The imperial outpost was, if anything, even more wrecked than HHSS Eternal Vigil. The weapons were all hit with lasers from multiple angles. The Republic forces, it would seem, concentrated their fire from a distance, methodically stripping every emplacement from the station. Then they pounded it into scrap. The wreckage lay now before HHSS Heaven's Whiskers in three major pieces, mixed with some smaller fragments orbiting together in local microgravity.
Arslashn stretched as his HND drone put on him a specially made skinsuit, proceeding then to strap on an EVA shell and the waldo arms. Young NAI loved his body, but lack of proper hands was a detriment in situations like this. The lion decided to explore the derelict himself, with just a screen of drones for protection. He determined the risk of boarding the wreck was manageable and this was the most excitement he was expecting to see unless some imps survived and were willing to kill their only way out.
As Arslashn prepared to jump the relatively small gap between his cruiser and the outpost, the lion received an update from the Bark. Before leaving her to investigate the second station he left his external cargo, initialised an Alpha core and ordered them to continue the construction. This newbuilt NAI was left with a set of workdrones and the monitor's partially completed fabrication facility for this task. According to the report, everything was proceeding slowly, even with the fabricator now fully operational. Two more of the PDLCs were ready, making the site's defences adequate at last.
The Alpha was requesting permission to pause construction of the Bark and focus on expanding fabrication capacity. They pointed out Arslashn's existing plan to build a resupply base and the attached timeline projected just a week's delay to the original schedule. And that the following projects would go so much faster. The lion dug deeper into the report. The monitors could still be constructed with just the materials already in easy reach of the construction drones, but he would need to deliver another load before the budding orbital manufactory was in any way ready for independent operation.
After some thought Arslashn approved the proposal. It was a decent one. Not relying on the Whiskers for fabrication meant the lion was free to move around the system and explore. And the depot would provide a nice home port in the decades to come. He decided to name the Alpha Bob, for their dedication to efficient building. The Beta quickly compiled and sent his reply, then jumped onto the wrecked outpost.
The destruction looked a lot worse in person, Arslashn reflected as he strode through the ruined corridors. Drone images just robbed one of the kind of person sized scale to compare everything to. And even the most crisp screen provided one with that layer of separation, armour of not-quite reality to insulate from the horrors of war. The station has been methodically destroyed, every section punched through, every compartment breached. The lion guessed this was a retaliatory hit, with all the grief fuelled fury that implied. He found no bodies so far, the inhabitants had likely had enough time to seek shelter.
But not to escape. External scans indicated no emergency shelters or escape pods were launched. All were still nested in their cradles. And all were hit by at least one railgun shot. Arslashn reached the door to the nearest one. It was locked and it took some time to dismantle the mechanism enough for him to pry it open. The inside was covered in old frozen blood and contained a few bodies. Some corpsicles in damaged suits, killed or badly hurt by shrapnel from a penetrating round. Some wearing intact ones, killed just by the overpressurization and left to decompose until they too froze solid. The lion sent in drones to collect the bodies, setting to identify, try to collect DNA samples and prepare them for burial. The grim task complete he continued deeper into the derelict
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The only dead not inside shelters turned deadly traps were inside the command center. Three of the five were killed instantly by a breacher. One lay curled into a ball, badly hurt by a piece of the hull embedded in their gut, likely having bled to death. The final one seemed unhurt except for a gunshot wound in their head, a sidearm still in hand.
Arslashn dove into the center's databanks. Like on the Vigil the records were purged, but unlike the Republic station the systems weren't turned off afterwards. A fragmentary record from damaged long range sensors showed two flights of ships, one in pursuit of the other, flying away from the outpost. By their vector, the pursuers were more likely to be the attacking Republic force, their prey likely coming straight from Caton I, from the Vigil.
Did both sides send a sneak attack toward the other at the same time? The lion found a trace of such tragedies in historical records of Earthbound carrier battles. Motherships on both sides hit while their strike forces were busy killing the other. It did not make him feel any better.
The recording lasted only a few hours, just until the emergency power gave out. The chase was still unresolved by then, suspected imperials getting more and more battered but still biting back. What internal sensors remained reported on total devastation, a state which roughly agreed with what the wreck was in now. Winners of the distant battle, the Ertans Arslashn assumed, likely never returned.
His mood thoroughly spoiled, the lion returned onto the Whiskers. The grim job of collecting the bodies continued for hours, shelters long dead but still securely locked. Most of the people inside had been civilians, some not even wearing full suits when they died. The rest were science types and engineers, just the kind of crew expected on a survey mission. No children were on board, owing no doubt to how little time there was before hostilities broke out. Young Beta reviewed acceptable burial options as his MainComputer led the drones in cataloguing every scrap of useful materials and drafting a deconstruction plan.
He kinda liked the idea of cremation. A nice monument orbiting in place of soon to be gone derelict imp stationcraft, with everyone's ashes entombed inside, in clearly labelled urns. And on its surface all the names neatly listed, and the cause of this attack. Something nice about defending their homespace, it was true enough after all. If a sister monument would replace the dead Vigil, the symmetry would be perfect.
After loading up on computronics, the thing they were in most need of, Arslashn directed his cruiser back towards the planet and the construction site. The lion was in no mood to be alone right now. He wanted some calming nature to roam around in. And company. The Beta idly prepared authorization for Bob to make a body as soon as circumstances permitted.
Arslashn tried designing a biodome park, to have a nice rest space outside the ship, but it just wasn't coming together. He reflected on Alpha Bob. They had some pretty good ideas. And this was going to be a shared space. Maybe Bob deserved to have input on how it would ultimately look like. The lion designated blueprints of the budding resupply station to be modifiable by Alphas in his command chain. Then, with a rumbling chuckle, named the project HHSS Lion's Den.