Much to my relief, the Shadowdancer’s crew were at the very least proficient in their jobs. While they all had problems of some sort that led to their being forced into service, at the very least I didn’t have to worry about them being bad at their jobs. Even that shady merchant who I’d bought to be Shadowdancer’s Quartermaster.
The story on the nanites wasn’t as bad as I feared. He used to be a dealer in nano-augments, which used nanites to either enhance brain function, or do other work that was too subtle for larger scale augmentations. When the local government made all nanite sales illegal when the Legion virus started spreading, he had ignored them and tried to offload his current stockpile. He was caught, and enslaved.
He was also really good at turning a profit, so I felt confident in allowing him to act as the ship’s Quartermaster, since there was only one of Raven, and I wanted her with me. Thankfully, the Quartermaster had quickly realized the potential profit in his new position, even if he was a slave. That, and the fact that the other group that had been considering buying him was a suspected front for Hundeherstellar merchants, made him recognize this was the best deal he was going to get.
The Valkyries were settling in nicely, as well. They liked the idea of being what amounted to a strike team or operatives, especially when we were going over their skill sets, and they saw how the group was balanced. They’d be able to deal with a wide array of problems, and I’d purchased gear that made sure they weren’t going to be just charging to their doom. The hacker practically creamed herself when I told her I wanted to hack any ship Shadowdancer fought and get any information she could off them.
I was in Raven’s bridge, running my preflight lists while listening to Nyna running Shadowdancer through hers, when the call came in. Jagloth, which had been mostly dark on the communication networks, suddenly went bright as daylight, transmitting to the entire system. Annoyingly, it was a ‘push’ transmission, which automatically played on any active readers once it was received.
THIS SYSTEM IS NOW PROPERTY OF THE UNDYING LEGION. ALL GLORY TO LEASH LORD TYREXIS! WE ARE THE LEGION. LOWER YOUR SHIELDS AND SURRENDER YOUR SHIPS. WE WILL ADD YOUR BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVENESS TO OUR OWN. YOUR CULTURE WILL ADAPT TO SERVICE US. YOU WILL BE CONSCRIPTED.
That wonderfully cheery message was followed by a whole lot of panic as everyone in the system started trying to get clearance to run the hell away. Both Raven and Shadowdancer were assaulted by comms from people begging for us to get them out of the system. But one message in particular caught my eye.
LeashLord: Hey, M.Mollen? You still got that really fast ship from Earth? Could use a lift out of the system. Lot of places to see, and conscriptions have plateaued.
M.Mollen: Kindof full up right now. But hey, pass me your coordinates, and I’ll have someone swing by to service you.
LeashLord: Hah! I saw what happened last time you called someone in to ‘service’ a member of my Legion. Losing the Spriteshack building set the conscription of Jagloth back a lot, you know.
M.Mollen: Glad to be of service.
LeashLord: Look, I’m willing to cut you in on this. Your own personal Legion. You’d be able to do anything you wanted!
M.Mollen: Already can do anything I want. And right now, what I want is to pass the coordinates from the backtrace of this comm to the Fleet.
LeashLord: You idiot! You could have ultimate power!
M.Mollen: Yeah, but where’s the fun in that? Anyways, I’ve kept you talking long enough, so I’m just going to sit back and watch the show.
LeashLord: What do you mean?
On the surface of Jagloth, the coordinates Raven tracked the transmission to lit up as several kinetic weapons hit in close proximity, their overlapping blast waves annihilating anything in the area. I was happy I’d forwarded the transmission in realtime to the Navy while Raven backhacked the coordinates. That talk of ‘conscriptions’ was too coincidental.
Unfortunately, that didn’t solve the problem, only delayed it. After all, LeashLord was a Nomad, so he’d be back after a short reset period. However, it seemed that his ‘Legion’ was good for more than just conquering the world. I was immediately assaulted by messages from LeashLord saying how I would regret blah blah blah. Anyways, it seemed like he was using the minds of his Legion to remain active while he waited for his body to return. Sneaky bastard.
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We had just cleared Charybdis Station’s docking ports when everything TRULY went to hell. Weapons were launched all over Jagloth. The missiles exploded over the uninfected landmasses, and we saw people quickly succumbing to the Legion. Somehow the bastard had been working on weaponizing the fucking thing and making it super fast-acting.
This caused a general panic, as you might expect, which only got worse as missiles were launched at the Navy ships and the stations still in orbit. It seemed that LeashLord had decided that the time for the ‘long game’ was now over, and he was going full Borg. I hated it when people went full Borg.
The Navy ships were able to destroy the missiles targeting them, as well as some of the ones targeting the stations, but three of the four remaining stations in Jagloth orbit were hit, the Legion quickly moving to assimilate the stations and their inhabitants.
THIS IS THE CONFEDERATE NAVAL SHIP TRAWARIN. THIS IS AN EMERGENCY EVACUATION ORDER! ALL SHIPS CAPABLE OF INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL IN THIS SYSTEM ARE HEREBY UNDER THE CONTROL OF THE CONFEDERATE NAVY UNTIL THE CURRENT CRISIS IS RESOLVED.
I didn’t like that message at all. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t against helping out, but the whole ‘here’s a crisis, everyone’s conscripted until we say otherwise’ thing didn’t sit right with me. The Navy I used to be in was all volunteer, after all. And even in an emergency, we didn’t just conscript every ship in port. They were demanding people helped, instead of asking, and that just rubbed me the wrong way.
To be on the safe side, though, I concentrated on slipping into one of my alternate guises. Someone was going to call and order me to do something I wasn’t going to like, and I’d probably get my picture put up on a bounty board somewhere. I brought out my Okuda Riku face from back in Alpha Centauri. Fortunately, I had just finished the change when we were hailed.
FREIGHTER METRION’S FAVOR, THIS IS CNS TRAWARIN FLIGHT CONTROL. YOU ARE TO COME ABOUT TO HEADING 134, AND ASSIST IN THE EVACUATION OF MITHARI STATION. JETTISON YOUR CARGO TO MAKE ROOM FOR ADDITIONAL REFUGEES, AND DOCK AT AIRLOCK FOUR.
“That’s a negative Trawarin Control. Metrion’s Favor is heading outsystem loaded with cargo and refugees from Charybdis station. Ones that are actually paying for this ship to take them outsystem. You and your Captain can kindly get bent.”
With that none too original insult, I cut the line and pulled the Raven into a turn, matching Shadowdancer’s course. Naturally, Shadowdancer was in stealth, so the Navy ships hadn’t spotted her yet. We could jump to hyperspace from deep in the system, but the drive reacted oddly to gravity wells sometimes, and it would require more maneuvering to clear the different gravitational effects and remain on course. It wasn’t as bad as with a Transition drive, which you had to be at the heliopause to use, but jumping to warp next to a station could be Bad.
Unfortunately for the Navy crews out there in the picket ships trying to intercept us, Charybdis was out of the way (on purpose), which left a big gap in the defenses, and while they were calculating for intercept jumps, Raven had already finished calculations for both Raven and Shadowdancer, and passed them along. We were receiving another set of hails demanding we cut acceleration and prepare to be boarded when we made the jump to warp. Sucks to be them, but I wasn’t sticking around in this system any longer.
(CNS Trawarin, Jagloth Orbit)
Captain (Acting Commodore) Ayluin Elaxisys bit back several unkind curses about the captain of the freighter that had just jumped out of the system, especially when it was detected that there were two warp signatures outbound. That meant there was a stealth ship with the freighter. Coming from Charybdis, it could only be a smuggler, or one of the syndicates.
One of the sensor officers spoke up, “Captain, we have a possible visual confirmation match on the freighter with a contact report from the Aquaria system.”
“To my screen.”
The knelfi captain looked at the readout that came up, comparing the visuals they’d gotten on the Metrion’s Favor before they escaped to a ship called the Azeroth’s Call which had slipped through the Aquaria Gateway over a month ago. The visual spectrum data was inconclusive, except for the fact that both ships were equally difficult to make out, given their extreme black coloration. That in itself was telling, as black was an unusual choice.
Sensor data from the two events was similar in its inconclusivity. The damn paint scheme appeared to absorb sensors somehow, making all sensor returns weak and diffuse. If they didn’t have visual confirmation of a ship’s presence, it was to the point where it might even be brushed aside as a sensor anomaly. And the black color against the blackness of space made visual confirmation difficult. Clearly, this was a ship up to no good.
Still, shield and engine patterns were enough to say that this was at least the same size ship, with the same type of engines and shields. Combined with the coloration, Captain Elaxisys was willing to accept the analyst’s 75% prediction as fact, for the time being. Which was a problem, as this ship was currently wanted for questioning, even if they hadn’t ignored the Evacuation Order, due to the fact that it led four Imperial ships through the Gateway, where they were promptly destroyed.
“Captain!” His musings were interrupted by the sensor analyst again. He flagged the report for passing information on to command, before looking up from his screen. And again bit back a curse.
The stations which had been hit by the new infection missiles were bringing up shields and weapons, and had already fired on two ships that were approaching the uninfected station. “Weapons! I want those stations brought out of the sky, now! Have all the conscripted ships alter their approach vectors to compensate!”
“Captain, additional missiles are launching from the planet! There’s too many of them to intercept!”
Captain Ayluin Eladisys was a patriot. He knew what had to do. If this Legion virus got out, then it would be unstoppable. The Confederation would fall, and over a trillion souls would be condemned to a fate worse than death. That could not be allowed. With grim certainty, he typed in a code only known to himself and the admiralty, and verified it with a biometric scan.
Self-destruct activated. Countdown to antimatter release: T-2 minutes.
“Helm! Set course for the primary launch site for the surface missiles, maximum acceleration! Take us between the station and the planet to do so! Weapons, prioritize fire control on the surface missiles targeting the station and civilian ships!”
His crew performed their duties without question. They all knew the stakes, and knew what awaited them, what awaited their friends and families back home, if they failed. All it would take is one ship escaping to be a blow the Confederation might never recover from. They would do their duty.
“Communications, get me a line to the Yesbalar.”
Two minutes later, a fireball erupted over the base where most of the missiles had been fired from. Twenty-five missiles had delivered their nanite payloads to Trawarin. None hit the station or the civilians.