LOCATION: OPEN SPACE
SYSTEM: ZK4-J92
DATE: 2400
Eden’s Might was the first ship to arrive in the unnamed system, but they were quickly followed by the others, with the Talon coming in a minute behind the rest of the fleet. It was better than their first jump where nearly fifteen minutes separated all of the ships, but it was the best they had managed so far.
They still had a few more jumps to the first system where the pirate station might be, so there was time to see if they could tighten up the jump timing.
“All ships are connected via tight beam laser link, Captain.”
“Put them on the screen,” Krieger stated.
The large holo display came to life with the faces of the captains and commanders–in the case of the gunships–of each ship.
“One minute of separation,” he said, not dragging out the curiosity they were likely feeling.
There was a collective round of groans before Captain Bloomright spoke up. “I would like to apologize once again for my ship lagging behind. Our computer just isn’t as capable as the ones Alex put into yours.”
“It’s fine,” Vitor waved her off. “We knew it was going to be an issue before we launched. I think we can delay our jump a few more seconds to try and help line them up, but I wouldn’t want to push it any closer than that. We don’t need the Talon arriving ahead of the rest of the fleet. Your job is mostly to support our ships and launch the landing parties anyway.”
Vitor paused and turned to his pilot. “How long until we reach the jump point?”
“A little over two hours, Captain.”
Vitor nodded and turned back to the waiting captains. “We haven’t run into any pirates or scouts so far, but once we reach the next system, we will be running in combat conditions, so passive scanning only.”
“Is that wise?” Captain Ramirez asked. “We are still three systems out from our first target.”
Vitor would be the first to admit that Ramirez got on his nerves. It wasn’t that the man was a bad captain or that he was constantly second-guessing him–although, in this case, he certainly was–it was that he was a consummate worrier. Vitor was hoping that would go away after the man saw some actual combat.
“Our goal isn’t to flush out every pirate from hiding. We need to get into these systems quietly, scan them as best we can as we move to the next jump point, and hope our arrival goes unnoticed. If we are detected, we will need to engage the ship or ships before they can run for it and alert the station.” He was worried about scouts waiting just outside the target systems that might alert them they were coming. Any ship without a transponder this far out was not friendly. There would be no warnings given.
He was glad that the Hawks had agreed to let Alexander update their transponders so their ships could turn them off as need be. Hopefully, any pirates they ran into would just assume they were pirates as well, giving them the element of surprise.
“Any other questions or concerns? Now is the time to bring them up.” He waited for a bit but nobody spoke up. With a nod, he pulled out an old coin that he kept as a good luck charm. “Who’s turn is it to call?”
“Heads and we go north,” one of the commanders of the gunships stated.
Vitor flicked the coin into the air and it landed on tails. “Looks like we go south of the ecliptic,” he replied.
They were not using the standard jump protocol when exiting systems, that would be foolish. They either jumped from the north or south of the system's direction of rotation. The coin was just to add a bit more randomization into the jumps in case someone was keeping tabs on them.
He knew that wasn’t likely, but he also knew how unlikely it was to run into an entire fleet of pirate ships and work for an alien robot, and he had done both of those.
***
They arrived in the next system two days later and he was glad to see their timing was down to forty-five seconds of separation between all the ships, but only four seconds between the BSE ships. That was about as good as they could hope for.
Unlike the last system, there was no immediate comm link. All of the ships scanned the surrounding space with their passive sensors.
He wasn’t too worried about their jumps being detected. Most ships had poor gravimetric sensors, so unless there was a dedicated structure in the system with a dedicated gravimetric sensor array, it was unlikely they would be picked up. That limitation wasn’t out of negligence or poor design, it was just that gravimetric sensors took up a huge amount of space to operate effectively.
If someone knew where to look, they would be able to see their ships or at least their exhaust cones, but that was another reason to pick a nonstandard jump point.
He was hoping the pirates were lazy and just used STO jump points that were created during The Great Expansion like everyone else.
“Captain, we have something,” the communications and scanner officer reported at the same time an orange dot popped up on the tactical display.
Vitor was still getting used to people having multiple roles. “Send the coded laser pulse to let the other ships know that we have a bogey.”
They got confirmation from the other ships, but also that Fury was reporting two contacts at that location instead of only one.
The Fury was larger which allowed it to have slightly better scanners so he believed their scan was probably accurate. The question was what to do about the two unknown contacts.
Krieger manipulated the tactical view. Unfortunately, the two contacts were well outside the light second bubble of Might’s tactical overlay. That meant figuring out what he wanted to know the hard way.
After doing some calculations, and confirming it with more coded bursts back to the other ships, they were able to determine the two scouts were sitting near the normal jump point from the previous system.
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It made sense. The last system they came from was the closest system to this one, making it the most likely for people to jump in from. Arkonis Anazi had picked a rather isolated system to hide his shipyard. It was sort of a dead spot in space with no stars within ten light-years except this one and the one after it.
The sort of dual system bridge ensured anyone who came out here would need to come through those systems unless they wanted to risk a dead jump into the vast gulf between stars.
Vitor would have preferred to just leave these two ships behind since they were completely oblivious to their presence, but he didn’t want to leave a possible enemy in their rear or risk them discovering them before they made the next jump, which would be easy once they powered up their drives and started flying for the opposite jump point.
There was also the opportunity to see how the other captains handled a combat situation.
“Tell the Talon and the two gunships to hang back, then send Fury and Resolve this battle plan.” He made a flicking motion from his screen and the comm officer acknowledged the transfer. Vitor could have sent it himself, but he was still stuck in the mindset of an STO officer and that meant delegating duties.
The three ships formed a triangular formation with Resolve leading the way due to its shorter weapon range. He honestly thought Ramirez would balk at being stuck in the forward position, but the man hadn’t hesitated to take the lead. Vitor only hoped that the man’s newfound certainty held up.
Given the choice, Vitor wouldn’t normally split his fleet like this, but the Talon was much too big a target and would be spotted long before they got close to these ships, even if the people on board were sleeping at the controls.
He also had faith in Alex’s improvements after going over the schematics during the trip. Every single critical space was triple-armored on each of the Eden vessels. The armor itself wasn’t anything to write home about, and probably wouldn’t stop Gauss rounds for long, but he was certain it could shrug off autocannon rounds without issue.
The only other real concern with most pirates was missiles. Those wouldn’t likely be much of an issue with all of the ECM and countermeasures the Eden ships had available with a full three supercomputers to back them up.
He wouldn’t discount these ships having lasers or railguns after running into Char’s fleet but he still felt that was unlikely. If Arkonis had access to those types of weapons, he would have used them on his flagship like Katalynn Char had. Still, his plan hopefully reduced their risk as much as possible.
The tactical plot updated when the enemy ships came into range, but there were now three icons on the screen.
Frowning, he zoomed in with the optical sensors to get a better look. The two ships were only corvettes and they hadn’t reacted to their presence yet. The third item was a large box, but it wasn’t producing gravitational distortions like the gravity traps did.
It had to be a trap of some sort, but Vitor wasn’t sure what type. He wasn’t willing to risk getting close enough to find out though. He sent a laser comm to both ships to go active and engage, but stay away from that crate.
Through the tactical display, he could see exactly when the pirate ship’s sensors spotted them. It was evident in the panicky jerky motions of the ships as their crews tried to fire up their engines. Sitting dead in space like this, Vitor’s people could have just sent a hail of railgun darts from beyond normal range and probably taken them both out, but he was hoping to only disable the ships and take some pirates captive for questioning.
The first to fire was actually Fury, followed close behind by Resolve. The Fury’s lasers flashed by the smaller pirate corvette but failed to score a hit. Considering they were still nearly a light second away, that was still a close shave.
The Resolve had better luck, Captain Ramirez filled the space with dozens of hyper-velocity rounds. It helped that he was much much closer to the targets.
Through the zoomed-in image of the pirate ships, Vitor got to watch tiny flashes of light bloom into being across one of the corvettes, only for a stream of debris to be blasted out the other side.
Resolve didn’t stop firing though. He was going to have to remind the captain to conserve his ammunition. They did not have an unlimited supply of railgun darts and the Talon only had around four thousand aboard their ship to resupply them if needed.
If they blew through all of those, they would have to dig out the mobile mining setup Alex had included for them. It only included the small smelter and a single drone, but they could augment the mining by adding the three Eden’s ship’s drones as well, once they printed the mining attachments for them.
Fury fired again, this time staggering their fire so it was more of a continuous barrage as opposed to an alpha strike.
Vitor held his single laser in reserve for anything suspicious, but it wasn’t required. The second corvette broke apart and started tumbling through space. The ships weren’t going to be salvageable, but they might be able to pull some useful items off of them.
He had the comm officer send a message for the Talon to join them, and then he contacted the two BSE ships.
“Good job you two. Hall, I’m glad you changed tactics to stagger your fire, but I think your initial instinct to try and hit them with everything was still correct.” The man nodded. “Ramirez, you did well getting in close without being detected, although you need to work on your ammo conservation. If we run out, we’re going to delay the mission by multiple days to replace what we used.”
“Thank you, Captain. I’ll work with my team to do better. Despite training extensively on this ship, I think some of my people are still used to the fire rates on STO vessels and those are much slower. You may want to look into that problem as well since your ship has the same railguns.”
Vitor put on a strained smile and nodded at the man. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
He pushed aside his annoyance at the man’s unwarranted suggestion and focused on the task at hand. “Ramirez, I want you to send your bot over to that crate to examine it. It could be a weapon or trap of some sort so don’t get close with your ship. Hall, I want you as overwatch. Don’t let anything sneak up on us while the Talon and their people are scouring one of the two wrecks.”
“What will you be doing, Captain Krieger?” Hall asked.
“We’re going to check the other wreck.” He wouldn’t be, but he knew a certain Marine that would be happy to stretch his legs. Once a dropship from the Talon came to pick him up that is.
***
Galloway jumped up and down, twisted and bent over, getting a feel for the augment suit as well as warming it up. It was slightly more maneuverable than the Navy model but lacked the additional armor of the heavy combat gear. He was happy with everything else. Especially the augmented interface, scanners, and ECM gear that Kane had somehow shoehorned into the thing.
The vibration and motion sensors quickly alerted him that the drop shuttle had just docked. Only seconds later, his HUD lit up and let him know that there were four friendlies aboard. He smiled at that, and it was only the tip of the iceberg, the rest of the armor would get its chance to shine soon.
It didn’t take long to cross the distance from Eden’s Might to the disabled pirate ship. They docked and waited for their HUDs to update them with an internal map of the vessel thanks to the sensors.
“Motion in the engine room,” one of the mercenaries stated.
“Got another in the bridge,” Galloway added.
No more targets presented themselves on the map so he turned it off and went into tactical mode. It would track any hostiles but only flash an alert if any hostiles were getting close or could possibly have a firing angle on the suit’s user.
“Two and two then, Zorina, you’re with Galloway.”
“Affirmative, TL. Try to keep up Mr. STO,” the woman said with a bit of mirth.
Galloway snorted and followed the woman through the airlock. Despite the sensors showing it was clear, both of them snapped their weapons up and scanned the corridor. “Clear,” they both spoke through the suit radios.
The other two stepped out and went in the opposite direction.
As much as Galloway would like to say, they got into a pitched firefight, and they easily won the day, that simply didn’t happen.
The motion on the bridge turned out to be a dead crew member bouncing back and forth in the seat he was strapped to. The other mercenaries got more lucky. They managed to take a surviving pirate captive, but the man was so injured and out of it, who knew if they could get any actual information from him.
Once they cleared the rest of the vessel, they sent the robot in to start tearing out useful tech like the jump drives, gravity plating, and maybe even the reactor, he wasn’t sure. His part in this operation was done, and although he hadn’t gotten to see what the augment suits were really capable of, he was still happy to have done something other than sit around.