The Admiral looked over the shoulder of an analyst. On screen, she saw footage playing. Depicting armored men storming down a corridor, while lightly armed security forces attempted to stop them. Plasma rounds splashed harmlessly against armor, as the security troops were gunned down with brutal efficiency.
She didn’t recognize the armored alien suits, so she inquired, “What are you watching?”
“Footage taken from the Tarnished Jewel, a Class III deuterium transport in convoy 47.”
“I recall hearing that convoy was hit by Voskar raiders.”
“It was, but during the battle the Menace made themselves known and raided the Tarnished Jewel. Giving us a rare look at their ground forces.”
The Admiral nodded along. She knew quite well how rare boarding actions were. Space battles were often fought at ranges in the hundreds of kilometers. At such ranges boarding actions were typically rendered impractical at best, but they were seen more often in police actions. Yet they did sometimes happen during military action, but there were requirements that must be achieved before troops could board a ship. The first was that the target’s shields would have to be knocked out, then one would have to disable the engines and weapons. Once all of that was done there were a few approaches for getting soldiers onboard. Boarding pods, shuttle craft, and straight up docking were all options. Teleportation was still the realm of science fiction, but she was keeping up with the scientists.
She knew of one project that was looking into it, but they had yet to create anything practical. They did manage to move a piece of fruit a measly meter and a half. That didn’t sound like much, but every previous experiment worked with only a handful of particles, nothing of substantial mass. Sadly it didn’t look like their approach would be of military use, not any time soon and it did have a limitation of requiring a device both at the source and the destination. Based on current theories it seemed that was going to be a requirement for any practical teleporter. Not that it mattered much given current designs could barely move a piece of fruit and took so much energy doing it that it was cheaper and easier to have a Valorian pick it up and carry it to the destination.
Putting those thoughts aside, she inquired, “Any interesting insights yet?”
“A few, I’ve been studying their hardened exosuits, trying to use the data we have to produce a general outline of their capabilities. Like our own, they appear to be designed to work in exoatmospheric conditions like those found on the transport when this took place. That indicates the presence of independent life support systems, which in turn suggests the possibility of allowing the wearer to survive in a variety of hostile environments. At the very least they would not have to worry about toxic atmospheres.”
She interjected, “Sounds like what you would expect of an exosuit. We design our own for a wide variety of environments. Not every alien breathes the same atmosphere we do.”
“True, but more interestingly their armor exhibits the same energy fluctuations as their ship’s when struck.”
The admiral blinked, “The same???!”
“Exactly the same, the variation was less than a millionth of a percent.”
“But that is impossible, SIF generators are...”
“Huge, yes, but for us. Apparently, our alien menace has figured out how to miniaturize them to fit inside of an armored suit but many other races struggle to do the same with shield generators, but we can do it.”
“Right, anything else of note?”
“Not really, their troops seem well-trained, highly coordinated and brutally efficient. Weapons appear to be based on the same technology as their starship cannons but on a much smaller scale. As you can see, covered positions don’t mean much against them,” the analyst paused and skipped ahead to where a security team had deployed portable cover. These were devices that projected a forcefield in front of a hardened barrier to provide protection to the troops behind. A bit expensive really and she recalled that the convoy had been moving a few units of the stuff to certain outposts. “Portable cover however seems to actually help, somewhat. The forcefield was able to stop their small arms, but...”
On screen one of the alien soldiers tossed a grenade and the room lit up as a charged energy pulse ripped through the room. Overloading the shield and frying organic tissue, yet leaving anything structural intact. “Was that?”
“A grenade version of their lightning cannons? From what I can tell, yes, it definitely appears to be based on the same technology.”
The admiral watched the footage play again, while her thoughts raced on the implications. It left her with many questions, but what she had seen was enough to give her worries. If these aliens attacked something more substantial than a transport they might be ill pressed to stop them. “How long did it take them to secure the transport?”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Minutes sir, they were quick, swift and brutal in their execution of the attack. It took the hundred alien marines about fifteen minutes to secure their objectives, drain the fuel and leave.”
She blinked, glanced at the transport’s blueprints and said, “15!!??”
“From the moment they cut through the outer hull, to when they pulled out I counted fifteen minutes thirty-seven seconds. They engaged two damage control teams and three squads of security troops that attempted to stop them totaling thirty-six dead.”
“How? The fuel...”
The analyst forwarded the footage, and showed the aliens simply disconnecting the fuel canisters and carrying them. No sign of special equipment, aside from the plasma cutters they used to widen certain passages. “They seem to be physically stronger than the average Valorian and a good deal faster. Perhaps their homeworld has a higher gravity than Valoria?”
What she saw here was concerning, how concerning she wasn’t sure, but the aliens seemed to be just as potent in boarding actions and by extension ground combat as they were in space combat. That was going to require taking into account with future operations. The clan wanted to capture the alien technology and that meant planning a boarding action.
Pushing aside those concerns for now, she decided to inquire on more immediate concerns. “Given this attack do we have any updates on the position of the alien taskforce?”
“Yes, we were able to use it and known local factors to narrow their position to one of three possible areas, all within the same sector, the Adioshi sector.”
Mentally she reviewed what she knew about the Adioshi sector. It was a resource-poor region of space along the Valorian Wovnar border, but the area was also plagued by Voskar raiding parties and suspected outposts. There was a stellar nursery in the region as well, which comprised the majority of local stellar resources, but being a stellar nursery also made that part of the sector very dangerous as the dense nebula was often wracked with plasma storms, ion radiation, wavefronts, and even shockwaves caused by stellar formations.
The military maintained a number of outposts in the sector and two important trade routes ran through the sector bringing much wealth into her own clan from far off parts of the galaxy. What was less well known was that there was a clan controlled outpost on the edge of the Adioshi Nursery that mined valuable and rare ores for the clan, including Erudite, Ephon Crystals, and Tungari. Tungari was a rare ore that formed due to mineral formations being exposed to deep hyperspace conditions, a local hyperspatial fissure being the source of the Tungari there. The material had incredible thermal resilience and was incredibly hard with high tensile strength. It was often used in the manufacture of military-grade armor and advanced alloys like Tritanium. The Krall had a very high demand for the material, but sadly they had their own more local sources and as a result made a poor customer. Regardless, that mine was perhaps the clan’s most profitable endeavor in the entire sector.
“So what factors did you use?”
“I factored in their known speed, last known position, heading and course. Along with observed course data from the past few months, then I calculated sensor ranges, factoring the alien stealth and correlated possible and known sightings based on time and date. Further narrowing things down by using local stellar phenomena to determine their course and then forecasting possible and known course changes of local shipping by the space storm Arach 117. Since we have had no future sightings since this battle, we have to conclude they are avoiding our outposts and ships.”
“So where are they, and you think Arach 117 would have affected their course?” inquired the admiral recalling that Arach 117 was a class II ionic wavefront, more of a nuisance than anything else. The intense ionic radiation of the storm would ionize sensors, and disrupt shield systems. More severe storms could leave ships temporarily powerless and adrift. Warp speed was typically considered inadvisable within a storm due to reduced sensor ranges, but was still possible if required.
“I don’t believe so, but it would have changed merchant shipping patterns. As merchant ships changed course to avoid the brewing storm, we predict they would have likely been driven into the storm. That brings them to one of three locations, Arnium, Telgros, or Yinsha.”
“Telgros? Are you sure about that one?”
“Yes, it’s one of the possible locations for their battlecarrier and its two escorts.”
That wasn’t good, not good at all. Telgros would put them within striking range of the clan’s most valuable mine. She was going to have to divert ships to the Telgros cluster immediately to defend the clan interests. “You mean battleship.”
“No, Battlecarrier, we have been studying it awhile and comparing her to Krall designs since they seem most comparable. In that light, the ship is surprisingly under-gunned with about half the expected firepower, but she also has those two hangar bays we identified previously. The vessel has also been observed deploying a strike complement comparable to a light carrier. Some still believe the ship to be undergunned but we don’t know enough about menace technology to confirm that.”
“The Krall!? Why are we comparing menace ships to them?”
“Because the Krall are the only other known faction to employ sustained beam weaponry and recent discoveries have made it likely the aliens are more advanced than first believed.”
“They don’t have shields,”
“None worth mentioning anyway, but that isn’t the only measure of technology. They appear to be comparable in technology to ourselves and almost as advanced as the Krall in some areas. Notably they use sustained beam weapons and their ships are remarkably fast. Capable of cruising at warp five, our ships are only now starting to gain that kind of speed. More interestingly is that not only can they cruise at high warp, they don’t show up on long-range sensors. Not the way we would expect, given the heat signatures they should be putting out. In fact their ships are remarkably cold, colder than most Voskar ships in fact, and the Voskar are the foremost experts in cloaking technology in this region of the galaxy. Using those metrics paints a race with technology comparable to most major powers. Yes, they are behind in shield tech, but they are competitive in other areas.”
“Noted.” Replied the admiral before she left the room.