Author's Preliminary Note (14th December 2016 - because I realize that I need one): I have recently been informed that the presence of this fic under what seems to be another name on Sufficient Velocity might have been a source of confusion for some people.
Fear not, for this man, XenaC, is as much I as I am he. We were merely the unfortunate victims of a tragedy known more commonly as 'sorry this username is already taken'. I apologize for any inconvenience caused by this seeming doppelgangerism. Thanks a lot to my man XWingExecuter for pointing this out to me - it had completely slipped my mind before then.
...and now that that's done, enjoy the story! Feel free to leave comments, reviews, whatever, and don't be afraid to be blunt. No plant ever grew large without taking some crap first. Or so they say.
==[]=[]=[]==
"From the moment we became aware that the stars were our orphanage, our hearts were turned inexorably homeward. Many were the ships that bore much peril to seek the lost System of Sol and its home-worlds. And humankind being as it is, it was but a matter of time before we found what we sought.
But if we had but known what we would find there..."
- Excerpt from 'The Megalith Annexes', Foreword.
==[]=[]=[]==
"...And whither fathers and mothers sow,
So shall sons and daughters reap,
for deep on the far side of glory
the twilight of man doth sleep."
- 'Otsuge'*, translated
from the Archives of the
Silver Chrysanthemum,
author unknown.
*(Revelation)
==[]=[]=[]==
The Far Side of Glory
Chapter 1: Distant Sparks
~The wind of space is my wind, my everlasting wandering~
Reiko Imamura blinked.
Then she stared at her cabin ceiling, and the glowing panel reading 02:25:06 above her throbbing head.
~A ship that flies the skies is my ship, my uncontainable soul~
But alas, all the fury in two bleary, sleep-deprived eyes would not move her alarm to mercy.
Nor did it hide the fact that it was the second of two alarms placed five minutes apart.
Grunting, she smacked the snooze button before shucking off her bed covers. Half rolling, half-stumbling in the dim light, she narrowly avoided impaling herself on the doorknob in her struggle to reach her desk, one of two desk-locker pairs that occupied the left side of the room.
"Real smooth, Ray," the room's second occupant said from the upper bunk of the bedframe they shared, tossing the words over her shoulder and the rusty red hair that cut off there, "how about you try not to wind up dead next time we reveille?"
Reiko snorted.
Helen Balzac smirked in response.
"Very funny, Helen."
"Any time."
"Whatever."
Rolling her eyes, Reiko suppressed a sigh as she turned around to glance at the readout on the otherwise blank screen of her small Personal Tactical Array. [1] Missed Call: Bridge.
"Bridge called."
"Sure they did, Captain Obvious."
"Ha, ha. Did you take that one?"
"Yeah."
"So? Is the border going to explode in unholy fire some time in the foreseeable future?"
Helen laughed.
"Naaah. Captain just wants us up on bridge in ten is all. The usual, no big."
This time, Reiko did sigh, running a hand through her hair as she turned back around to face her friend.
No big. As usual...can't believe it's been four months of this.
Four damn months, and she was no longer Lieutenant Reiko Imamura, eager recipient of her Arcadian Confederate Navy wings. She was Lieutenant Reiko Imamura, disgruntled patrol flight commander of the Vesper-class destroyer Emeraldas.Like all border patrol troops, she'd learnt to sleep light, keep odd hours, run escorts and recon every so often. She didn't hate that duty in principle.
Now if only the doing wasn't so godawful...
"...actually, tell me something, Helen."
"Yeah?"
"We're the Arcadian 9th Fleet. Border guard, first line of defense. Sometimes, I wonder if it's really okay to be...you know, okay, with 'no big'?"
Helen shook her head.
"Girl, we're walking a line that's been unstable since before we were kids, and you're not happy it's not swallowing ten thousand lives an hour for once?"
"You'd think it might still do so at some point, though. We read about a civil war in flight school."
"Yes...and?" Helen asked. "It's also been over a long time, girl. Where were you in that history class, la-la-land?"
Reiko frowned.
"No."
It would have taken a bored student indeed to not have been at all interested in learning about one of the most prominent conflicts of the post Core Sector Conflict era. An entire region of close to the rim of human space erupting into war over immense resource finds in what was now called the Ordian Belt.
Or of its victors: the Caelus Armada of Patagonius, now proud rulers of the Patagonian Union of the Rim - whose coreward border was the very one that the Arcadian 9th Fleet had been assigned to patrol.
"Then c'mon, you should be happy about the quiet."
"It's too quiet. I just don't like it." Reiko folded her arms. "I mean, we signed a treaty and called it a day. But we've got a fleet on either side of this border. Who barely talk to one another. It sure doesn't feel like we settled this right somewhere, if you know what I mean."
Well, that wasn't quite accurate. The 9th and the Caelus 6th Division did exchange communiques and routine orders daily. But she'd strangle herself with her flight suit sleeve before she'd call that talking. At most that was deciding not to blast each other for the day.
"Well if you put it that way, Ray...well, I agree, but…" and at this Helen struggled with an imagined itch behind her neck, "look, most people don't think that hard about peace. It's stable hours, cushy job, do your time, get the hours, get promoted. Sounds dumb, but I'm down with that shit. Captain Helen Balzac sounds like a real good thing to be...even if I gotta wait a while 'cause the Patagonian Union's not gonna re-explode into a ton of bad news anytime soon. Works for me at least."
"But I suppose not everyone is you, Daddy's Girl. It's number one for nothing for you, huh? You gotta chill a bit, methinks. Though I'm sure Admiral Sam would be proud if he heard you talkin' all big-picture-like."
Reiko had to bite back a snarl.
...Do you even know him, Helen?
All that man ever had to say about their border and the neighbours they shared it with was Accords-breaking unethical clone army this, shared Warp Nexus maintenance costs and asteroid mining rights that.
He'd always been like that. Always about the big picture. For ten years she'd grown up with video-calls thanks to the ornate peaked cap that put him in command of the 3rd Fleet. Then he exchanged that for a suit, and she saw
even less of him. Not without those others...and he hadn't even been there in person when-
-Ow. Owwwww.
The return of the headache jerked her back to reality, followed by sweet relief as her nervous implants lost patience with her problem, releasing a rush of synthesized endorphins into her system. She took a few moments to savor that small victory. ...Bless your souls, Fleet Medical.
...And holy shit, Reiko Imamura, get a grip.
Helen was right, she reflected at length. Even a wary peace was peace. Her problems didn't come into the picture.
"Anyway," Helen said, leaping off her top bunk with a loud whump of legs far too heavy to be flesh. "you have one of them dreams again?"
Ugh, Reiko thought.
She must have hid the grimace on her face pretty badly. And she would've stalled, but sky-blue-eyed Helen was already folding her tan, muscular nanoskin arms across her broad-shouldered chest. Herr cocked eyebrows were an unflappable statement of the answer-my-question variety, with just the slightest threat of physical intervention in case of reticence.
"...Yeah."
She wasn't even going to try. A five-foot-seven human going up against a six-foot-two auggie would never end well.
And it was the truth. Maybe it was the stress, or her mood, but she'd started having disturbed dreams for the last month. Couldn't for the life of her tell what they were about. But every so often she'd wake up, her brain wailing into her skull with a jackhammer. When questioned, Helen would just raise two hands and swear I did everything 'cept roll you right off the bed in protest.
In hindsight, she'd already gotten lucky twice today. Once with the alarms. Then once more when Helen took her to onlyhave a headache to worry about.
Not that Helen was a good person to talk with about that problem. She wasn't sure if her auggie bunkmate dreamed at all on the rare occasions where some shut-eye was in order.
Even as a far as the cybernetic augmentations for which the slang was named went, the redhead was an extreme case. Reiko often wondered what near full-body replacement might do to a person's mind, but she'd never found the occasion to task.
Probably never would, either. She imagined it had a good many conveniences, but there was always a story behind that kind of decision.
She wasn't sure if she wanted to find out what Helen's was.
"Maybe you need to consider pricking yourself on flax spindle, Cinderaylla," the redhead said as she walked towards her own desk and its accompanying locker.
Correction; she wasn't sure if Helen had thoughts on anything serious at all.
Or so she keep reminding me...
"Haha. Wrong story, Lynsomniac. I get enough good hours in, thank you very much."
"And you're very welcome too, Milady Imamura. I'll skip on the sleep though," Helen said, disappearing behind the right door of her opened locker. "Too many things to do in life."
"Better freshen up, by the way," she said in between sounds of rustling fabric. "Pretty sure you don't wanna go up there looking worse than when you hit the sack."
"I'll get over it," Reiko growled even as she felt the headache fade further into the background. It was not a full retreat; she could feel a faint second heartbeat in the right side of her head that refused to go quietly.
She peered at her reflection in the mirror mounted higher above her desk, just in case. Her eyes and hair were still brown, not green. Good, she wasn't as sick as she had felt. Or as envious. Not that her nano-mods would have let her do that, or that she expected or wanted them to. The Arcadian Confederate Navy was a military, not a charity, and legal emotion sensitive color-augs were expensive.
Okay, so maybe an opt-in for eye bag quick fixes might have been nice. Because man, I really do look like shit.
A tap on the right corner of the screen brought it, and her mail page, to life.
Six new messages. Huh.
"Checking your fanmail, sunshine? Didn't you hear me?" She could feel Helen's lilac eyes boring through the locker doors that separated them. "Bridge. In. Ten."
Reiko didn't reply, being somewhere in between thought, Cosmetics Offer Street and Kendo Society News Avenue.
"...You deaf or what?"
"Yeah, alright, space mom, I got it," Reiko said with not a small amount of annoyance.
She knew she was wasting time. Getting corneal uplinks to one's Arrays was all the rage in the Navy. And it was more convenient than touch-screens. But the stuff Medical had already put in her nervous and homeostatic systems gave her the willies as often as she appreciated their presence. All that our specialized nanomachines are 100% proven to be health hazard-free if utilized in accordance with the appropriate safety protocols crap be damned.
She couldn't bring herself to trust one of those things in her eyes, whatever 'auggies' would tell her. Even if they were red-head roommates who meant well past the vitriol they spewed from their mouths like so much gunfire.
Also, reading mails as opposed to downloading them was therapeutic. The words were banal at best. Same crap, different day, every day.
But they helped take her mind of the phantom pains that had plagued her sleep in ways the job could not.
"Just give me a..."
She scrolled down.
"...sec."
From: Samuel E. Imamura
Re: Invi-
She clicked the screen off.
"Done."
"Already?" There was a teasing note to Helen's voice. "I mean, I gave you some shit, but I thought you'd wanna give them loverboys more pieces of your pretty little mind."
Reiko forced a scowl down.
"Not worth it."
Turning around, she came face to face with her roommate. Helen was already in her flight suit, which Reiko noted -with something that was certainly not envy- accentuated the fact that she was a large woman by most measures. It also gave her rare unsmiling expression a matronly quality.
"...You sure?"
Reiko placed a palm on the biometrics of her own locker, marked Imamura (Lt.) - Flight Cmdr, AS Emeraldas. Green lights ran down its frame, and with a hiss, it opened to reveal her own suit and helmet.
"Yeah," she said, with just a hint of a mumble this time. "Not worth it."
==[]=[]=[]==
Helen threw her hands up in mock despair as they made their way down the grey travelator-lined hallways that separated the pilot quarters and the bridge.
"...So like I've been saying forever, if you're gonna read your mail like every four hours you should just get a corneal. We're in the service. We can get it, easy."
"And like I've been saying forever, no I'm not getting one," Reiko retorted, flipping her helmet in one hand before fiddling with the pressurization panel on her flight suit, loosening its overwrought cling-weave grip on her body. Not that the memory nanofibres didn't fit her well. They'd fit anyone well.
Helen made a face.
"Girl, it's better than that full-face cage of ours, that's for sure! Your hair keeps your head warm, I say. It doesn't deserve to be chained up and mistreated like that!"
"My helmet keeps my head in one piece. I'd say that's important."
The real reason why remained unsaid. She did not know where to find it, knew not how to wrest the words from invisible hands that bound and the gilded cages that stung her, cutting her off from her sea of stars.
Then her mind turned to earthy causticisms and the moment was as a rainstruck heat-haze.
"For me at least, 'cause I couldn't say the same about your metal head. We're hooked up to the bird when we're in the hotseat anyway. Your point?"
"Do you always have to be the square, Straight Laces?"
"You get to call me a square once you outscore me with your tricks, Easy Mode."
Helen scowled at that jab.
"Aw, come on, that one's not fair. Not everyone was born with a silver flightstick in their hands."
"Wasn't it a golden flightstick I won?"
"Keep talking, Top Gun. So you're big shit, big stick, big everything. Need me to prostrate myself and kiss your feet while I'm describing your many graces?"
"Do what you like, you two, but please hurry up," came a voice from further down the hallway. "We're going to be late."
Huh, Reiko thought to herself. At some point during their conversation, they'd started only keeping the all-too-familiar hall in peripheral vision, allowing the third member of their team to slot himself in there somewhere. Little John Strikes again.
Olive-skinned, curly haired Max 'Little John' Yohanis Susanto was wrong about being late, of course. The Vesperdestroyer class that Emeraldas belonged to averaged 160 metres lengthwise. No more than ten minutes' substandard leopard crawl from stern to prow. Certainly much less than the seven minutes they'd had left after changing into flightgear to walk.
"We've got at least four minutes, Max," Reiko said with a wave.
"Three minutes and thirty-one seconds to be exact. But I guess that's neither here nor there to the two of you."
Max didn't even look up from his own TacArray datapad. He'd at least deigned to reply, though. She'd take it as a win.
That sort of victory wasn't for Helen though, and a hungry fire was in her eyes as she marched forward.
"'Eyyy, Lil' John!" Reaching out, she hooked an arm around his shoulder and reeled him towards her, putting the 'Little' in his nickname right where it came from - an inch or two under her chin. "I see you're studying hard as usual."
"And I see that you did not do much of it," Max said, his voice even, eyes reflecting the light from the screen in front of him as they roved left and right, but not too far in either direction.
"Aw, so cold!" Helen held her free hand to her heart. "Don't be a stranger, Max! Give us the scoop, c'mon now."
Max shot her a help me look, one she'd been privy to it since Advanced Flight, when the three of them had first been thrown together as Madcat Squad.
She responded as always, shrugging and faking a whistle.
He grimaced.
"I will..." and then his lips pulled into the slightest of scowls, "...once you get off me."
Reiko fought the urge to laugh. There, right on schedule: the reason why there was a pool going round the Emeraldahangars concerning the two. More specifically, about whether Max would ever act like any normal guy would -and boy would they!- in his...physical circumstances before rank and duty separated them in due course.
Realism dictated that the naysayers had better odds, but her money at last went into the salty lake of hapless matchmaking tears. She'd catch him red-handed someday, Reiko told herself. Just not today.
"Alright, alright," Helen said, pulling away with both hands in the air, "you win, smart guy."
Max cleared his throat.
"To be honest, you didn't miss much. Preflight maintenance was done about an hour and a half back. All the crews and automatons are on standby as we speak. Our stuff -full gear, not the usual recon material- should be set up for final checks by the time the briefing's done," he explained. "But other than that, there's been nothing said about the why, so I'm told."
Reiko quirked an eyebrow. "You were down there in the hangars?"
"Yes. In fact, I'd say everyone's on edge precisely because there's been so little saying for this much doing."
"No shit. This is the busiest this ship's -hell, any ship in the 9th's- been since we started operating with the Union," Helen scoffed, poking her in the side. "But I guess our Glorious Leader over here's looking forward to some action, ain'tcha, Ray?"
"Not really."
It was a lie, of course. Reiko Imamura was not a 'not really' person. But she could not place when or why that phrase had crept up upon her.
The sliding doors hissed as they parted to make way for their entry.
A holographic starmap in all its vibrance dominated her field of vision, displaying the present sector of space theEmeraldas was patrolling: an asteroid belt with Confederate space in light blue on the left and Union taking the right in gold. Dots in much darker blue marked the progress and formation of the 9th, while Patagonius' Caelus Armada was in ochre close by. Scanners pulsed green circles throughout the map with silk-soft pings, updating positional data and raising minor alerts. A loose debris warning here, solar radiation spike an hour ago, nothing major.
It was the very image of the quiet one could experience in space. But Reiko bristled nonetheless. Just imagining the exposed flanks on both sides maintaining wary silence just out of projectile lock range set her on edge.
Her shift went unnoticed by either of her teammates. But from the knowing looks she got from one hazel eye and two shimmering blue ones, she was still too far from being able to mask herself from either custodian of the bridge.
She snapped off a salute. Her squadmates followed suit, right arm over chest.
"Madcat Squad reporting, sir."
A picture perfect return salute greeted theirs.
"At ease, Lieutenant."
Between Captain Rafael Vargas and herself, the difference was certainly age. That, and whatever experiences had allowed him to keep the twinkle in his one good eye bright, his shoulders squared and his standing posture ramrod straight despite the grey streaks running down his sideburns and a curved scar through his right eyebrow that neither peaked cap nor snow-white uniform could hide.
"Got some sleep, I hope?"
Reiko nodded.
"Yes, sir."
"I don'-"
"Yes, Lieutenant Balzac. We all know you don't really need sleep," he noted with nary a rushed beat. "And Susanto? Do I have to put you in the brig for some compulsory rest in lieu of running your art stream all night?"
Max rubbed the back of his head.
"N-No, sir. That won't happen again, sir."
The Captain laughed, a hearty sound.
"Good, good."
Then his expression turned swiftly grave.
"Now, to business. I'm sure the grapevine has given you some preamble," and at that he gave Helen a pointed I-know-what-you-haven't-done-for-the-last-eternity look, "so we'll skip the introductions. Emma?"
"Certainly."
The differences between her and the ship's XO Emma on the other hand were much more vast. In her Vorpal fighter, Reiko was cybernetically bound to the machine, yet still very much a flesh and blood alien to its machinations.
Emma was much more. Clad in a red jacket, white pants, black overcoat set that fit her waist-length blonde hair, she was the condensation of the arcanery and community that was command center busywork to a single being. The obsolescence of any additional bridge crew on deck.
She and the AS Emeralda did not merely seem to be one as the pilot suits made Madcat Squad for a time. They wereone, a fact amply demonstrated as a mere shift of her eyes set a bright klaxon-red overlay over the map.
One that was both herald and omen.
"'Eyes Only - Classified.'" Helen was the first to get her voice back. "That deep, Captain?"
Her flippant reaction did just enough to make the atmosphere breathable, but there was no mistaking the legendary 'first rodeo jitters' in the air. True, Reiko reckoned that the slight shaking in her hand was for a different reason than in her friends'. But it was there nonetheless.
Only the Captain and the resident artificial intelligence remained unaffected, 'first rodeo' having long ceased to apply to either. Indeed, a hint of a sardonic smile tugged at Vargas' lips as he glanced at the screen.
"Patagonius has finally found cause to request our presence, or so it would seem. "
Max cocked an eyebrow. "...Our presence, sir? But they've been so..."
"...insistent about handling their own business, even in shared space, yes."
Reiko frowned.
"Insistent? Secretive, you mean."
"With all due respect, sir, I say silence is good. The less we hear from them the better."
Reiko shot Helen a dirty look for that, a look that was promptly ignored.
"And knowing the old men on the board," the red-head continued, "...this probably has less to do with anything like border trouble and more to do with the trade Accords we signed with them some time back. Pretty sure they don't want to get involved in all that 'Separatists this, pirates that' lawless-space business."
"I will pretend you did not just slight our...prescient leadership. Indeed it does, Lieutenant."
"So, what about those Accords again, anyway?"
"S-specifically," Max said, "we refer to Article 9 of the Revised Patagonian Accords of 992. It...states that 'all new resource discoveries including such as that involve rediscovered Warp technologies within the Lesser Ordian Belt and its solar orbit in the appropriate times of the solar cycle shall for a period of thirty years be considered under the laws of Shared Space, and both sides shall in good faith share knowledge and profits equally in the event of such an occurrence'."
Emma smiled.
"My, an impressive memory as always. Are you looking to replace me, Lieutenant Susanto?"
"W-well I-"
"Quit embarrassing him, Emma," Helen cut in. "I'm impressed though - we managed to put 'good faith' in there without laughing ourselves out of the room."
And I'm impressed you listened hard enough to hear that, Reiko thought. But there was truth in that outburst. Truth she agreed in.
Good faith. Between militant dictators who sell resource planetoids and an ocean of blood for the right to trade tech and use a clone army that would have been banned anywhere else...and a Board of Directors whose guiding rule is basically bottom. I'll eat my helmet.
The Captain's almost-scowl flattened out as quickly as it came.
"Be that as it may, they are our allies now, Lieutenant Balzac," he said, his voice gentle but firm. "I also don't remember any of us signing the petition against the Accords when they were first mooted."
"Err," Reiko spoke up, "I'm quite sure we were too young for it, sir."
The Captain barely missed a beat.
"Some of us live with our mistakes. Others clean up after the sins of their fathers. I'm afraid your fate is the latter, whatever it may imply for your duties. Am I clear?"
"...Aye, sir."
"Good," he said, and took two steps forward, looking them all in eye as they did. "This now pertains to all of you. We are among the quick response ships on forward screen duty for the next six hours, and as such this mission's execution falls to us. It is my solemn duty to inform you that upon partaking of this mission you will be sworn to secrecy with regard to its contents until they are declassified. Any violation of this secrecy will be subject to disciplinary action. Do you acknowledge this?"
"Yes, sir!"
They acknowledged in unison.
Then Vargas broke into a grin, the years fading fast from his face.
"Excellent. Now that I'm done washing my hands of you three for when you inevitably do something very, very stupid...any guesses as to what we're going after?"
"Not enough information. I'll pass, sir." Max said.
Emma gave a wry smile, one that Vargas did not match by far in amusement.
"No fun. Helen?"
The redhead shrugged.
"Sir, I'm just hoping for a nice milk run, maybe some rare resource vein or...y'know, as many as we might need. Less we see of Caelus the better. I like my peace and quiet, and the stories we hear about them don't assure me that either runs through their blood, sir."
"Fair enough, but not even close," the Captain said, letting his words linger a moment. "Reiko?"
Reiko chewed at her lower lip. There were many things that fell under Article 9. A good many of these then overlapped with scenarios that might require the Union and the Confederacy to put together a joint group, though the sizes of that group could vary quite a bit. The Captain had mentioned the deployment of a detachment from the 9th's frontal screen.
The thudding in the veins around her head advised against doing the math. She pushed through anyway.
That was five Vespers and two Bellini-class Medium Cruisers. Twenty-one Vorpal starfighters and six Quietus heavy gunship-bombers in total, not counting ship armaments or research vessels. This was no scouting group or mine survey escort. This was a strike force, one that could shell a modestly-sized colony and its defenses into oblivion by itself, move on, and hit another two before needing resupply.
But such an operation, as she had noted before, was high on Patagonius' list of things they'd rather handle themselves. She did not imagine that they would appreciate such a strike force within range of their ships, either, allies or no.
So what other sort resource discovery mission would need both sides to cooperate, yet require such an otherwise unwise show of force on only one side out of two?
Yet Reiko Imamura was not disquieted by these thoughts. Indeed, they excited her. There was something out there. One that might give her what she sought, quell the questions without words that bubbled up inside her.
...including rediscovery of Warp technologies...
"We've found a Derelict, haven't we?"
==[]=[]=[]==
'...But what, one may ask, are the Derelicts of the Warp?'
They are relics from a time before ours.
From a time before the tumultuous Core Sector Scramble that had shaped the various polities of human space as they stand today.
Before the reconquering of space by dint of the esoteric, faster-than-light-navigating Void Nexus Network had begun, let alone ground to a dead halt against the invisible wall where the reach of the Nexii faltered.
Before the gleaming Oligarchs, whose mystery-shrouded fall and relics that we are only now beginning to truly unravel began that age of discovery and conquest.
Before all of this - when humanity stood among the stars as equal to the gods-
Reiko chuckled to herself in her contralto tones.
"Still, 'Equal to the gods,' huh. Sounds way too fancy for academia."
She leaned back, lacing her fingers together while pushing her arms forward, pressing her back into the ample fabric of the cockpit seat. Stretch done, she turned her eyes to the frontal section of her Vorpal's three sixty canopy display, where a projection of the Emeralda's AI's bemused look greeted her courtesy of its integration with her TacArray.
"Don't you think so, Emma?"
The AI glanced at her nails, a peculiar habit for a creature that would never have anything but perfect physical features.
"Beyond the Nexus. Polchovich, Damien A., issue seventy-four, volume two of Frontier Science Journal?"
"The same."
"I have looked through his publication records on a previous occasion, and though they are short, I must say I agree with that assessment," Emma hummed, tapping her chin.
"That he sucks and that his work should never have been required reading in school?"
"Now, I will not say that. His work is important. Perhaps by little merit of his own, but he did father our present peace. A man in the right place at the right time may as well be the right man."
True, Reiko allowed. Were she anywhere but here, she would have scorned the bombastic pretension of the person who had penned these words.
Damien A. Polchovich had after all never studied a Warp Derelict in detail. Indeed the effort to get close to the very first Derelict ever sighted had been the death of the maverick Arcadian scholar, when the research ship he had been on -theSymphonium- had been caught in the crossfire of a then-unstable Core Sector.
But here, at the heart of the distortions in space that Derelicts generated, she could see why he had written as he had. Why an incomplete manuscript containing one man's awed observations at his distant destination had, after many twists and turns, given birth to the century of peace that the better part of humanity, herself included, enjoyed.
Somehow, that unnerved her.
The detachments on both sides were but mere fractions of their border fleets, but fourteen ships and two science vessels was hardly a small number.
Yet they were just so small compared to the Derelict, and from the distance she and the rest of Madcat Squad were, hidden in a nearby debris field, that disparity was all the more obvious.
The biggest the joint force had was a single Gorgon-class superheavy cruiser, a bulky Patagonian design seven hundred metres across that looked like someone bred a cyclopean-eyed slug with a parrot-fish, then bound the spawn up in a thick nanosteel hull.
This thing on the other hand was two kilometres across, surpassing all but the largest super-ships that present-day humanity would field. Among Arcadian ships, only the Sangrial-class carriers and Wolfram-class capital battleships could claim to be larger. And they in turn would all be dwarfed by the yawning scar thousands of kilometres wide that the Derelict's appearance had torn into space, which even now pulsed like some living entity with flares belonging to more color spectrums than she had known existed.
A Warp Nimbus, a saturated field of the very same energies that man used to traverse space at faster than light speeds.
What lay behind that veil, in that final frontier - not of space itself, but of the liminal line between one space and the next?
Already she could see the results of many others asking that same question: various comms channels lighting up with calls for more science and labour vessels to be pulled in from both fleets to be added to the hive of activity that even now swarmed across its length like ants on an animal carcass.
Those would take a while to arrive. Both fleets were doing an admirable job of sticking to their side of the border, for two reasons.
One was the minimum distance between them as dictated by the Accords: 'twice the maximum range of a fleet's longest ranged weapons'. Which was a lot, considering the dissipation range of the Arges ultra-laser cannons mounted on the Patagonian Wyvern-class battleships. Or the point at which the Trisagion railgun batteries that lined a Wolfram'sbroadsides could be safely intercepted by Close In Weapon Systems.
The second was the impracticality of faster-than-light navigation -indeed, through a massed concentration of such esoteric energies. Nimbuses just barely allowed travel in at sub-light. Much of the Core Sector remained nigh impassable though more than three centuries had passed since the fall of the Oligarchy that ruled it - courtesy of that which was called Vortex Prime.
Such fears and others kept both fleets about ten minutes distant at full tilt. An eternity in an age where everything moved so fast.
Where the very information that informed that conclusion came to her in nanoseconds courtesy of the Fleet Integrated Cyber Network -FleetNet for short- that ran through their entire formation.
Idly, she wondered what they might find. Then she discarded the thought.
She didn't want to know what either side felt they stood to gain from stripping this relic of humanity's past dry.
Or any other faction for that matter. Nanotechnology, ship propulsion, medical science...these fields and many more had seen immense advances due to the discoveries made aboard these relics of humankind's past glory.
Or so the textbooks all but crowed, only to fall silent once asked what glories those were precisely. At one time, the Oligarchs of the Core Sector were the leading exponents on what the Warp Nexus Network was and how it worked. Now that duty and knowledge was split between the three factions who co-owned what parts of the Sector were still accessible: the Confederacy, the system-straddling Vars Empire, and the United Colony Commonwealth.
The Derelicts gave them all much to say about what Ancient Man could do. Yet none of them had anything to say aboutwho Ancient Man was. There was respect. Rampant speculation. Even wonder bordering on worship in some circles, or so they said. But the questions remained unanswered.
Could it really be harmless to take so freely of things they did not understand - and indeed things that seemed, to her mind, to have appeared at random just as the empire poised to rule the Core Sector had fallen without even so much as a whimper, their kingdom now out of reach to the rest of mankind?
...Just listen to yourself, Reiko Imamura, a little voice inside her chided, dripping the muted venom of spite.
Isn't this what you wanted? You were hoping for something like this to happen, and when it does, what do you do? You get cold feet. Cold feet. You're so scared. Always have been. Like an idiot. And you know what? That's probably why heleft. That's why you'll never get-
"...was it really such a painful read, Lieutenant?"
Emma's voice took to her reverie like a hammer to glass. The knots in her brow she didn't know were there sprung loose as her dark nascent thoughts derailed.
Damn it, her head was starting to throb again.
An "E-eh?" was much eloquence as she could scrounge up in her search for the shattered pieces, at which the blonde AI giggled, a girlish sound that was not at all hidden by the upraised hand she had over her mouth.
"You made a very intense face for a few moments. I was beginning to wonder if I should apologize for dredging up some bad memories."
"O-Oh, err, no," she made out, suddenly very self-conscious. How much had the AI caught on to? "I was just...spacing out a bit. I skimmed Polchovich, frankly."
"How he would be grieved by your dismissal," Emma lamented, though a smile ghosted at the corners of her mouth even as she shook her head.
Reiko felt relief bubble up inside her.
"He'd roll in his early grave, you mean."
"They do say he was a fighter. With words, at least."
"So they say. What do you say about him, though?"
The ship AI was silent for a long while.
"I...do not like it...or him, personally. Perhaps I do not appreciate his swagger as much as flesh and blood humans might? And I say 'might'. His work was divisive, as I recall."
Then an odd twinkle entered her eye.
"I also recall that you were quite eager to allow our conversation to...diverge from your 'spacing out' session. I still seek an answer to that question."
And of course you recall...Reiko moaned. There was no hiding from Emma after all.
"It's complicated," she said at last.
"I see," the blonde said, her expression thoughtful. "If you do not wish for me to pry, I will not."
"I'll...tell you when I'm ready, Emma."
When you're ready, that small voice piped up again. When will you ever be ready?
She forced it down.
"I will hold you to that," the AI replied with a ready smile.
It was at these moments that she was just a tad grateful, callous though its implications were, that various cold cases of artificial intelligence rampancy in testing phases had all but smothered the idea of a networked fleet in the crib less than ten years ago.
She wasn't sure she could deal with the entire 9th Fleet's worth of ships knowing when she was having a phase and all being so damn concerned about it.
Even so, Emma was already a formidable mass of neural networks connected to the ship's databanks, and from there the floating sea of information that flowed throughout the Twin Systems was at her very-literal fingertips. The data she could access and process -legally or otherwise- made words like recall and remembrance almost seem a little ridiculous.
It was another reminder that the Emeralda's resident digital XO was not quite comfortably human.
And yet her company was relaxing; even enjoyable and charming in its own way.
Perhaps it was her innocent lust for knowledge and her frank expression of it. Or the way she seemed to reach around for the right words and only speak when she -Felt? Concluded? Resolved? It was hard to tell sometimes- that she had found them.
It was an odd touch to Emma's character. She thought it...considerate. Yes, that was the word. It also made her feel just that much more special that she was one of the few crew members besides the Captain to have taken up the AI's offers to talk.
Maybe she was projecting. Like, with enough force to send her thoughts through the sound barrier a few times over. But regardless, she imagined that the AI tried to understand her. Or simply processed vastly more data for less invested emotion in order to approximate it.
Either way, she was grateful. Her team had been a lot less helpful in that regard. Helen had made her own apprehension apparent when they were doing takeoff prep in their individual catapults.
"The hell...this is crazy stuff, is what it is. We're gonna be looking for a damned Derelict in a Warp Distortion the size of a small colony cluster," she'd said, pointing at the place where the starmap of the asteroid belt more or less stopped and the Warp began, looking like nothing so much as a devouring plague on the dark body of space.
Max had just boarded and launched on the all-green in relative silence, which he had maintained until they had entered the area of operations. Then he had launched into a half-gush, half-rant that she'd promptly muted, leaving Helen the sole target of his unbridled curiosity.
So yes. The rest of Madcat Squad couldn't quite be counted on to absolve her embattled thoughts, being too absorbed in their own.
Which was why the frown that was beginning to form on the face of her confidante was worrying. She wasn't sure what model of AI Emma was exactly. That was way above her paygrade. But she was sure that they had been built to serve, and serve with utmost pleasantness, right down to the last line of code.
On a ship not captained by someone as against the scrapping of Project Erasmus as Captain Vargas had been, that frown might have been grounds for a rampancy audit. For Fleet Intelligence to comb her neural network for the first sign of what the Vasiliov Theory School held to be the inevitable decay of artificial intelligence.
Her training told her she should report it in the captain's place. But at this moment between moments, in a space between spaces, she could not help but be concerned for the AI in its turn. In its reach for something she did not think either of them could properly name.
Something that made them kin, for all their differences.
"What's wrong, Emma?"
Emma did not startle, but her frown did not fade. In fact it only seemed to grow in intensity as she looked not quite into the TacArray that was surely in front of her, but something past it.
It took Reiko a few moments to realize that the if the AI was indeed on the bridge looking over her own comms array, she would be treated to first-row seats to the action going on at the Derelict.
"It is an uncomfortable thing to watch," Emma said.
"What is?"
"...It may sound strange to you, but this is the first time I am witnessing a scrapping first hand. I know it happens, and that it happens to all machinery after a time. It is part of the course of things."
In a show of extensive remote control over the Vorpal's systems that a small part of Reiko could not help but find alarming, a zoomed-in image of the Derelict popped up on her canopy's frontal optics.
"I know this," Emma continued. "But when this alert came down, I wondered what it would be like to witness a Derelict being taken apart before my...my own eyes."
In it, several small Caelus transports buzzed around its flanks, shearing away at its pitted hull with an industrial-scale laser cutter. Similar scenes played out elsewhere all across the canopy's three-sixty display. Arcadian troops on the top deck, inspecting a set of triple cannons, their barrels blackened and warped. Research teams floating out of their transports and into the ancient wreckage through a gaping hole that had tunneled through its lower decks from starboard to port.
"And it is...uncomfortable. Why that is, however, I cannot say."
Were Emma human, Reiko would have called the lie for what it was straight away. She was no inspired genius, but it took little genius to puzzle this out. It was there, in the frenetic pace at which the AI had pinged those parts of the ship. In the many battle scars that the derelict seemed to wear in defiance even now. In the guns that must have fired till they were so twisted they could fire no more, and in the terrible wound that had in all likelihood ended its run in life.
If ships had a life, this one had gone down swinging, done its time. It deserved to rest in peace.
She was sure that Emma had made those connections.
But she couldn't say what she made of them, and from the way Emma was schooling her expression back into her default neutral smile, it seemed that the AI was intent on keeping those conclusions -if there were any- to herself.
She would have asked, if Emma hadn't made the first move all too suddenly.
"I suppose that is just the pontifications of a ship with too little else to do. You need not take it to heart."
The pictures began to disappear one by one as Emma retracted her encroachment into the Vorpal's systems, which only served to punctuate the sense of finality that Reiko could sense somehow, past the ever so slightly digitized inflections.
So she did not press the point. I guess we both have things to work through.
A yawn rose unbidden in her throat.
Emma grinned.
"Or dwell on it for too long, either."
"Hey, it's only natural," she defended, a little hastily. She blinked a few times, trying to clear eyes lensed over with tears. "All this thinking is pretty tiring, you know?"
"You have also been keeping vigil for the past five hours, forty-seven minutes, seventeen seconds and counting. I believe that might also be a factor."
It was strange, Reiko thought, how the same expression could be read so differently in context.
"...are you trying to be funny?"
"Not at all. I am, however, suggesting that you consider a quick rest."
Reiko cocked an eyebrow. "We're on watch."
"And you would make a poor watchwoman at present," Emma countered. "I am aware that you have not been resting well recently."
Reiko opened her mouth, only to have it click shut again as Emma reached forward once more, plastering two inner cockpit feeds across her canopy optics. One for each of her squadmates.
"And you are neither a fully augmented human like Lieutenant Balzac, or an artistic fanatic with a specialized chemical distribution system like Lieutenant Susanto."
The AI paused for effect. Just long enough for Reiko to recognize Helen's lip movements as half-singalong half-hum through the non-emergency mute she had on them both. And to notice that Max's various promises to the Captain regarding his art stream did not preclude producing material for it while on duty.
Well, charcoal scribbling was messy, but still better than streaming to half the system on the Fleet comms band.
"The standard-issue Fleet nanomachine implants can help alleviate your problem or remove its symptoms completely in a tight spot, but will not solve the larger problems that come with chronic lack of rest. I would advise you not to test their limits."
Reiko massaged her right temple. Or the place where her right temple would have been under her helmet. The very prospect of arguing this out with Emma was making her head hurt again.
So she didn't.
"You know this is a severe breach of privacy, right?"
Emma's tinkling laugh shattered that last defense with ease.
"If it would prevent you from being a fool, Lieutenant Imamura, I can do far more than this."
"...and if people call in while I nap?"
"I believe my lossless playback functions will tide us over while I wake you up."
Reiko sighed.
"Devious girl."
"Thank you for your compliments, Lieutenant. Now enjoy your rest."
Then the feed cut, leaving Reiko alone with her thoughts.
Or the lack thereof, really. Now released from the obligations of conversation and company, she found it hard to focus her mind on anything in particular.
She wasn't sure if she wanted to join the conversation the other two Vorpal squads on guard duty -Auriga and Corinth- seemed to be sporadically having over the block force channel.
There was also a few joint channels between Caelus and the 9th...which she wanted in on even less. Chances were that they were all taken up by the joint work taking place across the Derelict's length.
She'd just get in their way. Well, in the way of the Caelus troops at least. But she suspected they'd be bothered by anything that might interrupt their task. A task which they'd taken to with the same enthusiasm as they had in keeping the 9th out of their border affairs. Even to the extent of parking their detachment much closer than she would think was wise to the Derelict.
Almost like marking territory. Same old, same old, I guess.
Also, it totally wasn't her fault that the yawns were keeping it coming. Or that the light show going on in front of her was strangely calming in the its own way. Especially with the brightness on her canopy optics turned down low somehow.Huh. She didn't remember doing that. But it was nice. Kind of.
Much like the soft weight of her eyelids. That felt nice too. The way they eased down gently. Yes.
Maybe it was a good idea to just…
...just rest a little.
Yeah. Just...a bit…
==[]=[]=[]==
It is dark.
Something laps against her feet. It is wet, and comes up to the knees.
But it is not unpleasant.
She wiggles her toes one by one. Teases the place at which dry warmth meets cool dampness. Feels them blend together, seep into the gaps between each digit.
She knows this dream. It is water. It is the salt air. It is a song of distant shore. It is darkness. It is silence. It is the void of space. It is floating. It is being. It is.
It should be.
Except...something is wrong.
No, there is always something wrong in this dream. She does not know the sea. She does not know the sand that lines its shores, or the song of gulls. She only knows the public pool. The artificial lake. And the vacuum of space, in which the bloom of metal and earth that was her birthplace floats.
That is her sea. Not this.
She knows this dream. She knows it is a dream.
But today there is something more.
She can sense it. Hear it.
Plip. Plip.
Iron mixes with the scent of salt. It stings her eye. She tries to open them. It hurts. She tries to raise her arm to her face. Her right. It does not listen. It is heavy. Too heavy.
Everything is heavy.
Plip. Plip.
She looks into the water.
Plip.
Slosh.
She takes a step back at the visage reflected.
It is horror. It is pain. More wound than untouched flesh.
And it is red. So, so red. Red stains the deep blue. Red tints the blackness. Red colors the recesses of the mind
so dizzy
Her world spins. She staggers. Her feet struggle to find purchase. There is nothing. The ground is gone. It has slipped away. She hits the water, one good arm flailing. It doesn't stop the fall.
Her aching knees kick. She gasps for air in wild breaths. Struggles to stay awake. Stay alive.
But the water is no longer water. It is no longer sky. It is no longer space. No longer still. No longer peace. It is a vice grip pulling. Pulling her down. Down towards where darkness gives birth to a roiling, churning light that beats like a living heart.
Every pulse is a hammer in her ears.
An omen.
A beginning.
==[]=[]=[]==
Reiko shot up, her head a white hot mass of agony.
Her hands flew to her face.
Her hands. Her healthy, working hands.
Hands that did not come away bleeding and bloody.
Her gaze froze upon them for a good few moments, till she was convinced that it had been a dream.
Starting with realizing that yes, she had felt metal and smartglass where her face should have been because her helmet had been on. That the moisture recycling functions of her suit were not sending her iron content warnings that might indicate blood loss, only the rapid drain of the slick layer of cold sweat that separated skin and nanofibre suit.
That by dint of these three facts combined there was no way her hands could have come away red.
And yet this was not like the other dreams. She did not forget. The images did not fade all too quickly. They...had been clearer somehow. Too vivid, too real.
Like she was being told something. Shown something.
Her eyes flew to her canopy optics, ignoring the stabs of pain that ran through her brain every time her eyes darted across the three-sixty field of vision. Looking for something, anything that might tell her what it all meant.
But for the life of her, she couldn't. It was not that the Vorpal's displays were lacking. They had kept up with Emma, and they were keeping up with her much-less efficient control over the cybernetic link her suit had with the plane. They brought up zoomed-in images, diagnostics, intelligence and during-action reports.
There was simply nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that it, or she, could see.
So why didn't the spark of panic in her guts go away?
Unless…
She took another long, hard look at the Derelict, and tried not to shudder at how the Nimbus that surrounded it reminded her of darkness giving birth to a roiling, churning light...
"Emma," she said as evenly as she could, as though pretending she were calm could make it so.
It was just a hunch. Not even that - it was an idle thought, and nothing more, she told herself.
That did not stop her hands from shaking.
It was a good thing that the AI could read her vital signs - Emma's image on the front canopy was all business.
"What might you require?"
"Run a check for fluctuations in Warp energies...as far as our ship sensors can take you."
"Is that a private request?" Emma asked, eyebrow raised. "I will have to run this by the Captain either way."
Reiko nodded.
"It's fine. Just...please," she said, surprising herself with the ease with which the words came. But what did she have to lose by being wrong? Embarrassment felt like a shrinking, tiny thing now.
She had to know.
"I have a...feeling about this."
The ship's AI paused, considering.
"Fair enough. I will inform the Capta-"
Then her world lurched, and she was hurled back into her chair as something passed over and through her like a phantom punch in the gut.
Emma's face blurred, flickered, and then the feed cut as her helmet and canopy optics died with a shriek of static.
For a moment, she was as good as blind.
Then her TacArray came to life with siren wail.
[WARNING: WARP NEXUS SIGNATURE DETECTED - INBOUND JUMP. DANGER CLOSE.]
Impossible. The word rang through her mind.
No, that was not completely true. It was theoretically possible to use FTL with a Nimbus as either the entry point or the terminus. It was after all made of the same energies that FTL devices utilized through their link to the Nexus Network. But it was unstable, wild, untamed. Aiming had been shown to be unfeasible, the esoteric Nexus guidance systems hopelessly thrown off by distortions created within the Nimbus.
Whoever did this, they had balls. And also nothing to fear from the possibility of border conflict between Arcadia and Patagonius.
But who the hell would even-
[WARNING: WARP NEXUS SIGNATURE DETECTED-]
-Her optics came back on in sputtering gasps.
Then she saw them.
Nearly six Gorgons, trailing wisps of ghost-fire as they crawled from the womb of the Nimbus, flanked on all sides by smaller craft: eight Basilisk-class destroyers and a veritable swarm of smaller starfighter escorts.
Each one was clad in the blocky, heavy armor that was the Patagonian Union's trademark. But they were clad in grey and gold device, instead of the leaf green and black of the Caelus Armada.
Union Separatist 2nd Fleet, Dragonflight Squadron grey-gold, her TacArray display chimed.
Each one was also but a single piece of the screen that formed around the looming 'faceplate' of a single Wyvern-class battleship. Its dragon's reared head and maw glowed, bathing the Derelict it emerged alongside in a sea of boiling Argesultra-laser red.
Their weapons were readied, barrels pointing toward both fleet detachments - the 9th Fleet quick response element to their front, and the Caelus ships to the left. The Gorgons champed at the bit, their own prow-mounted Brontes lasers tensed at full charge.
A siren blared in her ear.
She was in the line of fire.
She jerked her controls, peeling off to one side.
For an instant, the universe stopped in morbid fascination, watching reality turn on its head.
Then Dragonflight Squadron fired in all directions.
A jolt of pain ran through her ribs as she rammed into one of the arms of her pilot chair. Just in time for her to look up and watch the Arges' blighted ruby light pour forth its fury.
The beam scythed through the debris field and overhead, a dozen Caelus transports vanished in its wake before boring into the AS Artaud, the frontmost ship in the small Arcadian formation.
For the briefest of moments the trapezoidal Bellini-class' armor held fast. But there were only so many tears the composite hull plates of its bow could weep. Only so much penance that could be enacted for the simple failure of having been taken by surprise in battle.
The laser won through, bisecting the stricken intense heat spread out sideways as it passed, igniting weapon systems and fuel alike in a profusion of blossoming death down the Artaud's widening length.
Its blue icon vanished from her HUD, replaced by a grey box.
[TOTAL LOSS.]
The words tasted like ash on her tongue.
Her side was on fire. But it was a good pain. Good anger. They numbed the fear, kept her from shaking.
Those bastards.
She tasted iron on her lips, her grip on her flight stick trembling, knuckles bone-white.
Her comms crackled to life before she could do anything, wise or foolish.
"This is Vargas, Captain of the AS Emeraldas," their Captain's terse voice broke in on the line. "All hands, Battlestation One. Repeat. All hands, Battlestation One. Fighter squads, move to intercept incoming bogies. Auriga Leader has command."
"Auriga Leader copies. Flanking now."
There was a name on Auriga Leader's Identification Friend/Foe tag. One that Reiko barely remembered. After all, she had never met Lieutenant Commander Genevieve Sheffield in person before. Closest they'd come was mining escort duty together a month or so ago. She didn't remember much about that day.
But she would remember the raw, rough-scabbed wound timbre in the voice of the Artaud's flight commander.
Battle lines were being drawn across the TacArray's tactical overlay, putting the fighter group still mostly hidden in the debris field and the ones currently filing out of their remaining ships on a hammer-and-anvil flank on an approaching group of enemy fighters.
Solid plan. Let's do this.
Her hands slammed the Vorpal into full throttle. Her vision narrowed in the rush from zero to supercruise, her back digging ever tighter into the fabric of the pilot seat.
This would have been detrimental for any pilot, if not for the cybernetic uplink from the Vorpal to FleetNet, through which she could maintain awareness of the situation at large. Through it, she knew even without looking that the otherVorpals were blazing their own trails out of the debris field, forming an staggered arrowhead formation as they advanced to intercept.
In the distance, their ships were on the move, turning to minimize exposure as they returned fire. Vesper-classesEmeraldas, Armitage and Vrtaska remained unscathed. Anrei and Saint Lowell were on auxiliary thrust, both having been winged by a Gorgon laser each despite evasive maneuvers.
Vectored thrust ports flared in unison, moving them into defensive positions around the wounded ships and their remaining cruiser -the Rabelais- while taking care to give its cut-down version of the Trisagion a berth appropriate for the a weapon nicknamed 'Thrice Holy- Shit That's Loud'.
The half-dozen ships opened up: one volley of shots streaking into the night, and then another, lighting up the darkness with plumes of trailing plasma fire and each ship's complement of projectile and beam weaponry.
Most were shot down by enemy close-in weapon systems and other countermeasures long before they could hit their targets, but one railgun volley made it through, punching right through one of those Gorgons aft and amidships. It broke into three, trailing internal explosions as the pieces drifted apart.
It was a sight both beautiful and terrible to behold.
So this is battle.
"Liking your day yet, Great Leader?"
Helen's voice interrupted her brief thoughts as her image and Max's appeared on her screen, her earlier mute overridden by the Battlestation One declaration. The joking tone was still there, but the red-head's face was grim.
Reiko was sure she looked the same.
"Speak for yourself. Some milk run this turned out to be."
"Can't always get what you want in life," Max grunted. "And I was having fun sketching the Derelict, too."
"Just don't release that pic before it gets declassified, or the Captain will have our heads," she reminded.
"Assuming our tango partners don't take 'em first," Helen noted. "I mean, hell, have you seen those guys? They're famous!"
Max frowned.
"They're also more than twenty years dead."
Reiko remembered that one. Dragonflight Squadron had been a famous Separatist ship group that had met its end in the Battle for Patagonius, where much of the Separatist had been destroyed trying to surprise the Caelus Armada at the heart of their strength on the 5th of July, 991.
Or so they were led to believe.
...were they truly lost there?
And if they were, who are these people?
Good questions - but not ones they were at liberty to answer.
Way too much going on.
In good news, the unknowns were avoiding conflict with the Arcadians for now, throwing up what was probably a cloud of reactive armor chaff from the way their shots were having trouble punching through it.
In bad news, they were now turning to put the Caelus detachment out of the fight for good. The Caelus Gorgon was by some miracle still up and running, but its own destroyer complement was down to two Basilisks, one of them listing heavily. They needed help and they needed it soon.
Good news: they were in place to prevent that from happening if their interception proved successful.
Bad news: that meant beating the swarm before them.
Twenty one Drakar fighters, seven Ogma sub-light torpedo bombers was the final count FleetNet gave. Stock early Civil War Patagonian starfighters.
And they were fast, faster than thirty year old rustbuckets had any right to be. FleetNet was being forced to revise its calculations on when they would hit engagement range at an alarming rate. Even that was assuming that their obvious strategy -a textbook bog-standard blitz run with the said sub-lightspeed torpedoes- was being executed with the unguided Stormhammer variant of that torpedo class.
That was one assumption too many, considering the events so far.
"All Squads, this is Auriga Leader. We're expediting."
Expediting, Sheffield had said.
In fighter pilot parlance, expedite could only mean one thing.
"Assume sub-light blitz formations. Launch on my mark."
Helen whistled, while Max shifted a little in his seat.
Nonetheless, all of them moved into their positions at the rear of the eponymous vertically-staggered diagonal formation.
The plan was simple: get in front of the enemy, unload all weapons to one side so as to avoid hitting each other, get out. Turn, come in for another round. Rinse and repeat till sure of victory. In other words, when everyone else was dead. Or you were, whichever happened first.
This also meant a double dose of chems being released into her system to deal with the punishment she was about to dole out to her body. That made three in a day. She was going to feel that one later.
But not now.
'Now' is payback time.
All-green acknowledgements ran down their formation, First Flight, answered by those from Tiwaz, Zenith and Striborg Squads - Second Flight.
"Mark!"
Then the stars themselves melted away.
If she was reliant on FleetNet before, she could barely see on her own power now.
But it was enough: she could see the shark-like Drakars fanning out to recapture their namesake, realizing what was happening. She could see the boxy Ogmas speeding up, maintaining course as best they could.
Too slow.
Too late.
She thumbed the activation on her Dearborn micro-missile launchers, accelerating as they fired. Criss-crossing tracer-lines streaked across the left side of her displays as she shot past their formation, barely missing her.
One member of Corinth Squad was not so lucky, a series of shots catching the Vorpal dead center and reducing it to a roiling ball of fire.
The shower of homing missiles struck harder, tearing into the enemy formation with a vengeance. Almost a dozen red blips faded from her sensors.
"Whooo baby!" She could hear Helen bellow.
Max's reaction was a fist-pump that managed to look unenthusiastic.
She was surprised she even noticed that: the victorious whoops of her fellow pilots all felt faded and soft against the wild beating of her heart and the bile threatening to jump out her throat at the sudden deceleration she made to turn.
"Good shooting!" Sheffield barked. "First Flight, reform! Second Flight, fire!"
Fire they did. Their own missile pods blossoming smoke and flame, the Vorpals of Second Flight unleashed a torrent of steel and grey-orange contrails at the enemy.
Less of the Separatists fell this time, or as easily. Their spread of fire and countermeasure deployment was tighter, their reactions faster. As expected of the elite. Two more Vorpals were struck by their gunfire, their blips going dark on her TacArray. Missiles found themselves beating against carefully deployed walls of reactive chaff, the premature explosions painting the surviving starfighters in the colors of sunset death but sparing them its touch.
The remaining Ogmas emerged from the fray,sub-light torpedoes loaded and ready, their escorts mustering about them.
Right into the arc marked 'Naval Interdiction.'
Out of the frying pan…
Reiko allowed herself a tiny smile.
...into the fire.
The formation's full range of CIWS obliged them, opening up on the starfighters.
And it was a sight to behold.
Nevermind the fact that the Separatists had limited their attack vectors in order to close ranks and lay down good fire against the blitz. Every pilot knew their way around AA. It was in their blood. Their pride.
But one could be forgiven for thinking it wasn't so if they saw the way in which FleetNet -in which Emma- just ripped into them. For every defeated missile, two more would take its place. Planes evaded one line of cannon fire only to run into another. Sub-light torpedoes, launched too early, were met dead on with pinpoint strikes from kinetic weaponry and the Vespers' own supplies of reactive armor chaff well before they could accelerate to full speed.
The closest any of them got was within fifty kilometers of the Emeraldas. A web of cannon fire cut into that, sending its death throes rippling against the surface of the destroyer, but otherwise failing to damage it.
"Good work, Emma."
She meant it. She couldn't think of an instructor who wouldn't have had to give the AI a perfect score.
"Yes, I believe this was a satisfactory way of kicking the hornet's nest, Lieutenant," Emma said, her face popping back up on her screen for the first time since the blackout.
Her ever-present smile gave the lie to the grim fact she described.
That this was only the beginning. That what they had destroyed was only a fraction of the full force the Separatists possessed.
That the profusion of angry red dots that bore down on their position was a much, much more sizable fraction of that same starfighter force. Which they had to survive against...or at least have something left to tell the tale by the time the main fleet got in range to open fire or launch their interdiction complement.
Reiko sighed. The pings were already coming out for defensive regroup. Reasonable: even sublight combat wasn't going to save them if they were this badly outnumbered. Attrition was going to be a bitch. Not to mention the ship-related side of things. They wouldn't last without fleet cover, but likewise even Emma's shooting would be hard-pressed to deal with both anti-ship and anti-air engagements at once.
"This is going to be a long day, huh."
"Technically, a long 'seven more minutes'...and probably another volley of those lasers," Max commented.
"Don't forget the important stuff. You know, like trying to not to get blown to bits. Not that that's big deal or anything." Helen grumbled. "Fuck this is gonna be hard. You got any more of that crazy trick-shooting shit where that just came from, Em?"
She could swear Emma's smile turned predatory for an instant.
"I aim to please, and shall be pleased to aim."
"Pftt," Helen snorted. "Works for me."
"And me," Max added.
Reiko didn't reply. Really, it was hard to find a good way to respond to a conversation that sounded like it came out of some absurdist comedy.
We're in a terrible situation, everyone's secretly scared as hell...and Emma makes puns just because.
But she supposed a little smirk would have to do.
What did the Captain say again? That they lived with their mistakes.
Our wishes too, she added silently.
But if we're going to go out in a blaze, might as well do it with a grin.
So she did, her just slightly-dry lips tugging sideways.
"Well, I'm definitely down for Round Two."
So saying, she gunned her engines.
"Who's with me?"
