Getting the satellite into the hold was easy. Deciding what to do with it was anything but. I took pict scans of it and set the cogitator to analyzing both the signals and the graffiti then set the ship to go back to, I guess I need to give it a name now. I recheck the notes and realize that the name of the world we aimed for isn’t even present. Beacon IV. The update to the notes is easy and I make sure it carries to the rest of the system.
The cogitator thrums and I receive detailed readings in the noosphere. I now have a likely few panels to open on the satellite as well as where the entire transceiver is able to be disconnected. Much easier than guess work on a maybe trapped device. I decide to kill its ability to communicate, grabbing two of the servitors working on the additions to the chemical room.
The work is honestly surprisingly quick. Whoever designed this clearly had modularity in mind and the transmissions were now silent. Looking into the device I could clearly see where it hooked up to a power supply but other than a few other wires to follow and seals to pry open there wasn’t a clear way forward. But it was time to study this new xeno tech, preliminary in the void just in case and then I’d disassemble it in the workshop.
The first thing that jumped out about the transceiver is the absolute lack of any machine spirit. It’s got similarities to a vox caster but there are only so many ways to throw radio waves around. The structural metal present here and on the satellite itself is interesting. Clearly a steel alloy but I don’t recognize several of the elements making it up. Interior pieces of the metal are even made with a rough analogue to plasteel but with a larger focus on fibrous plastics integrated into the metal rather than bonds directly between the plastic and metal. An interesting design philosophy. I decide to study it later and ignore the thoughts in my head of my xenarite acquaintances laughing at my hypocrisy.
I’ve now gotten two layers deep into the satellite and inside there is a clear power source of some kind. That and a blinking console are wedged into the compartment to the side and there is clear stripping of some of the other attachments inside. This all seems to have been done to make room for a large transportation crate that takes up most of the 2.5m x 1.5m cubic space in the satellite. There are also magnetic clamps on the inside that would make the whole thing open like the jaws of a snake. I can see now I went through the most structurally sound part of the whole device.
I can’t tell how to safely disconnect the power and there isn’t a machine sprite to implore for information regarding any rituals of appeasing-the-magnetic-locks. So, I do the next best thing. I walk back into the engine room for a snack and make one of the servitors unplug the console.
++ Grant a coward excuse to run from a battle and he will never fight again ++
“Wow… that’s just mean Miu.”
With no answer forthcoming from the MIU I walk back to the satellite as nothing has exploded or sprung out of the unprotected circuits of the equipment to kill us all. All is well that ends well. The magnetic clamps are no longer powered so I get the servitors to work as a team to open the jaws and pull it away from the crate. We then lean it over, so it falls right way down. I send the servitors back to work and begin to look for a way to open it.
It took me longer that it should have to open it. The hexagonal pattern on the box hid a button right it the center that allows the lid to pop off. Curse whichever xeno decided that aesthetics of the box was more important than an obvious latch to undo. The interior surprises me. There is a ceramic plate containing a small pile of strange gold striped chips that are about as wide as two fingers. They look like the doctrina wafers a datasmith of the legio cybernetica would use. Underneath is row upon row of small dataslates.
++ 1600 units of unknown manufacture dataslate ++
I suppose it’s a shipment of these. But I don’t understand the purpose. I pick one up. It has a small foldable display and a button in the lower left and upper right corner. I push the one in the upper right and the display comes to life, and I fling it away from me as a blue shimmering face appears above it.
“---- ---- --------- ------ --- --- ------"
I see it speak but it makes no noise in the void. It makes no other movement and doesn’t repeat itself. I stare at it for another minuet before the androgynous head disappears. I’m probably jumping at holograms here, but I need to make sure I wasn’t right to toss it like that. I pick up another random one from the case and push the button with a mechandrite. The hologram reappears and I wave my had through its insubstantial form.
Huh. Okay it seems just a holoprojector of some sort. There is an open connection available on the machine as well as the ability to plug something in. The gold striped cards count so I grab one and stick it in the slot.
ᖬ 260
“------ ---- -- ------ --"
(||) (リ)
The device showed hologram. Thank the Machine God that they used the same numbers in this galaxy. Truly it is by his mercy that the lost find their way to knowledge. It also has two seemingly selectable options that it can do with the data card.
++ An endeavor is its own reward ++
I should be able to utilize this to translate the alphabet I have in front of me. The MIU is right I’m kind of excited to have the task to do. Definitely will give me a puzzle to work out between ordering the servitors around. Speaking of they are ready for more adamantine clasps, pipes and heating chambers. I get started on the next leg of the task. Should be about a week before we have it ready for testing. I’ll use some of the fuel from the lighter to light the burners, but I’ll need to get some things together for storage. A few ceramite totes light enough for the servitors to move when full perhaps. I’ll have them bring me a couple ceramite panels to work with when I have time.
The work and follow up takes time. And I have the servitors bring the box of data-slates into the engine room for easy access. After, I’m bone weary from working with the adamantine, and running through bits to work it, Luckily, I have plenty of spares from 20 individual tech priests bringing their own favorite sets over. With that sad reminder I decide it’s time to sleep again and head to the command chair.
⚙ 💀 ⚙ ⚙ 💀 ⚙ ⚙ 💀 ⚙ ⚙ 💀 ⚙ ⚙ 💀 ⚙
I’m woken violently when we get a sound I’m not familiar with. Groggily I reach for the water I’ve got nearby.
“What is the situation Vibrant?”
++ Burst of energy of unknown providence further out of system ++ There is a ship ++
Fuck I’d been afraid of this.
“How far out, and how large a ship?”
++ Further out than the Gas giant ++ count 3 au estimation ++ Ship is far smaller than Imperial Warp-capable ships ++
I dive into the auspex sensors to try and get an idea of the vessel we are dealing with. Everything I get comes back fuzzy with background noise making impossible to determine size other than it is smaller than the Vibrant, and that is much smaller than the 640m Rudderow class escort. The smallest warp capable vessel I knew of.
++ Incoming hail from unknown vessel ++
“How… We’re more than 20 light minutes away…” I’m absolutely perplexed. Everything I know should make it impossible for them to have a real time scan of the system, possibly some archeotech could. Not to speak on their ability to break Light Speed communication without the use of a choir. I know I can’t do it even if they want to talk to me. Might as well look at their signal.
“Bring it up on the display Vibrant. I want to see what they are sending me.”
The moment I realized what I was looking at I slammed the connection shut with a command from the MIU. They had been sending Pict and Vox signals and had shown me a fearsome daemon decked out like any respectable Rogue Trader which made it all the more terrible. Warp fuckery explained the ftl communication now. I had to do something.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Vibrant all auspex sensors to passive. Shut down all vox capability and set the engines to stand-by.”
++ Acknowledged ++
The ship was a dark as I could make it. Hopefully the daemon wouldn’t be able to teleport onto the ship. Taking the engines dark would increase the time we needed to get back, but I had been accelerating for a while and had the right heading. I should only be adding a couple days onto the trip.
Alright, now I had to plan what to do in the event I had daemonic borders.
++ Above blades, above bullets. Care for your soul above all. ++
“Not fucking helping Miu.”
Ok, I’m going to head down into the workshop and instead of working the ceramite into containers for raw materials I was going to give 6 of the servitors wide tower shields. The other six get small ones to guard their torso and head and a ceramite spike they can hold like tonfas. Before that, I grab the holy oil. I’m badly in need of more but sanctifying and prayer over the servitors takes precedence.
20 minuets later Vibrant tells me another energy burst was detected and I brace myself. Nothing happens until a while later after I’ve blessed the last servitor. Another burst of energy. Near Beacon IV, and the space hulk. I didn’t change direction. I’d have to fight them for orbit of Beacon IV or die trying.
++ Even in darkness, give devotion to the Machine-God, for it is there he is needed most. ++
⚙ 💀 ⚙ ⚙ 💀 ⚙ ⚙ 💀 ⚙ ⚙ 💀 ⚙ ⚙ 💀 ⚙
“Yeah boss, they’re moving like a nerf getting ready to get slaughtered. If I’m reading this right, they have been accelerating since the L5 satellite position and if they’re going to that dustball they’ll take another 4 days.”
The pirate captain glared hatefully at the viewscreen. “How quickly would we catch them?”
“Two hours. We’ve got engine trouble from one of the turbo lasers that got through the ray shield, but we can catch that slow beast up quick.”
“And how big was it?”
“Near 100 meters. Almost half that wide with those stubby wings.”
Hitting a ship near as wide as his was long was a tough decision to make. “Do we know what its weapons look like?”
“Just that it has 2 gun-blisters boss. Can’t tell you what’s in em. And boss, I’m picking up something real big in system. There is something orbiting that small moon around the dustball. Couldn’t tell you what it is beside that it has enough mass to skew the moon’s orbit, there aren’t any signals originating from it.”
“How close would we be if we jumped over there?”
“A few million km. They wouldn’t be occluded by anything, so we’d get a good look without being in range of anything.”
“Alright, open a com to them.”
“Yes sir, sending.”
The Captain nearly began his intimidating speech before the coms pirate spoke again. “Hey boss, if I’m reading this right, they don’t have a subspace transceiver. I have no idea if they’re seeing you.”
The captain shook in his seat. Never had he been so frustrated by luddites from the stars stealing his loot.
“Boss their active sensors and engines just went dark. They got something from the transceiver and didn’t like it.”
“Uh boss.” One of the rodian pirates began. “I know you told me to stop talking to some of those weird cultists, even if they got great smuggling contracts, but…”
“Go on.”
“Okay so, one of them got with me last week. Said the Bando Gora were looking for new slaves to test some great mind-break technique they got. Said they’d pay top cred to whoever can bring them some subjects.”
Normally even the captain would flinch at handing over another being to the Bando Gora. The Hutts might be callous to the fate of slaves, but they didn’t actively torture them out of their minds and try to turn them into slavering beasts. For the fools that thought accelerating at such a slow pace a crippled bantha could do better after stealing his loot?
“How many proton torpedoes do we have left?”
“3 boss, were about out.”
“Alright, they are running to that planet. Let’s hop over and see what they’re running to so they can feel the hopelessness of contending with me!”
They skipped through hyperspace and stopped when entering the gravity well.
“Kriff boss,” the coms pirate said in a small voice. “You gotta look at that.” He brought up the large stellar mass that was new to the system. An immense floating wreck sat in orbit. Engines that dwarfed the Banking Clan frigate seemed to only mostly face the same direction. Immense asteroids connected with metal that seemed to have been folded around it when it passed through a sun took up most of it but there were many shapes that stuck out. Conning towers, immense cathedrals and strange engine configurations seemed to sprout out of the mess at inconsistent points. At over 300 km long they had seen barren moons that seemed to exude more life. No lights were visible. The thermal scans showed only that the lit side of the wreck posed any warmth the rest the same as the background void. None of the engines were live or seemed to ever have been, partially covered by the mélange of metals adhered to the outer crust. The group of pirates sitting or standing around the bridge were absolutely silent.
“It looks like they skipped all the steps of being a ship graveyard and, just, melted together. Boss there’s got to be a planet of refined metals there. No ray shielding so scans are giving me some info. I’m getting a lot of iron-nickel from asteroids it must have bonded to and tons of weird ceramics and metals the system doesn’t recognize.”
“Boss,” The rodian began, “Boss, I think we could sell this to someone.”
“Yeah… Looks like you guys were right. Maybe we do head over to Nar Shaddaa. I could contact one of the Kajitics. The slugs would love slinging this metal for the next few centuries.”
Minds made up the pirates went to work getting ready for the rigors of void combat. Talking about netting this next kill and contemplating what sort of treasures could be within the giant dead hulk.
⚙ 💀 ⚙ ⚙ 💀 ⚙ ⚙ 💀 ⚙ ⚙ 💀 ⚙ ⚙ 💀 ⚙
It had been two days of labor, enlisting a few of the servitors for help, to prepare the ceramite shields. The tower shields were near the limit of the servitors lift capabilities and the spikes looked deadly. I had taken part of the time to make a weapon for myself. Utilizing some of the adamantine I made an axe about half the size of a proper Omnissian one but about the same weight. There was a reason that most Imperial melee equipment was not made from the stuff.
The daemonic vessel sits at my destination mocking me. And after a quick rest I move to the armory to see if I can’t coax some more power out of the heavy las cannon. I successfully bring a couple of the capacitors from the other gun and add them into the system. Its crude and temporary but it should suffice for an engagement. Next, I look to see if I can’t improve the heat output. Utilizing some of the material from the unworking turret to increase the size of the radiator. With that done I should be able to get a shot off every 6 to 12 seconds without overheating. But after the first few I’d have to wait a minute for the caps to refill if I wanted the same energy output. Another day of work down.
The next day I return to the armory. There are 300 krak missiles here and I remove one to experiment with. The turrets are loaded with a revolving loader that holds up to 18 missiles but for any more in the engagement I’ll need 4 servitors up here to load reliably. I can only get around 40km out of the range on them but its better than nothing.
With the MIU and an STC with the Krak missile available its easier than I thought to modify this into an absolutely deadly grenade. The issue with Krak weaponry is that the explosive creates a small concussive explosion that doesn’t spread too far. Its ruinous against vehicles so if I had any go off in the ship, I’d likely be out the plasteel deck plating as well as more important components beyond. The solution is a cylinder of ceramite scored around the edges. To both take the explosion and make it more like a nightmare frag grenade. It would probably still damage the ship but constrained so it might not do too much. Over the next day I prepare 10. Sadly, I have no equipment to add timer capabilities, so they are all impact devises.
Doing the math, I have time for another rest cycle before I’m less than a day out and have to devote all my attention to void combat. I heat up a meal on the plasma reactor and wonder what the rest of the fleet is doing in the Imperium. By now the rest of them have probably found the system we were supposed to go to get to and were probably panicking that the most important ship in the fleet was gone. I grabbed one of the little data-slates to distract myself and pressed the button.
“Hᒷꖎꖎ𝙹, ⍑𝙹∴ ᓵᔑリ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ m╎ᓵ∷𝙹dᔑℸ ̣ ᔑ p𝙹ᓵꖌᒷℸ ̣ sᒷᓵ∷ᒷℸ ̣ ᔑ∷|| ⍑ᒷꖎ!¡ ||𝙹⚍ ℸ ̣ 𝙹↸ᔑ||?”
I grabbed the next and confirmed that it said the same thing even if I couldn’t understand it. The was good, meant these were identical unthinking devices. That alone was probably protecting them from daemonic invasion. I wonder what rites they employ to protect such things.
Their holoprojectors were even the same. It seemed uniformity was a theme amongst them. I grabbed one of the golden sticks and inserted it.
ᖬ 80
“m𝙹⍊ᒷ ᓵ∷ᒷ↸╎ℸ ̣ ᓭ ℸ ̣ 𝙹 ╎リℸ ̣ ᒷ∷リᔑꖎ ᓭℸ ̣ 𝙹∷ᔑ⊣ᒷ?”
(||) (リ)
So, the different sticks held differentiated amounts of whatever units those were. I press the dual lines on the left side that had lit up in the projection. It works but there is no feedback from it, and it marks the value as 0 but on the body of the device a part of it changes pigmentation to reflect the 80 value. I think about it then do it with the rest of the sticks and am left with ᖬ 23320. I think about it but, ultimately, decide not to stick my mechandrite in there. I still have no idea how its set up. I leave it to the side with the rest and finish my meal. Before I leave, I ensure the crate is closed and secure, before doing a cursory check of safety in the engine room. With all the safety rites being nominal I go to rest.
++ Let the enemy blunt their blades upon our resolve ++
⚙ 💀 ⚙ ⚙ 💀 ⚙ ⚙ 💀 ⚙ ⚙ 💀 ⚙ ⚙ 💀 ⚙
“Alright boss, he’s in range for transmissions to have limited latency.”
“Send the hail. Let’s see if these idiots know what’s good for them.”
The pirates had spent the last few days getting some incredibly detailed scans around the outside of the hulk along with gravimetric data on it. There were 4 billion gigatons of metals on the hulk. Though a lot of it was those massive asteroids and an unknown amount of the volume was taken up there at least a quarter of it, and maybe more, was taken up by the clearly refined portions of it. One of the Trade Union conglomerates or a more independent shipyard would pay blood for such a find. All of them were hoping to finish quickly and report to one of the Hutt Clan Kajitics. A couple had proposed to tell the Black Suns too and get a bidding war going.
The communication station pirate started talking, “Unknown vessel, surrender and prepare to be boarded. Otherwise, we will fire on you.”
He spoke clearly in galactic basic. There was no answer from the other ship.
Everyone waited while the Pirate repeated himself.
“Alright,” the Captain began, “Load the torpedoes. When he crosses 100 thousand km launch the first and see what he does.”
The air grew anticipatory. The pirates had been waiting for this for days.
“Fire.”