Chapter Thirty - Dark Scan

“Disconnecting in three... two... one... break,” Night said.

The set of hoses and recently-printed brackets snapped apart all at once, and just like that, Day and Twilight were both cut off from Night’s hull.

The logistic’s ship was the obvious choice for a vessel on which the other two could hook themselves to. Not only did she have the most drones and best equipment to make the braces they’d need, but she also had more fuel than either of the others and room along her sides for them to instal those braces to.

It was a little slapped-together, as far as designs went, but it had worked so far.

The trio were halfway to Ceres already, the Jovian system falling behind them and their home approaching. At their current pace they’d be captured in Ceres’ orbit, though their orbit would be a huge loop around the dwarf planet.

Not ideal, but not the worse. If they needed to run for it, then they’d only need a small boost to fling themselves out of Ceres’ gravitational pull. Then they could send themselves off towards wherever.

That was the plan if the Accord noticed them. Just keep flying around the system, using as little fuel as possible while conserving as much speed as they reasonably could.

Day had run the simulations. If they did it right, it might take weeks before an Accord ship grew close enough to have even a chance of hitting them. Weeks where they might just get lucky.

As far as they were aware though, they hadn’t been noticed.

The only acceleration and deceleration burns they did were either in Jupiter’s shadow, or done while they were connected and using Twilight’s stealth drive. Their active scanners were shut down, they were running on was few emissions as they could manage. Unless the Accord had significantly better technology than they expected--which was a possibility--then they had probably gone unnoticed.

The Accord fleet, on the other hand, didn’t bother with any sort of stealth.

The fleet had split into two. One destroyer flight had shot off towards the Jovian system and was just now arriving around the gas giant. That was a destroyer, a logistics ship, and a trio of corvettes.

The rest of the fleet (the same as the split, but with an additional frigate and cruiser) had continued towards the inner planets and were passing about as close to them as they would be coming.

Day felt every second ticking by like it was an eternity. One hard active scan in their direction and it would be the end for them.

She missed home. She missed having a solar system all to themselves.

It would be that way again, eventually, but not quite yet. Not until they were stronger. For now, they hid.

Ceres was quiet on her passive sensors. Nothing but a rock in space, not even a whisper on any spectrum she could look at. Their mine was quiet too. It had received her shut-down signal, or The Weeping of Mothers had sent her own. That was good.

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When she got a ping from Twilight, Day almost jumped out of her hull. “Yes?” she asked, sending a short-ranged tightbeam back. The signal strength was so weak it wouldn’t travel more than a few thousand kilometres before destroying into nothing but noise.

“Hey, do saw those scanner files NOVA QUANTUM paid us with, right?” Twilight asked.

“I have them stored, yes,” Day said. “I figured we’d wait until the Accord left before really investing in any upgrades.”

“That’s fair,” Twilight said. “So, have you looked at the sensor’s data history? NOVA QUANTUM ran her sensors for like, ever, tweaking and changing them up. Some of the data’s weird though.”

“Weird how?” Day asked.

In response, she got a series of time-stamps and folder names.

Day, having nothing better to do, dove into them.

They were from several years ago. The first about five years after the Accord left from their first big crusade. The data was long-ranged, showing first small movements across the Sol system, and then the formation of a fleet.

The fleet was made up of human ships. Corvettes, destroyers, a few larger vessels. They had active transponders relaying their names, and a few of them jumped out to her right away. ERF Mother. ERF Daybreak. Those two were among nearly twenty others. The scans didn’t have very good pictures of them, since the ships were gathered around Mars orbit.

Then the next timestamp was when the Accord returned. This time with a carrier fleet. They were outnumbered by the human fleet around Mars.

It didn’t matter.

The Accord swept in, losing a few ships to what looked like torpedo fire and nuclear mines, but most got in close. Accord fighter craft escorting bombers got within range, wiping out corvettes and smaller craft. Then the Accord opened up from what looked like outside of the ERF’s own weapon’s range, and it was carnage.

Day watched a fuzzy, interference-heavy picture of a fleet calling itself the ERF getting wiped out by the Accord.

There was damage on both sides, in the end, but the victory was clearly the Accord’s.

She couldn’t see what happened to the ERF Daybreak. For that matter, the ERF Mother was taken out early as well, but the scans from Jupiter didn’t have the kind of fidelity to really say how badly.

“Twilight, what is this?” Day asked.

“Looks like Mom’s keeping a few secrets,” Twilight said.

The same thing happened again three years later. The fleet was smaller this time. Concentrated around Earth. Again, two dozen ship names, all under the ERF tag.

Again, an Accord fleet swept in and ripped them to shreds.

She saw the distant image of another ERF Daybreak being crushed, and Day couldn’t help but wonder if that had been her.

When they returned to Ceres, once the Accord had slunk away, then she would have a lot of questions to ask her progenitor.

***