The bridge of the Tomahawk was silent, the crew left speechless by the destruction.
They’d seen and heard of many battles; some close calls decided by sheer luck, others total victories at the hands of a superior enemyy force or particularly sharp commander. Yet this…this had been entirely unlike all of them. It had been more similar to target practice…only the targets had been people.
“What is the…unknown fleet doing?” Captain Bosetti asked, flexing his hands.
“B-Boarding actions, sir.” His sensor officer reported. “I’m seeing a good dozen boarding craft approaching the…uh…the warship that’s still solid.”
Bosetti chuckled. An entire battle squadron of royalist warships -cruisers and destroyers!- had been reduced to a single destroyer stripped of its weapons and propulsion and left adrift in the void.
The unknown fleet, on the other hand, was virtually pristine. The ship’s sensors had detected a handful of succesful hits by the inbreds’ missile barrage -a pittiful sum for such a great expenditure of munitions-, and of those even fewer had penetrated the mysterious ships’ shields and armor.
“Do we know where those ships came from?”
“No match on any of our databases, Captain.” His intelligence officer reported, mumbling unintelligible curses to herself as she compared their sensor data with thousands of profiles. “Closest profiles are…early post-collapse Hegemony cruisers.”
“What the hell are Collapse-era ships doing out here?”
—
“They’ve breached the bridge, Admiral.” Colonel Guerr reported to the rest of James’ staff. “The captain commited suicide before my men could grab him, but his XO and several officers are still alive.”
The various gathered officers smiled, but there was hardly any celebration at the regimental commander’s words. Such results were expected, when an entire company of the 101st boarded a warship protected by a handful of ill-equipped marines and panicked sailors.
A few seconds later, the man spoke once more. “Engineering’s been captured, though my combat engineers have few hopes of regaining control without significant repairs. Your orders, Admiral?”
James remained silent for several seconds, his eyes never leaving the boarded ship’s signatue on the battlemap.
“Grab the officers, pick up whatever data you can from their computers and reformat their data drives. We’ll leave their sailors and marines as they were; we’ve nowhere to put them and they have life support and rations to last them a long time, enough to get picked up by one of the penal colonies.”
“Aye, Admiral.” Guerr nodded, turning to speak with his officers onboard the ship.
In the mean time, James and the rest of his staff focused on the other…issues concerning the operation.
“Is that republican cruiser still there?”
Lieutenant Commander Hall spoke up. “It is. No propulsion, no active sensors…but the Circe’s sensors picked up its arrival and we’ve been tracking its heat emissions ever since. Its ballistic course will take it through the kuiper belt in four days.”
The scout ship’s crew likely thought themselves concealed, for had they known they were being watched they would’ve likely fled.
“Is it likely they’ll turn back before they get in interception range?” James asked
It was Captain Smith who answered. “Likely, though they haven’t seen the true range of our missiles. The Vanguard’s long-range ship-killers could get to them before they jump out. No witnesses, if you so desire, sir.”
“Oh, we have plenty of witnesses.” Stefan Hall refuted, pointing to the half-dozen penal colonies spread throughout Wolf 163. “Going by the interviews of the refugees from station C3, there’s about four thousand souls on every single one of those tin cans floating through the void. We’re talking about twenty to thirty thousand of these poor souls.”
James grimaced. His deep-strike unit had been privy to the truth of Vogdi POW camps where captured akritans were held. It’d didn’t sound too different from C3, minus the regular supply shipments. Prisoners were sent into the void in ill-maintained suits to mine minerals from asteroids for grueling shifts, returning to the station to eat tasteless and lacking meals and sleep for a handful of hours in beds drenched in sweat and disease.
He would liberate Wolf 163, that much was certain. On that much, both heart and mind agreed.
“There will be no threatening or shooting missiles, gentlemen.” He spoke, and the two officers turned to look at him. “I’ve already drafted a message for the ship’s commander, as well as another that he will take to the commander of the Republican Navy. If we want an alliance we have got to act in good faith.”
—
“Captain, incoming message on the laser-comm.” The communications officer reported. “It’s coming from the…uh…from the unknown fleet, sir.”
Luca Bosetti nearly jumped from his chair at the officer’s latter sentence.
“Laser, not radio?” He asked, barely controlling his tone.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
Sending messages via radio broadcast towards a jump point to bait out any spy ships was a common enough tactic, even if the sender wasn’t certain of spies. But lasers such as those used to communicate securely over long distances required very specific target coordinates, and space was big.
In short, the mysterious fleet knew they were spying on them.
How long had they known? The Tomahawk had controlled its emissions carefully, and there hadn’t been any spikes…right? Bosetti swore to have engineering check over the logs one by one after reading the message.
Approaching the communications console, he leaned in to read the short message displayed.
To the commanding officer of the republican warship that has been attempting to recontier this battle squadron while remaining hidden.
The Akritan Dynasty has entered a state of war with your enemies. An alliance between the Dynasty and your Republic would be beneficial to both. Attached is a proposal for such an agreement signed by Duke James Akrites, first of his name. To ensure that this message is read only when reaching the headquarters of your nation, it has been encrypted in such a way as to require the use of significant processing power.
At least one akritan warship will remain on station in this system for the forseeable future, awaiting a response.
P.S.
Boarding of royalist warships succesful. Remain on station for six to eighteen standard hours to receive intelligence. Consider this the first of many such exchanges if an alliance is termed.
Captain Bosetti stood motionless, reading and re-reading the message.
Akritan Dynasty? War? Alliance?
This was way, way above his paygrade. This was the kind of stuff the admiralty made choices on…but of course, that’s why the warships of this ‘akritan dynasty’ had sent the encrypte message.
“Is part of this transmission encrypted?” He asked the comms officer.
The young man nodded. “Yes, sir. It looks to be several times bigger than the unencrypted content. It’d take weeks, maybe months, to crack the encryption with our computers’ strength.”
“But what about the admiralty’s computers?”
“I suspect they coul do it in much less time, Captain.” The lieutenant answered. “But those kind of numbers are way above my paygrade.”
“Very well.” Bosetti acknoledged, going back to his chair.
“We will remain on station for eighteen more hours, and continue with EMCON protocols. Inform engineering to re-verify that our emissions are up to par.”
—
A week later, the Tomahawk returned to the the Leonis system with a treasure trove of information and a message of the highest importance in its databanks.
To an outsider’s eyes all looked normal. Even its laser transmissions, if their contents were to somehow be intercepted by royalist spy ships stationed near republican communication satellites, would look normal. But all was not as it seemed.
A codeword here. A secret meaning there.
Before it even breached the kuiper belt a squadron of destroyers met up with it to escort it further into the system. The past month’s lul had given way to conflict, and there was strength in numbers.
When it finally breached the kuiper belt, and the impromptu squadron’s sensors confirmed there were no unknown ships prolowing around the hidden communication satellites, the Tomahawk’s laser communications system transmitted a burst transmission.
Only a few dozen milliseconds long and incredibly difficult to detect, it carried a scarce few kilobytes of data. A dozen pages of text, compressed into a hundred lines of binary and encoded with the hardest encryption available to the navy.
The squadron continued on its course. At first carefully, lest one of the many missile-mines seeded into the republican slice of the system by their enemies go active without them noticing. Then less so, for as it got closer to its destination space became safer and safer.
They passed by hidden satellites by the dozen. Missile launchers and railguns built in asteroid craters, infrared sensors and passive radar encased in frozen methane and ice. Republican ships, too, became a more frequent sight. From tiny area defense gunships to destroyers and even cruisers, maintaining the security of the ‘Eagle’s nest.’
Finally, they arrived at their home port in Leonis VI-C. The destroyers would only stop for a few short hours to refuel and resupply what little they’d spent, but the light cruiser was in for several days of maintainance, rest and relaxation. Save for its poor captain and intelligence officers, who were promptly whisked off deeper into the moon’s labyrinthine bunkers.
—
Captain Luca Bosetti did his best to look calm as he stood in front of his superior.
He’d done nothing wrong, and they both knew it. He wasn’t here to answer for crimes or misdeeds, but to simply report. Yet the Admiral was a man few had met and even fewer knew on a personal level. There was a certain level of performance anxiety any proper republican officer experienced under the piercing gaze of Admiral Cecilio Kranz.
“And you are certain you followed proper emissions control protocols, captain?” Kranz questioned the man.
Bosetti nodded fervently. “Y-Yes, sir. I had my engineers check and check again for any possible flaws, but there were none. We even went on auxiliary power for several hours, and yet the, uh, akritan vessels continued to track us. We know, because they kept sending us intelligence updates every few hours.”
Kranz nodded thoughtfully. “Well…there is nothing more you could’ve done, captain. You’ve served the republican cause better than you can imagine on this mission, and for that you have my personal thanks. I’ll see to it that your men are given two days’ more leave.”
“I’ll see to it that they appreciate your gratitude, sir.” The captain promised.
“Very well then. You are dismissed.”
As the rattled captain walked out of the room, Admiral Kranz and Captain Doss were left by themselves. The two men looked at each other, exchanging the barest of glances before Kranz’s chief of staff stood up. A minute later, he sat back down with two glasses of amber alkbrew and ice.
At Kranz’s raised eyebrow, the man replied. “Is this not a cause for celebration, sir?”
“What, the Duke’s proposal?” The admiral replied, swallowing half the glass in one shot.
Doss nodded wordlessly.
“Well…yes.” Kranz nodded, wearing a weary smile. “I suppose it is, though you and I both know their aid isn’t coming for free.”
“Nothing’s free, but their price is pretty cheap.” Doss countered. “They’re taking a hot potato off our hands, they’ve already destroyed half a squadron of elites and they’re bringing in more ships -big ships- to the fight.”
“For the price of a system.” Kranz rapped his fingers on the table. “Wolf 163 might’ve been rendered unexploitable by the war, but before that it provided more than twenty-five percent of the kingdom’s raw materials. We’re handing over tens of billions of lira in mining equipment, and tens of thousands of our people.”
Doss sighed. “Equipment that’s useless to us until and unless we achieve victory, and people who would’ve regarded us with suspicion at best and rebelled at worst. A third of them belong in a maximum security prison, and the rest would believe us -rightfully so- to have abandonned them to the royalists. We have neither the ships nor the resources to safeguard the system and help its people.”
“I know, Emilio.” Kranz nodded, clasping his subordinate’s hand in his own. “And I’m not against this. Just because it’s a bitter choice doesn’t mean its a bad one. I’ll sign the deal in the morning and send it on a messanger ship to Wolf 163. This ‘Duke’ of theirs should see our reply by the end of the week.”
Captain Doss looked down at Kranz’s palm, then grinned.
“Well then…I suppose I ought to make sure you don’t back down.”
The weary admiral’s face split into a grin. “My room or yours?”
“Yours, of course.” Doss giggled, leaning into him. “You’ve got silk sheets…”