(BSN Atlanta, Tsk’neth system, Free Worlds Alliance)
Captain Veleth frowned as they hung silently in space, drifting ever closer to the Sssketh-class frigate while their sensors got as much data as they could. The frigate’s condition bothered him. The damage to the hull was not due to weapons fire, as far as they could tell. Or, at least, they weren’t due to any weapons that his science officer was familiar with.
Kinetics had certain defining characteristics on their impact sites. There were some differences between impactors and penetrators, naturally, but one could tell when a ship had been shot with kinetics. Explosives, whether they were conventional or nuclear had their own blast pattern. Starbolts rarely left anything behind to analyze. And energy weapons were almost entirely point impacts.
But according to the report, the damage appeared to be due to two different sources, neither of which should be possible in nature, and both of which were utterly impractical as weapons. According to the science officer, in some parts the damage was due to continuous electrical discharge, like lightning, and the rest was from a sustained energy beam.
Sure, it was possible to generate sustained electrical discharges, or a true energy beam weapon. However, the power requirements and the nature of physics meant that those weapons would require vast reserves of power, and would have an effective range that could be measured in kilometers. Sure, energy cutters existed, but they were used on mining ships, or in shipyards to cut up scrap, at ranges that rarely got over ten meters.
“Stone, I want you to pass this information along to Command. Maybe the eggheads back at Star’s Reach will have a better idea of what could be causing this. Add on that I agree with Specialist Herxina that I know of no natural phenomenon or weapon system that could create such marks unless the ship was disabled prior to being attacked.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” The lieutenant got that far away look in his eyes that Veleth had come to recognize as a Nomad accessing their information streams. “Captain, reply from Admiral Mollen. We are authorized to attempt a boarding on the Ihm vessel. The Admiral wants full hazard protocols. Biological, Chemical, Nuclear, Nanite, Psychic, and Cyber. We may drop stealth at your discretion.”
Veleth breathed in, and said, “Very well. Inform the Admiral that we will be sending our Marine detachment over to examine the ship. Also, advise that the system appears clear of hostile forces, so if the Shinokage and escorts wish to join us, they should be clear. Then call down to the shuttle bay and have Kowalski prep Shuttle 1 for departure.”
Leaning back in his chair, he hit a button on his command chair to call down to ‘Marine country’. Even when it was only a couple rooms, given the size of the Atlanta, some traditions held firm. He took a breath, and then upheld another tradition, that of a Captain sending men under his command into harm’s way.
“Sergeant Woulfe, Command has seen fit to let us investigate the frigate. Admiral Mollen himself apparently suggested full safety protocols, including psychic and cyber. Shuttle 1 is being prepped for your team.”
Slave-Sergeant Jaxon Woulfe was a new addition to his crew. His former sergeant had, unfortunately, died during the battle against the ships that emerged from the Coldana Rift. The former resident of Jagloth had been working to get adjusted to the new ship, but, so far, seemed to be getting along with the crew, which was good. Friction between a crew and the marines could eat at a ship.
“Understood, Captain. Any word on what we could be expecting?”
“Not yet. According to sensors, everything is dead. Minimal power, life support offline, and no discernable life signs. And I’m sure you’ve come to the same conclusion about the ‘battle damage’ as I have.”
“If’n by that you mean that the damage looks like no weapon I’ve ever seen, then yeah, I’ve come to the same conclusions, Captain. I have the team suiting up now. Ready to launch in ten.”
“Understood. I’ll let you get to it. Bridge out.”
(Shuttle 1, Tsk’neth system, Free Worlds Alliance)
“Sergeant, can you come up here for a moment?”
Hearing the tone in the pilot’s voice, Woulfe moved towards the shuttle’s bow, and stuck his head into the cockpit, where Petty Officer Fairbreeze was working the controls. “What have you got for me, Seldana?”
The half-knelfi pilot looked up at him, and shook her head. “With Cyber protocols in place, we can’t try and do a remote override on the shuttle bay doors. However, I have found an airlock that looks to be functional. The adapter should work to allow us to connect mechanically, without relying on the ship’s systems. However, that limits our ability to screen out potential contaminants. The airlock energy screens are only rated for known chemical, biological, or nanite threats. If we’re dealing with an unknown, it may not be sufficient.”
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“So, the passenger compartment may get contaminated. What about the cockpit?”
“The quarantine fields are some of the best, but they won’t protect against anything your suit doesn’t.”
“All right, then, we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way. Line us up on the airlock, and I’ll have the guys prep for EVA. That way, we can at least limit the exposure to the shuttle. Once on board, we’ll try and make our way to the shuttle bay, and open it up for you to land.”
Fairbreeze nodded. “Sounds good. I’ll get us lined up for the airlock.”
(Strategic Command Center, Blackstone Station, Star’s Reach)
I was looking over the current state of our forces around the galaxy. Right now, I wasn’t really worried about expanding our theater of operations. Currently, we had permanent bases in five systems, two of which were exclusively ours. The Starhunters had already scouted the closest systems to Star’s Reach, and any of the closest systems would take a large initial investment to get going.
Oh, sure, one of them looked like a good catch, but getting colonists and resources together for the venture was neither quick nor easy. Trying to keep it out of the public eye, since I wouldn’t have any way to keep the vultures off my back unless I stationed Navy ships there until permanent defenses could be set up was problematic. Worse was that, because the world wasn’t by one of the Gateways, without using X’thari drives the system would be isolated if anything went wrong, with the nearest help half a month away.
The whole thing reminded me of those civilization-building games, where you had to balance expansion with defense and development. Spread out too quickly, and you risk your development falling behind enemy groups, or you spread your defenses too thinly, allowing barbarians to suddenly rampage through your systems. If you weren’t careful, you got both, at the same time.
“Any word from the Atlanta yet?”
Looking up, I found General Khan standing next to me, looking at the same figures I was. Or, at least, pretending to. Wouldn’t do for any of the minions to think there was something to worry about before there was something to worry about.
Straightening up a bit, I shook my head. “No word on the system itself beyond the initial reports. The whole thing sounds like a ghost ship on a system-wide scale. And they found an Ihm frigate that has damage types we’ve never seen before, and are clearly not natural.”
“Think they met something in Hellspace that chewed them up and spit them out?”
“Best guess right now. The damage might not work for weapons systems, but if you had an insanely strong Psy user, you could probably replicate it. I’m not sending scouts into Hellspace until we can support them. The Chaos Brigade is giving us plenty of data already, so we don’t need to risk our people on that end.”
“And Tsk’neth?”
“Well, if we talk about something chewing on the frigate, deciding they don’t like it, and spitting it out, that’s all well and good. But what if that’s not the end of it? Person or animal bites you, the bite itself might hurt like hell, and stopping the bleeding is important, but sometimes that isn’t the most dangerous part of a bite.”
“Hell germs? Thinking a plague?”
“If we’re lucky, yes. If we’re not…”
“Why not blow it up, just to be sure?”
“We need to get proof before we can do that. I can explain away our ship being where it isn’t supposed to, just saying that they were commissioned to track down a pirate or something. But cleansing a system? We’re going to need some kind of evidence before we go dropping bombs, or we might have the whole galaxy after us. And we can’t fight that and win.”
“So, Marines?”
I nodded. “Marines.”
“Then I guess it is good news that Second Company’s ships have been upgraded with the X’thari drives.”
“In that case, I have an idea…”
(Unidentified Sssketh-class Frigate, Tsk’neth system, Free Worlds Alliance)
Woulfe’s boots were the first to touch down on the hull of the derelict frigate. A soft thunk sounded inside his suit as the magboots connected to the metal hull. Four other pairs of boots touched down around him, as his squad traversed the ten-meter gap between the shuttle and the frigate.
No one got stupid and tried to show off, for which he was thankful. Too many people died because they acted like damn kids whenever they got to ‘play’ in zero gravity. He was just glad his team knew not to try things like that while on a mission.
“All right, team. Let’s get moving. Raez, see if you can get that airlock to work, or if we are going to need cutters.”
Private Jazon Raez, their technical specialist knelt over the control panel for the airlock. If there was one universal constant, it was that people who put an airlock on a ship also put a way for it to be opened from the outside. There were some security concerns about this, but, in reality, they were negligible. If commandos were able to get to the hull of your ship, then they were likely going to be able to get through the outer airlock doors. Which is why most of the security was on the inner doors.
Still, sometimes people don’t maintain their systems well, or they deliberately sabotage the safety protocols. And sometimes damage to the ship could knock automatic systems offline. Since it so happened that all those kinds of ships were the ones that Marines, in any space navy, were most often tasked with boarding, tactics for a more forceful means of entry had been devised long ago.
With the condition of the frigate, Raez figured they would have to go to at least rewire the control panel. The chances that the airlock had power and was functioning normally was slim to none. So, he was fairly (but pleasantly) surprised when the standard Ihm emergency access code (a nine-digit sequence that was roughly analogous to the SOS of old Terran history) opened the hatch on the first try.
Sergeant Woulfe, however, didn’t share the techie’s view on the matter, however. “Damn, this is bad.”
“Why is that, Sarge? Door’s open.”
“Because, Raez, one thing that happens when a warship goes to battle stations is that the main computer locks out the general airlock access code, requiring a ship-specific one. Even civilian ships do something like that. Helps slow down borders. It is part of the reason that, if we don’t catch a ship by surprise and don’t need to be quiet about it, we usually just cut our way in.”
Raez nodded, starting to catch on. “And a ship that’s been banged up like this would be doing that. So, either the main computer has been knocked offline, and the system reverted to base programming, or the switch was never flipped to begin with.”
“Exactly. I don’t like this, not at all. In fact—” his words were cut off by a new voice entering the channel.
“Woulfe, this is the Captain. If possible, I’d like you to turn on your helmet cameras. I have Herxina and Stone standing by to review the feed, to help with analysis and to send the information back to Command.”
“Understood, Captain. We’ll use configuration Gamma.”
“Roger that. Good hunting.”
As the line to the ship went dead, Woulfe looked back to his squad. “All right, people. Cameras on. We’re under Cyber-threat protocols, so use data configuration Gamma. Receiving from tightbeam lasers or secure suit induction only. Everything else is transmit only. We have external radios that are not connected with our systems, so we’ll be using those as primary comms.”
“We are transmitting our feed back to the shuttle, which will filter it before sending on to Atlanta. Assume that all computers on the frigate are actively compromised and will seek to compromise your systems. Any access to ship systems is to be done through the secondary devices you’ve all been issued. If we come across intel, download onto external drives.”
He paused, long enough to make sure each of them understood what he was saying. “All right, move in.”