1808/AC02-05EVENTLOG

Ω CHAPTER FIVE: ECHOES IN THE SILENCE

"What the frag do I say? I ain’t seen a thing like this before. Not even our incendiary rounds can destroy something as easily as this has… If you're hoping to get answers from listening to this, you’re out of luck. I’m as clueless as you are." -Jax, First officer

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It was a rare union for two objects to drift together in the vast coldness of space. Even under their current state, the gentle dance of the Phoenix and the ruined station derelict was one of grace. Bound by the unseen forces of the space around them, and under the dim spotlight of their distant sun. The twinkling stars were their stage, yet the script at this point remained unknown and unseen.

KT was in the aft airlock. The idling hum of their idling engines was an ever present comfort. The bulkheads creaked under invisible and unfelt forces. Once in a while, a loud yet weak impact would stir her from her thoughts, yet it would do little to the Phoenix. Each hit was akin to a warning shot fired at their bows, the battlefield didn't want them here, it wanted them gone. It wanted peace.

But the Phoenix was not like her, she was strong. She was unyielding. She would allow their weakness, as long as she had their strength when she needed them.

Another impact rang out from the bulkhead beside her. She saw the metal door vibrate yet it remained unbroken.

Once the shiver down her spine had faded KT found herself again drifting that turbulent black void of thought. Fear crept through as it always did. Anger boiled up from deep within, as well as burning away in the clouds of her mind. Those same clouds blotted out the rays of hope. The events of the day had hit hard, the storm in her mind was ever present.

A want and a need spoken of only in whispers wound itself through that murk. Not one uplifting thought went through her mind, however if they did it would immediately light the way.

“Captain.” She greeted the spacer as he approached silently. He didn't stalk her like prey, rather he had yet to ever make much in the way of unwanted sound. Yet she knew his presence. She could feel him before she saw him. It was like they all had an unseen link, forged and developed through years of being in one another’s presence. She heard a loud thud, mere moments before the bulkhead sealed shut.

“Ensign.” He grunted in acknowledgement, earning a cringe at the mere mention of a military rank. He sat himself opposite her. He applied a frustration to the mural of mood, and just as intended it left its mark. He watched her quietly, KT flicked her fringe infront of her face. He noticed the hairs on her arms stand up, her fingers gripped them tightly. Her eyes, mostly hidden, locked onto him. What she did to herself far outweighed any harm that could befall her. Her body was tense awaiting an assault she knew he would never deliver.

“Sorry Sir.” That latent fear had never faded. The thoughts that kept her waking at night, where would she go if she crossed that final line? Images of another life flashed through her mind at interplanetary speeds, one that had only ended in recent history. Her skin crawled so much it might have come off.

What would she do, if she failed those that had saved her?

“Yeah damn right you should be.” He said with absolute scorn, his tone more akin to a father scolding their daughter as opposed to an officer berating a subordinate. He let out a sigh. “We have it easy on this ship. Anywhere else you and Jax would’ve been thrown in the brig, or out the airlock, a long time ago.”

“If they’d even let me aboard atall.” She mumbled. Shame, it dripped from her words.

“Trues to that. I don't give a shiv what you think of each other, not any more. There is no place for the casual attitude we’ve had previously when that shiva is floating out of our viewport. This is a Home Fleet gunboat, and in the Home Fleet, she’s my XO. If this was a normal by-the-by intercept of a pirate group, it’d be the usual casual affair, I couldn’t even give two shivs if you came on that bridge absolutely plastered.” He paused, tapping the cold bulkhead beside them. “But this ain't normal. This demands a crew working in perfect synchronisation. Working together without friction. Hell, I’d be much more comfortable if we was in a Graephal rather than the Phoenix. If you and Jax want to fight you do it when we aren’t adrift in the wake of… whatever this is.”

“Yes sir.” Her nod said, but she stayed silent.

“Data download should be ready for picking now. We will evaluate our fields as per procedure and convene when we have enough information to make up a good image of the enemy force.” He spoke like he swallowed the text book on deep space patrols. Skip got to his feet, his joints audibly cracked the whole way like breaking ceramic. “By the numbers, best that you can, as you always do.”

“Yes sir.” She flashed the faintest of smiles, knocking her muddy-gold hair back with a flick of her head. Skip pound the door control with a vicious fervour. The bulkhead’s hissing and clunking the only sounds for a few moments.

“Fraggin’ crack to it!” He barked, loud enough for his voice to echo, yet he did it with a smile. With one final whisper he parted; “Ignore what your head says. You’ve never disappointed me.”

Cold, blue idling flame faded into red and gold as the Phoenix swung away from the ruins, her lights dimmed to a darkness only briefly broken by a roaring flash from her oversized engines. The small ship blasted into the darkness of space, the sheer size of the void her only protection against the coming storm.

The ship had been quiet for long hours now, the data had not long finished streaming into its data banks when the decision was made to hide in the expanse. It was either from the mutual fear of being found or the mutual desire to run as fast as they could.

“Phoenix, Captain Skipper. This situation is worse than previously anticipated. In every conceivable way. Suspicion is afoot amongst the crew and rightly so. The enemy force opposing us is substantially more sophisticated than anything in the fleet. I am under the sincere impression that any force capable of causing such destruction and not only survive untouched, but move on at such a pace could not only pose a serious risk to Prokhyon but the entire OSFC. I will finish this log in private.”

Skip finished the log with a click. He pressed his hands to his face, fatigue had long sat in from far too long going by the book. His mind flashed back to happy times, when he could pull the trigger and not have to deal with hours on inept bureaucracy after. He couldn't help but think that the founding Outer Space Fleet Command was meant to have changed that. They had become exactly what they swore they wouldn’t be. An oath made over the bodies of those that once led them.

“Skip?” He looked back to the bulkhead with a frown. It deepened at the sight of Jax, a look of concern on her face.

“Whatsup my little tormentor?” He got a brief snort back, her concern immediately eased slightly.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course. Just ask." He leaned back as she took her space. “You should know you don’t even need permission.”

"What is happening out here?" She was always the hot head, yet at this moment there was no anger, she couldn’t find it. Left only as a voice, all warnings said for caution.

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"Well we're having a conversation." Skip put a smile on, one that quickly faded when it wasn’t reciprocated.

"I'm being serious, Skip.” Jax could not hide the slither of latent fear. Fear of the unknown. A feeling every spacer had felt at one point or another whilst staring into the void. But now it seemed, somehow, that void was looking back.

Like a predator waiting for it’s moment. It had declared them all it’s prey.

"We are doing our job. Exactly what we signed up for. A target has been found and It’s our job to ensure that it can be stopped.." He watched her carefully for a moment, reading her actions and expressions in quite intricate detail. "You scared?"

"Very Skip." She looked down in shame.

“There is nothing wrong with being scared.” Suddenly Jax sat bolt upright, she hadn’t heard that from a captain before, even this one. Even after decades of service. “That means you are only very much aware of the threat at hand. Fear isn’t a sign of cowardice, it’s a sign of knowledge. Knowledge is the greatest power in the universe. Do you have any new knowledge for me?”

“I've read the data… and I got my assessment of the weapons used in the attacks.” Her movements were jerky. She went to hand her notes over, yet a raised hand stopped her in her tracks.

“Read it, it's ok. Read it to me and you might understand it better.” He, to the best of his ability, avoided making his tone sound like an order.

“What good would that do?” She snapped, her ever present attitude making a grim reappearance.

“You won't be scared of something you can understand. The more you understand, the more the balance of power moves in your favour. Like I literally just said. Trust me. Read it.” Now his voice unwittingly held the authority required. Immediately, Jax fell in line with a nod of affirmation.

“The weapons used on the station are not a registered weapons design. It appears to be a hybrid plasma-kinetic weapon system. Closer to a plasma thrower than a polarized round." She began, immediately she piqued Skip’s intrigue. Looking past her he could see KT silently waiting, and listening. “It appears to fire motes of superheated highly magnetic dust wrapped up in a plasma envelope at insane speeds. With a high rate of fire and no apparent delay for cooling.”

"Could it be a prototype?" Skip watched his officer curiously. He knew how rare it was to see anything but overglorified kinetic weaponry in the OSFC. That concern returned...

The faintest of terror inducing thoughts seeded their minds at that prospect.

"Not atall. This weapon was deployed in various sizes on every ship, there is also no sign of kinetic damage caused by weapons fire. All damage to the station was as a result of thermodynamic forces... I was able to make a rough estimate of the yield, and it is concerning." Jax rested her head in her hands, earning unseen frowns from the other officers. She paused for a minute. Then continued reading.

"The smallest yield used outside of point defence I detected had the same… Sorry.” She paused again, trying to find the voice to speak the words in front of her. “It had the same destructive capacity of a six meter ultra-dense round fired from an eighty ring railgun-”

"Why does that sound familiar?" KT asked aloud, startling her crewmate and earning a barrage of barely audible insults.

“Axial weapon of a Countess class destroyer. Big song and dance about the OSFC Majesty being fitted with them in battery mounts.” Skip explained, casually reaching to French’s console, and plucking a picture of their flagship from it’s brethren. The bores of the turrets in question were larger than some of the vessels that orbited it.

“That’s capital ship levels of firepower!” She exclaimed, in utter awe. "How the frag are we supposed to fight a fleet armed entirely with capital grade weaponry?"

"Not capital grade weaponry KT. Capital-killer grade weaponry… And it... it gets worse… If it’s atall possible to..." Jax's frown changed to something else. Something that is seen rarely on the faces of those facing their fate. It wasn’t fear, or anger. It was acceptance. "It does not appear to be ammunition based or, as I said, cooling restricted. This weapon system has been perfected, and I mean perfected. Two shots would have caused critical damage to the survey station, they fired thirty."

"No care if they hit?" Skip asked, Jax shook her head. He thought for a moment. “They want to completely destroy everything in their path?”

Jax nodded. "I detected eight impacts before the station’s systems failed... Their accuracy is the only fault I can find, there is no precision to their shots, rather their fire patterns indicate they prefer to shred their targets rather than outright disable them. They aren’t interested in salvage or taking prisoners..."

She leant back and lit a cigarette. "My final assessment is that we are outclassed, outgunned and vastly outnumbered. Even in one on one combat I have my doubts we could even land a hit… That's me, Skipper."

“KT What have you got?” Skip leaned back in his chair, one by one the crew filtered to their stations, no one had any feeling greater than dread.

“A heading. Specifically theirs.” She replied, her voice betrayed her nerves. She engaged one of the bridge’s displays, presenting her data for them all to see.

“Their present course is taking them core-ward. First they will fly by Hodge’s Moon, and if they carry on, In three weeks they will be at Mercurial Eye.” A flashing arrow curved past the nearest gravity well, coming to a small flashing square. “At that point they can cripple trade and supplies across the frontier space, and if they blockade or lay siege to Hodge’s, they will in one swoop destroy the mining economy of this system and cripple the OSFC’s territory wide production line. If they head at full steam as they are now, they will have seized the system within the next two months.”

“There's a lot of ifs there KT, tell me you are certain.” Skip insisted, sending a nod to French as he too came on the bridge.

“I am.” She affirmed. “You take out Prokhyon, you take out the main supply of industrial alloys and minerals for the entire OSFC. R&D operate out of Mercurial, you take that out as well? Even if this invasion stops here, the OSFC will not survive.”

“What about local defence fleets?” French threw out the question, pointing to the scattered emblems all across the sector map.

An alert flashed across their screens, bringing them the answer they needed.

“Alert all civilian vessels, Pirate activity on edge of system.” Skip read from his console. He grimaced. “That is a fraggin understatement.”

“Looks like Battlegroup Empyrion and Battlegroup Vertigo are enroute to intercept. Civilian distress signals have been detected.” KT announced. She flicked a switch, tapping into the bridge’s loudspeaker.

“This is the freighter DD04 Syspensis, critical damage taken during SDE jump. They came from nowhere! Send immediate assis-”

The call for help was overlapped by another.

“OSFC command alert we have taken damage, position is thirteen-eighteen spinward of Hodges moon. Critical engine failure, hull breaches on all decks! We-”

“Help us!” The only signal not cutoff by another was instead ended by the unmistakable sounds of decompression.

Their enemy was on the move.

“Please help me… My Mummy said she’d be back. Where is she?”

“KT enough!” French spat. The look of rage on his face was beyond comprehension. He looked like he could crush their attackers in his bare hands. His body trembled with rage.

Skip skimmed past the alerts, finding a scrap of hope they needed. “Admiral Wulf’s at Mercurial.”

“Skip, can I make a suggestion, and trust me I want to be sick at the thought of it.” KT had a look of disgust, she glanced at the photograph, only now taking note of the messed up workstation. She sighed. “We have good data from Indigo, that piece of shiv will need what we’ve got. It could change the response to this… Under his command, maybe even help us win.”

“Thats going off patch, carries the death penalty.” Skip pointed out. He gestured towards the still blinking icon, as the crew all stared at him. “If we turn up off patch and hand over information that he considers either useless or irrelevant, we will be out of the airlock in minutes, regardless of whether we are the last ship standing or not.”

“So what are our options?” Jax asked, she quickly thought of the obvious. “Wait for that alert to turn into a rally call?”

“Two and a half weeks of flight between us and Mercurial, we’d never make it in time.” KT pointed out, she looked between her crewmates, again they waited for their commander. “Let’s not forget, we will be flying into this shiv-storm.”

“If we are going to do this, the decision has to be unanimous I’m afraid, as cliche as it is. I will not make you all face the death penalty unless we agree its the only option.” He put his hands up. “But if it were me alone? I’d already be underway. Frag em, the only chance we have is with the data the Phoenix now has.”

“I’m with you either way, Skip. I owe you that much. If you think it’s the right thing to do, I will rely on your utterly fragged moral compass.” Jax waved for her two colleagues to add their voices to the pot.

“I have informed compositions and a theoretical schematic for five of the ship’s used in the engagement.” His voice was a hiss, but nonetheless it was unbreakable and confident. French’s input was the ace in the hole. From that they had a chance. “I’ll need your help KT with the rest of it.”

“With that added in, safe to say the defining factor in this war is whether we get to Mercurial Eye in time.” When her decision wasn’t clear enough, KT straightened, and gained a confident smile. “I will get us there in time.”

“Right if you're in Jax. French? You haven't said yes or no yet. Am I leaving you in your pod?” Skip knew the answer before he asked it, he flicked a switch on his helm control, the Phoenix now awaited KT’s coordinates. His engineer gave him a grim smile.

“Like you said, Frag ‘em. Sir.”