BOSTRUISA, MALGEIRU
Speinfoent woke up to the rhythmic cascades of the running shower. Shaking the lingering fog from his head, he spread out his paws on the luxurious blankets. They were made of a soft material he did not recognize and felt divine against his fur. He slowly lifted himself into a sitting position, still marveling at how comfortable it was. As he sat up, he noticed a faint yet familiar scent wafting through the air. His stomach started to flutter as fragments of last night came flooding back to his mind.
As he just sat there ruminating, he felt the warmth of Malgeiru’s primary star hit his left paw. Hold on…
The sun.
The window.
He craned his neck to look and realized that the window coverings were conspicuously absent.
Wobbling to the bathroom, his eyes caught Eupprio’s undressed outline highlighted in the translucent glass door. He knocked.
“Fine. You can come in,” Eupprio giggled from inside with a hint of mischief.
Ignoring her implied request, he asked, “Eupprio, did you intentionally leave the window coverings open last night?”
“The window coverings? I didn’t notice,” she replied just a little too innocently. “Why?”
He let out a groan. “But— what if your paparazzi friends were outside taking photos of us… you know, getting intimate?”
Eupprio burst into laughter. “That wasn’t what I had in mind. But if it was, would that have stopped you?”
Speinfoent stuttered, “Well— well— no. Fine. Forget it…”
The sound of the shower ceased, replaced by the squelching of wet paw steps on the bathroom tile. He quickly looked away from the window, his snout flushed a rosy hue. Then, he heard her offer in a much more tender tone.
“Here, come on in,” she coaxed, “Allow me make it up to you.”
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As Speinfoent retrieved the array of clothes around the bed as they dried their wet fur, Eupprio’s datapad emitted a short beeping sound. Her ears perked up and she snatched it up from the bedside nightstand.
“Any updates to our project?” Speinfoent asked from across the bed.
Eupprio flicked her eyes over the screen. “They’ve narrowed it down to five hundred entries and have started analyzing the remaining.”
Speinfoent let out a low whistle through his snout. “That’s… a lot fewer, but still quite a few reports to read through. Doable, though. May I see it?”
As she tossed him the datapad, he caught it with practiced ease and started skimming through the files. Browsing through them, he saw a colorful bar chart with only number labels. He pointed it out to her. “What is this showing?”
Eupprio swiped and pinched at the chart to manipulate it. “Looks like the outcome differential factor. So, roughly speaking, the number of reports in each group of how different the result is from expected.”
“How different the—” Speinfoent smacked his furry paw against his forehead. “That’s it! These reports are both when we lost and won by a lot. If these aliens hurt the Znosians, it would show up somewhere we did much better than expected.”
“Huh? Aliens?” she asked, her whiskers twitching, confused. “You know, I can probably help you better if you told me what you were looking for.”
Speinfoent hesitated, mulling it over. Then, his features softened. Deciding he could trust her, at least on this, he told her. He relayed the Znosian Marine’s interrogation, his fleet commander’s directive, and even how he got access to all the records.
“Wow, that’s— that’s certainly not what I expected. I see why you’re looking through all these reports to find these supposed alien protectors then. As you say, I’ll ask the engineers to just filter these down to only incidents in which the outcomes were much better than expected.”
Her fingers danced across her datapad as she transmitted the new instructions. Almost instantaneously, a reply pinged back.
Eupprio’s eyes narrowed, her ears drooping. “That can’t be right.”
Speinfoent raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”
She quickly tapped out a message to her team for confirmation. “Just checking if this is correct. Only eleven reports came in.” Another chime rang out, and she scanned the new message. “Yeah, they double-checked. Only eleven reports in total.”
Speinfoent winced. “We’ve only significantly outperformed expectations in eleven battles? Well, the silver lining is I won’t have many more reports to look through. Let’s run down the list. Give me the first.”
She skimmed through her datapad and started reading. “Znosian raid on a propulsion research facility two years ago. They blinked six Gamma-class ships directly into railgun range of a Beta-class in the outer system for target practice. All six enemy ships were lost with zero casualties on our side.”
Speinfoent stroked his snout. “That sounds like a comical stroke of luck, but unless our mysterious alien benefactors can literally change where ships blink to, it seems unlikely to be related to our search. Give me the next battle.”
She looked at the screen again, her eyes scanning quickly. “The second one is… a little different. It’s not a battle. It is an after-action debris analysis of an unsuccessful Znosian raid on Oettro. Suspected Znosian transport attrition raid. Looks like the sector defense fleet checked the system after a transport convoy was reported missing after leaving for it.”
“Oettro, Oettro. Where have I heard of that? I think it’s a star system. What is its significance?”
Eupprio quickly pulled up the information on her datapad. “Oettro is a non-habitable system with a small, defunct mining outpost. No military installations or anything. At least, nothing on the public record, for what that’s worth.”
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Speinfoent leaned forward. “What does the after-action results say about Oettro?”
With a casual flick, Eupprio tossed the datapad to him again.
Speinfoent quickly scrolled through the digital pages, his eyes narrowing. “We lost a mining outpost, two Delta-class ships, and six transport ships. The Znosians lost four Enemy-Delta-class ships. No ship from either side survived the battle that we are aware of. Due to a miscommunication, sector defense did not realize the convoy was missing until two weeks after they arrived in Oettro. All life-pods had expired by the time the help arrived. No survivors recovered from either side… All four of the enemy ships were destroyed, and the only one that was not vaporized was pounded into so many bits they could not recover any significant piece of equipment. However, when our own wrecks were searched, they discovered that the recorder boxes had been removed from all but one of the ships: one of the Delta-class escorts, the Seiddiu. Hmmm… that’s odd.”
“That does sound odd,” Eupprio agreed.
“No, not just the result, I meant this…” He zoomed in on a picture attached to the report. The image showed a ship’s compartment, its wiring frayed and disconnected. “It looks like someone forcibly yanked the recorder box. You think the Grass Eaters got their paws on it first?”
“Well, you did say the Grass Eaters knew about it, right? Maybe this is how?”
“That’s possible, and it makes sense. Hm… it also says the contents of the other recovered data recorder were attached to the report, but I don’t see it.”
With a quick swipe, Eupprio took the datapad back. “Ah, the file was too large to show, so the display was truncated. Here, I’ll bring it up… There it is: navigation sensors, external cameras, bridge voice recording, weapon status data, sensor—”
Speinfoent stopped her. “Sensors. Look at the sensors first.”
Their eyes were glued to the screen as the sensor footage fast-forwarded through the recording data. First, there were four enemy blips, then a swarm of incoming missiles, and suddenly— “Wait, hold on, what’s that new sensor signature?”
Eupprio tapped the screen, pulling up the detailed data. “Unidentified ship class. Possible Enemy-Omega-class ship, but much smaller than a typical ship of its class. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Not really. Strange though. Why isn’t there a radar signature at all? Why is it just infrared? That thing is well in visual range: there should be a radar hit!” Speinfoent exclaimed.
As they stared at the screen, dots identified as ‘friendly missiles’ burst forth from their ship. Then, out of nowhere, thousands upon thousands of new radar signatures filled the screen, overwhelming the display until it froze. The recording abruptly ended.
He frowned. “Was the sensor data corrupted by the ship destruction?”
Eupprio jabbed a few more commands into the datapad. She shook her ears. “No. That seems unlikely. The checksum is valid. The data seems to be fully intact.”
“So, the ship’s radar saw thousands of decoys from an Omega-class ship?” Speinfoent questioned, eyes narrowing.
She gave him a nonchalant shrug. “I don’t know. I’m not the tactical officer here.”
“I may be one, but this makes no sense to me either. What happened after the radar went haywire?”
“Checking the logs, it looks like the radar computer overheated and crashed. Then, no further data from the radar was recorded,” she announced, scrolling through lines of technical jargon.
Speinfoent paused, gears turning in his head. “Wait, you said we had external camera data, and this… Omega-class ship was within a thousand kilometers. Show me that.”
They both leaned in to watch the view of the Seiddiu’s visual sensors as it blinked into the sector. There were no signs of the Znosian ships because they were too far away, but suddenly the visual sensors began to manually pan and zoom. They focused on—
Speinfoent let out a soft, almost inaudible gasp. That… was no Znosian ship.
The size of it matched an oversized Omega-class ship, but it was distinct from any ship class he’d ever seen. It was painted mostly black on the exterior, but it wasn’t just black. The darkness of its black paint made it unsettling to look at. The curves of the exterior looked contoured to perfection. Its sleek design made it appear almost as though it had been designed for atmospheric flight instead of space travel. Its smooth surfaces betrayed no hint of the functionality of its modules. The only distinct shape he could see on it were some light gray markings near the rear.
“Pause and zoom in on those markings near the tail.” Speinfoent requested. As the image zoomed in, he felt a jolt of recognition. “That looks exactly like what the prisoner drew. This must be either the same ship or same type of ship the Grass Eaters saw.”
“What a strange looking ship,” Eupprio remarked, handing the pad to him. “Do you see anything that looks familiar?”
“Uh… those look like main thrusters at the rear of the ship,” he replied.
“Great,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Even I can tell you that.”
“Look, I don’t see any weapons or familiar modules.”
Too excited to see what happened next to continue teasing him, she tapped the screen to resume the video.
They observed in horror as the bumbling escort captain, Preitamplo, unleashed a barrage of missiles and railguns on the mysterious vessel. In response, the sleek ship quickly sprang into action…
A large compartment on the belly appears to open, launching a flurry of mysterious missiles and ejecting several other unidentified objects. Then, the Malgeir missiles heading towards the mystery ship immediately lost track of the target and exploded harmlessly into space.
“Looks like we missed everything we shot at them,” Eupprio noted, not hiding her disappointment.
Speinfoent scratched his snout. “Well, if they were our alien protectors, that would be a good thing. Or even if they’re not, at least hopefully they wouldn’t see this as an outright declaration of war.”
She grabbed the pad and pointed at the screen at some of the objects that had been ejected from the unknown ship. “That doesn’t look like nearly enough decoys to put thousands of targets on the radar computer.”
“It’s not. That ship must be doing something weird.” Speinfoent said, leaning over.
“Something weird, is that like official nomenclature in the Navy?”
“Just play the video, Eupprio,” he sighed.
Their eyes remained glued to the screen as they watched the alien vessel’s thrusters pulsate sporadically, nimbly dodging the incoming railgun fire with what seemed like minimal effort.
“Almost like they’re toying with us…” Speinfoent mumbled. “They have an Omega-class ship with defensive capabilities that outclass the Oengro, better agility than any ship in the Navy, and they are clearly not Znosian. We may be incredibly fortunate our trigger-happy captain didn’t accidentally land a shot.”
“Hmmm…” Eupprio pondered, lost in thought. “Let’s not forget about the Grass Eaters. Not a single shot was fired at them either.”
“True. We didn’t even fire on the four raiding ships. Neither of our armed ships did.”
She continued. “So… let’s add it up: this unidentified ship could have blasted us to smithereens but chose not to, even after we shot everything but the kitchen sink at them. They also probably annihilated those Grass Eater ships. I think your ‘protector aliens’ rumor is looking more solid by the minute? Still, even if that’s true, we can’t be sure about their real intentions. I mean, both our species might just be pests on their cosmic windshield, too insignificant to waste ammo on, right?”
“Right,” Speinfoent conceded, leaning back. “But at least we know they’re not together with the Grass Eaters. That’s got to count for something, right?”
“You know what bugs me? Why did no one else find this before us?” Eupprio asked, squinting at the datapad screen. “This looks like pretty important information that should stand out.”
He guffawed at the question, shaking his ears. “Have you ever met anyone from the Defense Ministry? Check how many times this report has ever been accessed since it was filed.”
She did, then double checked just to make sure. “Wow, it’s been accessed… zero times before you pulled it. No one has seen this before us?”
“Yup, most likely. That’s quite typical. Nobody ever reads these.” Then, with a few more taps on his own datapad, Speinfoent sent the report and his preliminary observations to Oengro’s tactical computer. Then, just in case, he also forwarded them directly to the fleet commander’s console. “And… there we go. At least we’ve narrowed it down and we can investigate this further from here. I’ll head to the spaceport later and go brief the Fleet Commander; maybe we can send a ship to Oettro for a follow-up.”
Eupprio looked up, her grin widening into a playful smile. “You’ve got anything else to do before you have to go?”
“No. You have something in mind?”
She gazed at him ravenously with her unnaturally silver eyes. “A few things. Do you want the window coverings open or closed this time?”