“Fire!”
An excited shout rang through the huge bridge that was unusually quiet right now. The many stations were staffed by UAS members and most of these space travel veterans had pale faces right now.
They watched with dread as outside a huge energy projectile shot forward, fired by one of their own turrets. An instant later it hit the big asteroid that was about to crash into the front of their ship. In a silent explosion the rock blasted apart into thousands of fragments. Many shot towards them but were easily intercepted, only getting the ship’s shields to glow slightly.
“Changing course, plus 6°, new targets A15, A19 and A23.”
Slowly the nose of the big ship turned to the right, setting the new course towards a region of this asteroid belt where the density of deadly objects was a little lower.
“Fire!”
Three more projectiles flew forward, pulverizing more asteroids.
“Increasing speed, plus 160m/s.” The excited pilot shouted new changes again.
“...holy mother…”
“...may the gods help us…”
Low whispers could be heard from the crew when the big ship gained even more speed and rushed through the asteroid belt.
“Weapons on cooldown. 14 seconds to fire…” The man at the weapons station reported.
More gasps could be heard. That was exactly what everyone was afraid of. You cannot blast the whole field clean, these kinds of weapons need some time between shots.
“Captain, requesting permission to increase the front shields, plus 33%, lowering the rest, minus 25%” The pilot addressed the man in charge of this vessel.
“Granted. Have it your way, Alaris. But if I find even one scratch on this ship, this test for your pilot license is the least of your problems!”
“Sir!” Someone shouted in dismay but was ignored. Soon Niu gave new updates.
“Shields recalibrated. Changing course, minus 4°, raising speed, plus 75m/s. New targets A2, A5.”
“4 seconds to fire…”
“Hold tight!” Niu shouted just before the ship rammed one of the huge asteroids in its way. Even so it was more like a nudge, as the rock was hit with the slanted side of the nose, the shields still flashed bright like Mereus itself for a moment and a jolt was sent through the whole ship.
“Weapons ready…”
“Fire!”
The next two asteroids exploded and finally the end of the belt could be seen with the naked eye.
“That was awesome! What is my time?” She turned around after they had completely left the asteroid field.
The Captain looked around and saw the many pale faces of the board of examiners. He shook his head in disappointment.
“Status report!” He demanded and the guy at the engineering station looked up after tapping some more buttons.
“No damage reported, hull not breached… or scratched. Shields recuperating, energy reserves at 14%. The generator will need 13 minutes to get us back in top shape and we are good to go.”
Looking at Niu’s expectant face, the captain sighed.
“Time?” He asked the engineer.
“Uhm… 1 hour, 16 minutes, 11 seconds!”
“Great, Alaris, you did it. You broke the record by more than 15 minutes and made all the examiners shit their pants. Congratulations!”
“Your methods are… wild, but effective. You passed the practical test with excellence.” One of the examiners agreed.
Niu’s grin widened for a moment, before she noticed that the captain - her mentor and instructor over the last months - only had a sad smile on his face.
***
“... That’s all?” Robin looked at Keran in disbelief.
“Well, yes. What did you expect the job would be?”
“I don’t know, but definitely not ‘go to a dead planet and observe a rock!’, that’s for sure.” Robin lamented.
“This is a… very rudimentary summary, but okay. I know you are looking forward to exploring the universe. A mission like this is perfect to get into that. It’s in another system, but not too far away, the planet may be dead but still is a place of interesting phenomena and while it isn’t some fancy facility or anything, you are researching technologies left behind by the race which is said to have the biggest collection of secrets!”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Keran tried to defend the assignment and his team members all nodded in agreement.
“I know and you are right with this being a reasonable job to begin with. It’s just… after hearing we will travel off-system and all, I may have raised my expectations a bit too high.” Robin sighed and pushed his disappointment away, “Let’s go over this again and discuss our next steps.”
Over the next hour, Robin and Keran kept discussing and planning the mission. While Robin might have hoped for something else, this could very well become quite the adventure for them.
More than 20 years ago a human team of explorers ventured into the Goya System that is neighboring the Mereus Cluster not too far away. The UAS was there before, but Goya is a dying star, making the conditions in the system very unstable and not fit for settling. From solar flares to electromagnetic storms, the whole system is plagued by the ‘mood swings’ of Goya.
The explorers followed a lead they found in one of the many forsaken relic sites in the outer rims of the Pranum Expanse and moved in on Terulos. The only planet in the system where you could still walk around without fearing instant death due magma spraying out under your feet, icy winds converting you into a popsicle or other natural phenomena like that.
Even so, Terulos still was quite hazardous and not a place where you want to spend your next vacation. After days of searching, the explorers found what they were looking for. A huge monolith of unknown origin, more than 30 meters high and definitely technological in its nature. As they couldn't learn any of its secrets, even after long studies and tests, the location was sold to the UAS.
Human researchers were the first to get there and quickly could associate the monolith with the Keeper. However, even after all these years, they didn’t get any further than that. The officials in charge also made sure not to share the find with the other races of the UAS and are still hoping to solve the monolith’s secrets on their own.
Now that they found Robin, the scientists that are assigned to this fruitless project - Keran and his team - had high hopes, to finally be able to get something out of the object.
“How long until we will be able to set out?” Robin finally asked after they had a lengthy discussion about the Goya System and the conditions on Terulos.
“The UAS IP Hubble will arrive in one week, when the team is completely assembled at that time, we should be able to leave immediately.”
“Okay, but I’ll take up your previous offer, too. Please send me the profiles of the active members of the crew, I wanna know who is covering my back.”
“Sure, no problem. You also wanted to invite some members, right? How is that going?” Keran asked.
“I wanted to wait for this mission briefing, before deciding on anything. I’ll talk to them in the coming days. However, as we are not on a tight schedule, I wanna go to Rucasur to fetch them personally. After that, I may even plan a stop at one or two moons on our way to the Goya System, would that be a problem?” Robin said and glanced at the screen to see the reactions from the team of researchers and scientists. Like Keran, they didn’t seem to be surprised by this.
‘Ughh…’ Robin sighed in his mind. In all his dealings with the UAS they never explicitly talked about this, but he was sure the UAS had long guessed that he had a map of sorts to find all the alien locations and relic sites. They didn’t force him to reveal his map and even accepted his direct refusal to share his source of information, but Robin was well aware that this silent agreement would only stand as long as shared what he found and would not be too daring when it came to the first looting.
Bringing a team of UAS officials with him to such excursions would underline his willingness to work together and hopefully give him a bit more leeway in other fields, if needed.
“Of course, visiting a few moons could be good training so the crew can get used to each other before heading to Terulos.” Keran agreed and kept his friendly smile.
“Great, I’ll head back then. I’ve some calls to make. Please don’t forget to send me the profiles and the report about the conditions in the Goya System and on Terulos. If you are looking for me and don’t find me in my room, come to the lab of Prof. Aurelius. I probably will use the next few days to work with him on some little projects.”
Robin went back to his room with a head full of ideas and things to do. He had to think about who he would add to his team - and who would even want to come… he needed a talk with Patience.
Also planning the route for their trip was on his agenda. He wanted to go to Rucasur and get the Melody and at least stop by at Trov S to check on one of his unknown-markers from his map. Guard had said he should look out for a still working facility of the Eltaran. So matching the races with his markers was the next logical step. He was pretty sure Gaunus III was already fully explored by the UAS, so he shouldn’t find anything undiscovered and make a huge ruckus again so soon. Sure, he could also ask directly for UAS reports of the moon to see which sites they had discovered, but at the end of the day, he still was excited to go there personally and it really could be good training for the crew.
Coming to his room, he saw a black haired woman in official UAS attire waiting by the door.
“Mr. Tulward, I’m Akemi Watanabe, nice to meet you.” She greeted him.
“Hi, how are you doing? What can I do for you?” He said and shook her hand.
“I’m here on behalf of this station’s security. We would like to confiscate the Drel weapon called Disruptor. It’s part of your agreement with the UAS.”
Robin frowned at her choice of words.
“You can ‘borrow’ it, yes. But I expect to get it back after you are done with your tests.” Robin slowly said.
“Of course, however, such tests do take time. I don’t think we’ll be done before your departure next week.” She explained and it dawned on Robin what she was doing. The UAS probably wanted to test how far they could push him… well, in addition, if Fengo ended up giving a proper report on the pirate’s raid, they most certainly really were interested in the weapon and if he’ll ever get it back was questionable.
He thought about that for a moment and ultimately decided to hand over the Disruptor. It wasn’t the right time to fall out with the UAS right now. Also, ever since he used it, he had found no way of recharging it. The huge amount of energy was so compressed, compact or whatever - he had no idea - that it had felt like nothing more than a normal energy weapon’s magazine to his senses. He didn’t know at all how to recreate that.
Robin nodded and opened the door to enter.
“Sure, I too am curious what you may get out of it. However, a word of warning - that thing can do some serious damage. Don’t test it out here in this underwater facility.”
The woman took the drill without giving it a second glance and stepped back out into the corridor.
“You have an appointment for a full-body scan on the next 5th at 10:00, please don’t be late.” She said and turned to leave.
Robin stopped dead, eyes wide.
“Mrs. Watanabe, I have a standing agreement with the UAS. I’ll not take part in scans of any kind!” He growled, there was no way he would let them scan him. No matter if they wanted to pressure him a bit, this was a line he wouldn’t let them cross.
“We are well aware of these agreements and obviously comply, however it is our job to ensure this facility’s safety and therefore we will have to make the needed checkups. Who knows what kind of viruses you were exposed to, far away in the Drel outpost. Of course we will not scan your G-Anomaly or read out your Neuro-Chip, no worries.” Watanabe said and left.
‘Sure, you will scan me but not look at the mutation or the chip… yeah…’ He scoffed silently.
Robin’s mind raced with different scenarios and ways to prevent this checkup. However, each was less feasible than the next one.
“Fuck!”