“Leave it to the corpies to run their tests out in the wild fuckin west!” Captain Kavanagh groaned, passing a hand over his salt and pepper beard while he nursed a vicious headache.
“Wild West sir?” His clean shaven XO responded from the diminutive command chair to the captain's left.
“Didn’t you watch those films I sent you?” Kavanagh mumbled disapprovingly behind the rim of his coffee mug. Spotting the sheepish look of procrastination, he rolled his eyes. “Shouldn’t need me to educate you on our past. What are they teaching kids these days!”
“Uplifting of humanity. Colonization period. The Frontier Expansion… the war more than anything.” Replied the XO absently with a twinge of discomfort at the thought of a war gone before he was old enough to remember it. At least, in any way other than the distant expressions his parents wore like armor.
“I know, Morlan, I know. Not much time for our proper history anymore.” His coffee mug clinked gingerly across its usual perch on the armrest. Old rings stained the otherwise immaculately polished chair. “Forgive an old man some condescension?”
Barrick Morlan watched his captain pick up a long crystal stick. Dull green and not unlike the sugar sticks with which it shared it’s form. The main difference was that Kavanaugh had asked him to procure it personally and strictly off the record. He was hesitant at first, not wanting to risk the rapid pace of his career on a fleeting vice. After he relented however, the nights through their connecting wall were quiet for the first time since he had joined the crew. The waning veteran’s hands were steadier too. In the end, he had come to the conclusion that giving up his own penchant for liquor was a good enough excuse to squirrel funds away for the frankly ludicrous expense. Ship funds were monitored closely, as were the savings they sent home. That left their personal weekly expenses relatively unmonitored, particularly out amongst the free planets. Convincing the ship’s medical staff to fudge the toxicology reports though? Well, that had been another matter entirely.
“Sir, If I may?” Barrick said softly, eyeing the nervous swirl of the crystal through the black liquid. The third time since they had arrived at the rendezvous.
“Y’know you ask that a lot. Never seems to matter what I answer.” The captain grumbled back, squaring his attention on Barrick.
“It might be a while before the rest of the escort arrives.”
“Your point?” Kavanaugh replied, tapping the crystal against a large chip in the mug before setting it aside.
“Distracting yourself by explaining to me how this is similar to the, ‘Wild West’, might keep you in better condition than… well.” Barrick petered off, awkwardly avoiding a direct referral.
“That’s a fair point!” The captain said, seeming suddenly more self aware as he reclipped the neck of his freshly ironed uniform into place. Refraining from staining his roughly combed beard with another sip. “You saw the best and worst of us in that time. Though that’s not really a unique thing, we’ve been pretty ruthless in even our most inspired periods.”
“It was the birth of Novus Custodia if I recall right.” Barrick replied enthusiastically. Eager to entertain a man who kept spotless gear in unkempt quarters.
“Hardly! No. It was the birth of the United States, only a founding member of… are you seriously looking this up in the middle of my story?”
Barrick looked up with a timid finger pointed at his terminal. “We have the diplomatic databases for a reason.”
“Anyways!” Kavanaugh continued with a friendly sneer. “Since you mentioned it, the best comparison was the Frontier. Just without all that corporate bullshit getting in the way. Or any of those lizard-lipped executives getting any dumb ideas about independence.”
Barrick winced. “I have to be honest sir, that feels kind of racial.”
“What? No! It’s just an old phrase! Do you seriously not watch anything I recommend?” The captain returned desperately. “I'm not one of those xenophobic FHA, FTA pricks! Before you start fuckin’ joking about it. How were any of us supposed to know that centuries later there would actually be a race of lizardy businessmen on our borders.”
“Just be careful you don't sound too much like them.” Barrick smirked and looked down at palpable irony. “Dumb ideas about independence?”
The captain followed his gesture to his mug. An object of sentiment from his only trip to their ancestral home. He had refused to have a new one made from the onboard 3D printers, despite the wear and tear. A squat, white mug, it bore all the hallmarks of gift shop merchandise. The print across the front portrayed an archaic rocket leaving a distinctly less developed Terra, echoing the retro-futurism of the twenty-first century and its explosive popularity leading into the twenty-second. Sprawled across a banner around the lower half of the planet, were the words ‘Born to Freedom! Called to Explore!’, taunting him almost as much as his XO’s nearly imperceptible grin.
“Listen…” he groaned “... I respect their right to self governance, of course! We should be free to expand without the oversight of a corporate charter. But to leave us high and dry? When those monsters come skittering back to us they won’t pause to consider what borders we’ve drawn and all we'll be left with to see them off, is a divided resource pool. It's selfish is what it is! Those executive types are the worst of the lot. Convincing their citizenry that it’s in their best interest to let everyone else bleed for their pockets. I guarantee they’d sell us what they should have been contributing at cutthroat rates, once shit hit the fan!”
“What about the free planets?” Barrick asked. “They aren't trying to manipulate our system. They don't even want to be a part of it.”
“Their determination I can admire but the reasoning is shortsighted, to put it very politely. When this all kicks off again, and trust me, it will! Our fleets will end up over their worlds with whatever junkers they can pull out of the salvage yards. We’d be defending them regardless. I mean c’mon, they even trade in Federation markets! I don’t understand why they don’t just let us in, develop some of their world’s potential. Don’t they owe it to their people to not live like it’s a rural twenty-first century? They’re far too underdeveloped and undefended to put any trust in those estimates. A hundred and twenty years is fools gold for a bunch of old cowards hoping they'll die before it's their problem!” Kavanaugh’s rant finished with an exasperated huff and a deep draw from his mug. “Okay, ensign! Take this away will you, I’ve had enough coffee for today.”
Barrick’s mind fixated on the morbid topic he needn’t have been schooled to learn. The star chart before him reminded him of that every time he had to speak to navigation. A gaping black wound in which his reflection called out to him. Calling him to action. He’d been born in the same minutes as the initial attacks. Deep within the core worlds. Though it had done little to protect his family from the devastation. Navy, every one of them. Despite the incentivised and artificially assisted high birthrates and consequentially the extended families left over by the Frontier Expansion, the only surviving members of their family had ended up being his parents. His father was a logistics officer and his mother had been busy procuring the gear he was organizing. Even then there had been close calls as the war stretched deeper and deeper into terran space.
“You don’t agree?” he forced out of a tightly set jaw.
“Of course not!” Kavanaugh snorted. He noticed the hard swallow his XO took and felt a twinge of guilt for setting the man’s nerves on fire. “If you’re listening to the eggheads, then yes. A century and a quarter, or thereabouts after that tragedy. I’m not sure tragedy even begins to do it justice. What I am sure of, is our enemy sees it as little more than an obstacle. I didn’t get to fight them as much as I would have liked, but it did teach me they’re determined enough to find a way through their obstacles. Or, as I learned at Circadia, clever enough to find a way around them. It’s just wishful thinking from people too scared or too selfish to commit to the reality of our situation. I just wish they’d wise up and let us help them as partners, before we have to help them as refugees.”
Barrick did not have a chance to respond as a drive tunnel opened up in front of them. In less than five minutes the shields of seven gunships had come online as they moved to screen their three parent ships and the unique frigate they were escorting. Weapons were left idle across most of the formation as was standard procedure. Kavanaugh however, had done what Barrick knew now to be standard procedure for him and ordered all four gun batteries trained on what could be a potential target.
“Keep them fixed on the opening and split the target acquisition between each new emerging ship. Maintain firing solutions but keep them powered down. There should be four targets, one for each battery on our eyeballs.” Kavanaugh ordered with such a practiced tone that he almost sounded bored. To those who knew him better, he looked like a new man, or one decades younger. “If anything extra comes through, arm the guns before you tell me!”
“Sir, I can’t help but feel like all you’re going to achieve is either annoying or terrifying whoever comes through.” Barrick whispered without any physical indication as to the conversation he was trying to start. “It’s highly unlikely to be anyone with the inclination or capability to threaten us. The economy may still be recovering in the core, but out here?”
“Just being prepared, Lieutenant Commander.” Kavanaugh replied.
“Most of these people can’t even afford to get off-planet, never mind fuel and operate a warship.” Barrick stressed. “I appreciate how prepared you are but this does feel a little more…”
Kavanaugh watched his subordinate trail off in an attempt to backpedal from what was quickly becoming an insult. Waiting for him to muster some courage, the captain huffed as the silence persisted.
“You can call it what it is. It isn’t an insult to me.” He said in a defusing tone. “I headed this ship through the latter half of the war. The entirety of Battlefleet Imperi learned the lesson I’m about to teach you.” He paused briefly to wrestle with the emotions in his memory and make sure his XO was listening. “Prepare with paranoia, act with confidence or die with regret.”
“Bleak motto for a bleak time.” Barrick said sombrely.
“Well deserved! It was humanity outnumbered, outgunned and outmatched. A disadvantage that severe reminds me of so many old films. If only we knew how accurate those outlandish plotlines were! Heroic last stands with some ridiculous victory.” He chuckled grimly. “Only, every battle was like that. Every maneuver had to be perfect. Every shot had to be divinely inspired. Every captain hoped to be lucky. Hoped to be one of the heroes we’d make new movies about.” The captain pulled at his nose as he usually did when stemming the emotion welling behind his eyes. “They’re all dead now. Luck is for men gambling with things they can afford to lose. Prices they’d be willing to pay. We usually only had one long shot to victory that would demand perfection. Spend five years living that life and losing many more. You’ll quickly realize that paranoia isn’t a choice. It’s just how you make sure you’re looking at the right target.”
“I take it that’s why you haven’t taken a higher posting?” Barrick asked after a respectful pause.
“I… don’t take your meaning.” Kavanaugh replied.
“There isn’t any hiding that you’re a sentimental man, sir.” Barrick began to elaborate. “You served at Circadia and from what you told me, you were one of the best.”
“Aye, I did. Only wish I’d made it through the tunnel with the rest of the wolfpack.” Kavanaugh said with a rarely heard hint of regret.
“I’m glad you didn’t. Considering they never made it home.” Barrick snuck a look at the captain staring off into the distance. “You did. You could have had your choice of any frigate in the fleet. Even some of the original cruisers would have gladly had you aboard.” Barrick gestured to the magnetic lines on the captain’s jacket, whereupon should have sat a row of medals. “Still in the safe are they?”
“Always.”
“Sentimental. Like I said.” Barrick regarded his captain’s weary gaze with a genuine smile of admiration. “You can’t even risk losing medals pinned to your chest. You expect me to believe you’d let anyone but a perfectionist command the Intervention.”
The captain tugged his nose harshly and ran his hand down the front of his beard. “She served us well. Wouldn’t be right to disrespect her like that. It’s the right hand on the wheel or my boot up fleet command’s ass!”
The two men shared a brief laugh, stifled by the emergence of a large and familiar class of ship. A Rubyan frigate. Three hundred and twenty meters of local dominance. More than twice the length and breadth of their ship, three times that of the smaller corvettes which accompanied both parties. Like most of the early war reinforcements, the Rubyan was a retrofitted civilian hull. It had been an exceptionally common pre-war freighter, manufactured by Zephyr Industries who, due to the success of their retrofits mid-war, had skyrocketed both their fame and territory, feasting on the almost carcass of the Abyssinia Corporation’s colossal shipyards.
The catastrophic failure of standard Federation doctrine during the war, mainly due to the Terran fleet’s ‘technologically inadequate ships’, as the Federation’s general overview report had put it, led to there being no demand for the company’s purpose built products and subsequently, no income to support the production facilities without entering bankruptcy. Now, twenty eight years after the war, the Rubyan was proving as adaptable as most Zephyr Industries ships, including the Estallan corvette they were seated in. Exceptional ease of access to their ‘plug’n’play’ systems had allowed these hulls to tech upwards until now and likely into the foreseeable future. Impressively keeping pace with the purpose built Battlefleet Imperi ships, manufactured by a competitor who had seemingly sprung from nowhere. The New Gaia Defense Initiative. NGDI, for the apathetic and short on time.
One Escada corvette, the Zephyr Industries retrofit precursor to the purpose built Estallan, emerged from the drive tunnel to match the two Escada’s accompanying the Intervention. A collection of gunships filtered out, either disconnecting from the larger ships or drifting in out of the tunnel. The sight would have impressed the commanding duo seated aboard the Intervention, if not for the four hundred meter monster behind them.
“Lieutenant Commander Morlan. Get me the name of that frigate and her captain, I’d like your assessment of who… your usual spiel.” Kavanaugh departed from his ‘captain’s voice’ to a more casual tone, his attention otherwise captured by a disconcerting detail. “Ensign Lochly! Find out where the rest of their patrol is!”
“Aye Aye sir!” A fidgety but reliable young woman replied, setting to work at the comms terminal.
“It’s the Concordat sir.” Barrick said bracing for impact.
“Arya fuckin’ Mihr! Of fuckin’ course.” Kavanaugh stifled a shout under his breath as his face fought not to contort and betray his feelings to the bridge crew.
“With all due respect and perhaps a lack of self preservation on my part, her record is immaculate.” Barrick said, running over his words to get his point across before an interruption. “I never caught the reason you disliked her between all that swearing.”
“Send a message to the Concordat and ask it to open its umbilicals. We have a ship in need of resupply before we get started here. Then you can finish what I asked of you before I go coloring your judgment.” Kavanaugh replied. After a brief message exchange one of the Escada’s in their patrol moved off for it’s resupply, allowing Barrick to don that expression he always wore when the outside world slipped away in favor of his analysis.
Over the next half hour, an Escada corvette from Kavanaugh’s formation, alongside it’s detachment of gunships, approached the Rubyan’s position and were refueled by the new arrivals via umbilicals that could be used to move personnel, equipment, fuel, oxygen or even just power and data. Meanwhile, the local scanning data that had been accumulated while waiting for their arrival, was transmitted in its entirety from the Intervention. Onboard which, Barrick had been trawling through whatever records he could dig out of the limited personnel files each ship came stocked with, alongside a plethora of other topics all intended to assist general operations.
Barrick was grateful for them. Sometimes cultural concepts needed to be translated, or the local concerns and sensitivities of smaller interest groups, had to be studied and tiptoed around. Past events, particularly concerning the actions and dealings of fleet officers were especially important to be kept up to speed on when such vast quantities of personnel could be interacting with the same individuals. Rather than maintaining a colossal staff dedicated to educating officers on every factor they could encounter on each deployment, it was far more efficient to provide them with the capacity to educate themselves in the moment.
A multispecies federation was a complicated web of interactions and events too large to be managed on a case by case basis. As such, the Federation had mandated that active duty ships across their member states be fitted with databases and loaded with a mixture of standardized general information and locally specific content, such as the officer corps of that particular state’s fleet. To offset the cost and terrifying data storage requirements, these databases were provided freely by the Thentians and while made of the typical indecipherable crystalline technology they used, they were all customized to be compatible with whatever systems the recipient states had marked as their standard model.
“Hails from the outskirts of the core worlds, close to Zephyr’s territory.” Barrick began having only half finished his thought process. “We like a little more professional ceremony back where I’m from. She should contact us when she has some sort of speech prepared. Though I’m not sure why they didn’t specify the planet of origin, or residence for that matter.” Struggling briefly with the unusual omission, Barrick shook the errant question from his mind, especially since Federation anti-discrimination laws made sure that such information wasn’t legally mandated. “Little younger than myself though much further ahead in her career. Unlike me she started in the officer corp. Scored top marks and got commissioned straight into inner system patrol routes as an executive officer. Didn’t stay there long. The captain of her ship retired early, due to some wise investments and she was promoted to fill the gap. This isn’t unusual for inner system patrols since they’re mostly handling white collar arrests and extraditions. The lack of any serious altercations during said arrests led to her commanding the patrol and before long, this outer system heavy patrol. Which looks to be down two corvettes of an… Abyssinia Corp make, older generation.”
Barrick paused to collect his thoughts, unbeknownst to him, under the curious watch of his captain’s aging eyes and the concerns they mulled over in private.
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“If I had to say anything about her, from the files and well… the lack of complaints. I’d say she’s as much a politician as she is a captain. Her performance in recent, more violent altercations out here has been stellar. So she is competent. Still, competence doesn’t accelerate your career like this. Doesn’t have any family pedigree so she must have met, or arrested, a lot of the right people back in the core. These white collar arrests can look like shitty cruises when you get an amenable officer.”
Kavanaugh smirked slyly to himself, more sure of a long overdue decision now that his XO had been so accurate with an officer he wasn’t familiar with. “She’s the embodiment of a papercut.” he said, dropping his smile before Barrick could notice. “Annoyingly persistent, seemingly ever present in the local report’s which, now that I think of it, I still need to file ours. Can’t complain about her mind you. You’d be laughed out of the room for complaining about a papercut, no matter how much it’s stinging you. Especially when you're not even sure where the problem is. Trust me Morlan, it’s there.”
“That’s what you think. Mind telling me why?” Barrick probed.
“She’s a Corpie through and through, that much I know for sure.” Kavanaugh said with as much confidence as contempt. “Can smell it off of her in every meeting.”
“She’s never had a corporate job, nor has she ever been posted outside of direct UTA command.” Barrick replied after brief consideration.
“Don’t need to wear the suit to kiss the ring. That’s my second lesson for today and make sure you learn it.” Kavanaugh said with an oddly insistent tone.
“I… will try my…” Barrick said with little conviction.
“Message from the Concordat sir!” Ensign Lochly announced.
“Bullet points if you will ensign?” Kavanaugh replied.
“The rest of the patrol suffered critical engine malfunctions before the last tunnel. Something to do with improper maintenance.” Lochly drawled in her usual stiff voice. “They were light on the details. Senior Captain Arya Mihr has requested we begin active scanning and feed any and all data to her ship including anything the passive scanners have picked up since our arrival.”
“Go ahead, ensign. Wake the second shift up while you’re at it.” Kavanaugh replied, dropping his voice to a whisper shortly after. “I think the corpie is about to get a lesson in the painful part of corporate affiliation.”
“Sir?” Barrick asked, his confusion slowly dissolving into a sickening twist in his stomach as his thoughts raced ahead of his captain’s answer.
“Awfully convenient that two ships close to decommissioning crapped out now of all times.” Kavanaugh elaborated, a strange fire developing in his eyes despite the grave tone he had adopted. “She seems to realize it too since she isn’t trusting our perimeter.”
“Convenient for who?” Barrick said as he noticed something strange on his terminal.
“Don’t know. Don’t care either.” Kavanaugh coughed and reinstated his leisurely, stately tone. “Arm the guns and charge the rails on the torpedo bay. Load a Firefly, mark friendlies for avoidance and switch on the auto targeting. I want it ready to snapfire.”
“Sir…” the choking sound of a deadly realization caught in Barrick’s throat. “... the drive tunnel hasn’t closed yet. Every ship that made it here, especially including the prototype, they’re all Zephyr ships. The only two that didn’t are not only made and maintained by Abyssinia but… well I’m familiar with those captains sir. Their siblings have worn Abyssinia suit’s for over thirty years.”
“And were in the Wild fuckin’ West.” Kavanaugh finished for him. “Full active scans, now! Sound general quarters!”
The order had little time to circulate. Tension welded the bridge crew to their seats as the first hints of a proper fight leaked from the drive tunnel. A hulking behemoth, of Terran design and ingenuity, slipped out on the angry waves of blinding thrusters just behind Arya Mihr’s formation. The easily cruiser sized, mangled beast, could best be described as a chimera. The contrasting heads of six distinct ships yearned to be free, straining against the cruelly welded collar which corralled them into one, amorphous, tyrant. The call for battlestations came moments before the beasts brood of gunships detached from its haunches and flocked to envelop the patrol. As soon as the last ship had detached from its perch upon the chimera’s hide, a deluge of disparate firepower descended upon what should have died.
The Concordat’s thrusters had initiated a violently intense reverse burn, in the split seconds before their enemy had emerged. The lighter, more maneuverable turret’s targeting the Escada below them, had almost found their mark as the reverse maneuver placed the Concordat over their quickly ducking ally. The shields of the Concordat faded out just in time to prevent a catastrophic hail of firepower from being routed around and into the body of the Escada accelerating beneath her.
A decadent lashing of plasma and molten metal scored and stripped its upper armor, creating a hot glowing cloak of shallow craters and casting thick glimmering sparks out into the void, amidst frenetic stabilization thrusters which fought desperately to correct for the impact. The ship's shields raised again just barely catching the unleashed wrath of a cluster of protruding heavy batteries. The violet barrage streaked around the shield like bands of a wicker basket, slowed ever so slightly by the distortion of space.
Emerging opposite to their point of entry with fierce acceleration, the brief interruption created the illusion of charging a gleaming purble ball before venting itself upon the ship below. The risky maneuver had spared the main body of the Escada below as it began accelerating away. However, the torrent of violet which now lanced towards it pierced the rear engines with such a flurry of devastating force, that it carved the engines from the main body of the ship, sending both into a tailspin.
The remaining ships near the Concordat had fared slightly better. Those who had approached earlier from Kavanaugh’s formation to refuel, had completed the process and managed to wheel away to the sides of the drive tunnel, providing space for the ships near them to maneuver with less caution.
Similarly, Arya Mihr’s formation had weathered the initial onslaught with only grazing wounds before their shields had come online. Though it was clear that beyond survive and shoot, they were as unsure of how to proceed as everyone else. Confusion wore off quickly though as the visible sign of a plan reached their communication arrays.
Arya Mihr’s gunship crews had responded to the sundering volley, by breaking off on emergency maneuvering thrust so severe that any who survived would almost certainly spend time in a medbay. A wide pulse of encrypted transmissions emanated from the Concordat and organized them enough to pair off and begin hunting their counterparts, whom now that the initial shock had passed, they could confidently say they outnumbered.
The refueling group, inspired by the action, had not waited for their own orders, instead taking the initiative. The corvette rose to harass the enemy and present a second clear target, hoping to split their attention and take the pressure off of the Concordat’s shields. The two gunships alongside it had swept downwards to guard their damaged and drifting comrade.
“Those gunships don’t have shields.” Captain Kavanaugh said serenely, watching one of them shred beneath the main canons of two well trained gunship crews. “Main gun’s target the cruiser. Fire by eye if you have to, just do it quick and try to block their gunports. We’re close and they’re slow. Keep your shots consistent so our friends know where not to fly. I want our sensors tracking the little ones and feeding telemetry to the Firefly. Speaking of, fire when ready. Load the second torpedo for when the first stops being a threat to them and while you're at it, prep something good for penetrating that… thing. Helm! Navigation! Full speed to half our current range then get us into a wider orbit, I don’t want to be fighting this poisoned planet to move.”
A chorus of affirmative responses, some shaky and young, others old and feverish, erupted through the bridge in time to match the vicious retribution the fleet was unleashing upon the intruding cruiser. The aggressive hum of their sharp acceleration was just beginning to build, matched in rising intensity by the withering fire hammering down upon the cruiser’s shields from all angles, when a transmission forced its way through their firewalls onto the ship’s main screen.
“This is Senior Captain Arya Mihr.” A distinctly measured accent called out, supplanted by a fearsome image. A regal expression dominated their screens. Pale white hair, sharp features on a tall, lithe body with the mellow eyes of a siren, juxtaposed their entrancing image with the river of coagulated blood already clotted upon the left side of her face. “Our shield system has been heavily modernized and should sustain against this assault for a time, but I doubt their plan is this cavalier. CDS Intervention you are to do what your ship does best. Identify, Intercept and Incise whatever affliction they have hidden here. Do not change position. Do not, abandon the prototype. The rest of your patrol has already received their orders. Good hunting, Captain.”
The captain had little chance to argue before the transmission cut, returning control of the screen to the startled crew. Kavanaugh scanned the hesitant faces turning towards him and maintained a neutral expression while he thought.
Barrick was somehow more confused as to why her home planet had been omitted in her file. She was from Saeleun. Rapidly clotting blood. The slow but consistent and powerful pulse in her veins. Pale skin and whiter hair. Razor blade bone structure on a tall and rectangular body. Not immediately noticeable in a crowd but the evidence of the initial generations of colonization who, like most, had been provided with a temporary, rapid adaptability in their genetics, was evident. Given her people’s culture, why any of them would deny the political leg up it would provide them to be known by it, was a conundrum that would take far too long to discern given the current situation.
“No sense in arguing. Helmets on and secure yourselves.” Kavanaugh ordered, watching the anxiety his comment induced wash through the bridge like a toxin, stiffening or shaking the youngest among them in particular. Anyone younger than fifty likely hadn’t seen anything close to the kind of engagements the fleet had suffered during the war, and so the order to prepare themselves for serious damage to the ship was one that hadn't graced most ears since the emergency drills in training. “Captain Mihr’s suspicions are well placed. We may be surprised, overwhelmed and in a situation where the shields fail. Whatever happens after that, if we lose power, gravity, or depressurize, you can rest assured that I’ve flown crews out of worse when I was half the captain I am now. You’re just getting prepared. Focus on your tasks and we can all have a panic attack in the mess hall after.”
The veterans, though the nerves of battle never quite went away, had already settled in and were keeping an eye for any emergencies while the rest of the crew finished the procedure. Slim, reflective, silver helmet’s were fished from underneath the crew’s seats and fastened into place around their collars. The transparent face of the helmets provided both an unobstructed periphery and a direct link to the ship, ready to display anything from who was speaking, to their remaining oxygen, to whatever information they wanted to keep on the sidebar. Also pulled from beneath the seat, they slipped a chest rig over their head and tightened it into place. The rig provided basic body armor and heat-pads nestled behind a row of thin oxygen canisters on either side. Tightening the rig they finally clipped it down to their undersuit.
The 2S suits, or ‘second skins’, clad them from their neck to the tips of their fingers and toes. Specialized boots and wristbands were the only parts of the ensemble that weren’t skintight, needing the extra space to incorporate powerful magnetic loops which could allow them to navigate the ship in the absence of railings or the artificial gravity the shield system passively produced.
The complex, flexible yet durable, carbon outer mesh of the suit sat atop a layer of crystal syrup, ready to freeze the moment a breach disturbed its carefully balanced environment, repressurising the suit and putting pressure on any wound that may have been caused. The final inner layer carried a thin mesh of insulation between two loops of piping, one to collect, store and provide an outlet for excess sweat which would likely be reprocessed later, the other a line of capsules filled intermittently with antibiotics, mild painkillers and coagulants. Finally, each suit was bright white to aid in visual identification and recovery should any of them end up floating outside of the ship, with a coloured stripe running like a sash around their chest and back to denote their field of service.
Those few who had opted to wear their uniform that day, pulled the suit’s fastening cables from underneath the layers of fabric before clipping them both to the vest and either their seat or the railings of their console, clipping in the chair’s harness just to be sure.
Secured and with the sound of their hearts pounding inside of their helmet, they performed a quick comms check and returned to duty. Despite the nervous fumbling, the whole process had taken just under a minute. Seeing the last of the crew attach their helms oxygen intake to their vest and the vest to their chair, connecting to the ship’s oxygen to spare their tanks, Kavanaugh signaled his XO to depressurize the room and send word for each department head to perform a similar process across the entire ship.
“Prep the missile bays. A Lance and three Wasp’s for any contact, new or old, that gets close to us.” Kavanaugh spluttered over the comms, caught off guard by the pure air filling his lungs. “They’re out there dodging like they’re made of paper, so they probably don’t have shields on the little ones. This is a brawl so don’t wait for confirmation, volley at your discretion. Let the Firefly’s payload loose, get our friends off the busy work and onto the real threat.” Slipping to a more private channel on his microphone, he continued in a softer voice. “Morlan, how fucked are our techy friends?”
The XO had been watching the central path of the Firefly torpedo, aided by the now famous launchbay structured around a railgun, that the Escada and Estallan corvettes carried in their mouth, cruising between clustered dogfights. With a few short commands it began spitting out a flurry of warheads, backed by thrusters that did in fact make them seem like a swarm of fireflies had taken particular grievance with their intended targets. A cluster of mini-missiles that all linked either to the sensors aboard the torpedo itself, or preferably to the ship’s targeting decks. The familiar look of pondering setting marble lines into Barrick’s brow, made his captain set his jaw in unease.
“Honestly, I think they’re the safest out of all of us.” Barrick said. “As long as they stay out of this.”
“I keep you around for the details, don’t be shy with them.” Kavanaugh replied.
“This was more than planned, it was organized.” Barrick offered.
“Those are different, how?” Kavanaugh asked distractedly, staring off into an unknown distance somewhere beyond the gunships, which were somehow evading both their pursuers and the mini missiles trailing them.
“Professionalism.” He said quickly, taking his captain’s sudden withdrawal in confused strides. “Going toe to toe with the gunships on this patrol? That’s impressive. Granted, we were caught off guard and they’re half fueled at best. Dodging the Fireflys at the same time? It’s a bad range for them, but even our best couldn’t do that while outnumbered.”
“Sure they could.” Kavanaugh interjected, staring at the chipped coffee mug now locked in a wallside cabinet near the bridge’s coffee machine. “So long as that’s all they were doing.”
“Yeah.” Barrick whispered. He watched the swarm of explosives close in, little by little on the dancing groups of dueling gunships subjecting their crew’s to horrific G-forces. Two of the enemy gunships proved to indeed be shieldless as the Fireflys caught up, intercepting their flight path and burying themselves beneath the gunships which were immediately replaced by a flash of light and a cloud of expanding debris falling into orbit. “Only they aren’t like our best. They’re flying faster than they should and barely attempting to trade blows. That abomination in front of us still hasn’t focused its fire on any particular ship, though I’m sure it knows it could overwhelm even the best shields we could fit on a frigate. Not to mention the timing? We’re only seeing half the plan.”
“What do you think the other half is, Barrick.” Drifted in the wistful tone of the captain, seemingly ignorant of the urgent situation at hand.
“I think…” Barrick cut himself short at the only mention of his first name he had heard from Kavanugh since joining the crew. A genuine, gentle grin, lightly lifted on Kavanaugh's face and urged him to continue with a nod. “I think, no one told them what the prize would be. I think they stripped down the gunships so they could move faster and buy time. They brought a terrifying and inefficient mess to give us something to focus on and again, buy time. They knew about this event in advance, so they have to know about the prototype and most importantly, the prototype isn’t armored or painted. Beyond its main systems it’s barely finished. Which means… I think…” Barrick’s certainty began to waver as he tapered off.
“That they don’t know that barely armored heap of metal with all the eggheads in it, is anything more than a freighter.” Kavanaugh finished, grinning ear to ear with misty eyes. “Guessing they need it at least recoverable. Need to find something punching above its weight to identify a ‘prototype’. Beautiful thing even looks like the old ships before their retrofit.”
“Sir?” Barrick said, struggling to split his focus between the captain’s newfound softness and the dogfights drawing closer on his display.
“Let’s hope those brainiacs live up to the name and don’t-” Kavanaugh was cut off by their visual display’s whiting out. “Report!” he screamed over the blaring alarms of a shield on the brink of collapse, rushing to seize his crew's attention before fear did.
A flurry of replies captured the bones of what had happened in a chaotic scramble. The prototype had fired, proving definitively the cliched reputation of the word ‘prototype’. A powerful particle cannon running the length of the ship’s spine had divulged a stream of particles like the crack of lightning, covering the distance with such speed it was as if firing had simply caused their target to realize it had been hit.
Caught in the path of untrained, impromptu gunners, the Intervention’s shields had been ever so slightly grazed by the stream. The lattice framework of the shield which would normally allow separated atomic and subatomic particles to move through unimpeded, had responded as it was designed to do and closed the latticing to prevent penetration. So overwhelming was the surge of energy that almost the entire shield had closed, blinding their sensors to any and all forms of detection and transmission, allowing nothing in or out.
“Make sure those wasps are ready! If there is anything new, be it responses to what just happened or anything else you weren’t fuckin’ staring at on those screens, don’t ask, just volley!” Kavanaugh bellowed. “If anything gets close it had better not have any more threat than floating scrap hitting the shields!”
Slowly the shields began to dissipate the overloading effects of redirecting that much energy, allowing the sensor arrays to begin collecting data again as the lattice opened once more. The scene revealed was a chilling display of the difference between such power intensive weapons favored by much of the Federation and the plasma-kinetic hybrids Terrans were used to using.
A lone gunship, almost unrecognizable if not for the fact that all of their allies were still accounted for, drifted away, cored out and saturated with radiation. It had presented as little resistance as a wet sheet of paper would to a bullet, allowing the stream to pass through and strike its intended target. The behemoth which had been close to overwhelming the Concordat now sat silent with glimmering waves of distortion rippling across its shield.
“Those idiot’s bought time for Mihr at least.” Kavanaugh grumbled to Barrick. “Their dissipation is terrible for a shield of that size. Looks like she knows it too. She’s taking the chance to take the pressure off of the Concordat’s shield.” Kavanaugh cleared his throat and spoke to the bridge crew. “Keep one battery poking that cruiser’s shields. Don’t make it easy for them to recover. I want the rest to make hell for those gnats buzzing around us. Keep them off of the Concordat while she breathes. Expand that volley to all twenty tubes.”
Kavanaugh, as soon as he was sure the rest of the bridge were focused on their tasks, snapped his head towards Barrick. “Listen very carefully.” he insisted with a reckless urgency. “A while ago I pulled some strings with a very powerful man, so that I’d get to choose who I advanced into my seat after I retired and yes! I am retiring.”
“Sir, I don’t think this is the right time to…” Barrick tried to interrupt.
“You’re gonna let me fuckin’ monologue!” Kavanaugh shot back in no uncertain terms. “I’ve thought too long and too hard about how to script this interaction to have you sass all over it. I will die before I can finish our fight. You probably will too unless you find some wealthy cougar, silver fox or even an Iveri matriarch, if you somehow pissed off the pelvis gods! Heard they like the proficient types. Whatever the matter, whomever estimated right, I’ll never live to kill another spider this side of Federation space and I damn sure don’t want to fight anyone else. All the faces I'm supposed to shoot these days look just like us and there’s nothing I can afford that can make that guilt go away. It’s all complicated, fuckin’ political and far too relatable for me to sleep easy. So I’m gonna go and at least sleep somewhere nice, back in the core, closer to a home I barely saw and piss out kidney stones while you look after my ship and make sure that whoever replaces you, is better than her previous captain. You’re certainly better than me. Same conclusions, except you can verbalize your intuition. Younger, in a world you can actually recognise.”
Kavanaugh paused to take a breath, shake his head and chuckle. “Maybe I can get myself a quiet little place on Earth.”
“Assuming I can speak now…” Barrick probed to no resistance. “... you’d be bankrupt before you even landed on Terra.”
“Hah! Yeah, yeah I suppose so.” Kavanaugh looked intensely at Barrick, wearing a mask of pity while he gathered his words. “I hope someday, you understand why that isn’t it’s name. Words are important, Barrick. Terra don’t mean home.”
“I…” Barrick floundered for a moment in the face of, to his ears, very uncomfortable phrases. “... will take care of the ship.”
“Volley!” The weapon’s officer shouted over the open channel.
The CDS Intervention shook violently, the impact resonating through its hull like a screaming gong.
A curtain of blood draped itself over Barrick’s visor.