(BSN Shadowdancer, Desolace System)
“Target locked.”
“Fire!”
“Ship destroyed.”
Captain Thelynn watched as her crew performed admirably, allowing her first officer to take the lead in this little skirmish against the Kolkar pirates. Desolace was aptly named, being a system with only a small star and a plentiful array of asteroids. In fact, it is quite likely that no one would ever come here, if it weren’t for the Gateway that had been found here, likely placed before whatever cataclysm had wrecked the solar system.
The Kolkar, Gelkis, Magram, and Maraudine pirate clans maintained a presence in this system, however, as the plentiful asteroids made this an excellent place to repair their ships away from complications like local law enforcement. The kind of rough ships the pirates used, however, were no match for the Shadowdancer, which had been blooded in war against the best of the Imperial Navy. What Nyna was thinking of as a skirmish was actually a full-fledged battle between the Black Star Fleet and the combined pirate forces. All ten (well, seven now) ships of their combined ‘fleets’. For Assassins and Gunboats, this was child’s play.
Well, that was why only the Shadowdancer and the ten gunboats assigned to First Group were conducting this ‘police action’, wiping out the pirates while the rest of First Group and Third Group (centered around the Nightforge), watched on. All in all, it was an acceptable training exercise for the new crews, since the ‘battle’ at Booty Bay two months prior was practically over as soon as it had begun.
Of course, letting her XO get some time commanding the ship in battle wasn’t her only reason for sitting back. As the commander of this assault, she was responsible for the battle as a whole. That meant her eyes were focused on the tactical track, watching the gunboats in action.
The gunboats were small, fast, agile, and stealthy, when they weren’t zipping around. Current ‘doctrine’ had them fly in pairs, like fighters with their wingmen, to give them better defense, and to help them time their attacks better when doing runs on enemy ships. Keying her commlink, she said, “Chekhov, you and Dixie, keep your heads in the game. That pirate is trying to lead you into a crossfire. Echo, take Falcon and support them.”
This was a scrimmage, but that was no reason to get sloppy. The pirates knew the asteroid field they were flying through like the back of their hands, so thinking they wouldn’t be able to turn the tables on the Black Star ships just because they had crap ships and crap crews was foolish. The cornered beast always fights hardest, trying to get any damage in that it can.
Half an hour after the first shots were fired, the ‘battle’ was over. All ten pirate ships destroyed. The Black Star Fleet suffered no casualties, though Captain Thelynn was going to recommend that Dixie’s crew got some more simulator time so they could learn how not to fly into enemy fire. Their shields were barely holding at the end, which was just pathetic against these foes.
“Captain, incoming transmission from the Shinokage.”
“On screen.”
On the central viewscreen appeared an image of the bridge of the Shinokage. It was set up in the same basic fashion as Shadowdancer’s, though it was larger, accounting for the fact that twice as many people crewed the Shinokage’s bridge than the smaller corvette. And that was without counting the two extra figures standing next to Captain Inatumal.
Nyna straightened a little more in her chair as she saw one of those figures looking at her. “Master! Shadowdancer reports that the pirates have been eliminated. No casualties to the squadron. Full report is transmitting now.”
“Yes, we were watching your work from here. The squadron performed admirably, for the most part. Hopefully getting blooded this way will cause their crews to snap into shape. What is your opinion of the Wingman doctrine?”
“Certainly effective, Master. Several cohorts were able to set up attack runs on their targets, using one ship’s cannon to drive the target ship into the other’s fire. Falcon’s cohort even managed to get simultaneous strikes on one of their targets.”
“Good. We hope to make good use of the gunboats in the future for small-scale engagements, or in harrying larger forces.” Her master paused, and then said, “Now, the primary reason for this communication, other than congratulating your squadron on its work, is because I have a mission for Shadowdancer.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Nyna ran through the options in her head quickly, but she’d been part of the crew back when they found the information that they’d based this whole expedition on, so she knew there really was only one mission that he could be asking of her, and her ship. And she would be lying if she said it didn’t scare her.
“You wish for us to scout the gate coordinates the original ship recorded, Master?”
“Correct. We need a ship quick and quiet enough that they can get away from trouble if they can break contact, and tough enough that they can survive a couple moments or force a breakthrough if they’re attacked on the other side. We also have no way of knowing what the conditions on the other side of the gate are like. However, we have some reason to believe that it is not something that will be instantly threatening to your ship.”
That tidbit was new. “Have we received additional intelligence about where the Ponce de Leon ended up, Master?”
Instead of her master, the drone that was the ‘face’ of his best helper, the sentient AI Raven, said, “No, but we have been able to track down the pirates who were initially responsible for finding the ‘black box’ of the Ponce de Leon all that time ago. Of the crew that survived capture, half were sentenced to execution, while others were received prison terms or summary enslavement. Most of the survivors were on Jagloth when it fell to the Legion, but one of the enslaved pirates, one Erna Trollope, had been purchased by a mining ship which helped harvest resources in Jagloth’s asteroid belt.”
Her Master picked up the tale, “We purchased the pirate from the mining ship when their business failed due to the sudden lack of demand in Jagloth’s system. She’s currently the pilot for Sybyll, one of Third Group’s gunboats. Once we found that connection, we questioned her, and found out that the data recorder didn’t come through on its own. A scratch-built shuttle came through with it, but the systems aboard were primitive, compared to us. It was barely able to make it to the Gateway and dial the gate. The pirates ambushed it on the other side, and the sole pilot was enslaved and forced to join the crew.”
“Such a crude shuttle wouldn’t be capable of interstellar flight, surely. That means they had to have launched from somewhere in the system, then?”
“Indeed. So we know that, at least five years ago, there were people living in that system, with some kind of industrial base, and they were trying to reach out to someone.”
“Did the pirate say anything about the pilot they enslaved? Did they have anything to say about the system or why they were reaching out, or how they knew what coordinates to dial on the Gate?”
Her Master smiled grimly at that question. “Apparently he was an explorer. Found more than he wanted to, no doubt. Since we haven’t had any further contact from them since that prototype shuttle was launched, we can probably assume that there weren’t too many other explorers in their group.”
“But as for how they found out which Gate coordinates to dial? Apparently, they found an index to the gates, like the one found in the Valoys system that allowed the Ihm to be the first to activate the Gates. Well, the first to activate them on purpose. Anyways, while Valoys only had sixteen gates in its index, since the rest of it had been destroyed in an ancient battle of some sort, these people may have found a complete index.”
Captain Nyna Thelynn slumped back in her chair in shock. A complete Gate Index? That would be the largest advance in, well, since the first gates were unlocked! It was known that there were gates outside Known Space, since the X’thari used their strange Anchor drives to jump directly from place to or from a Gateway, but since no one had ever found the X’thari homeworld, it made sense that they were at an Unknown Gate. The problem with Unknown Gates was that no one knew the addresses, which meant that to find them one would have to resort to random dialing, and that was incredibly dangerous. But a complete gate index would have only the gates that actually were used, eliminating many of the random possibilities.
You still might run into the X’thari, but that was, at least, a known quantity, even if it meant death. Much better than just… disappearing, or whatever happened when you dialed a ‘wrong number’ on a device you didn’t understand which was capable of sending you across the galaxy in an instant. The very thought of it sent a chill running down her spine.
“Very well, Master. Shadowdancer will make for the Gateway immediately. With permission, I would like to take a cohort of gunboats to dial the gate for us, so we can hit the gate at full combat speed, just in case. It may be nothing, but moving at speed will allow us to better avoid any surprises on the other side.”
“Good thinking, Captain Thelynn. Take Able and her cohort to dial the Gate. The rest of the expedition fleet will move out three hours after you. We’ll wait another three hours, and if we don’t have contact by then, we’ll try a more forceful probe of the system, though that will increase the risk substantially.”
“We won’t let you down, Master.”
“I know you won’t. Shinokage out.” And with that, the viewscreen went dark.
Looking at the rest of her bridge crew, she said, “All right, comms, get Able and Barbara on the horn, and have them form up and move ahead of us to the Gateway. Navigation, I want to line us up for a straight run on the ‘exit’ side of the Gate, so we can do a full sprint through it. We’ll be going full speed on the sublight engines, because I don’t want to even guess what trying to hit the Gate while in FTL will do to us. Helm, be ready to execute the run when Able’s cohort is in position. On the other side, you may need to do some high speed maneuvers if there are obstacles in the way. Don’t ask permission, as soon as we’re through adjust course and speed as you need to in order to give us the best chance of not hitting something solid. Sensors, I want your eyes peeled on your scope, the moment we get through the gate. If there are X’thari, I want to know it before they start shooting at us. Have the computer prioritize identification of X’thari energy signatures. Weapons, we’re going in hot and ready, but I want you to hold fire until I give the word. If there aren’t X’thari on that end, they’ll be twitchy with the gate opening, and they might shoot at us. We can chalk one up to a misunderstanding, but if they keep firing, I want us ready to return the favor. Understood?”
She took a breath, and opened a comm line to the entire ship. “Crew of the Shadowdancer. You’ve been with the Company since the Fall of Jagloth. You’ve been blooded in action against pirates, and you proved yourselves the equal of any crew in the Imperial Navy during the Civil War. Now our Master calls on this ship, his first warship, to venture into the unknown.”
“I am sure by now you’ve heard the rumors about this expedition. Now let me confirm what you’ve heard. Before the Fall of Jagloth, I was part of the team that recovered a Data Recorder from an old Earth colony ship, the Juan Ponce de Leon. That recorder was in a vault on one of the orbitals around Jagloth, but originally it had been found here, in this system, having been sent through the Gateway. The ship that recovered it recorded the coordinates the Gateway connected to. This means we have the coordinates to a 17th Gateway!”
“We do not know what is on the other side, but our Master has charged us with venturing into the unknown, because he knows that we are the best that Black Star has to offer. He is counting on us to scout the system and report back. Because it is unknown, we will be conducting a combat run on the Gate, at full military power. We may need to maneuver quickly on the other side, and the inertial dampeners may not be able to keep up. Secure all loose materials, and prepare for possible combat operations. All ship suits must be worn and sealed in case of hull breaches.”
“We will not fail the Master. Let’s make history, Shadowdancer.”