Chapter 36

Stuggart star system, inner system.

Stuggart Prime, Secure Berth Delta-31.

"You know...This is the kind of stuff straight out of legends I was talking about."

Sarah blinked, and looked up from her tablet. She was more at ease using her implants than most people, but even she used physical supports whenever she could. She supposed that catching up on paperwork while showing their armorer their new missiles wasn't exactly polite, but, well...Turral had more or less dumped Seria on her because the chief engineer had more important things to do, and the rest of the engineering crew was either on leave or needed for critical repairs. Thus it was either up to her to babysit the newbie or the marines, and the latter were too busy reinforcing the perimeters with the seemingly endless piles of lethal ordnance Sarah was very careful not to enquire the origin of. Well, Elteria could have done it as well, but the AI was too busy programming an interface for the hyperspace missiles.

"What do you mean?"

"Those hyperspace missiles." Seria patted the missile almost affectionately. "That's the kind of stuff you hear legends about, even in the school I went to."

"Well, to be fair, this is beyond the Dominion. By a long shot."

"So is your reactor. It's just that...even then at it's core it's a fusion reactor. The numbers look impressive but it doesn't necessarily feel quite real. While this thing." The armorer thumped the missile with her fist. "Feels very, very real."

"Might want to be careful with that. It carries a 160 megatons warhead after all." Said Sarah nonchalantly, before chuckling as Seria practically jumped in the air and scrambled backwards. "Relax, it's cold. We might be mercs but even we don't keep live warheads in our magazine. Well, most of the time anyway."

"Right." Somehow, Seria didn't look particularly reassured, and Sarah chuckled, before Seria shook herself. "So, as I was saying, it feels more real than I anything else did." She shrugged. "Possibly because it's a weapon."

"I mean, our battle laser is a weapon as well."

"And Turral didn't let me within ten meters of it's chambers." Said Seria, almost plaintively.

"With reasons. It requires careful calibration, and can get finnicky." Not to mention that due to the lack of spare parts it was more an abomination resulting of the almagamation of lower tech components to substitute for the Near Verge spares they simply couldn't manufacture or get their hands on. "Only specially rated engineers may enter."

"I know, I know." Seria sighed, before patting the missile once more. "So, is it true what the legends say then? We're going to be able to blow ships right out of hyperspace with this?"

Sarah couldn't help it, she laughed out loud.

"Okay, those legends are false. Those missiles can move through hyperspace, but that doesn't mean they can hit anything in it."

Seria tilted her head.

"Oh? Why not?"

Sarah shrugged.

"Something due to the hyperspace field ships use to avoid, you know, being destroyed by hyperspace itself. Stops all energy transfers."

"Oh. Wait, why can't we do that for our own shields then?"

Sarah shrugged.

"I have no idea. I'm not a dimensional physicist. I don't think anyone can do it."

"Actually, some can." A new voice interjected

Sarah blinked, and looked to the side as Elteria's avatar materialized in the missile magazine with them. The AI looked....pissed.

"Ah, Elty! What owes us the pleasure of your visit?" Politely asked Sarah, falling back into the somewhat familiar routine of ascertaining what was the source of her AI's anger so she could either diffuse it or get out of the proverbial blast radius.

"These damned things." Said the AI, shooting the missiles a venomous glance, before sighing. "Sorry, I shouldn't let my emotions get the better of me, but damn do I hate the people that programmed them."

Sarah's eyebrows rose.

"What happened?"

"In short? The software for those missiles is being inflexible as fuck. And it's really hard to crack as well."

Sarah frowned.

"Anti-theft measure?"

Elteria looked at her for a second, before laughing.

"I wish! No, it's a fucking toddler protection system."

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"I'm sorry, what?" Interjected Seria.

"We theorized that these missiles were too far beyond the Loki Republic for the design and tech to have truly originated from them. Well it seems we were right. These things are locked tight to prevent some idiot from messing with the software and breaking the missiles. There's basically no flexibility, the missile accepts a certain type of sensor input, target designation, and that's it."

"Damn, that's...restrictive." Said Sarah as she pocketed her tablet. "Can we just...formulate our sensor data to conform to the software's expectations?"

"No kidding. And yes, we could, but we'd lose a ton of resolution, and outright forsake several of our long range systems."

"Ah."

"Yeah. So I'm trying to find a workaround. And it's not helping that these things have very good cybersecurity."

"How good?"

"Near Verge. Lower end of military spec. Modern military spec."

"That..."

"Pretty much confirms someone is arming a High Verge nation with Near Verge tech, yes." Elteria shrugged. "Not that it's our problem."

"It is if the Federation comes looking for the missiles."

"Pffft, please. You know the Federation doesn't give a crap about technological artifacts. They only care about tech transfers. That's why they go easy on the smugglers."

"Wait, wait." Interrupted Seria. "You're talking about the Infinite Systems Federation, correct?"

Elteria and Sarah exchanged a look, before nodding.

"Yes?"

"And you said that they...don't care about technological artifacts? Why? Aren't they afraid of reverse engineering?"

Sarah sighed.

"They don't need to be. Beyond stuff already within reach, reverse engineering just...doesn't work."

Seria looked at the captain increduously, and the captain continued.

"It's one of the reasons why no one has ever managed to duplicate the Federation's quantum tech. One of their engineers tried to explain it to me, and keep in mind that this is the most polite analogy I've been given on the topic, that it would be like trying to expect a caveman banging rocks together to create sparks to be able to duplicate a fusion reactor."

"That's..."

"Not very polite, but accurate nonetheless. A lot can be learned from devices of higher technology, but not enough to truly duplicate them. Take these missiles for example. The idea is fairly simple, all things considered. Could the Dominion duplicate it? Not a chance in hell. They might be able to duplicate the concept, certainly, but how is taking apart the computers tell them how to make molecular level circuitry? How is taking apart the hyperdrive going to tell them how the phase arrays are made? They can see how they're configured, but they'd never be able to make them that small, or even stabilize a phase array powerful enough to punch through into hyperspace as close to a planet as those can."

Seria opened her mouth...and closed it.

"Point taken." She sighed. "You were saying something about someone who could do the shield thingy in real space, XO?"

"You can call me Elteria, everyone does. And yes. The Federation, who else?" The AI shivered. "It's part of why their capital ships are so damned hard to kill. They call it the 'Citadel-class shields'. They can't do anything while it's on, but you can do nothing to them either."

"It's like a get out of a jail free card?"

"Well, no. The info I have relies on observation, not actual data from the Federation, but no one has seen one of their ship jump or translate with it on, or even change their vector. So they can hide behind the shield, but they're pretty much stuck on their trajectory until they pop it and bring out their head."

"Eh. Maybe they should have called it the 'turtle shield'."

"Maybe they should have indeed. And while that-"

Elteria blinked, and Sarah was halfway through opening her mouth when the entire ship shook.

"What the-"

"We're under attack! The berth has been breached!" Yelled out the AI.

*****

The assault team might not be the best equipped or the most elite one in the universe, but they were professionals.

The fusion charge they used was normally used by Dominion bunker busters to dig a hole big enough to let the rest of the missile, usually with a nice nuclear warhead, through into whatever fortification they wanted destroyed today. Since they wanted their targets alive, and triggering a nuclear warhead on Stuggart's surface would have been a death sentence -even if they hadn't been in the weapon's kill radius to begin with like here-, they'd simply settled for sending in drones on the charge's heels.

As the charge finished digging through the berth's ceiling, missing the Eternal Seeker by a few, very carefully calculated meters, and making a graceful arc before running out of velocity and falling back to the ground, a group of drones flew over the molten magma left in it's wake, and erupted into the berth proper, circumventing every perimeter defense.

Unfortunately for them, the Seeker's marines weren't just professionals. They were veteran, hard bitten professional paranoids. The drones had barely the time to realize that there were a lot of power signatures for a simple ship berth before the gauss turrets began scything them down. The drones responded with flashbangs and stun darts...which did absolutely nothing to the armored turrets, who had been made to be able to pick out enemies and reliably fire even in the middle of an orbital bombardment.

The assault team leader swore as the drone feeds abruptly went dead, and sighed. It would have been stupid to hope the glorified drill and the drones would have been enough of a surprise to carry the day, but even he could hope.

"Well, looks like we're doing this the hard way. All assault teams, move in!"

All around the secure berth, soldiers, who had been hiding in maintenance tunnels, or repair vehicles, surged forwards, and rushed their assigned vectors. Then the leader grabbed his own rifle, and gestured at the now open blast door showing a cooling tube of molten rock, which some of his people where already busy spraying liquid nitrogen onto to at least make it bearable for their armor to walk upon.

"Let's move!"

Armored helmets dipped all around him, and they surged forward.

*****

"Status?" Said Sarah as she ran into her quarters.

"A fusion bunker busting charge just went through the entire berth. Missed us, but it wouldn't have penetrated our armor anyway." After all the Eternal Seeker's armor plating was made to stand up to direct hits that could bypass the shield. That meant point blank detonations from multi-megaton fusion bombs, at the very least, not a glorified mining charge. "Drones went in after the charge. The auto turrets got them all. I also have multiple groups of hostiles moving in through the hallways towards us." The AI shook her head. "They're trying to pin the perimeter teams down while they grab the ship."

"How likely is that?"

"Normally I'd say fucking impossible, but, well." She shrugged. "We were as secure was we were gonna get, and we can't maintain the capacitors while they're charged. The reactor is running at minimal power as well. I'm spinning up everything I can, but we won't have shields, gun, or hell, drives, for at least an hour, maybe more."

Sarah swore viciously as she grabbed her laser rifle. She went in for the locker containing her suit of power armor, before sighing, and diverting towards her lighter, but still functional suit of unpowered combat armor.

"How long until they reach us?"

"I have no idea. The perimeter assault teams are starting to lay in breaching charges on the doors, so pretty damn soon. I don't have eyes into the hole, so I can't tell, but they're probably making their way up already."

"Alright. Have Hector pull back to us, we need to consolidate."

"He's already doing that. All perimeter teams are falling back. I've also warned everyone who is on shore leave, and triggered Shattersky's emergency beacons. Their security should get them to safety while we sort this out."

"Right, good. Open the armory, and tell everyone onboard to arm themselves."

The AI nodded, and then sighed.

"I have to ask the question. Should we pull everyone aboard and seal the ship?"

Sarah shook her head.

"They wouldn't have attacked without a way of getting onboard. If nothing else, the main drive isn't as armored at the rest of the ship. Even with fusion cutters they would get through eventually...and we have to assume they brought something better than that. We have the onboard defenses, but if they've gone though the hull they can definitely go through the bulkheads to circumvent them. Plus once they're inside, a nuke will destroy the ship, and we'll have to surrender or blow ourselves up."

"Fair enough. The armory is unlocked." Elteria blinked. "And I have grenades sailing through the hole into the hangar."

"Any damage?"

"Negligible. They were flash and frag grenades. The turrets can take those all day. And...they brought their noses out. And they're falling back into the hole, at least for now."

"Kills?"

"At least 3. Possibly 4. Plus another 3 wounded." Elteria shook her head. "More grenades. The marines have entered the hangar."

Sarah nodded, and started making her way towards the ship's door, before stopping as an holographic arm barred her way.

"Elty..." Said Sarah.

"Captain, with all due respect this isn't a fight you should be involved in."

"I-"

"No longer have power armor worth a damn. And as much as your rifle is a good weapon, it's not good enough to justify risking you. Not right now at least. Our marines have the advantage of prepared defenses, with all that it entails. They might not be able to win, but I'm fairly sure they can hold our attackers long enough for help to arrive. And they'll do that a lot easier if they don't have to worry about keeping your ever so precious ass out of the fire, captain."

Sarah met her AI's eyes, saw the unyielding steel in them, and sighed.

"Fine, but I'm getting on the bridge, and get me some of the controls for those turrets. I'll be damned if I send my marines to die without at least trying to help where I can."

"Of course captain. Diverting turret controls to you."

Sarah shook her head, and began the carefully calculated half run of a captain rushing to battlestations, fast enough to get places in a hurry, but not rushed enough to terrify the crew members.

Not that she'd have needed it, everyone she came across was grim faced, and making their way towards the armory.

Even if the marines fell, those bastards, whoever they were, wouldn't get the ship without a fight.