the young man, trying to buoy his spirits a bit. “I think we’ve seen enough, let’s head back.”
“Yes, sir!” Ensign Peters replied before he switched channels to get clearance to return. “STC this is RS four, requesting an open landing bay.”
“Stand by RS four….” The speakers crackled to life. “Approved, please approach launch bay twelve.”
The ship curved out and around to the underbelly of the ship heading towards the indicated airlock door.
“Slow your approach RS four, you're coming in a bit hot. Opening bay doors now.”
After their short trip, they slowed to a complete stop inside the airlock before the outer door closed behind them as the airlock cycled. Once the ship landed, Henry and Chantal disembarked and headed back through the bowels of the ship towards the CIC, both of them in a much more subdued mood.
“It’s gonna be alright, baby.” Chantal said, grabbing his hand and giving it a squeeze. “It looks bad now, but things really could have gone so much worse. In many ways we got pretty lucky.”
“I know.” Henry said with a short sigh. “Though short of a catastrophic failure of the mission complete with a horrible hypoxic death, its hard to imagine a more frustrating setback at the moment.”
“Well, it is going to incentivize us to better search and secure local space and the outer solar system before moving inwards. Arguably we will be in a stronger position doing things slow and carefully than we would be if we simply steamrolled our way right towards the Earth without at least securing our supply lines and fortifying for ourselves a base of operations.” She said with a slight smile.
“The idea was never really to rush right to Earth anyway. It just became more obvious that would be a bad idea with the revelation that there is a three way political split rather than a weak two-way divide like we thought. Plus, if we can cut off and take control of all the advanced manufacturing capability they have in-system, we can choke off their access to high technology and repair parts on Earth. If this experience has made anything clear to me, its just how difficult it is to maintain high technology equipment without access to a solid industrial base.” Henry said, smiling back.
“Precisely, we will seize the source of their advantages and turn the tables on them, and thereby make it our strength and their weakness.” She said with a fierce look.
“We’ll make a tactician out of you yet.” Henry teased.
“Only through your influence, love.” She said as she bumped his shoulder with her own.
Henry looked around and saw they were alone for a moment in the corridor and pushed her up against the wall. He stared into her eyes with longing as her breath got short and husky before he tilted his head into a long and passionate kiss.
“Oh... my Captain. Gonna take my breath away like that.” She said after they broke apart.
“Do you want me to stop?” Henry teased. She grabbed him by the front of his BDU’s and pulled him back in for another kiss.
“Never.” She whispered in his ear afterwards before biting his earlobe playfully, which sent a shiver down his spine. He slid his hand down her back and pulled her in a little tighter.
“You know… we aren’t too far from our room…” She purred, causing Henry to stiffen in excitement.
“I positively love the way you think.” Henry said as he cocked a smile and pulled away from her. She grabbed him by the hand and started to move with a purpose. He got a good moment to appreciate the swing of her hips and the curve of her behind before he was pulled along. They made impressive time to reach their shared cabin before Henry clumsily palmed the biometric scanner amidst a storm of kisses.
The door slid open, nearly causing them to fall inwards atop one another. Henry caught Chantal and lifted her back to their feet before she twirled him around and pushed him onto the bed.
“You’ve had a tough day, Captain, and you need to... unwind. You always take good care of me. Allow me to instead take care of you.” She purred as she lowered herself on top of him and slowly unzipped his BDU’s, planting kisses down his muscled chest as she progressed. Finally, after a few agonizing moments of teasing, he freed his arms from his BDU’s and she slid them the rest of the way off of him. With a hungry grin, she took him in her hands and began to stroke.
“Oh, you are ready. Now lay back and enjoy this, and don’t… you… dare… cum…. yet.” She said with a devious smile before she began to wrap her mouth around him. Henry found himself in a world of pleasure as he gripped the sheets, completely under her power. Time seemed to lose all meaning for a while as he saw stars before she pulled back with a gasp.
“Now its my turn.” Chantal said before she slowly unzipped and then climbed on top. Henry gripped her hips as she positioned herself and slid down with a gasp before she began to grind slowly at first but with a growing pace and intensity. She began to moan and bite her lip as Henry helped direct her hips in support of her tempo and alignment as her wetness increased and she dug her nails into his chest. Finally, she shivered and let out a loud series of moans, tightening around him. Henry could stand it no longer himself, and they finished together before she fell on his chest with a satisfied smile.
Henry shifted to get a bit more comfortable before Chantal shook her head slightly and said. “Don’t you dare move. Not yet.” She then gripped him tighter and smiled. He wrapped his hand around her and squeezed for a moment.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He said as he closed his eyes for a minute and simply allowed the stress to roll off of him as everything faded away.
He awoke some time later with his head buzzing to a notification alarm in his neural interface.
CAPTAIN, WE NEED YOU IN THE CIC RIGHT AWAY. OUR SENSOR TECH DISCOVERED SOMETHING BIG. DOC OCK IS HERE WITH ME HELPING TO ANALYZE. – CMDR ALVAREZ
“Motherfucker….” Henry groaned as he rubbed his temple.
“Hrmmm? What’s wrong, love?” Chantal asked as she stretched and sat up. “Fuck, that was amazing, wish we could have napped a bit longer though.”
“Yeah, that was incredible, you had me seeing stars there for a moment. Unfortunately, duty calls. Alvarez texted me that they found something important, wouldn’t say what.”
“Mmmm… no rest for the wicked, I suppose. Hold on, I’ll come with you.” She said before stretching again, giving Henry a rather intentional show of her lithe curves with a sly smile. “Keep looking at me like that, mister, and we’re never getting out of bed.”
Henry rolled his eyes and grabbed for his BDU’s. “Don’t tempt me.” He said before shaking his head. “This is important though, I’m glad we got a chance to be together though, it’s been hard to find the time lately.”
“I know, we just have to make it count when we can, is all.” She replied with a slight smile before she pulled herself into her BDU’s with a few hops to help them over her hips.
“Agreed. Let’s go see what they’ve found then.” Henry said before he typed up a thought-path reply.
ON MY WAY DOWN NOW. – CAPT O’TOOLE
“How’s my hair? Too obvious?” Chantal asked as she looked around the room.
“Might want to run a brush through it if you don’t want it to be too obvious.” Henry said as he opened a drawer and handed her the brush he assumed she was searching for.
“You’re a lifesaver and a mind reader. No idea how I ever got to be so lucky.” She said beaming.
“You saw what you wanted, and you took a chance on me. Luck had nothing to do with it.” Henry replied, smiling.
“Well, sure, but you could have been a right bastard, instead you’re the most amazing man I’ve ever known.”
“Well, you make it easy to be. You’re brilliant, beautiful, caring, and you demand the absolute best out of me. Honestly, I’m the lucky one. I’d be a damn fool to mess this up.” Henry replied with a smirk.
“Well… when you put it that way….” She said with a roll of the eyes. “I love you.” She said, blowing him a kiss as she set to work brushing the tangles out of her hair.
“I love you too.” Henry walked over and grabbed the brush she was handing over before putting it back. “Let’s go see what they have for us.”
Henry then opened the door, and they made their way to the CIC together, feeling happy in each other’s presence. They made good time, and soon enough Henry strode through the doorway with Chantal following slightly behind.
“Captain on deck!”
“At ease. Now why don't you tell me what you've found.” Henry said.
“Go ahead and send the LIDAR scan with the thermal overlay over to the captain’s console.” Alvarez ordered before he turned to Henry. “We found something strange, though it might be better if you see it for yourselves before we start going into detail about it.”
Henry nodded and then pulled the file up and displayed it above the holo console, replacing the local system map. Chantal let out a slow whistle behind him. Henry took in the sight and looked over everything while his mind processed it all.
“We found it because of the thermal signature it was giving off, and because it just happened to be swinging around the edge of its orbital path coming into view. If that had been in front of Jupiter, it would have been washed out, so we got lucky really. It was a hell of a good find to be picked out so early. Hats off to the sensor tech.” Alvarez said.
Henry stared at the projected image of a two kilometer tall pyramid with four tall obelisks jutting out from what appeared to be a section of rocky crust, as if it had been ripped straight out of the ground. A gaping scar had been torn in its side by some kind of ordnance, likely plasma from the all-too familiar look of the melted edges. There was a slight thermal signature in its center, though the structure was clearly deep into a process of radiating most of its heat away into space.
“It’s in a highly irregular, slowly decaying orbit, estimated to fall into Jupiter’s outer atmosphere within the next two hundred years. It’s purpose and nature remain unknown, though it is likely it has independent telekinetic drive generation capability onboard if it was able to lift off from the surface before it took that killing blow.” Dr. Silvar’Esh said.
“Well, I guess that answers your question about why we never found any signs of old bases around Jupiter.” Henry said to Chantal before he turned to the Alderei. “What intel do we have about this facility?”
“Very little, we know there is likely to be an ore processing and manufacturing facility in the area that was part of the supply chain to repair and maintain Nii’Baruu and their other ships. This might well be part of that.”
“Well, if that is the case then it might be exactly what we need. Either way we need to secure that facility and discover its purpose.” Henry said to those assembled before he turned to look at the rest of the CIC staff.
“Sensors, I want a full sweep of local space, looking for anything anomalous. Possible ships in hiding, satellites, other facilities, thermal anomalies, if its out there, we need to find it.”
“On it, captain!”
“Helm, we need to relocate, coordinate with navigation to find us a nice safe hiding spot in Jupiter’s trailing asteroid field. Take it real easy on the gee forces when you plot that course.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Comms, get me a line to the Fist of the Argonauts and patch in the Dirge of the Fallen, too.”
“Aye, captain, connecting you now.”
Henry cleared his throat while he waited. Moments later, a comms window popped up on his display with Commander Cutter and Lieutenant-Commander Seydoux on one side and Commander Watson, captain of the Dirge of the Fallen on the other.
“Captain, good to hear from you. How can we be of assistance?” Commander Cutter took the initiative as soon as the connection was live.
“I’m sure your curious as to why I called for you, so I’m going to just get right to it. I have a mission for you all. Stand by for data uplink.” Henry replied, pushing the scans over to them.
“Well, what do we have here?” Commander Watson asked, rubbing his chin contemplatively.
“The Indomitable Will took a nasty hit in this last battle, as I am sure you have already seen. It’s repair is beyond our current ability to easily perform until we are in phase two of the colony infrastructure buildup plan. While we were doing a local system mapping sweep, we came across this facility in a destabilized orbit in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. Intel suggests this may be a part of the enemy’s shipyard production supply chain. If it is what we hope it is, then we need that facility captured intact and brought back online. If this is indeed what we think it is, then successful completion of this mission might cut months off our repair time. Any questions so far before we begin mission planning?”
“Sir, do we have any real confirmation of the nature of the facility? Any defenses we should be aware of? Any additional intel you can provide will be invaluable.” Olivia asked.
“Unfortunately, we have little more than educated guesses to go off of. We need to be prepared for the possibility that this facility has multiple uses, or alternatively that it may be useless to us. The fact is, we do know they likely have a installation in this section of space that is part of a manufacturing supply chain for starship repair and manufacturing parts. We hope this is it, but we cannot prove it until we get boots on the ground inside to verify. As far as defenses, there are no obvious ones, aside from some surface laser batteries, though they appear inert. As you can see, it took a similar plasma strike to the one that hit the Indomitable Will. The facility seems powered off, and likely has vented most or all of its atmosphere. We are currently doing a full scan and sweep of the local area to look for heat anomalies or signs of ships in hiding and satellites.”
“Sounds like we should approach from below on momentum and under EMCON then just to be safe. We should also be prepared for our ground teams to watch for traps.” Commander Watson replied.
“Agreed, a stealthy approach is the wisest choice. I want the Fist of the Argonauts to deploy both your special teams to sweep the facility and clear any remaining threats. The Dirge of the Fallen should send their marine teams in support of your field engineers to secure their flank and get to work on reactivating the facility, with backup fire support from both of your Patriot mechs. I will supply ten drone squadrons for any external threats along with our deployed C.L.A.P.P.E.R drone. They will be useful in case of an ambush from any other ships hiding in the area.” Henry said.
“Good plan, we definitely appreciate the extra support. Lord willing, this place really is abandoned, and we can take it without needing the drone reserves to buy us time to recall our ground forces.” Commander Watson replied.
“I agree, it gives us some breathing room to work with just in case. So far this sector seems abandoned after Horus retreated, but that’s no reason to throw caution to the wind. We’ll take this facility for you, sir, assess its nature, and get it working again if it can help the war effort. You can count on us.” Commander Cutter said with a predatory smile.
“Of that I have no doubt. Go ahead and fly some spirals to build up momentum for the flight over. We’re going to relocate the Indomitable Will into Jupiter’s asteroid trail to begin coordinating mining efforts and the creation of a base of operations. I’ll make sure to have your drone support tailing behind you and ready. Any final questions?” Henry asked.
“No, sir.”
“Keep me posted by Q-Comm. Godspeed and get me that facility.” Henry said before cutting the feed.
Sol will be ours, but first, we claim Jupiter. Henry thought with a smirk. He then returned to his console and got to work planning the rest of the many operations that would be required in the coming days and weeks.