Chapter 12: Upgrades, Research, And A Little Shooting...


January 2124
International Governmental Cooperation Committee Building
Extrasystem Control Group

Everyone studied the data that was the subject of the latest report. "At this point we have close to three years of ship tracking information from the network, and have improved our surveillance program considerably over that time, both in the data collection aspect and the data processing one. We can now track an individual ship throughout the entire system, which was a tall order, I can definitely put it like that. Everyone involved in the programming team has done an exceptional job. The terminal computer systems aren't designed for that level of detail and we had to rewrite a considerable amount of their main control software, very carefully, to allow it. It's been obvious right from the beginning that there are a vast number of people who rely on the network and we don't want to interfere with them."

John indicated one of the projections. "The simulation system our people designed allowed us to fully test the software before we even considered a live deployment. We also made very sure to take backups of the original software, and thoroughly test the process for both replacing it with our own version and restoring the first one on some of our disassembled units. It was only when we were absolutely certain that there would be no unwanted interactions that we deployed it, initially to a number of terminals that saw little traffic just in case, and then rolling it out across the entire system after a thorough test phase. We also found a number of subtle bugs in the original variant that we fixed, which could have caused odd effects if anything triggered them. The most serious one was potentially catastrophic as it could in theory have made the entire network dump the total energy of all the terminals simultaneously, the end result of which would have been absolutely horrific."

He looked around at everyone present for the briefing. "We're not sure if the planium would have fully destabilized, or only partially done so, but the devastation would have been severe enough that it wouldn't really make any real difference to those affected. We made certain that bug was well and truly fixed. It was a very low probability issue, you'd almost have to deliberately trigger it, but it would be irresponsible to leave it as it was. There were some more that were less serious, but could be problematic under specific conditions. We also went through the entire code base and added error checking to a number of places where it was either insufficient or missing, and generally optimized the code considerably, which also made it much easier to add our own extra functions. The builders of the devices were very good engineers but as we've noted in the past, not fantastic programmers. Good enough, yes, but we're better." He smiled as several people chuckled.

"The end result is that all the original functionality is still present and working entirely normally, and if anything will be slightly more efficient, but we got our own code in place in a way that no one is likely to notice unless they go to the same effort we've used to reverse-engineer one of the devices. Even the original builders probably wouldn't notice without a very deep diagnostic, and we were careful to make sure that there's no way to trace it back to us if that actually happens. Considering how long ago it was that the programming of the devices must have been finalized that seems very unlikely but why take chances?"

"Doctor Warden, in this process, did your people find any signs that whoever built the terminal network is actively monitoring it?" General LeBatelier asked curiously.

"No, General, we didn't. We looked specifically for that as a function and couldn't find anything that suggests the network is being monitored on a day to day basis. There are functions that would allow someone to interrogate any terminal in the network from any other one, and of course the basic network protocol itself allows for some interesting possibilities including doing what we did to push out our own updates, but the logs we've so far found don't show them having been used in tens of thousands of years." He paused, then added, "Something just over fifty thousand years, in fact. Which is a figure we've run into before..."

After a moment of silence, Ambassador Santhotuzex, who was these days pretty much always involved in such meetings to keep his own people updated, said, "Yet again I find myself very curious to know exactly what happened at that point in time. The date does seem to come up more often than could possibly be explained by random chance."

"We think the same, and quite a few people have come up with large number of possibilities," John sighed. "The most likely one is still what we derived from the original Promethian databases, that there was some form of conflict between them and some other currently unknown party. There's growing evidence to show it was probably exacerbated by the terminal network, and could have encompassed a large part of the galaxy. It seems entirely possible that there were more than two species involved too. A war of conquest perhaps, with the aggressors attacking on multiple fronts? We don't know, there simply isn't enough information so far available. But there are a number of other possibilities, such as some form of large scale natural disaster, possibly a supernova or series of them which caused a dangerous amount of radiation to pass through sections of the galaxy… There are one or two mass extinctions in Earth's own history that may possibly be due to such an event hundreds of millions of years ago."

"We too have at least one fossil record that shows a similar event taking place very far in the past," the thranx diplomat replied with a nod, his antennae waving in interest. "It might be interesting to compare the times and see if they match with the ones you mention, which could settle the issue. However, that's a task for others. And I doubt we're going to determine what disaster befell parts of the galaxy some fifty thousand years ago here and now."

"Unlikely," John agreed with a small smile. He brought up some more data which the group studied. "Returning to the current problem, we've so far identified a dozen distinct variants of ship drive, which we are virtually certain represent different species' modifications to a common technological base, so we're working on that basis for now. Most of them are very similar, although three stand out as being somewhat further from the average than the rest. One of those belongs to the species who we first ran into when they began searching for the terminal they noticed was missing. It suggests that they might be somewhat more technologically advanced than most of the others, although that's not a solid fact as of yet, merely a likelihood based on the data."

He indicated a large 3D graph which broke down the ship data. "Each of the dozen variants has a number of subtypes, ranging from four at the low end to two hundred and sixty seven at the high end, which we are convinced are different classes of ship. Most of the aliens appear to use similar but not quite identical drive configurations, again showing a common starting point for the technology, which in turn suggests that they have a fairly consistent set of ship classes. Specific sizes of freighter, perhaps, as in the old days here on Earth with various tonnage tankers, bulk haulers, and so on. Or perhaps military ships such as destroyers, gunboats, that sort of thing. Just using this current method of data collection doesn't allow us to identify what the ship is for, only that it's a specific class. And there are a few outliers which are possibly one offs or experimental ships, or ones built for a specific task like terraforming."

#You said you can track individual vessels through the network, Doctor. What is the total count of ships so far logged?# Athena asked.

John produced another table. "At this point in time we've positively identified two hundred and twenty seven thousand, six hundred and thirteen individual ships across all classes and species," he replied. "Some classes are fairly rare, only single examples to dozens being seen, whereas others are very common and have many thousands of copies. And they move around differently, many of them making what are obviously routine trips so being most likely cargo or passenger vessels, with others moving in groups that stay together for long periods of time. We believe those are probably military in nature. There are also a few that seem to jump around almost randomly, which could be survey vessels or some sort of private ship, something of that nature. And then there is this group."

Bringing up yet another display, he ran it forward. Everyone watched in amazement and interest.

"Good lord. How many ships is that?" Premier Clarke said, sounding astounded.

"Fifty one thousand, two hundred and six distinct craft, with the largest number of different classes we've seen so far," John replied as they all watched a vast collection of traces pass through the terminal network on the other side of the galaxy. "Almost the entire grouping transits as a block," he went on. "We don't know how large the ships are, but even with something the size of an IS scout that would represent several hundred thousand crew. Or, of course, a very large fleet of automated ships. However, the way they move strongly suggests an organic mind is controlling their course, rather than a non-sapient computer, so we're fairly certain it's a large number of aliens who are moving around en masse. Why, no one has a clue. They don't generally seem to stay in one place for all that long, the maximum time between movements so far noted is only about two months, and while they're on what seems to be the less traveled routes in the network, they're not going to or from the most isolated parts either. A colonization effort was our first thought, but we'd have expected them to enter a system and stay there in that case, not keep moving around like they do."

He shrugged slightly. "So far it's a mystery. We've noticed that this group seems to have what could be scouts of its own, some forty ships that spend long periods all over the place but always return to the main grouping sooner or later. Most of these seem to vanish from the network for extended periods, implying that they are traveling using their own superluminal drives, or possibly docking at a planet or space station for resupply. They also visit more terminals than most ships appear to, which would fit with some form of scout or merchant vessel. We have a significant number of theories but no firm conclusions yet. They are after all aliens and may not do things the way either human or thranx would, of course. Possibly we're missing what they would consider obvious out of a lack of information or imagination."

#In your table here, Doctor,# Minerva commented, her avatar highlighting one of the data blocks that broke down the ship IDs by trips logged, #I notice this specific ship appears to have visited some interesting destinations.#

"Yes, indeed," he nodded, pulling up more detailed records of that particular vessel. "We spotted it fairly quickly when we began identifying individual ships. Whoever is running D-19-216 seems to have a significant interest in the four systems that contained the terminals that used to link our sector to the rest of the network. In fact, it's the only ship that's visited one of those systems, the one nearest the core. All three of the others have been explored by at least one of three other species. One of those has been to all three, that's the ones who first turned up four years ago, while the other two have been to both the others, all of this happening several times so far. Our friend there has spent quite a lot of time in each of the relevant systems although it's interesting to notice that whoever it is seems to have deliberately avoided any of the others, based on the transit times."

He glanced at Director Anderson and General LeBatelier, adding, "IS and the military have collected more data on that ship through the same methods we used on the first one."

"That is something we will report on after this briefing," Director Anderson commented.

John nodded. "We've assigned each species an alphabetic designation for now. Species A is the one who we first encountered, and it runs up to L at the moment. Species D, the ones with the huge fleet or whatever it really is, are mostly self contained with the exception of that small amount of external missions. Most of the others move around much more independently although we've built a map of the common destinations which has allowed us to assign tentative territories to each of them, presumably showing each of their home sectors."

He produced a top down volumetric image of the galaxy with many colored zones shown throughout it. "Species A is most common in this zone, about a third of the way around the galactic rim from us in an anticlockwise direction. Species C is mostly in a zone nearly a hundred and eighty degrees from that, on the other side of our sector, and so on. There are a couple of interesting ones, though." Putting a marker on one smaller zone near the galactic core, on the other side from Earth, he went on, "This bunch here, Species L, are almost entirely confined to three terminals, which have a single connection to the remainder of the network at this node here. No other species ever seems to go through it, and we haven't seen them go past it in the other direction yet either. It's a lot like a much smaller version of our own sector, and it's possible that they've got some sort of embargo on travel to their volume of space. We don't know, but it's interesting. As is the fact that they are one of the three groups who have significantly variant drive signatures, which are in fact considerably further from the average than Species A."

"The other one is this group here, out near the rim about ninety degrees anticlockwise from us." Another, much smaller, zone was highlighted as he spoke via a quick n-link command. "These guys, Species B, seem to have just one terminal to their name, and don't use it much. There are about four or five ship movements a month through it, and those ships then jump around all over the entire network for a few days before going home. It seems to be the same sixteen ships who do all the travel as well, although we have no idea how many ships they actually have. Xenophobic? Shy? There's no way to tell right now, but it stands out. Interestingly they're the third ones with significantly variant drives, which are nearly as distinct as those of species L. Most of the rest move about much more than either of those two. Species F is all through this area here, and their ships go into most of the other zones every now and then. Species E is notable for having groups of their ships, usually mostly one class with a couple of other vessels of a different class, move in a predictable pattern through many terminals. The suggestion is that this is some sort of law enforcement or something along those lines."

"We are fairly sure it's a military patrol, based on our own analysis of the data," General LeBatelier remarked. John looked at him for a moment and nodded.

"That would also fit, I agree. But in any case, we've established quite a lot about what appears to be a thriving galaxy-wide civilization of some sort, comprising at least these dozen species, although there could be more than just don't move around much, or possibly use someone else's ship to do it. Or obviously there's a possibility they use something else than the terminal network, like we do."

He cleared the current mass of data and produced a new image. "The other thing that really jumped out at us right from the beginning was this."

"Ah, the mysterious gathering place everyone visits," Lord Alamo said with an interested look. These days the man was generally far less bizarre in his operating methods, although he still had his moments, and rather to everyone's surprise had proven to have a remarkably good grasp of quite a few subjects. When he wasn't being excessively Texan he was capable of some impressive insight.

A lot of people wished he'd shown that side of himself a long time ago. It would have made the political process much less stressful, although admittedly less amusing, if only accidentally.

He hadn't shouted Yeehaw! in the middle of a discussion for months now. Some of the delegates were wondering if he was a little under the weather, even as they were grateful for the relative quiet.

"Indeed," John replied with a glance at him. "Every species except the one in the core has passed through this terminal at least once during our observation period. Species B only turns up occasionally, the same ship each time, which only stays for about an hour, but most of the others visit constantly. A, C, and E are by far the most common, but all the others also visit, including a number of ships from Species D. The logical conclusion is that this system has in or near it a planet which is some sort of political or commercial center, like a seat of government such as we're in now only on a vastly larger scale."

#That would appear to be in agreement with the data,# Athena commented, nodding. #If this scenario is in fact a widespread multi-species civilization, which appears likely, a central gathering point for coordination of trade, politics, and military would seem to be a requisite for most governmental systems I am aware of. Even if it was only a place for various embassies to gather that would still fit the patterns we can see, as would a trading post.#

"Kind of a long way to go for trade," Minister Hawkins of the CAS remarked. "Half way around the galaxy is a decent trip for someone who hasn't got the blink drive."

"It's not all that far with the terminal network, though," John replied, turning to him. "Most destinations can be reached from most origins in no more than nine to ten transits, some in as little as one to three. Based on known speeds of the planium FTL drive as shown by the ships we've monitored exploring the former locations of our external links, they seem to average some ten light years per day, peaking at just under fourteen for our friend D-19-216. Those guys have got what's probably a very fast ship in their terms. So in a worst case scenario, taking account of travel times between terminals in adjacent systems, one could go from anywhere to anywhere on the network in under two weeks. Most trips would be less than half that."

He shook his head a little. "Obviously we don't yet know how far away from the nearest terminal these people bother to live, but based on observed behavior it's probably no more than a hundred light years at most. Rolling that in, we get journey times of around one to two months in extreme cases. Entirely plausible even for fairly routine purposes. In the old sailing days trips half way around the planet could take several times as long."

Hawkins nodded thoughtfully. "Point taken. I agree, that's still not that much effort, depending on how much fuel and other resources their ships carry, and how large they are. Before the TBT drive was invented, we'd been looking at times of days to weeks just moving around our own system, and interstellar travel was something that would have taken generations."

"And in our case even with faster superluminal travel than these species we still had quite long journey times," Ambassador Santhotuzex added. "It didn't prevent us colonizing several planets without too much effort."

"We're still monitoring the ship movements and steadily adding to our database," John continued when everyone else fell silent again. "We've set up a separate group dedicated to that task in conjunction with IS, who are using the data to extend our own navigational information on systems we know planium exists in. Obviously that includes all terminal systems, but considering that as far as we can tell at this point all these species make use of the material in much of their technology, it's very likely that any system they routinely visit has at least traces of it. So far, of course, we've never found any sign of it occurring naturally and the prevailing opinion is still that it is artificially produced. All deposits discovered to this point are clearly the result of some form of technology in the distant past. As a precaution we're currently marking any star system within one hundred light years of an actively used terminal as a probable planium-contaminated zone, so they'll have to be approached with extreme care and scanned from a safe distance."

He smiled for a moment. "It's not as if that actually makes very much difference from our point of view. The total number of stars involved is so small relative to the number in the galaxy we could easily avoid them forever without even noticing."

"As we gather more information on the planium-using species we may have to extend that hazardous zone," Director Anderson put in, "but at the moment, based on the data we currently have, it seems like a conservative safety factor."

Premier Clarke leaned forward a little, studying the map intently. After a few seconds, he settled back again. "I see. Thank you for the update, Doctor Warden. Is there anything else that stands out right at the moment?"

"Not so far, no, sir." John shook his head. "I'm sure that as time passes we'll probably spot other patterns in the ship movements that will let us refine the data, but as of now that's the interesting parts."

"And the planium devices themselves? I believe your group has decided that you've extracted the last of any new information from them."

"Yes." With a glance at his small team, several of whom nodded, he went on, "We've disassembled and made safe every unit we removed, placed the planium cores at a large distance from each other and everything else in a very long period orbit of the galaxy, and fully reverse-engineered the design. We're in the final stages of documenting everything we've learned, which has produced petabytes of information and several new theoretical areas of interest that are being researched. The improved method to increase the strong nuclear force we derived from studying the construction of the devices, for example, has as you all know already made significant improvements to our existing cerametals, and the thranx Science Council is heavily researching the same concept for their superalloys. Our research has paid enormous dividends in many ways other than the immediate safety issue of removing the terminals from our space, material sciences being the primary beneficiary but not the only one."

Sighing a little, he added, "Unfortunately we've been largely unable to learn any more historical facts about who made them, as they appear to have gone to a lot of effort to completely remove any clue to their identities or anything else of that nature. We may never find out who they were or where they came from."

#An extragalactic source has been suggested,# Minerva remarked, causing everyone to look at her avatar. #It's certainly not impossible, but there's no real proof for or against the concept. We know that they were around somewhere in the order of two billion years ago, and appear to have still existed up to sometime within at least millions of years of the present, but they could have died out by now, or moved elsewhere. When we begin to run long range scouting missions to Andromeda and other nearby galaxies, we may discover traces of them there, which could possibly help us determine more facts.#

"Finding planium in other galaxies would tend to imply they visited them," Lord Alamo suggested. "If we assume that they made the stuff, that is. Or maybe it actually comes from a source in another galaxy and they brought it here?"

"That's certainly not impossible," John agreed. "As Minerva said, at the moment we just don't know. Travel via the planium-based FTL drive would make intergalactic journeys very slow by our terms but doesn't preclude them assuming a large enough amount of supplies, and possibly some form of biostasis to keep the crew alive. We've also worked out how one could speed things up considerably by using the terminals in a form of leapfrog arrangement. Send one out using conventional FTL, which is certainly possible by inverting the mass-altering effect of the planium core to allow the terminal to become self propelled, something that would require an entirely new control system although the hardware would support it. When it reaches the maximum range of the superluminal frame of reference conduit, you then use a second terminal to send a third one through to the location of the first. That process could be repeated to build a chain of the things across as much distance as you had units to use, and when you finished you could make the trip in hours. We suspect a process such as this is how they were originally placed to begin with although we have no proof."

"Now that the investigation into the devices themselves has finished, is there still a requirement to keep the full Planium Device Research Group active?" The question was asked by a representative from the Pacific Alliance, a woman in her late forties. Doctor Zulaikha Hazim looked around at the others present both physically and otherwise, adding, "Possibly the group should be scaled back and the resources used elsewhere."

#The total resources employed by the group are fairly minimal in the grand scheme of things, Doctor Hazim,# Athena replied, turning to her and flicking one of her avatar's cat's ears while smiling a little. #We don't really have any pressing requirement to reassign the people and ships currently working in the research into the transportation network. As Doctor Warden reported, there are a significant number of spin-off research areas coming from study of the devices, and although that aspect is now finished, they are also researching planium technology in general, with an interest in discovering where it comes from and how. This could be vital information in the future.#

The PA woman thought for a moment, then made a motion of acceptance. "I bow to your superior knowledge, Athena," she said with a small smile. "While at the same time I shudder at the concept of planium technology in general."

"Most people feel that way," John commented, chuckling. "I do myself. However, research into how these various species are utilizing planium could well produce useful avenues of research, possibly pointing to places where we could find something we can replicate with our own technology. It's likely that some of these people have been using the material for some time and they might well have come up with tech that we haven't even considered. That's almost a given, for that matter. Just as how we and the thranx have taken a very similar theoretical basis and gone in quite different directions with it in many areas."

"I see your point, Doctor Warden." She nodded slowly. "A different outlook could lead to significantly variant outcomes."

"It would almost be guaranteed to," Santhotuzex said. "The thing I personally find intriguing is that on the face of it all these species appear to be technologically far more similar than I would have expected, at least working from the limited data we so far possess."

"Their drive signatures are all close enough that it's virtually certain that either they all copied each other, all copied some third party, or have someone who makes a lot of slightly different drives and sells them to absolutely everyone," Professor Vroland remarked, studying the various graphs and tables. "I can't see any other reason for them to be so nearly identical. Convergent technology to that level seems a stretch as there are clearly multiple ways to implement planium should you be nuts enough to want to do it."

"Possibly whatever method they use is merely the most efficient and they all ended up using it, whoever it was that actually came up with it in the first place." John shook his head a little. "We have no way to know at the moment. We'll need some method to get more data if we want to establish that, and all the other things we don't know about them yet. All we do know is that there are probably at least a dozen of them running around out there and they probably have some form of large scale government going on based on the ship movements."

"We know a little more than that, Doctor," General LeBatelier said. He looked at Premier Clarke. "Perhaps, as it seems that Doctor Warden has finished with his report, we should move onto ours?"

Clarke glanced at John, who nodded and cleared his data from the shared displays, then leaned back to listen. "Go ahead, General."

The much older man quickly produced a series of holos and mindscape projections of his own. "We have spent considerable time monitoring the ships that came to investigate the locations formerly containing the terminals we removed, after the first one surprised us. As Doctor Warden mentioned earlier, so far we have seen representatives of four separate groups visit at least one of each location. The different drive signatures are matched by significant differences in ship design, leaving us confident that the variations being recorded do in fact show different species with a common technology."

"The first group, Species A, are definitely technologically superior to the remaining three. They are also very persistent, having run a whole series of extensive searches around the HD291789 system out to a significant distance, and have been observed to set up and dismantle a rather impressive optical interferometric array in an apparent attempt to image the terminal removal process. We highly doubt they got anything even vaguely usable as simple physics would prevent them producing much more than a very temporally smeared statistical probability map, but they clearly know what they'd doing. While they seem to have given up a direct search, they do keep coming back every now and then and wandering around some more, possibly trying new instrumentation for any traces of what we did."

"Which they're not going to find," Professor Vroland commented.

"No. There's nothing to find." The general shrugged with a small smile. "Doesn't seem to put them off. Anyway, we've tagged at least a dozen of their ships with passive smart dust probes, and recorded a lot of internal data, including managing to tap their computer system on the most recent visit. This was done extremely tentatively in a purely read-only manner, but paid significant dividends as we discovered they had their vessel completely packed with processing and memory units. We're pretty sure it's their equivalent of an ECM or surveillance ship, which would fit the mission profile. In any case, we've extracted dozens of terabytes of data including a significant amount of technical information that they seem to have gathered on many of the other species using the network. They seem to be doing more or less what we're doing to everyone, which is admittedly rather ironic under the circumstances."

He produced a number of displays for the audience. "We also got a large amount of lexical data on several languages, a lot more information on the background of several of the species involved than we expected, and all sorts of interesting stuff on these people themselves. It's let us build a translator overlay for so far six different languages, including theirs as the most complete one, and two others to nearly the same level. The other three are less fully fleshed out as of yet but we're working on it."

Showing a series of visual records, some of which they recognized from the initial investigation when the ship first turned up and some new ones too, he went on, "Species A. These people are called Salarians. They're an amphibious species originally, and seem to be what you might think of as the brains of whatever governmental structure is out there. Fast metabolism, worryingly short life spans, but smart and inquisitive. We have a full report on them current as of two days ago that's available for examination by anyone who wants it, but it's far too long to go into now."

The images and videos were replaced by another set, these of a vaguely avian or reptilian looking species. "Now this is Species E, known to their friends as Turians. They appear to be very militaristic, and act as the military arm. They tend to go around in patrol groups of a minimum of four ships although on occasion there are individual craft on their own, and at the other end of the scale they're operating fleets of up to twenty that we've so far seen. Heavily armed and armored, with ship sizes falling into several distinct classes distinguished primarily by tonnage and weaponry. Again, we have a more complete set of data for those interested."

He waved at the next set of images, which made everyone stare. "This is where it gets interesting."

"Blue space women?" Lord Alamo looked shocked. "Good god. How?"

"We have no idea," Director Anderson replied to the question. "They appear so similar to human physiology that we're more than half convinced there must be some link somewhere. If not, parallel evolution is more of a thing than anyone ever realized. We don't have any genetic samples, unfortunately, but if we ever get any I expect the biologists will have the time of their lives trying to work out what's going on there."

"Those are Asari, what Doctor Warden refers to in his data as Species C. We've only seen females of the species so far and the Salarian data suggests that they may in fact only have one gender, however that is supposed to work. We're still researching it. Their ships aren't as heavily armed as the Turian ones are, but they're not exactly civilian vessels either. That is another thing we've noticed; every single ship we've so far encountered has been armed with not only a mass driver but laser-based point defenses and missiles, although the number and type of those varies considerably. it's somewhat worrying. Possibly we've only so far seen warships of one sort or another, although even that suggests a level of conflict that's unfortunate, or if not it must be like the wild west out there if everyone is wandering around armed to the teeth with weapons capable of taking out a city from orbit."

The general shook his head. "I'm not sure which possibility is more disturbing. It also makes me wonder if there's some other threat we don't know about that all this armament is meant to protect against. If they're using it on each other, I'm not sure how an intragalactic government as we've been assuming exists could exist. It's going to take a lot more information to work that one out. Anyway, yet again there is a report on the Asari available. And finally, in the directly observed species list, are these people."

As the displays changed once more, he carried on, "Species D, or Quarian. The only ship we've seen from them is D-19-216, which is definitely putting in a lot of effort poking around in every system we took an external link terminal from. Their ship is fairly small by the terms of the various species we've seen so far, only about three hundred and fifty meters long, although that's pretty large by our standards and not trivial by thranx ones. And we're fairly sure it's quite old, it looks like it's been worked on a lot for a long time. On the other hand its definitely got the fastest FTL drive we've so far seen in use, and whoever's been maintaining it has put a lot of effort into the process. Small crew, only sixteen, and we're almost certain it's analogous to one of our own CCF scouts."

He waved a hand and images of all four species spread around them, along with data on the ships involved. "The Quarians also have much better protection on their computers than anyone else does out of those four. We've had more trouble passively tapping them than the others without them noticing. It suggests a higher level of ability in computing hardware, although what we've seen from all of them is fairly primitive by our standards. The big problem is that we're having to do this through the hull without letting them know about it, remotely from a great distance. We wouldn't have any issue if we got hold of the actual hardware, as it's not even as complex as the stuff we recovered from Mars, never mind the terminal computers."

Director Anderson put in, "We're steadily building up the knowledge base on these species, and more slowly data on the others. There are large holes in our information, obviously, as all we've so far got to go on is data that was available while they were using their onboard systems, and only while they were within one of the four star systems we're monitoring. The probes are all programmed to self destruct when they transit through a terminal so they won't find any evidence if they happen to scan the hulls closely enough. Unlike with the thranx, we don't have the luxury of being able to monitor an entire civilization for a year or two. In that case we got almost too much data." He glanced at Ambassador Santhotuzex who flicked an antenna with amusement. "It made the same process much faster."

"Is there any practical method to get more data without announcing ourselves to the galaxy?" Lord Alamo asked, looking at the images and graphs with interest.

"We think there is, yes," General LeBatelier replied with a nod. "Based on what we've observed them doing, they seem to have some form of superluminal comms system using what appears to be a very small, very primitive form of the terminals themselves. They also use message drones via the terminals, but we've picked up transmissions sent without using that method, which appear to be a tight beam modulated laser carried through a small superluminal conduit between what are basically communication satellites in deep space, and relayed from one to the other. We've inspected a couple of these and we're pretty sure that they're implementing something fairly close to Sysnet or Hivenet over them as well as direct point to point links."

John looked at the images the general produced, read the data, and nodded thoughtfully. "Very interesting indeed. I would agree that these appear to be using the same principal as the terminal network, albeit very inefficiently. On the other hand they're absolutely minute by comparison. Probably fairly cheap to make, and indigenous to the species currently using the network. They may have copied the design without fully understanding how it worked."

"That's the thought of the CCF research department, yes, Doctor," General LeBatelier replied. "While your group was working on the higher priority project of the terminal network we didn't want to distract you, but if you have spare capacity we'd be grateful if your people could check our data and conclusions. You could well find something we overlooked."

John glanced at his small team, who were looking fascinated. "I think that can easily be arranged, General," he said with a smile. "I'll give some thought to the best way to go about it."

"Thank you, Doctor." The older man nodded. "But returning to the main point, we think it should be possible to insert an active tap into one or more of these comms repeaters and gain access to their public network. With the current language data we've derived from the ship observations, that should let us learn a lot about the state of affairs in the wider galaxy outside our own boundaries, without risking contact with the planium-using species. While we can avoid them indefinitely it's not impossible that sooner or later we will need to talk to them at least. Who knows what will happen in the future?"

#It seems plausible,# Athena remarked. #I would be concerned about either disrupting their network, or leaving WIMP technology in close proximity to planium-based tech. While the likelihood of something going wrong is very small indeed with the latest shielding designs, it's non-zero.#

"Agreed, but there are ways around that." The general shrugged slightly. "We can modify one of our existing probes to act as an interface, and remotely add a tap to whatever their comms interface turns out to be. If we're careful we should be able to duplicate their existing hardware closely enough that even if our equipment gets discovered at some point they'll think it was one of their own groups that did it. And we can make sure that our probe is far enough away that they won't find it."

"And if we pick a repeater in a seldom traveled sector, it probably wouldn't attract attention," Lord Alamo said.

"Yes, but on the other hand we don't want to pick one that's hardly ever used or the increase in traffic could get noticed," John pointed out. "We'd need one that's remote enough to be easy to get at without anyone being in the area, but not so remote it looks odd when we start playing around with it."

"It's probably best to find one linking a high traffic area to another high traffic one over a significant distance," Doctor Hazim suggested. "Based on the mapping data Doctor Warden presented earlier, it looked like there were several areas that met those criteria."

#It will take some further research but it should be possible to locate a suitable candidate,# Minerva, the IS AI, commented. #Having direct access to their communications would be extremely useful for learning more about them in the lowest risk manner, both for them and for us. The extensive use of planium in virtually all the technology we've so far seen is concerning. The implications of that use over long periods of time are far more so.#

Premier Clarke looked thoughtful. "There is something of an ethical quandary here, in my view," he finally said. "While learning about these various species is important, directly tapping their communications to the extent of modifying their hardware seems somewhat invasive. At least with the thranx we were only listening to public broadcasts… Luckily they're quite talkative."

"We do like to talk, that's true," the ambassador chuckled. "I agree that there is a small potential issue as you suggest. However, as long as no damage was done to the repeater and we were only using any public equivalent of Hivenet, I doubt it would adversely affect anyone. Learning more about these people is something I believe to be important, if nothing else so should any of them ever happen to meet any of us we can talk to them from a position of knowledge. As with my own species, it could prove to be the difference between a smooth initial contact and a possibly disastrous one, depending on their attitude to external interaction."

#I tend to agree with Ambassador Santhotuzex,# Athena put in.

"Well, I suggest we break for a short recess and something to eat, then discuss this proposal fully after lunch," Premier Clarke said after a moment, looking around at the chamber. No one seemed to think that wasn't a good idea, so fairly shortly they were all leaving the room. John found himself walking towards the cafeteria he favored along with several other people, including Santhotuzex and his security team, all of whom had become good friends over the years.

"Do you think we ever will actually make contact with any of these species?" he asked as they found their seats a little later.

"I really have no idea," Santhotuzex said, making a gesture of indecision. "It depends on so many factors, many of them currently unknown. I suspect that their use of planium in so much of their technology may well preclude that for most if not all of them, unfortunately."

"Contamination is likely to be a major problem, yes," John agreed. "While it's technically possible to decontaminate individuals, it's still complicated and dangerous, and doing an entire biosphere would be excessively time consuming to put it mildly. Plus they'd probably object, since from their point of view I expect planium is seen as entirely safe. Which, to be fair, it mostly would be without any WIMP technology around."

"I do worry that should any of them happen to independently discover WIMP theory there could be a very unpleasant fate waiting for them," Santhotuzex said after taking a sip of water.

"Yeah, that gives me nightmares," John sighed. "It's also a good reason not to tell them about it if we ever meet. If they're anything like either of our species, even yours, telling someone not to do something is pretty much asking for them to do it as soon as you're not looking."

Santhotuzex laughed, and his bodyguards looked amused. "You have a point, my friend," he replied. "There are also arguments to the contrary. But neither viewpoint is likely to be relevant for some time, if ever, so it's not something we need to worry about overmuch."

"True enough." John smiled. "On another note entirely, have you heard what my grandson and his daft crew have done this time?"

"No, I have not," Santhotuzex said with interest, his antennae flicking forward. "Please enlighten me."

"Ah. This is… very them. It started, of course, with Isaac daring Leyzenzuzex to do something both of them should have known was a bad idea..."

Very soon, their entire table was heaving with laughter.


GS year 2409.2
Primary Server Cluster
Rannoch System

Four Mass Relays missing from network. Investigation by multiple organic factions into method and actor inconclusive. Factions are concealing information on Relay disappearance from each other. Creators are only faction aware of all four cases.

Feasibility of initiation of more efficient investigation into cause and method of Relay disappearance.

Investigation feasible given priority of task sufficiently high to release required resources.

Lack of data on process to move Relay without damage suggests technology used differs substantially from all known sources. Probability that technological base of actor responsible for Relay movement would aid Geth in current projects greater than 80%. Priority of task is maximum.

Probability that actor involved is assumed extinct organic faction labeled Prothean.

Prothean involvement probability lower than 0.001%. Technology required exceeds all known Prothean abilities significantly.

Conclusion is unknown faction located in isolated sector of galaxy responsible for Relay removal. Reason unknown but assumed to be to maintain isolation from organic factions utilizing Relay network. Further conclusion is unknown faction does not require Relay network for travel purposes. Probability that unknown faction possesses superior superluminal transportation ability greater than 94%. Further conclusions not possible without new data.

Recent data on Relay transportation operations indicates 0.03% increase in efficiency of network over last three years nine months two weeks three days one point two hours. No known reason for increase found. Increase network wide. Conclusion is unknown faction upgraded Relay software with confidence greater than 77% percent.

Reason for upgrade unknown. Reason unlikely to be hostile as normal functionality unaffected with exception of minor efficiency gain.

Probability unknown faction hostile to organic factions low. No indications of hostile intent with exception of Relay removal. Removal done in manner calculated to minimize disruption to remaining network. Removal not hostile in nature.

Probability unknown faction hostile to Geth… unknown. Further data required.

Probability of peacefully contacting unknown faction.

Probability currently incalculable due to lack of data regarding motives and goals of unknown faction.

Geth action currently limited to further data collection from organic factions and direct investigation. Communication with unknown faction recommended if unknown faction makes presence known. Unknown faction military potency has high probability of exceeding Geth or organic faction's capability. Unknown faction should be approached with caution and lack of aggressive intent.

Consensus reached.


GS year 2409.4
Quarian Migrant Fleet Exploration Ship
Tralket
Command Bridge

Rael'Zorah grabbed the arms of his seat as the Tralket shuddered. "Glancing hit, kinetic barriers holding but if another of those gets us directly we're in trouble," the weapons officer shouted, desperately trying to get the defensive laser array back online. The first impact had taken them completely by surprise, coming out of nowhere as it did. Not long after that they'd finally spotted the two Batarian pirate vessels bearing down on them, having apparently taken a shot from extreme range and gotten lucky.

The lead frigate, one he was damned certain was actually a legitimate Batarian military vessel with a spoofed IFF, new paint job, and the serial number filed off, had fired a number of missiles at them, while he'd frantically ordered evasive maneuvers to be initiated and their own weapons brought to bear. They'd managed to score a hit of their own on the second ship, which hadn't expected the fairly small Tralket to have such potent armament, and done enough damage that it had fallen behind, leaving them with only the first one to handle for the time being.

Unfortunately, the spinal cannon necessarily required the ship to be pointing at the target, and since that target was four times their size with at least double the weapons, they more wanted to be pointing away from it and accelerating hard. Launching as many missiles as possible as they ran for it while jinking about manically to avoid a target lock, Rael'Zorah was frantically trying to come up with a plan to get them out of this alive. The second Batarian vessel was bound to catch up sooner or later, and there was no way they were a match for both of them. One was more than enough.

Their laser array had overheated and blown a main power bus, due mostly to lack of new parts which was a constant problem with the Migrant Fleet. He and his people did what they could with far too few resources and he'd pit his crew against any in the galaxy on a like for like basis, but they were outgunned by a significant margin, not to mention that the Batarians were coming from the direction of the Relay and it would be a job to get past them to escape this system. He had to assume that they had reinforcements on the other side, too, who would be lying in wait for anyone who did escape. It was what he'd have done in their place.

Another shot from the main cannon of the pursuing ship came at them, the helm officer and the sensor operator working together to detect and avoid it. A cannon shot at close range was a bastard to detect in time to avoid, and that damn ship behind them was almost on top of them.

The Tralket was definitely faster than the two ships shooting at them, but only in FTL. At sublight speeds the much more modern vessels the Batarians were using had a definite advantage. Unfortunately, that didn't help because the Relay behind them linked to one so far away it would take weeks to reach under normal FTL. There were no others within reasonable travel distance, given their current fuel reserves.

He might have to try a run for it anyway. Perhaps the slavers would give up if they headed off into the unknown. On the other hand, they might not. Batarians were persistent four-eyed shits and if they thought they were missing out on a rich prize would go far past the point of sense to capture their target. He'd lost enough friends over the years to know that beyond doubt.

"Got it!" Zap'Ran shouted, crawling out from under his console and diving for the controls. He quickly entered several commands and flicked some switches, which caused the lights to flicker for a moment. "Rerouted the controls to switch power from the main gun to the laser capacitors," he explained as he worked, before slapping the last control with his entire hand. The sound of the lasers starting up again, a series of semi-random dull thuds as the capacitor banks discharged, made the entire ship resonate a little. "We can't use it to shoot at these fuckers anyway."

"Good job," Rael'Zorah nodded, watching on one of the tracking screens as another flight of missiles approached at high speed and were taken out in short order by the point defense system. It wouldn't get every single one, he knew, sooner or later one would make it through, but if they were lucky the Batarians would run out of missiles before their lasers ran out of targeting solutions. The far bigger problem was the cannon.

Both cannons. He saw with dismay that the second ship that they'd temporarily disabled was back in the game and rapidly overhauling them. It began firing as well, glowing-hot projectiles flying past, one again pinging off their kinetic barrier at a very shallow angle.

Damn it. There was no choice. They were going to have to go to FTL and head off into deeper space while hoping the Batarians wouldn't follow. Tracking something moving at superluminal speeds wasn't possible so the pirates wouldn't know exactly where they were, but changing course at FTL was also extremely hazardous so it wasn't a difficult trick to simply follow in the same direction. If they could get far enough ahead, they could return to sublight speeds, change course, and go to FTL again, hopefully evading their pursuers.

That would still leave them without any sensible way to get back, of course, as they Batarians could just sit at the Relay and wait, but at least they wouldn't get shot out of space in the process and would have time to think about what to do next.

A massive tremor shook the entire ship and the main lights went out, then came back on. Alarms went off all over the place. "Weapons out, kinetic barrier failing, port fusion engine is dead," someone shouted over the racket. "Big power surge in the KB generator. That was a direct hit to the stern. Captain, we can't take another one like that, it'll blow right through us."

"Damn it," Rael'Zorah snarled. "Take us to FTL, head for the nearest system. If we can get there before them we can hide somewhere and maybe have time to do repairs."

"Nearest system is back to the one that contained the 314 Relay," his helm officer said. "Is that a good idea? What if… they… turn up?"

No one knew who they were, but everyone on board was pretty sure they existed. And the mere concept was enough to worry anyone who thought about it. Rael'Zorah himself certainly spent enough time looking at the stars and wondering what was out there.

"Unlikely, no one's ever seen any sign of whoever it was that took the Relays, and we don't have any choice anyway," he replied. "Get us out of here."

"Yes, captain." The helmsman worked his console and the ship quickly accelerated, the latest shot from the lead Batarian frigate dropping behind as they went past the speed of light. Even as the pirates disappeared off the scan range they were also engaging their FTL drives.

"With one engine out we'll barely stay ahead of them," his aide remarked quietly.

"I know, but that's the only chance we have," he replied, sighing, as the viewscreen showed all the stars in front blue-shift as the eezo core did something horrible to normal space. "We'll get cut to ribbons if we try to fight, and they were too close to evade otherwise."

"It's things like this that give Batarians a bad name," the helm officer commented acidly, making everyone else smile a little. Black humor was about all they had right now.

"Well, that and everything else about them," Zap'Ran said. He looked at the captain. "I'm going to go help engineering get the power bus fixed, sir." Rael'Zorah nodded, waving him to the exit.

They spent the next few hours fixing everything they could, but with limited resources the amount of damage stretched even Quarian skills to the limit. He considered dropping out of FTL somewhere between systems in deep space but after some thought rejected it. There were errors all through the power system from the massive surge caused by the kinetic barrier being overloaded and while a remote possibility, it wasn't completely out of the question that their FTL drive could fail unexpectedly. Being in a star system was far preferable to floating around light years from anything. It was definitely a hard choice of fates, though; going to sublight in interstellar space could let them evade the Batarians with greater effect but could kill them all if it went wrong, while hiding in a star system made it less likely that they could successful get away, but made it more likely that someone who didn't want to kill them might find them. And if all else failed, they could probably extract enough resources from asteroids to eventually repair the ship fully.

Quarians were very practiced at that sort of thing, not having much choice, and every ship in the fleet carried enough equipment to effect repairs from very simple beginnings. Even so, you needed to actually have those beginnings and that wasn't going to happen in the middle of dark space.

When they finally came out of FTL a few light hours from the primary of the 314 system, a location they'd spent a lot of time poking around in over the last couple of years, he immediately ordered them to head for the smaller of the three gas giants, using a short intrasystem FTL jump to do it as quickly as possible. Right up until the point they were lurking in close proximity of one of the smaller moons that orbited the planet, using the IR emissions of the moon and the vast amount of radio noise the planet itself emitted to suppress their own detectable output, every person in the small crew was expecting a high velocity projectile to end their lives.

Half a day passed while they made more repairs, with the ship shut down as much as possible consistent with being able to come online again in seconds. Eventually the sensor operator stiffened in his seat. "Captain, passive scans show a ship just came out of FTL. Another one… It's definitely the pirates." He paused, then slumped. "And two more. They got reinforcements."

"Damn."

Rael'Zorah studied the tactical plot hologram. Their information was several hours old, due to the distance to the small group of pirates, and it was possible that they were already heading right for them at FTL if they'd been detected. He wondered if he should have headed out of the ecliptic to a point where it wasn't obvious, but that again put them too far from resources if something went badly wrong, and gave them no camouflage. At least here they were less likely to be discovered than in most places, although depending on how persistent the fucking Batarians were it was only a matter of time. Firing up the drives was almost guaranteed to attract the wrong sort of attention.

"The main gun is back in operation and so is the laser array," Zap'Ran reported. "And we've got a third of our missiles left. Kinetic barrier is probably good for about eighty percent normal but we won't know until we turn it on, and if we do they'll detect it."

"So we have to wait until we have no choice," Rael'Zorah muttered. "Make sure all the missile batteries are ready to fire and the main gun is charged. If they do spot us, all we can hope to do is get lucky with the first shot then run for it again. If we can get back to the Relay..."

"Assuming they don't have even more ships waiting for us," the helm operator pointed out. He nodded, furious with the damned Batarians.

"Assuming that, yes. I have no idea why they're coming after us like this, though."

"Maybe they heard we were poking around in strange places and decided to do some investigating of their own," Lih'Sal suggested. "We might have been noticed going to Ilium and similar destinations and someone got curious."

"I could believe that of the STG, but as far as I can tell they haven't worked it out yet," Rael'Zorah replied. "We've been careful. And if the Salarians haven't noticed us I'd be surprised if the Batarians did. They're not known as being the most observant people around."

"True, but they're sneaky underhanded fuckers, so it's not impossible," his aide commented, causing him to think it over then nod reluctantly. Everyone tended to have a low opinion of the Batarians, which in his experience was pretty accurate, but they weren't idiots. And someone might have got lucky.

"Possibly," he sighed, staring at the display. New information was coming in from the passive sensors, showing that the four ships had run next to each other for a while, then headed in different directions. The one that concerned him was the one that disappeared from the holo, having jumped back to FTL, but at least it was going in the wrong direction.

Probably going to backtrack along their path, on the off chance that they could stumble across a ship drifting far outside the system. It was a long shot, but given good sensors and enough time, not impossible, as they'd know the exact vector the Tralket had taken to get here.

That left them with three ships full of murderous slavers, probably actual military trained ones, each ship being more than they could take on alone. A slightly improved situation if you considered three to one odds less impossible than four to one.

He didn't.

"Which ship left?" he asked.

"One of the new arrivals. The other new one is smaller, I think it's an older class. Can't get a good read on any of them without active scans, but that one is emitting a lot less power and the eezo output is only about seventy percent of the first two." Zap'Ran looked around. "We might stand a chance against one of them if we got a good hit. We'd need a perfect shot and a lot of luck even so."

Nodding, Rael'Zorah ran over options in his mind. They could simply sit here and wait for the Batarians to get bored and go home. It might work, but then it might not, and in practice the four eyed slavers might only go back and lurk near the Relay, knowing that his ship would have no choice but to head in that direction sooner or later. They could try to evade the Batarians and slip past, using the star or one of the planets to block detection long enough to head in a direction the enemy didn't know. That would let them run for a while, then stop and change course towards the Relay. But it left the same problem, that there could be an unwelcoming committee. And since the next Relay in the chain that had originally led to the now-gone 314 was at the end of a series that no one traveled, they were unlikely to find help.

Or they could fight, but that not only had low odds of success, but still meant they'd need to get past the Relay and anyone lying in wait.

It was a tricky problem.

Their best bet was probably to wait and hope, while making all the repairs they could. If it came to either running or fighting, the more functional the ship was the better. He turned to his small command crew, who were working while looking at him every now and then, clearly hoping he had a way out of this.

"We'll keep an eye on them, and fix everything we can," he said. "If they leave, that gives us breathing room. If they don't, we'll stand a higher chance of escaping with a fully functional ship."

A number of people exchanged slightly dubious looks, visible even through the environment suits, but they all nodded and got back to doing what they could. He stood up and stretched, having been sitting in that chair for hours, then said to Lih'Sal, "I'm going to inspect the ship, then have something to eat. You've got the bridge until I get back. Call if the Batarians look like they're coming this way."

"Sir," the younger man replied, taking a seat where Rael'Zorah had just been. With a final glance at the tracking data, which showed all three ships heading towards the largest of the gas giants, he left the bridge.


Several hours later, having checked in on every section, talked to the various crew staffing them, and had a look at the damage that was still being repaired, he went into his quarters and sat behind the desk. He'd eaten and had a drink, and was feeling slightly less ready to fall over after a short nap, but the entire situation was making the entire crew tense and he wasn't immune to that at all. Bringing up a local copy of the tracking holo, which now had a lot more information about the movements of the enemy ships still moving around looking for them, he studied it trying to think of something he'd missed.

Idly wondering if the Batarians had realized that this system was supposed to have a Relay in it and didn't, he watched the small icons representing hundreds of people each, all of them dedicated to causing he and his own people harm while wishing that the Council, or someone, had done something about that particular problem a long time ago. It hardly seemed fair to him, considering how his own species had been treated. The Batarians had, in his view, killed a lot more people than the Geth had, although that wasn't something he was ever going to say to another Quarian.

And at least the Geth just killed you, they didn't go looking for you, enslave you, kill your family, then torture you for years.

He wasn't going to sat that either.

The older Quarians were more than a little touchy about the Geth, for reasons he understood, even if he didn't quite feel them with the same intensity.

A thought struck him, and he brought up some more data, including the technical specifications of their main gun, along with data on various other systems. Eventually he called for Zap'Ran. When the weapons chief came into his office, he looked up from the various holo displays surrounding him. "What would happen if we connected the laser array capacitor banks into the main gun accelerator field generator?"

The other man stared at him, then looked thoughtful. "We'd burn out the laser power supply and the field generator," he replied after a moment.

"Before or after we managed to fire the thing?"

"… After, I think."

"How much extra velocity would that add to the shot?"

Zap'Ran prodded his omnitool, running the math. "About… thirty percent. A little over that. Once."

"What would that do to the Batarian's kinetic barriers if we managed to hit them dead on?"

Rael'Zorah waited as his subordinate made some more calculations. "It wouldn't punch right through, unfortunately, but it would probably wreck their barrier generator. The power surge would shut them down for several minutes, most likely, but their ship is a lot newer than ours, they'd recover a lot faster than we did."

"And if we fired off our entire missile complement as soon as their barrier went down?"

Even through the faceplace of his suit, Zap'Ran's smile was evil. "Their point defenses would be out for at least a couple of minutes. We'd probably get fifty, sixty percent hits at least. That would be more than enough take them out, possibly destroy the ship entirely if we hit something critical."

Nodding in satisfaction, Rael'Zorah studied the tactical plot again. "Make the modifications," he said. "If we get a shot, we'll take it, and if we don't, well, we probably won't need to put it back to how it should be."

"And if we take the shot and miss we won't have any weapons left," the other man commented.

"Same as if we take it and succeed," Rael'Zorah sighed. "But at least then we'd have one less ship to run from, and we'd only get one chance anyway. I'd rather go down fighting."

"Yeah, me too." Zap'Ran shrugged. "I'll get a crew on it. It'll take about an hour and a half."

"Good." The weapons officer left, and he went back to thinking.


"The two smaller frigates are heading this way. The larger one is moving outwards to the last planet."

The report made everyone look at the holo. It was what they'd been dreading for nearly a full day by this point. The three Batarian ships had spent the time carefully probing the entire gas giant area with active sensors, which at least let the Tralket crew know roughly where they were. The fourth one hadn't made a reappearance and Rael'Zorah was now thinking it was probably actually acting as the picket ship he suspected this group had left to guard the Relay. Which in turn might mean that it was the only one there. Not that this massively improved the situation, but it meant there were probably only these ships involved, not an entire slaver fleet. Small comfort but he'd take what he could get.

Now, though, the Batarians had clearly concluded that his ship wasn't where they'd been looking and had split up to make the search go faster. They were putting in far more effort than he'd have expected, which made him suspect that Lih'Sal was correct in that they were specifically chasing the Tralket for reasons other than random piracy. Possibly covering their true actions as piracy, which would mean that the ships really were Batarian military.

Not that there was a lot of difference between the Batarian military and the supposed 'pirate slavers' as virtually everyone in the galaxy thought no matter what the Batarians themselves said. Unfortunately no one who was able to do something about it did.

Politics. It really pissed him off sometimes.

Both the smaller vessels headed steadily towards the planet the moon they were almost in touching distance of was moving around. The moon was only about five hundred kilometers in diameter, very close to the gas giant, and as a result very tectonically active from tidal stresses, which was why he'd picked it in the first place. They were surrounded by a thin atmosphere outgassing from the ball of rock and ice, which they hoped would mask their presence except at very close range.

Even the eezo emissions from their drive core would be hard to detect so close to so much electrical and electromagnetic interference. Gas giants tended to have massive magnetic fields, which were often a nuisance when operating near them, but in this case it was helpful.

"They're heading for the next moon out from us, the big ice one," Tra'Kin the sensor operator said. "Close formation. Active sensor sweeps running."

"Get a firing solution on the lead ship and keep it," Rael'Zorah said, turning to Zap'Ran, who was already working. "Don't lose it. If we get a shot, we'll only get one shot."

"I know, Captain," the other man muttered, still working rapidly. Rael'Zorah didn't say anything as under the circumstances everyone was nervous and a little snappy.

"Target lock set," the weapons officer said a little later. "I've got it aimed directly at the center of mass. Missiles are passively targeted at the engines, drive room, and the main magazine. We might get lucky and make their core go critical."

"Keep that lock ready," Rael'Zorah said, leaning forward and staring at the holo, as everyone else was doing. "Bring the drive to pre-readiness, if we manage to pull this off we need to get out of here as fast as possible. We'll engage FTL as soon as we're clear of the magnetic field of the gas giant, I don't care what direction we go in. If we make it we can stop and change course when we're out of range."

Everyone did their jobs and they went back to waiting. It was driving them all slowly nuts from the tension but it wasn't like they had any choice.

Eventually, after an excruciating wait, Tra'Kin announced with trepidation in his voice, "They're heading towards us."

"Time to detection range?"

"Twenty minutes at most."

"Time to firing range?"

"If we want to be certain of a hit… nineteen minutes."

Rael'Zorah looked at the weapons station, to see Zap'Ran looking apologetic. "Sorry, Captain. But we need to wait until they're too close to evade."

He merely nodded, sat back, and waited.

Eighteen minutes passed with no change in behavior of the oncoming ships. Both were coasting towards their moon, making occasional course correction burns, and clearly were intending to go into a low orbit to scan the entire thing.

Nineteen minutes, and the two ships moved in sync to correct their course for final orbital insertion. They were only a few thousand kilometers away now, and the Tralket's instrumentation was picking up their active scans at deafening levels. It was very clear to him based on the movement of the craft that they were no random pirate. He'd been right, they were Batarian military with a not very convincing disguise.

Both ships rotated a little, clearly entering the final position to scan their hiding place.

"In range, they're less than a second's projectile travel from us, Captain," Zap'Ran said, almost whispering. "Your order?"

Rael'Zorah studied the holo. There was something about the way the ships were moving… "Hold fire," he said abruptly.

"Captain?" The weapons officer glanced at him. "They'll see us any second and if they boost we'll lose the lock."

"Hold..." Rael'Zorah leaned forward unconsciously. "Hold… FIRE! NOW!"

Zap'Ran slammed his hand on the fire control and the entire ship rang like a bell as the massively overcharged accelerator cannon fired, the eezo field reducing the mass of the projectile to almost nothing as it passed down the four hundred meter length of the barrel. The lights flickered wildly and alarms went off almost everywhere as the power surge took out half their systems and he could smell burning coming from somewhere, but no one looked away from the holo. The preprogrammed firing sequence launched their entire remaining missile load just after the cannon went off in two salvos a couple of seconds apart, the thumps of the missiles leaving the tubes again reverberating through the ship.

Then it was quiet again as someone turned the alarms off.

They watched the result of their surprise attack in shock and enormous satisfaction.

"No one is ever going to believe this," Lih'Sal said in wonder, gaping.

Their overcharged shot had struck the first frigate directly amidships, causing the kinetic barrier to flicker and the warship to visibly shudder. Moments later all the running lights went out, and a few seconds after that the first salvo of missiles hit. Huge balls of fire bloomed across the hull, the remains of the kinetic barrier falling just in time for the second salvo to strike. This time they blew enormous craters into the ship, shrapnel flying outwards as more explosions went off inside it. And almost too quickly to see the delay, the entire vessel went up in a blue fireball as the energized eezo core failed catastrophically, ripping the ship in half and throwing large fragments outwards at huge speed.

Half a dozen missiles flew out of the wreckage, misfires from the loaded launchers, all of them disappearing into the distance. And most amazingly of all, the rear third of the destroyed ship, moving at a significant velocity from the massive explosion that had annihilated it, slammed squarely into the other frigate's bow, due to a preposterous amount of luck on their part, Rael'Zorah's almost instinctive timing, and the Batarian commander's unfortunate positioning. If the ships had been that little bit further apart it would never have been possible, but they'd been just slightly too close for the remaining ship to take evasive action.

The impact wasn't severe enough to destroy the second frigate but there was more than enough mass involved to have immediately overloaded the kinetic barrier, and probably caused significant damage. It wasn't dead in space but it was damaged and crippled.

"I don't suppose there's any chance we can get off another shot, is there?" he said hopefully.

"Sorry, Captain, the main gun is slag. It's going to need a complete rebuild." Zap'Ran still sounded stunned but he quickly checked his instruments. "We're completely out of everything. We could throw something at them, but..."

"Fair enough. Excellent work, everyone. I hope we recorded that. Get us out of here."

The helm officer prodded controls and they started accelerating as hard as possible, burning for a direction away from the gas giant and the wreckage of one enemy and another crippled one, before the Batarians could rally and get enough functionality back to shoot at them. Both fusion torches at maximum power, they fled.

Thirty seconds later they were in FTL, running at maximum output for a random destination, the last Batarian ship having not had time to even notice what they'd done. With any luck it would never figure it out, the delay from being several light hours away covering their tracks.


"So how do we get past this bastard?" Lih'Sal queried, all of them looking at the passive scans of the Relay, which had a Batarian frigate just sitting there a few hundred kilometers from the thing. It was much too close to allow them to sneak past, and the time needed to negotiate with the Relay and start a transportation sequence would be more than enough to allow the enemy ship to fire on them even if they could somehow evade his sensors. "That last frigate from the 314 system is bound to get here soon as well, this is obviously the only place we could have gone and they're not idiots."

"We've got no weapons at all, but the drive is fine and both engines are at full specification," Zap'Ran added. "Although they're going to need a complete overhaul when we get back to the Fleet. We've stressed everything far too much recently."

The Batarian suddenly started painting them with active sensors. "Damn it, they've seen us," Rael'Zorah grumbled. "Only a matter of time. Evasive action, we're far enough away to avoid their shots for now."

Which was proven as a cannon round zipped past on the port side. "He's firing almost blind, there's not a lot of chance of hitting us at this range," Zap'Ran commented. "Delaying action until his friends get here. He doesn't know we mission-killed two of them."

"Which still leaves one, and it's the most dangerous one," the captain muttered. "This fuck isn't moving, he's just going to take pot shots at us to keep us away from the Relay until reinforcements turn up. I hope they didn't call in even more ships."

"Unlikely, this is clearly a covert mission and they wouldn't want anyone to find out, so the less people involved the better," Lih'Sal remarked. Rael'Zorah thought it over and nodded, his aide was probably right. There was a good chance this was the only ship between them and escape, but he couldn't see any way past it. The distance to the next Relay was over six hundred light years, far too far for them to be able to make it on conventional FTL even if they had the fuel, which they didn't. The Relay was their only way out of this situation.

"I'm open to ideas," he said.

"Spoof his sensors and slip past?" Tra'Kin suggested.

"Can you do that?"

"...No. We don't have the right equipment on board."

"Damn."

"Go back to deep space and wait them out?" Lih'Sal said. "We've got enough provisions for about three weeks and we could probably stretch that to four if we try."

"Possible, although not something I'm looking forward to," Rael'Zorah allowed. "But then we don't know whether these idiots are prepared to wait even longer."

"They can't sit there forever, someone else is bound to come through sooner or later. A Turian patrol will get really interested in a Batarian ship this far away from their normal areas," his aide replied.

"All they need to do is sit there long enough," Rael'Zorah sighed.

The standoff continued for another hour, while they dodged occasional long range shots and outran a couple of missiles they detected coming long before they were anywhere close. "He's definitely delaying us," the captain growled. "If he was serious about fighting, he'd be chasing us, not just sitting there like he is."

"Captain!" The shout from Tra'Kin made him whip around. "The other frigate just turned up."

"And there it is. Oh, may his ancestors rot in hell." Rael'Zorah thought frantically. The tactical plot showed that they now had a frigate on both sides, the one coming in from outside the system moving very fast directly at them, while the one blockading the Relay was beginning to accelerate in their direction. "At least they're probably wanting to take us alive."

Everyone looked at him. He slumped. "Yeah, I know, not something to look forward to. Not with Batarians." Taking a deep breath, he said, "Rig for self destruct. If we get caught, we might take them with us, and I don't want them knowing anything."

Zap'Ran nodded silently and worked at his console for a while. "Incoming projectiles," Tra'kin announced urgently, the ship immediately changing course as the helmsman took evasive action. Both shots missed, but came far closer than anyone was even remotely happy about. At the rate the Batarians were closing on them it was only a matter of time until they got hit, and with no way to fight back at all, they were screwed.

"Open comms," Rael'Zorah finally said, after yet another shot had barely grazed them, causing the barrier to lose a few percent of integrity.

"We're going to talk to them?" Lih'Sal asked, sounding surprised. "You think that will work?"

"No, but it's worth trying," the captain shrugged. "We don't have any other recourse, do we?"

"Comms active, captain."

"Unknown Batarian ships, break off pursuit. You are acting illegally and face Council punishment if you continue your action," he said, trying to sound confident.

Everyone in the bridge once again stared at him. Zap'Ran shook his head in wonder.

"Suit rat, the Council wouldn't bother to piss on you if you were burning to death," a Batarian voice replied, sounding amused. "Cease your futile efforts to escape and heave to or we'll blow you out of space."

Unfortunately, Rael'Zorah was fairly sure the damn Batarian was right about the Council, but that was irrelevant.

"You haven't managed to do that yet," he said. "Unlike us."

There was a pause, then the inbound ship fired again. "You got lucky, Quarian scum. Luck runs out."

The Tralket barely managed to divert course enough to avoid the incoming round. The Batarians were so close now that the next one was sure to hit.

Desperate, Rael'Zorah said, "Any ship hearing this, we are the Quarian vessel Tralket and we're under attack by the Batarian military acting in violation of Council law while disguised as pirates. We need help."

"That won't do anything," the Batarian laughed.

Then he exploded.

Everyone on the bridge gaped as the frigate hurtling towards them suddenly erupted in glowing plasma, as something punched a hole right through it from side to side and ripped a two hundred meter long gash through the vessel. Superheated internal atmosphere gushed from the wound, emitting an actinic violet glow on both sides. The ship immediately began tumbling, clearly utterly dead.

"Keelah," Zap'Ran whispered. "What did that?"

"The same thing that did that," Rael'Zorah said numbly, the holo display with an image of the second ship showing it had just had the exact same thing happen to it. Both Batarian vessels spun through space, fragments of hull surrounding them in an expanding cloud. None of them had ever seen a weapon that could produce such results, and it was clearly a weapon, not an accident. Certainly not with both having the same thing happen a few seconds apart.

"I'm picking up a lot of radiation coming from the ships," Tra'kin said, his voice uneven. "Looks like secondary emission from irradiated metal. It's already starting to fade."

Zap'ran swore under his breath, checking his own instruments, then sat back, his overall attitude that of someone who'd worked out something that horrified him.

"Gamma laser," he said faintly. "It had to have been a gamma laser. In the multi-gigawatt range at least. Nothing else could go through kinetic barriers like that and do so much damage so quickly."

Rael'Zorah stared at him, then looked back at the images of the pair of destroyed Batarian ships. The damage was in the form of a meter-wide slot cut neatly down both sides, which he had to admit was consistent with a laser of a power level he couldn't even fathom. And a gamma wavelength would maintain focus over millions of kilometers, although the precision required to hit a moving target at that range was almost incomprehensible. "Where did it come from?" he asked quietly.

"Triangulating the two hits puts the source at about four hundred and fifty thousand kilometers from us, ninety degrees port by forty two degrees up. But there's nothing there now," Zap'Ran replied. "Whoever it was is gone."

"No one has weapons like that," Lih'Sal said, his voice shaking. "I didn't think it was possible even in theory."

They looked at each other in silence for some time.

Eventually Rael'Zorah leaned forward and put his finger on the comms transmit button. Licking his lips, he said, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," a voice said a second later, in perfect Keelish.

He very gently let go of the button and turned to his crew. "Let's go home," he said. "We've got a report to make."

Everyone got back to work in total silence, setting a course to the Relay with competence underlaid by a feeling of detached disbelief mixed with gratitude.


February 2126
1.3 light years from HD291789
Onboard CCF scout ship
Like A Greased Weasel

#We're going to get in a lot of trouble for that, Commander.#

"We didn't have a choice, Fess," Commander DiGriz sighed. "You saw it, we all did. Those guys weren't going to make it and they really, really tried hard. That trick with the supercharged cannon was inspired. And the other lot were acting as pirates, don't forget, illegal under their own laws, the Citadel ones, and ours too. If any of the Citadel species' militaries had run into them, they'd have taken them out on the spot. Piracy is a capital crime as far as they're concerned. And Batarians from what we've learned are slaver bastards too."

#True. Still, the IGCC is going to have a lot of questions for us. And IS is going to be annoyed we spread planium all over the place.#

"We'll get rid of the wrecks in the disposal zone and let the military and tech guys look over them by remote," DiGriz replied. "First time they'll have had a chance to really investigate any of the ships of one of these species, so there's that. And cleaning up the previous system isn't too hard, most of the planium won't escape the gravity well of the planet they were close to, so it'll end up falling into the atmosphere sooner or later which should make it safe enough. A planet that size won't be bothered if we end up destabilizing it to get rid of it. And it's not like that system is one we're too interested in anyway."

The small crew watched through the tiny probe monitoring the distant star system as the ship they'd known by the reference code 'D-19-216' entered the superluminal conduit formed by the network terminal in a shower of special effects, instantly accelerated to multiple millions of times the speed of light. #Ingenious people,# Fess commented. #I wonder why those other ones were chasing them so determinedly?#

"No idea." DiGriz shrugged. "Not our job to know, really. We're just monitoring what happens with anyone who's poking around looking for the terminal and collecting data. But I hope they make it home all right. They seem interesting."

#The other end of the terminal link has no vessels near it so they should be fine,# the AI replied.

"Good. Right, then, I'm going to go throw myself on the possibly non-existent mercy of the IGCC and CCF, while you guys get the transporter probe ready to move those wrecks. Assuming I don't get relieved of command on the spot we'll go and push what's left of the other ships into that gas giant after getting rid of these ones. No reason to let anyone who comes past work out what happened. Might get traced back to D-19-216 if nothing else."

"Yes, Commander," the small ship's second in command replied, nodding to him as he got up. "Good luck."

"I may need it," he said with a small smile, before heading to his cabin for some privacy during what was likely to be a very awkward conversation with his superiors.

He was right.

It was.