Chapter Fifty - Success on Many Fronts

Day watched as Night basically took over the work. She deployed drones by the dozen, sending out repair drones and tug drones from her stores and taking some of Day’s own extras as well. More were coming from Ceres, sent over by The Weeping of Mothers, though several of those were carrying prisoner transport capsules.

One of the first things they did was to shut down all of the scanners and exterior-facing camera they found on the captured ships by means of repair drones who were surprisingly good at unrepairing things.

Then they assumed control of the ships they could, slowed them down, and brought them closer to each other. They’d chosen an asteroid that was nearby as a point of reference in the belt, and lined up the ships in a neat corded row next to it.

Then the drones chopped the weapons systems apart.

They should have done so earlier. One of the crews onboard a destroyer had been able to disconnect one of the particle cannons from its computer controls and manually aimed and fired at several of their drones.

Most of those shots had been clean missed, but Day was still upset when they struck a few drones.

Night venting their air calmed them down, and they were one of the first groups forced into a prisoner capsule--essentially a cargo hold with seats and straps and a very rudimentary life support system within.

The entire time they worked, Day kept an eye on the FTL ship.

It was distant enough that she couldn’t make out much of it, but the occasional flash hinted at the use of laser-based weaponry, and that worried her. Twilight wasn’t supposed to give her reports on her actions until she was successful, and Day regretted that enormously.

What if something went wrong? What if she could have helped by being there instead of supervising Night who seemed to have things well in hand?

Then Twilight’s response finally arrived. “FTL ship secured... though it’s kind of on fire.”

Day was hit by an immediate wave of relief. “How did it go?” she sent back before returning to work operating several drones fitting more capsules onto the ship’s airlocks. Others were going over the exteriors of the ships, looking for hidden subsystems and hacking apart any weaponry they found.

Twilight, in lieu of answering herself, sent a full report of her capture of the FTL ship.

Its name, Day discovered, was the To Infinity... And Beyond. She’d never seen a ship with the translated equivalent of ellipses in its name before, but they were aliens, so she gave them a pass.

Twilight had started operations as she was supposed to, sending a couple dozen repair drones out towards the ship with pressurised thrusters which slowed down just before hitting the FTL ship’s massive hull.

It was three kilometres long, and quite large in every other dimension as well. That was thirty-five of Day’s own hulls placed front-to-back in a row. Fortunately, for all its bulk, it wasn’t a warship, and there were several maintenance accessways all across its surface.

It took little effort for Twilight’s drones to cut their way into the ship and stary infiltrating its systems.

The problems rose when Twilight discovered the number of systems the ship had. Its computational system for its main FTL drive--or so they assumed that's what it was--made the entire ERF processing power look like a bucket next to an olympic swimming pool.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Still no AI though, just an exceptionally complex and power-hungry system being fed by dozens of large Accord-style reactors.

The ships interior had several hangars, living spaces, and room for a crew that numbered in the hundreds. A crew which was armed.

So, while Twilight didn’t need to breach the outer hull the way they’d expected to, she didn’t have the troops to take the crew hostage, not when it was clear that a single alien was more capable in a tight fight than one of their retrofit repair drones.

Day made a note to research proper combat drones later. They had a few blueprints for those floating around but never had the need to build any.

The To Infinity... And Beyond had its own artificial spin-gravity, though it was quite weak, and had several pieces of interesting tech that Day was eager to steal.

Twilight changed her plans and started attacking the ship in the way she loved best, by being a terrible, stealthy gremlin about it. She had her drones cut fuel lines, break off bolts un trusses, disconnect some wires here and there, and purposefully smash delicate machinery.

Wherever they travelled, they left a million headaches for the To Infinity... And Beyond’s maintenance crews. Meanwhile, she disabled all of the exterior anti-asteroid guns she could reach, and a few particle cannons hidden around the hull.

There was no way she’d find everything. a three kilometre-long ship had enough space within it to hide a small city’s worth of infrastructure, and the more Twilight looked, the more things she found that she had to take apart and disable.

So she got sloppy trying to move faster in order not to miss the window of opportunity Day and Night had for a good ambush, and someone sounded the alarm.

Naturally, Twilight reacted by detonating an EMP within danger-close range of the FTL ship, using its bulk to shield herself from the worst of the explosion.

Those of her drones not disabled by the bomb went on overdrive, cutting out any system they could reach while Twilight worked hard to hack through the ship’s systems properly while the crew was still reeling from the sudden attack.

It had worked, a little.

The To Infinity... And Beyond had lots of point defence weapons, which were activated and used to try and tag Twilight out of the sky, but Twilight had drones giving off signatures as if they were her, and while there were a few close calls, none of the strikes hit her.

Then with the language package and a few more hours of sabotage, including a few ramming actions from deactivated torpedoes and some missile strikes across the surface of the To Infinity... And Beyond, she finally convinced the crew to surrender.

Then she cut off power to the large processor banks, just in case they tried something funny.

At the moment, the To Infinity... And Beyond was running on a single generator, enough to keep its life support going, and little else.

The crew wasn’t happy.

Day figured she’d have to deal with that too, soon enough.

Worse, Twilight was being insufferably smug about her victory. She was treating it as if they’d gone fishing, and her catch was this big.

***