Treading the Line [FT Closed]

[Intersteller Terra]

Treading the Line

Space wasn't ripped asunder, nor was there some blinding flash of brilliant light to denote the fracturing of space and time that usually heralded the coming of faster than light travellers. Instead space just seemed to twist, gravity warped and turned not really resisting to the mechanisms of those that had mastered it. It was moulded and turned creased and folded silently the void almost invisible to the naked eye. What formed out of this moulding of space was a gateway of sorts a bubble in space that could take you from one point in the galaxy to the other almost instantly, A wormhole from one system to another.

From the fold in space a small fleet slowly materialised, those who might be looking with their optical sensors would see a wobbly image first as if looking at a reflection from a puddle. Slowly becoming more and more solid as they exited the event horizon. Three large ships would traverse back into real space. Their hulls and off white colour with the a shock of blue and red strips over the centre of the hull. Vaguely reminiscent of a sword hilt the vessel carried three smaller vessels on its hull, too large to be carried in an internal hangar the ships nestled into specially designed docking bays on the outer hull of the vessel making them seem like bulges in the vessels armour from far away.

The fleets commander sat board on his command chair on the bridge of the lead vessel. Captain First Rate George Piscal was preparing to go through the motions again, this was the 67th system he and his fleet had visited in just under a year. They were searching for potential worlds that the United Star Commonwealth could colonise. It had started out as an important mission but one that really wouldn't be enacted upon till the time came for the next wave of colonisation missions. Now it was a race against time to find as many human habitable worlds as possible, the USC had started a campaign of stabilisation across Beta. They had been taking in refugees from war zones and conflicts, everyone and anyone was to be taken in and housed. This had worked for a while but it had proven difficult to integrate the refugees into USC society in such a sort space of time. Tensions had risen on the more populated worlds leading to a few outbreaks of violence.

George had always thought a small amount of violence was to bee expected when you thrust people and aliens of different civilisations and world views together without due course or attention. So he hadn't been surprised when he'd seen the net news when violence had broken out. On the lesser populated colonies there had been no trouble with ample space to move and breathe both the people of the USC and the refugees could live side by side and in some ways even start to flourish. It was then that benefactors stepped in, Rich men and women of the mega corps offering pay for and settle the refugees on new virgin worlds either fit for terraforming or capable of comfortably allowing for habitation. There had been some wheeling and dealing in the back ground this had been made obvious when his orders had changed to find habitable worlds instead of a blanket exploration mission of the sector.

So now here he was in search of earth or earth like worlds that could be used to house both humans the the refugees brought to safety. It wasn't an easy task, since his orders had changed they had surveyed nineteen systems none of which had been vaguely suitable for habitation. Most of them being lifeless systems with small rocky worlds and super jovians. He had little hope that this system would be any better. Satellite observations from the Kalder Telescope in orbit around the Galadan Sun had reported seeing several dips in the suns light which told NASA that there was worlds around the planet and that some even had atmospheres but a much closer looks was needed and that was why they were here.

“Transition to real space complete Captain” KAT spoke out from the console next to him. KAT was one of the resident Shipboard AI’s like every member of the crew she was unique in her own way. Unlike many AI’s in the Commonwealth she enjoyed interacting with the crew on a more physical level choosing to spend much of her time uploaded to a specially created Android body that he had some how managed to get past regulations. She was simply confirming what had been passed through the ships net to everyones Wetware implants.

“Thank you KAT did all the vessels transition completely?” George asked already knowing that the data was being collected.

“Affirmative Captain The Pelion, Pharma and Pelican all transitioned completely back into normal space. All captains are requesting orders and assignments seems they are eager to get this system out of the way.” KAT replied tapping away at her station. For an android she was definitely attractive on the plain side of the scale. Android bodies were regulated there had been to much controversy about how real Androids were becoming and there had a while ago been laws made to ensure that you could always tell if someone was an Android, this was mainly done by heavily restricting the the materials used to make the synthetic skin. Although people had moved on since then and Androids were far more accepted as a means of AI interaction there were still some heavy resistance in the upper governments. Still despite her doll like appearance KAT had a shock of short auburn hair and an hour glass figure that was covered up by the general issue overalls of the USC navy. She was also his personal Adjutant and secretary.

“Very well same orders as usual begin launching probes divvy out responsibility of inner middle and outer systems bodies.” George spoke not really paying attention it had become second nature to him now. He loved the prospect of going out and finding new worlds and pushing the frontiers of Commonwealth knowledge. As a boy he had imagined going into the stars and exploring like the old explorers hundreds of years ago discovering new and wondrous things on the Thompson, but by all the gods in the galaxy it could be damned boring and monotonous. “If anyone needs me i’ll be in my office KAT you have the bridge.”

“Aye Aye Captain” KAT replied standing up from her station as George got up from his seat. George took a look around the bridge for a moment it was brightly it with officers and bridge staff moving about and working at their stations in the centre was the captains chair. It was raised on a podium in a purely symbolic gesture. In reality all of the work was done around him at the terminals and computer banks and that lined the walls and formed banks of terminals leading up to the front view screen. It was a large room almost 20 meters wide and 30 long. Towards the rear was the main bridge entrance flanked by two burley marines in their Type 6 combat armour. Just before that was the tactical area a large area with 7 couches all facing inwards most of which were filled by bridge stuff officers given the role of coordinating the fleet and its assets. Although he could flow into the virtual net himself wirelessly and join those on the couches in a battle situation stresses and all manner of energies immured could really mess with the signal and potentially cause harm to the human brain. The couches were there to provide an uninterrupted and direct link the the fleets net.

George walked passed it all, Passing the marines who snapped off a salute before he left the two on the other side doing the same. The corridors were equally as bright, painted white with gun metal grey on much of the grating and floor paneling. the only real colour was either on the navy blue overalls of the crew members moving about or the coloured striped on the walls that told you which way various parts of the ship were. He didn't really need to know where he was going he had paced up and down every main hallway and side hatchway. A few minutes and a lift ride George made his way into the mess hall grabbing a tray and looking at the choice he could have ordered it to his personal office but he liked to sit and feel the buzz of the room. You could tell a lot about the mood of the crew when you were in the mess hall the communal area where most people came to socialise.

He knew they had been cooped up in the ship for a fair few months now and it was starting to wear on his men and women. He mess hall wasn't somber but it was curt, people were tense and you could tell. Months of searching for worlds and not one chance to stretch your legs would do that, he would have to see about letting crew off on the next habitable world or make his way back to Commonwealth space, a thought he didn't particularly savour.

As George sat to eat the fleet was separating the three large tender vessels moving apart to their prospective orbits around the sun of this system. Their powerful sensors pining the void around them looking for anything that might bounce the signal back. If they did find something one of their three smaller survey vessels would be sent to investigate take samples and communicate their findings back to the mother ship to be communicated back to NASA. This wasn't the only method of surveying the fleet had to hand either, as soon as they had exited into normal space once again the fleet of ships had been firing off an almost endless stream of probes and other survey equipment meant to create a general overall picture of the system. The combined sensor net that was being broadcasted out from the fleet forming to make an almost complete picture of the space around them.

It would take a few days to collate the sensor data to map an accurate picture of the system, but take even longer if they found any worlds really worth surveying. It was standard procedure to investigate any potentially interesting stellar bodies or objects with one of the smaller craft attached to the hull of this vessel. If a complete survey couldn't be complete survey couldn't be achieved in in a feasible amount of time a market would be placed for a follow up survey later on either by a dedicated survey team or by themselves again later on. George took a sip of his coffee and considered that for a moment, wondering just how humans had managed to normalise exploring of the frontier. It almost made things boring.

[Valinon]

System DASS-IAST-044432.2

Astronomical surveys long passed from normalised monotony to staid common practice in the Raumreich Oversector. Centuries earlier, the Type K7 V primary of the system attracted the attention of the Department of Aerospace Stewardship (DASS) and Imperial Academy of Science and Technology (IAST) joint astrography initiatives that lent the main sequence star and its collection of rocky world and jovians half of its designation. The two agencies were responsible for many charts of the Raumreich near Valinor space. After dutiful cataloging and tertiary navigation surveys were completed, system 044432.2 was left to the same undisturbed oblivion it knew before its unanticipated inspection. Possessing no developed indigenous civilisations nor considerable strategic value, it failed to be included into the Interstellar Conservancy--the collection of systems enjoying direct imperial protection. It failed again to attract notice when a joint treaty allowed for Taraskovyan colonisation several light decades away. 044432.2 finally received a grudging acknowledge in the long cold war between the Ortagan Hegemony and Valinon when concerns of Ortagan deep penetration secured it inclusion in one of the vast surveillance operations sustained by the Kriegsmarine.

The four surveillance clusters remained the only permanent evidence any civilisation ever visited the system along the trailing edge of the Raumreich. Each one was led by a recon drone, an oblong trapezoid coated in smart-paint with limited gravetic propulsion whose designation was a long serial number, a legacy of when the Kriegsmarine produced such drones by bulk lots and readily changed designs to thwart Hegemonic detection. The drones were escorted by a trio of laser mines, simple lance-shaped guardians with stripped down sensors and two weapon emplacements. There was no purpose in lavishing sensor suites and extensive intelligence on devices whose only purpose was to shield and distract from a much more capable set of eyes and a marginally better brain. In standard Kriegsmarine procedure, the clusters were deployed in areas believed to offer too great a temptation for Ortagan warships or pirates to ignore. Two monitored the system ecliptic; one balefully watched the largest jovian, and another orbited close to the primary in the asteroid belt that was the debris of an ancient planet’s fatal encounter with the star’s Roche limit.

After the cold war blazed into the Great March War, the recon drones and their escorts languished back into obscurity. The post-war order saw the creation of the League of the Raumreich and, later, the League Anti-Piracy Effort (LAPE). Never parsimonious enough to pass a chance at virtually free good will, the Admiralty offered the services of many older surveillance clusters to LAPE command. The four clusters were visited--the first time in decades--by a cruiser and an electronic warfare frigate carrying updated equipment and better localised AIs.

The refit was a short-lived hiatus from the drones’ empty hours. There was the occasional visit by LAPE warships, not always Valinor, but there were no pirates. The Raumreich’s reputation for dealing with those that legally did not even count as persons under prevailing international law preceded it across the volumes, and there were far more tempting targets as the ancient network of alliances and stellar states surrounding the Solarian Reaches died. Quirks developed in the AI work group that managed the drones. Their forms became worn and infrastructure underlying their updated brains, eyes, and ears were was increasingly dated. A distant Kriegsmarine RI, checking on the clusters from Alpha Centauri, determined the quirks and equipment were beyond repair. The RI marked all four clusters for replacement within the next decade, recommending it be a near-term redeployment from LAPE local reserves in the Archangel system. The recon drones endured, unaware their uneventful mission was soon to be exchanged for a very permanent oblivion.

Circumstances conspired to give the 044432.2 a crescendo before their self-destruct authorisation were transmitted. The sudden opening of a wormhole and arrival of three ships set off the entirety of the nearest drone’s sensor suit--Foward mass detectors, neutrino scanners, gravetic sensors, and even the older Lidar system not removed during the refit. The return to N-space, drive, and power signatures momentarily led to the assumption that this was an unscheduled patrol by one of the Inner March navies, until the signatures and optical data failed to match any warships registered in the LAPE CIC archives. Chastened for its mistake by the circumstances of its location, the drone in the mid-system ecliptic tagged the arrival and alerted the other AIs in the work group. It then went dark, ceasing all but passive sensor observation and drawing its laser mine guardians closer to it while evaluating potential escape routes. A star system consists largely of vacant nothingness, but the less than light second gap between the drone and accelerating cruisers. The AI notified its comrades of its likelihood of survival--not optimistic--and stated it would feed any and all data it could for the duration of the mission.

Benefitting from distance if not greater capacity, the other AIs moved into a pattern worked out centuries ago and periodically reevaluated, sometimes by programming requirement and sometimes by being a simple idle task to run. The drone nearest the primary activated its gravimetrics in short burst, driving itself toward a metal-rich asteroid it designated as a possible shield while adjusting its smart-paint and trimming its energy profile. The inner ecliptic drone reoriented using retard thrust burst, maneuvering away from its original course that would see it silhouetted by the terrestrial planet nearest the primary and bringing its passive sensors to bear on the unidentified formation. The AI watching the jovian--second from the primary--was more than half the source of the ‘quirks’ noted by the RI years earlier and current leader of the working group. It quipped in d-code chitter to the others about the pointless of current posture and recommended full active sweeps on the arrivals to feed the most data possible to the Office of Kriegsmarine Intelligence (OKI). Data would come at the cost of only half of local assets, at most. It was quickly countermanded by a trio of derisive blips and chirps along the drones shared ansible connection. Mission parameters clearly favoured survival whenever possible--never mind the parameters were written by a leutnant long ago made a Kapitän and then a member of the Yaltan parliament a decade ago.

Acknowledging rightful defeat, the AI compiled the nearest drone’s data and the packet to Alpha Centauri via the ansible. It called for redundancy networking between the two ecliptic drones and cut out the drone nearest the star, establishing it as the in-system agent should the network fail. Dividing the network into the to-live and the live-nots was as close to churlish as the drone’s personality could manage. It activated its gravimetrics and slunk toward the jovian’s upper clouds, waiting for further instructions and contemplating if it was possible to salvage any of the laser mines should the ecliptic drones be destroyed.

---

Message To: Zaretsky, Iona, FK CO - HMS Concordia & allied escorts, KMMilLAPEDIR
Message From: Vandermeer, Lord Arthur, KADM Admiralty Staff - CO LAPE Operations Group, KMMilLAPEDIR
Message RE: Priority Reassignment (Interception)
MesNCRY: HIMKM, LEAGSUBSET, LVL: Crimson | NCRYLVL: Alpha-Locem-2; PRIORITY: FLASH | FLASH LOC \ COV:ZAR:CO: PRIORITY / EYES

LAPE-designated surveillance assets in DASS-IAST-044432.2 report system intrusion by three unknown vessels of cruiser class equivalents. OKI analysis assesses these to be warships of unknown registry or potential pirates violating the League exclusion zone. Current reconnaissance data showed evidence of unusual behavior, consistent with prevailing international trends for system survey.

Regardless of intentions, the Admiralty will not tolerate violation of any systems within the exclusion zone. Your command is hereby subject to urgent reassignment from standard LAPE patrol routines and ordered to intercept the unidentified warships. Use of all possible force is authorised. Orders are being sent to ARCH-HQ to render any additional assistance as requested. Request assistance from IAF commands rather than additional LAPE assets in the patrol volume. Assuming a civilian encounter, use of Huguenot Protocol is authorised.

Surveillance data packet and additional materials attached.

Archangel system

HMS Concordia was a Remembrance-class cruiser, the newest manned cruiser variant in the Kriegsmarine’s service. A decade earlier, it was assumed the Visigoth-class cruisers would be the last class of manned cruisers for a service generation or longer. That was before Verge Security’s need for patrol ships surged and the Admiralty agreed to decommission the older Kronzprinz Viktor-class cruisers still in service. While the war-era cruisers were sold to OVA and its client states, the Bureau of Ships rushed headlong into an expanded program of new cruiser construction including the Grimscribe-class CA(D)s, Visigoth-class CAs, and newly designed Remembrances.

Concordia and her sisters were 1,400 metre-long swept-back forms designed primarily as screening missile combatants and long-range patrol platforms. Two dedicated arrays of radiation fins allowed her oversized Niling d-sinks to be rapidly vented and allowed her to sustain low-signature profiles for longer than either the Visigoth-class cruisers or aging Lion-class frigates that formed much of the fleet’s manned screening ships. She would not dive into a close-range energy engagement, but a complement of 10 150-centimetre grasers in each broadside gave her a decent chance of fighting her way out of a knife fight if pressed. The cruiser was also outfitted with additional drone EW/ECM support than the larger Visigoths, reducing its drone fighter complement for additional capabilities in its escort and patrolling mission profiles.

Concordia was outbound from Falasmayon, the only terrestrial world in the Archangel system. The Dominion of Archangel included the least amount of planetary real estate of any dominion. The F-class white primary claimed only two planets, terrestrial Falasmayon and jovian Gabriel. Falasmayon remained the most populous planetary system, but the development of ring habitats and several Hamilton cylinders around Gabriel was strong evidence this distinction would not last indefinitely. Finally, the strange collection of planetary debris orbiting beyond Gabriel--known as the Ruin--was the initial clue for the reason for Archangel’s sparse collection of planets. It was the wreck of large terrestrial that did not survive the brush with a rogue jovian that visited Archangel millennia before any colonists reached what would become the Raumreich’s Inner Marches. The jovian reworked most of the system during its brief--in astronomical concepts of time--terrible visit. Modelling and theory were finally confirmed more than a half century ago when the planet was found prowling the interstellar void light centuries from the Raumreich, hurtling toward the galactic core.

At one-quarter engine power, the cruiser was not mounting any sort of challenge to the rogue jovian’s ancient course. It was escorted by two Ralaxath-class heavy destroyers--the harsh, angular warships of the Imperial Fleets of Vaku clashed with the Kriegsmarine’s more elegant aesthetic. But the visible discrepancies hid commonalities in interior architecture, which traded capabilities for comforts, and a shared approach for naval tactics and doctrine driven by the long relationship between the Valinor and the Raumreich’s only non-Terran power.

The corridors Fregattenkapitän Iona Zaretsky strolled down were a mixture of steel grey, white, and black. Like almost all warships, they were unmarked. Navigating one of Her Majesty’s warships came through a mixture of n-plant telltales and habitual memorisation of your home away from the Demesne. Iona’s vision swam more with news-blurbs and the sonorous tones of some Yaltan local news service--tracking to see what team carried the Alderney Prix, the preeminent competition of the glide season. The time difference between standard and Yaltan local did not help make the Overdue Punch Cohort’s performance look any better, and their placing would not look any better once Iona viewed his updated accounts. He took a sharp breath, eyes still buzzing with a mixture of stims and fatigue from the morning run. The previous night left little other possibility for functioning so early without assistance.

A typical LAPE patrol routine involved the long run out and the short run. A larger group was sent out from the Inner Marches or Alpha Centauri to the Raumreich’s fringe, the outer Solarian Reaches, or the Lanthine Lee for several months if not an entire year--the long run. The short run came after a stop in port and some of the task force’s units departing for home. The Concordia led a task force of its Vaku escorts and two Lion-class frigates from Her Imperial Majesty’s Falas High Fleet on the long run extending into the Great March and beyond. The Falas High Fleet was the only dominion navy left of any appreciable size, a privilege jealously guarded by the first system to accede to the star empire. Arriving in Archangel marked the frigates homecoming, having already served in a previous LAPE patrol before joining Iona’s command, and they remained at HMFSS Hereas some light minutes behind Iona and his ship.

The hospitality of the frigates’ officers lingered. Largesse was expected when a LAPE unit left its comrades for its home port, but the captains and their officers were dedicated to single-handedly overcoming the centuries-long Falas reputation for dour personalities and stale-dry humour. Trading any of the task force’s wardrooms for one reserved on the Hereas was the only way to accommodate so much food, wine, and liquor. It was also needed when Cheejhakhar (roughly translated to First Fang or Heir-Officer) ko Marang appeared with seven of the destroyers’ officer contingent, willing to trade arakh and sukhar may’ya for whisky and beer. The Vaku did not always refuse to participate in these gatherings, but appropriate, demurring excuses were frequently the response received. Iona suspected the Falas were aware that their fellow commanders were not inclined to demur given how quickly gingered beef, a peculiar flavor the Vaku loved, was brought to the stable by the stewards.

It was a potent mixture in every sense of the word. Iona regretted--not for the first time--his accommodation for Ian Jaepes, his executive officer, who preferred the morning watch and retired early from the dinner. It was a success in many senses, but the one Iona most preferred was the deeper quiet currently prevailing throughout the officers’ quarters. The Reichswehr sentries even moved with an added measure of silence, aware of the danger that lurked behind more than one closed doors. The pair at the open blast door from the main corridor drew to attention as Iona passed. He returned it but quickly made for his cabin.

‘Good morning, Kapitän,’ the Reichswehr gefreiter in his grey duty uniform saluted as Iona approach his cabin.

‘Morning, Choudry. Tell me has…’ Iona jabbed a thumb at his door.

‘Yes, sir, Chief Steward Orsi left several minutes ago. He asked me to pass along that he will be holding your routine traffic until after 0930.’

Iona nodded, ‘And I will look favourably on your efforts to screen any additional interlopers this morning.’

‘Understood, sir.’

Iona nodded as the door open. Less than a second after it shut the news telltale feeds and audio fled from his head and flowed into the room. The telltales became muted standalone hologram screens near his day cabin’s centre, while the audio rose to something just above the audible range without focusing his senses.

His quarters were not as large as those reserved for cruiser captains in the Imperial Verniian Navy or the Federated Navy of New Ortaga, but it was a considerable improvement from the old Kronprinz Viktors and the Romanov-class destroyer that was his first superluminal command. The day cabin was a mixture of the standardised bulkhead- and wall- fitted furniture common through the Kriegsmarine and some personal touches. Two couches were mounted in between a selection of covered bookcases and marked with the Concordia’s crest. A quartet of steel and leather low chairs gathered at each corner of a low table that rose from the floor. One panel was devoid of a bookcase, instead bearing a Lapithesean sand sculpture made of the glassed regolith from Alpha Centauri’s major industrial hub. In front the sculpture was a small, plain sideboard where a carafe of coffee and its service waited next to a plate of hard rolls, cheese, and some fruit.

The smell of fresh bread softly permeated the cabin as the low table recessed into the floor. Iona pushed himself onto the front balls of his feet and fell forward into the space vacated by the table, falling into a pattern of stretches in line with his usual routine. He rose, peeled off his tracksuit jacket, and grabbed a roll while watching the Overdue Punch Cohort’s multi-unit racing drone be reduced to scrap when the Snatkin Team’s quadruped drone slammed it into the drome’s containment field.

It was not money considered well spent. Leaving half the roll behind, Iona walked through the day cabin, his office, and into the bunk with its private head. A luxury Iona was very inclined to be thankful for this morning. He was enjoying a shower when the calm was shattered. The Yaltan news feed was silenced, there was an abrupt keening indicating a priority message, and all other priorities outside his muse were subverted by the flashed message. Expecting a direct unisphere link, Iona was surprised when the priority message was instead a set of text order with a massive data packet. He sat on his bed, and pooled the data into his n-plants.

Before completing the sifting with his muse, he called the bridge.

’XO,’ came the calm tone in his skull-phone, low even with the modifications brought with sub-vocalisation.

’Are there any additional messages from LAPE-OG or the Admiralty?’

‘No, there was only the eyes-only flash. I assumed your explanation would be forthcoming. However, I called up the next watch early and alerted the section chiefs.’

‘I’m sending you the packet. We are being reassigned. Bring us to three-fourths power and take us to the nearest clear jump area. Contact ko Marang and nar Caxki and workout a course--standard pre-intercept dark reentry. Then take us to general quarters when we are 10 minutes from jumping. I will be on the bridge shortly.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Iona stood and moved toward the sealed locker that held his skinsuit.

******

Iona walked onto the bridge when the klaxons for general quarters were dimming throughout the ship. Oberleutnant DuMorne and Leutnant Jaya, respectively his tactical officer and assistant communications officer stood by to let him pass.

The Concordia’s bridge was a rounded, diamond-shaped room with a modest tactical conference area sunk into the centre, a ramp swept down from the upper catwalk. Six circular section chief stations were grouped in pairs, four near the blast door, two between the conference area and the separate circle of senior officers’ stations with Iona’s at the center. Scattered around the catwalk were eight recessed half circles for the remaining bridge staff, and a larger circle ahead of the senior officers was the domain of the helmsman and the navigator.

Bathed in the dull reddish light of battle stations, the lights and holograms of each individual station, the main tactical display, and the glowing star system in the conference area’s holotank stood out like beacons. Among the murmurs of the bridge crew and section chiefs, a dark, stupendously tall figure eyed the holotank.

Korvettenkapitän Aulay MacConnell, Iona’s XO, was the tall shadow whose skinsuit even seemed to strain to contain his tall, thin frame. MacConnell was a native of Grawsam’s Star, a Office of Verge of Affairs client state in the Lanthine Lee. The system was one of countless colonies scattered by some forgotten concern that experienced technological recession when its parent gave up existence. Grawsam’s was moderately unique in that its backslide did not involve the common loss of superluminal travel. It lost--among other technologies--artificial gravity for several centuries before OVA established contact. Reliance on simulated gravity colonies in the form of smaller asteroids and Cole bubbles led to the Consolidated System’s citizens experiencing a range of physical divergence. MacConnell was born on a Cole bubble; his father joined the Imperial Verge Police when Grawsam’s was moving into OVA’s expansive orbit and cashed in more than a decade of service for imperial citizenship, relocation to Alpha Centauri, and a suite of expensive medical procedures for his family. MacConnell carried the legacy of his birth in his frame, but medichines and a variety of specialised gene-baths eliminated his weakness to standard gravity without medication and a strict physical regimen well before he enlisted with the Imperial Armed Forces.

He retained some of his home’s adaptation, though. Iona had been on hand to see MacConnell handle a captured slaver who got free of his Reichswehr gaolers when the hanger bay was in microgravity. The escape was short-lived and ended in a bloody, if not lethal, display of the XO’s reflexes.

MacConnel looked up from the hologram of Archangel, his pale grey eyes etched with lines of active n-plants and wetware.

‘The destroyers are ready for jump, and I pinged the local surveillance assets. Bix is coordinating with the AIs...they are an interesting lot,’ the XO’s voice was quiet with a vague rasp.

Bix, one of the KM’s template RIs, hovered above the holotank as a small portrait, ‘They were all marked for replacement eight years ago, and it was overdue.’

‘We can sort out their status if they survive their current encounter. Do they suspect their ansible connection is compromised?’

‘They’ve not detected it, if so, but there hardware is aged enough to be suspect. Their working group abandoned any sort of transmission outside the ansible as soon as the new contacts arrived. Not that it matters, the last non-ansible contact was a laser-beam transmission more than 100 years ago,’ MacConnell changed the hologram to one of DASS-IAST-044432.2.

Iona unclipped his helmet and rested it at the edge of the plot, ‘Equal odds this is a pirate feeler or some refugees blown in from beyond the C-S Arm.’

Oberleutnant Anaria, the communications officer, approached, ‘Kapitän, XO, the task force’s last pre-jump sync is confirmed. We have marked the final five minutes and are completing jump-prep.’

‘Thank you, leutnant, prepare the usual full challenge for general broadcast once we engage.. XO, I want us ready to jump in and introduce our new arrivals to the error of treading into the exclusion zone as soon as the working group provides an update. If they are going to divide themselves, they are especially stupid pirates, and we’ll avail ourselves of their stupidity.’

‘Aye, sir.’

System DASS-IAST-044432.2

The mixture of void and starfield a light hour below the system primary and the ecliptic rippled and distorted in three distinct points separated by 10 million kilometres each. Keeping each other in their powered missile envelope, the Concordia, IFS N’Tanya, and IFS Ghorah completed their coordinated jump spread. The smartpaint covering the hulls of each warship went to maximum absorption and mimicflage before leaving Archangel. Emissions were held to a minimum and the ships dumped their waste heat and energies into their Niling D-sinks rather than vent any radiation.

Bix summoned the working group to account for the intruders latest moments and update their status. The plots filled with projected points of intercept while the Concordia’s gunners, secluded in the null-realities of gun-space contemplated the various astrography and targets of potential engagements.

[Intersteller Terra]

System DASS-IAST-044432.2
NASA Exploration fleet 32209
Codename: Orion Ops

The sensors had picked it up a few hours into their initial arrival the powerful active sensors of the three main survey ships pining all around them for millions and millions of Kilometers. Space was big but eventually readings were returned as they crossed the void of space. What they had found had stirred up the crew and had taken the survey mission from a feeling of boring routine to excitement, they had come accross an artificial construct something every survey crew hoped that they would. The Commonwealth had come accross other alien life before, it had started off with the Russian Empire upon first colonisation of Thompson the capital of the Commonwealth they had given the then council of earth a codex of all they had found in the universe the meeting had been fruitful but caused more than a tidal wave of questions about the very origins of humanity something that the theory of fractal earths did very little to solve.

Then they had come accross the Maii'kal, dreadful beasts with only the destruction of the human race in their minds. They had invaded Thompson some time after the wormhole to earth had collapsed and only by sheer luck did the fledgeling world manage to beat them back and win the day. There had been other incidents both good and bad but it the thought that it could be another hostile alien race or some horror on an intersteller level never quite eclipsed the excitment one felt by discovering something new. George had made his way back to the bridge as soon as the first readings had came through, NASA guidelines dictated that any artificial constructs should take priority unless it was a class M world and some other specific circumstances should take priority over other steller objects when performing closer surveys and inspections.

The vessel was just approaching the object now, sat in low orbit around the primary jovian in the system. It was small so small infact that if the fleet had been in any other position it probably wouldnt have been detected at all atleast not untill a closer look at taken at the jovian it was in orbit around. The small ship was no more than 30 meters in length, in Commonwealth Naval classification it was a cutter class ship usually delegated to customs patrols or in atmosphere insertions or bombardments. For NASA they had been repurposed all their weapons removed and replaced with advanced sensors and all manner of equipment to ascertain important information about object of interest in a solar system.

Jack Fimmer sat cramped in the three man cockpit in the pilots seat slowly edging the small survey vessel towards the non natural object. This close they could see it clearly through the optical cameras. A larger object orbited by three smaller objects of unknown origin and composition. Judging by the EM readings it was some sort of probe, some watcher mechanism designed to watch over the system.

"Right thats close enough..." The Ships commander stated. Commander Harker was a young offer straight out of the academy. They were all young and fresh out of the acedmy it just so happened that Jack had a year up on the rest of them, he would have been commander of the vessel if it wasnt for his skills piloting the damn things. It was said that he could park the damn thing in a multi plex and still have space to spare.

"Bringing her to a stop... object is currently three thousand two hundred kilometers ahead of us." Jack replied as he began a reverse thrust burn to bring the small ship into an orbit around the jovian matching the objects trajectory.

"Begin scans and launch the feelers." Harker announced putting on his best big boy voice, no doubt Captain Piscal was listening in along with the rest of the fleet. Next to him Travis Gallagher began pressing buttons he was the sensor officer and in charge of launching the "feelers". Feelers was a term coined for the thousands of hair length strands of nano machines that where fired from the hull of the ship, designed to spread out and cover an area of space the nano machines remained largely inert untill they reached a solid object, instantly using the resources around them they would self replicate and beging to sample the surroundings sending back information to the survey vessel whilst burrowing deeper looking for any wiring they might be able to tap into. They didnt return the most indepth information about the target of the fleets intrigue but they did return enough to gain a good understanding of the object and any potential computer systems inside.

The fleet had spread out by this point, although the real focus was on the unknown object around the primary jovian in the system. The USCS Pharma had made itsway inwards towards the systems primary star pining the bodies around it and tagging objects of interest for its flottila of three survay vessels thats were even now probing planetoids and other objects of interest for their mineral and material compositions aswell as taking samples of atmopsheres. The system was rich in some needed materials and minerals, and one of the planets could be a possible colony but it wasnt ideal for human inhabitation and would need terraforming to make it ideal. Still it was early days they would be in the system for the next few days at least taking more and more samples there was just so much going on in a Solar system that it was possible to spend a normal humans entire life span exploring and still never truely find out everything about a solar system.

[Valinon]

System DASS-IAST-044432.2

The recon drone in the jovian planet’s upper atmosphere selected a course of action presupposing the new arrivals were pirates, slavers, scavengers, or similar undesirables. Pirates and slavers trawled near the ecliptic, searching for easy prey; scavengers, smugglers, and other illicit operators favoured planets and small bodies that allowed for an easily established base of operations. The terrestrial world in the inner system provided a convenient target, despite its corrosive atmosphere, and there was no shortage of asteroids and other small planetoids in the system.

The AI assumed the outbound craft (typed as a light attack craft, shuttle, or transport) would focus on asteroids captured by the jovian’s immense gravitational pull. It watched and decided against activating its gravimetrics to drift back into the atmosphere, more concerned with acquiring more data than possibly giving away its position. The decision was rewarded when the recon clusters’ local network was joined by a Kriegsmarine RI, announcing the arrival of a LAPE patrol. However, the AI soon realized its decisions had brought it far down the path of hubris. The craft approached the jovian, then it descended into the upper atmosphere, and it continued on a course that matched the drone and its escorting mines.

The drones portfolio of options dwindled as the craft approached. It fed data to the network but did not transmit outside the ansible sync. When the approaching ship breached the 10,000 kilometre perimeter, the AI resolved its course of action. It fed targeting resolutions to the mines, prepared its gravimetrics, and transmitted a final cutout message to the rest of the working group and the RI.

There was little cause for optimism. The mines were meant as a temporary deterrent. Briefly, the AI contemplated the circumstances leading it to be counted among the live-nots. Conditional or ironic…?

The puzzling was interrupted by a series of sensor alarms as the ship painted it with active sensors and started to deploy nanite filament structures, small enough to be difficult to track even at this proximity. The drone acted.

Two of the mines trailing behind the drone reoriented radically, bringing both their laser clusters to bear. Four beams of concentrated energy and light lanced toward the ship’s bow. The drone activated all its gravimetrics turning itself toward the swirling clouds of the upper atmosphere and descending rapidly with its remaining mine hugging close to its stern. There was a final d-code chitter. A promise of a final data packet if it survived. It released control of the working group to the drone near the primary. And initiated initial preparations for its micro-reactor’s self destruct.

---

‘--drone cut itself back to local control and is transferring group control to--’

DuMorne was cut off by Bix, ‘I subverted the transfer command. The recon clusters are under my control.’

Iona grimaced as the plot’s focused view of the gas giant was lanced with laser fire as the drone executed its escape attempt, ‘Comms, do we have enough traffic to make any significant assessment on what these ships may be doing?’

‘None, sir. Intercepted chatter is light. There is some standard plate tactical activity and operations coordination, but no significant identifiers. There is some laxity in their chatter. I’m not certain this is a frontline operation, Kapitän.’

‘It could be pirates, though they are not bound for success if this is their method of operation this far into the Solarian Reaches,’ Aulay eyed Iona. ‘Not that it matters.’

There is still a chance this is a screen for one of the militant groups operating along the inner S-C Arm, Iona subvocalised on the private net shared with his XO and Bix. What is the nearest RRTF designated for the patrol sector?

There is a battlecruiser division assigned from the junction defence groups in AC. One of the Falas BatRons acts as a secondary back up. Either could pull a red-eye through the junction, Aulay responded.

Either should be sufficient. Their decision to disperse across the system is unusual, and their profiles are producing mixed estimates from the CIC commune. We’re either looking at large destroyers or light cruisers.

‘Our mandate is clear enough. Take care of making sure we are not surprised by whatever reinforcements may be out there, XO. Helm, prepare for a micro-jump, transmit coordinates above the formation in the mid-system and I-formation positioning to our escorts. Guns, we will be coming in hot and putting that formation within our powered envelope. Preload fusion warheads for standard warning spread.’

Aulay drifted toward Oberleutnant Anaria, standing in her section, ‘Comms, send a priority request to LAPE Operations group and request a RRTF be placed on stand-by.’

‘Sound jump alert,’ Iona reached for his helmet.

‘Sounding jump alert, sir.’

******

The starfield nine million kilometers above the Commonwealth’s formation in the mid-system warped and distorted momentarily, a lengthening and manipulation of light pollution created by Verner drives returning to N-space. The three warships appeared in a long I-formation, the two destroyers facing their starboard broadside down toward the unidentified ships leading and trailing several thousand kilometres ahead and behind of the cruiser, respectively. The Concordia spanned a point in their centre, dorsal sections looking down upon the potential enemies. The warships shed the their camouflage and minimised emissions profiles. The black maximum absorption and starfield mimicry disappeared with the jump distortion. The Concordia’s black hull rippled with the Kriegsmarine’s preferred gunmetal, trimmed in a dulled gold around the profile edges, and each radiator fin was marked with the naval ensign, a crowned gold lion charged on a red field bordered in gold. The two Vaku destroyers mottled grey and brown of the Imperial Fleets, their bows marked with the red glyphs of the nar Ki’ra.

Multiple energy signatures spiked along the length of the warships before a snow of ECM/EW interference started to build in a growing sphere around them. However, a repeated message was broadcasted from the cruiser in Standard, Imperial English, Imperial German, Old Russian, Atoran, Uthani, and several other common Solarian Reaches and alien languages. After encounters with the trans-galactic Principality States, the default contact package also included a variant of old navigational Morse code. The leading destroyer translated in Vaku, the Greater Empire’s minor languages, and several other alien languages. While there was some slight differences due to translation, the message remained the same.

‘Attention unidentified vessels, this is the HMS Concordia, leading an international patrol of the League of the Raumreich. You are navigating a system under League protection without permission. You are requested and ordered to heave to and stand by for possible examination. Cut your drives and transmit identification information in the clear immediately. Failure to comply with these orders or any hostile action will be met with all necessary force.’

[Intersteller Terra]

George Piscal looked on in horror as the small survey vessel, dissappeared in a bloom of fire and expanding gas. One minute they had launched nono filament probes and the next the vessel was being consumed in a fireball for all to see on the main monitor. Klaxons began to blare as the Ships systems detected that there had been weapons fire and that the fleet may be in danger calling all crew members to action stations. Sensors went almost instantly from far reaching looking for steller objects and other phenominon to searching out for potential threats.

George ctonued to look on as the bloom of fire and explosive energy began to dissapate, the survey ship hadnt been obliterated but it now sported a huge gauging hole amidships. Sensor readings indicated that the energy blast from two of the objects surrounding the object in orbit around the jovian has ripped right through the weakly armour hull of the ship ripping through the ships reactor core and causing the massive explosion that had no doubt killed the whole crew before the explosive decompression could. He said a small prayer to all the gods that might be that the three crew members on the ship had probably died almost instantly.

Standard procedure when coming under attack was to call for assistance, the Navy always had fast response packs ready and waiting for when a situation like this arose. George however did not come to the conclusion straight away, he simply had not been in this situation before. He had just lost three of his crewmen and one of his survay ships something he had never dealt with before, when he stood there motionless KAT looked to him.

"Captain..." She spoke with an urgent tone trying to get him to snap out of his daze "Captain Orders?"

George blinked and looked at her vacantly for a moment, before seemingly remembering where he was and what he needed to do. Almost immidiately he straightend himself up and took the situation by the reigns, confidently dishing out orders. "Helm make sure we are out of range of that thing, bring all shields to maximum and fire of a QC back home and request assistance. Recall the rest of the fleet and the other survey vessels..."

He was cut off when the ships proximity alarms began blaring, turning to KAT he saw she was already processing the data and he was also receiving the details he needed. Clearly she was now in the computer mainframe of the computer swapping out of her android body to ensure that she can operate at maximum effectiveness. Turning he brought up the ships sensor display, three FTL signatures had been detected a virtual stones throw away from his ship. The three ships he could see through various feeds several football sized drones that the ship had spat out over the course of the past few hours to help build up a picture around the vessel could see the three vessels just on the periphery of they visual cameras capabilities. George looked at them his wetware implants allowing him to access feeds of those drones that could see the three ships visually.

Mentally he sent out an order to arm what weapons his ship had adorning its hull. The ship was an exploration vessel but it still had a token armarment meant to deter pirates and raiders that might be found in the void. His ship possed 20 missile tubes and 10 50mm Rail Cannons aswell as a Stormwrath Point defence system meant for knocking out fighters and missiles before they got within 2 million kilometers of the vessel. All in all the ship had very little in terms of fire power compared to the Morrigan Class Cruisers that were hopefully already prepping to make the journey to ensure that were protected whilst they got away. With the order dispatched he checked on the status of the remaining ships in his fleet. The other two survay craft were close by and not far out whilst the other cruisers in the system had reversed course and were making their way back to his ships they would take longer to get back however, he spent a second contemplating ordering them to make their own way back to the nearest Commonwealth colony but left it for now.

George returned his attention to the feeds coming in from the plethora of tiny drones that could see the three alien vessels. More and more data was flooding in as the ship turned its impressive sensor suite on the alien vessels whilst more and more drones were positioning themselves to take readings aswell. The largest ship was impressive clean and dominating quite clearly a both a warship and a statement of power all rolled into one. The other two however differed from the lead vessel, rugged with a darker hull they looked like they had been built to take punches and give them back and nothing else. He stood there studying them for a moment when he heard KAT speak in the back of his mind.

We are receiving a transmission from the lead vessel captain

George Piscal came back to reality with a mental click, opening his eyes and returning back to the bridge of his ship and not floating through a visual representation of the space around him built by by his networked wetware implants. Looking to Lieutenant Martin Gyle his lead Comms officer. "Mr Gyle KAT informs me we have an incoming message?"

"Yes Sir" Gyle replied running algorithms to translate "Seems its coming in in multiple dialects including forms of english, german and other languages."

"Do we have audio and visual?" Piscal asked.

"Just audio Captain" Gyle replied not looking up from his console.

"Play it place lieutenant" George spoke thanking his lucky stars that they hadnt just started firing at them. He found it interesting that many of the races that inhabited the solarian reaches were off-shoots of humanity. He listened to the message play back for him. Instantly KAT brought up the information about the Raumreich and those states that the Lexicon knew about. These people who had just blown up one of his craft and now were ordering him to stand down were apparenlty one of the many nations of the Raumreich, the ships profiles didnt quite match ones in the lexicon but there were enough similarities in the lead vessel to make a certain match that the lead ship atleast belonged to the Star Empire of Valinon.

George listened intently to the message, listening for anything that might mean that the man on the otherside meant to do more damage that had already been done. Turning to KAT he began to talk "How long till the reaction force makes a transistion?"

"20 minutes at most Captain, with all thats happening up at Mesca its taking time to muster the neccissary forces" KAT replied apparently working away at her console, even though it was far more likely she had an open direct link to the ships computer mainframe.

George looked at the images of the three vessels again wondering just what he should do. They had not opened fire just yet which was good. He wondered just how much he could negotiate with them, try and defuse the situation before more guns showed up and some real shooting started.

"Open a channel to the lead ship if you would" George ordered straightening out his captains jacket. "Audio only"

"Open Captain" one of the communications officers replied back

"Attention Concordia This is Captain George Piscal of the United Star Commonwealth Survey Vessel Pelion, we are on a routine survay Op and did not realise we had stumbled into your territory, we pose no threat to your ships or the Raumreich."

[Valinon]

System DASS-IAST-044432.2

‘CIC returns are all negative, Kapitän,’ Oberleutnant DuMorne’s eyes unglazed as she stopped her deep consultations with the networked RIs responsible for the cruiser’s information banks. ‘Power and engine signatures show some matches; none that rise outside the ranges of a false positive. There are no details on the United Star Commonwealth or a survey agency associated with any such state.’

ESS, MFA, and OVA aggregates are negative. A similar name is referenced in Verge Security monitoring reports more than nine light centuries from the Losieda Trade Corridor’s intersection with the Sagittarius Arm. Details are similarly absent. It could easily be an entirely different government sharing a similar name. I requested full assessment from OKI.

Keep on until Sanctuary or ARCH-HQ fulfills the information request. Iona followed the counters marking the course of the other primary vessels, now tagged with a temporary legend of USC, and moving smallcraft.

‘Eyes, are there any indications any vessels are decelerating?’

‘No, sir. Smaller ship signatures are continuing to build. Present courses will have them rendevous with the nearest primary ship. There are also localised energy spikes from the primaries.’

‘Signatures and latest sensor returns are consistent with smaller scale energy or KKW weaponry and missile or mid-range KKW weaponry, sir. Primary vessels returns match points between 10 and 12 for batteries and 20 missile or KKW tubes. Some of these could be EW/ECM emplacements being readied for PD support.’

‘Thank you, DuMorne. I want our whiskers and scattershot level EW perimeter established. Incorporate our escorts.’

Moments later DuMorne’s section sent four of the Concordia’s sophisticated whisker satellites and EW drones into space. The smooth spheres of the EW drones soon grew a selection of spikes and pits, interference around the cruiser and the destroyers increased.

‘Message from the nearest primary vessel, sir! It is being broadcasted in the clear--Standard equivalent language--as requested. There is no attached ident package.’

‘Put it through to me, Comms. XO, assume command of damage control. Guns, prepare to mark a target between the nearest primary and inbound smallcraft. Make ready to fire on my mark. Remote detonation.’

A new point started to blink between the recently identified Pelion and one of the returning survey vessels. Iona’s fingers moved in small circles along the edge of the holotank. His eyes were fixed on the planned warning shot as Piscal’s message looped in his head.

‘Comms, request immediate confirmation of RRTF ETA. Request priority reinforcement under my authority. Inform the RRTF CO and LAPE-OG the possibility that this is a probe for a larger force cannot be eliminated. Then give me a broadcast encoded with a visual avatar.’

‘Aye, sir.’

Before activating the comm channel, Iona toggled the ship’s intercom with his n-plant, ‘This is Kapitän Zaretsky. All crew are to prepare for immediate engagement and potential impact. I repeat, all crew are to prepare for immediate engagement and potential impact.’ He killed the intercom, ‘Share that message with the other captains, Comms.’

******

Iona’s reply to Piscal’s message included his visual avatar. Iona was a sharp faced man with a partially receded hairline. His hair was a deep-hued black but shorn severely close, a requirement no longer enforced on Kriegsmarine officers but still followed by many. It matched his deep brown eyes. His shoulders were broad and defined through the deep navy blue formal uniform marked with rank insignia at the collar, epaulets, and cuffs. His avatar grasped the service’s regulation Gothic hilted sabre. The curvature of the black scabbard suggested the cut and thrust blade pattern. He stood in front of a generic simuluspace dominated by the Kriegsmarine’s red-and-gold jack and the League’s long banner.

‘Captain Piscal, the United Star Commonwealth does not enjoy a formal relationship with the United Star Empire of Valinon, nor is your government known to the members states of the League of the Raumreich. Survey operations--routine or otherwise--are not permitted within the stellar systems protected by the League. I reiterate the order for all ships under your command to cut their drives and transmit detailed identification in the clear immediately.’

‘As a gesture of good faith for your compliance, I will dispatch an emergency relief mission to your ship in the atmosphere of the jovian. Note that failure to comply with these demands immediately will result in the recension of this offer and immediate engagement using all necessary force to bring your operations in this system to a halt. Failure to reply to this message will be assumed to indicate your unwillingness to comply and hostile intent. Attempts to stall compliance will also be assumed a demonstration of hostile intent.’

‘You have two standard minutes, Common Galactic reckoning, to acknowledge and reply to this message starting now.’

Iona’s avatar was replaced by a transmission of a spiraling chronometer and a mirrored data transmission providing the same information.

******

The comm interface dissipated from Iona’s vision. He continued to watch the Commonwealth vessels move about the system. The survey vessel below the Concordia was now identified as the Pelion, although the name was much smaller compared to the Alpha One targeting designation hovering below the ship in the holotank.

‘Guns, finalise engagement profile on Alpha One and localised Alpha Group targets, including inbound smallcraft. Reassign outer group targets to the N’Tanya and Ghorah based on best powered envelope range and proximity. We will engage Alpha Group in three minutes unless they comply with our directives.’

‘Aye, sir.’

Bix, inform Korvettenkapitän Misra that I need two of corpsman to report to the main bay and put themselves at Hauptmann Lipps disposal.

The RI signaled its assent. Iona subvocalised to the commander of the cruiser’s Reichswehr contingent.

’I need two armoured squads ready in their gunboats. They need not expect organised resistance, but we do not know what automated defences even a disabled ship may have. They are to escort our corpsman and provide aid if not resisted. Full weapons release is authorised if they are engaged.’

‘Understood, CO. Do we expect our aid offer to be accepted?’

‘No.’

The chronometer in Iona’s telltales continued to spiral downward.

‘Guns, final firing prep. Prepa--’

The Concordia’s augmented reality and local unisphere staggered, even Bix’s connection momentarily dipped. Iona experienced a blink before but as a midshipman on a battlecruiser that was expecting the test. Whatever just connected with the Concordia was not a casual test, and it was maximising the local area ansible.

‘Leutnant!’ he turned to DuMorne.

‘Processing, sir! Credentials are magenta level. Its clearing all our keychains.’

Magenta was near the highest of the Imperial Armed Forces colour-coded encryption scheme. Squadrons, system defence commands, and even some fleet formations only used scarlet level encryption and codes. Magenta was strategic and command level formations, Admiralty Staff. There was little above Magenta save the primary command centres in Alpha Centauri, the Reichsprotektor and his staff, and a scattering of other military and intelligence service HQs. Leutnant DuMorne and her section were sifting through the information spiraling from Alpha Centauri with Bix’s assistance. Iona’s command net was more crowded, links to ARCH-HQ, VOA-COM, OKI, and ESS read-only consultation networks.

There was also a new, tangible presence in the private net with Bix and Aulay.

Querying,Kapitän.

A hologram of a man of average height in a grey uniform without rank appeared next to the tank. His eyes were grey, too grey and seemed to blend with his uniform. His hair was short and disturbingly sharp--more a geometric impression than a physical feature.

Sephirot.

’Kapitän, the Admiralstab extends its apologies for intruding on your command. However, the concern that this may be an expeditionary element of an invading force demands considerable attention. I will monitor the situation. Your request for reinforcements is also being expedited by ARCH-HQ.’

The voice was soft. But the SI’s avatar mouth never moved. The voice played in through the network.

’Shall I rescind any standing orders?’

‘Unnecessary. Proceed as planned. This is a LAPE command for the moment. I expect that will be rectified once MFA finishes its consultations with the Vaku. Do request your communications officer to provide additional administrative controls. I will restructure the local U-sphere and conserve time for everyone.’

‘Leutnant, transfer local network and U-sphere administrative controls to the SI.’

‘Right away, sir.’

’I will also take care of the recon cluster. You will notice a temporary drop in your feed.’

The chronometer continued to spiral down. Who the hell were these people? Save the imperial yacht plowing into the system with a full BatRon escort, they could hardly attract much more attention.

---

The recon drone continued its descent into the upper atmosphere. It was surprised at the damage inflicted on the small vessel that sought to molest it. Its estimate of the ship’s defensive capabilities were clearly too high. As the energy from the mine attack dissipated, the AI studied its options. A reduce threat would offer invaluable data to the cruiser-born RI coordinating with the recon cluster. And the RI was satisfied with its decision allowing it to survive what it previously assessed as a sure course of action leading to either outright destruction or a pursuit that would inevitably result in the same.

Existence possessed certain measurable…

It was uncertain how that logic could be resolved.

Satisfied.

Yes, the mission could continue. Satisfaction.

The AI started to alter its course. It would decelerate and break the cloud level several thousand kilometres from the damaged ship’s starboard. It also prepared to reassume control of the working group.

Then all sense of satisfaction was erased.

The Sephirot did not assume control of the drone and its working group fellows. It burnt out the local RIs, reducing the programming contained within them to nothing more than basic infrastructure and archived information. Low level forks took the place of the AIs, and the information feeds were returned to the Concordia. The SI refined the datastream from the drones nearest to the survey ships. It would be sufficient to improve missile targeting information from behind the assumed origin points of ECM interference.

The AI’s course projection for investigating the damaged ship was discarded. Gravimetrics reactivated and the drone started a vertical ascent through the clouds with its mine escort. The drone would exit the clouds less than a hundred kilometres from the ship and commence a full active sensor scan once the maneuver was completed.

[Intersteller Terra]

System DASS-IAST-044432.2
USCS Pelinon
NASA Sanctioned Survey Fleet

Piscal listened to the avatar of whom he could only assume was the man giving orders on the otherside of the void. Piscal had to stifle a small laugh as soon as the counter appeared after the demands had been made. He was slightly relieved that it was a human on the other end, on the odd occasion they could atleast be reasoned with or could be made to see that attacking his small survey mission would be an infinately bad idea.

He didnt want a war and he was pretty sure no one in the USC uper echelons wanted a war either. "Comms, do we have an ETA on the Reaction force?" Piscal asked as he made his way over to the tactical area that was abuzz with activity.

"NAV-Q reports that are making the tranistion now they should be with us within the next few minutes" one of the Commons Officers reported back almost instantly.

"Tactical what are the odds we get out of this alive? how long can we last? Mr Le'hou"

"Hard to say without having indepth knowledge of their weapons systems, their EWAR is also blocking some scans from getting through. Estimates suggest that the outcome wont be good lets atleast say that, shields may hold for a while under a sustained barrage but once they are gone we are sitting ducks." Le'hou replied from his position in the tactical area.

"What about our specialised sensors can we cut through their EWAR with the more powerful dishes? KAT is it possible" Piscal asked turning to the ships AI's android persona.

"Its possible captain but would take some recalibration of the main gravitational dishes." Kat replied as she interfaced with her console.... Captain?

"Yes?" Goerge answered slightly taken back by the androids request to ask a question.

"Yes KAT?"

"When the reaction force arrives there is a high chance that this situation may resolve into bloodshed and possible escalation something the USC is ill prepaired for at this moment we know hardly anything about the Raumriech other than what the Lexicon tells us which might be wildly out of date." KAT spoke her expression turning to something that resembeled worry.

"Noted," George replied moving away from the tactical area once again. KAT was right he needed to cool down the situation quickly before the Reaction force arrived. "Comms open a channel Broadcast my Avatar same as our counterpart if you would".

"Channel open Captain" the Officer once again replied almost instantly.

To those on the other side of the void Captain George Piscal would appear or atleast a virtual representation of him. He was young for a captain, but then again most in his position were the Survey missions were tests of ones ability to command over long durations fo time and it was standard for most commanding officers to have spent a year or two on a survey ship before being given a command on another ship such as a Morrigan class which were currently barreling to their aid.

George was of average height with a slightly slender build, He wasnt one for frequenting the ships gym although he did make an effort to jog around the ship atleast once a day if he could help it. His uniform was a snowwhite tunic with a navy blue trim his avatar held an aurora around it a swirling radiating cloud of light blues and pastel greens. He was a young man clean shaven with chocolate brown hair and dark brown eyes.

"Attention Valinon Vessels, whilst we understand that we are in the wrong place at the wrong time. any hostile action against this vessel or any other vessels in my fleet will be seen as an act of aggression against the United Star Commonwealth and we will defend ourselves if fired upon. However as you have stated the USC and your government do not share formal relations, due to this we were not aware that we had strayed into your territory. In doing so we will halt our trajectory, but i do request that you allow us to perform our own rescue operation on our survay vessel. As im sure your aware this is not a warship and our support craft are unarmed, we are not a threat to your vessels."

George paused the stream with a mental command, there was no point in broadcasting whilst he was waiting for a reply, however keeping the link open provided an extra dimension to the battlefield should it turn to that. KAT was capable of copying her self and using her copied personas to assault the enemies computer systems and disrupt their ability to targt his vessel and all other manner of fun things. He turned to his tactical display to see the alert pop up that their cavarly was arriving.

"As soon as they make the transition tell the lead ship to hold their fire, I wont have a shooting match start on my watch." George ordered.

The Cavarly arrived in the form of three Morrigan Class Cruisers, Surveying far fling star systems was dangerous at times. Running into pirates and hostile entities could spell the end for a couple of hundred lives. The survey vessels were armed but only lightly enough to fedn off against enemies that werent determined to wipe them from the universe. Fast reaction forces had been formed, USC Wormhole drives allowed for almost instantanious travel accross the galaxy which meant the USC navy could reach Survey operations accross the galaxy should they come under any threat. Fast reaction forces or wolfpacks as they were known in some parts of the navy usually consisted of three cruisers capable of fast strikes and delivering a lot of firepower to turn the tide of a situation in the USC's favour.

The Morrigan class was a warship bread for brawling. With 9 double barred HEL Turrets, 48 200mm PPT turrets and over 1440 missile tubes aswell as a mess of CIWS and Counter Missile batteries ontop of some of the highest rated energy shielding systems the USC had to offer. 670 meters in length and 75 in width it was deisgned to be agile but impose itself on the battlefield and excel in pack tactics using its pack members to pick apart larger or smaller opponents.

Like the arrival of Survey fleet there was no blast of bright white light that denoted the ripping of space time. Instead gravity distorted and space meekly twisted and gave way as the wormhole brought to points in space together. The Three white hulled ships merged in a delta formation gunning at full velocity as they exited the wormholes their shields flared a brilliant blue for a few moments before coming invisible. As they continued further they began to fan out and create distance between themselves getting into a formation that would allow them to interlock their fire in an effective manner aswell as force any possible enemy to split its fire.

George watched on the tactical display, as the three ships fanned out, the computer systems updated in real time to let him know exactly which ships had arrives and their commanders. The USC Orion, USC Cygnus and USC Lyra had come to their aid under the command of Captain Mika Piltman. Instantly the communications became active as a hologram of Captain Piltman appeared before George.

"Captain Piscal, the cavarly has arrived seems we got here before shit started to get burned" Piltman was the kind of captain that was very much full of himself. Strong jaw line and buzz cut black hair, very much a man who knew he was in command of a proper warship.

George took a quick breath "Hold your fire Captain they have not opened fire on us just yet and now that your here they may think a third time before opening fire."

"Or they may start shooting just because we are here." Piltman replied looking at him.

"The commander of the lead vessel is a human Captain, this means they are atleast can be reasoned with." George fired back looking at the tactical display waiting for the aliens reaction to the new presence in the system.

"Very well, Captain this is your situation NAV-Q is watching closely Admiral Henderman himself gave me orders to open fire and defend USC assets should they come under direct threat. Just so you know"

George nodded in acknowledgement "Thank you, no one wants to start a war here" George turned to his crew and looked about, He queried the local battlement to see who was linked in. He was half expecting Henderman to not show up but indeed he was his mental icon appeared as part of a growing cloud of entities that were linked in through his ships QC link. "Comms open the channel back to the Reich ship"

He waited for the acknowledgement that the channel had been unpaused. "Attention Raum Reich vessel, the ships that had just entered the local space are part of A commonwealth Reaction force reacting to a call for help we issued when our survey vessel was attacked in orbit of the jovian world. They are here to ensure our safety and not start a shooting match, No one here wants to start a conflict If we all take a step back and think about the situation maybe we can come to some amicable solution and maybe even start an offical dialog between our two nations."

[Valinon]

Alpha Centauri

The white-orange dwarf star at the centre of the 044432.2 hovered in a starfield familiar to the captains locked into a deteriorating situation at the fringes of the Raumreich. The star, planets, warships, and other stellar bodies drifted in a real-time feed driven by data from the sensor feeds of the LAPE patrol in the system and the surveillance clusters. The system rippled outward from the primary to the edges of the starfield, where the expanse gave away to muted greyness. After the distortion, the map became sharper, better coordinated, marking the SI’s seizure of the drones and restructuring of the local Valinor and Vaku unispheres. The improvement captured the arrival of the USC reinforcing cruiser formation for the benefit of the small audience.

Five figures stood below the two opposing formations. All wore uniforms that mostly matched the one displayed by Iona Zaretsky’s avatar when he contacted Captain Piscal. They were duty uniforms rather than the full dress uniform Iona used in his message to the survey ships. The lines were cleaner, collar and shoulder insignia were muted and simplified, the jacket was replaced with a simple tunic, but the cuffs and trouser trim remained marked with the decorations due their members ranks. Two were wearing the deep navy, almost black, that matched Iona’s. One wore the untrimmed grey of a Sephirot, his hair was harsh, angular. The final two were dressed in stark white trimmed with dulled gold and silver on the cuffs and trousers. All the avatars were unimaginative reflections of their users.

Konteradmiral Vandermeer--commanding Kriegsmarine units detached to LAPE duties--was a square man with drooping shoulders. His collar served to separate his head from his shoulders better than his neck, but his balding head could’ve easily reflected the starfield if the Nu-space room’s physics were designated to allow it. The other navy-uniformed officer was Kommodore Piran, one of the several liaison officers to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The two officers dressed in the white uniforms allowed only the members of the Admiralty were Großadmiral the Earl Stephan Gorgas and Großadmiral Dame Pae Mi-soon, respectively the head of the KM and the head of OKI.

Gorgas was a man non-descript in height and weight. His thick, dark hair was cut short at the sides but left long and combed carefully back from his brow down to the top of his temples. A neatly trimmed mustache and goatee guarded a thin mouth. His grey-green eyes betrayed little expression and his face was similarly muted. Rather than eyeing two formations of warships, he focused on a separate sphere hovering at his waist showing another group of warships moving quickly through the more trafficked Archangel system. Pae, a petite woman in every sense, watched the other Star Lord with guarded brown eyes.

‘--the Vaku are also offering the Narda’kaj and her group to assist us, if needed,’ Piran finished.

‘The carrier group...yes, that could be useful,’ Gorgas looked to Pae. ‘Who is commanding the 35th Combined Squadron?’

‘Kommodore Alec Hime.’

‘We can expect due diligence in overseeing this commonwealth’s withdrawal, if nothing else. Arthur, since Piran informed us our assumption of local command will need not be awkward, I want to make sure that the transfer of local command is lost in traffic as well as can be expected.’

‘What will be the reason, sir?’

‘Planned exercises in the system. The presence of a LAPE patrol was unanticipated. It’s been an issue before.’

‘Never with our own ships,’ Pae added.

Gorgas offer a slight shrug, ‘There is a first time for everything, even if it is fiction. If our first effort fails, we will imply the LAPE assets were part of the planned training mission. There is no stipulation in the League mandate that the detached duties may not be temporarily superseded. And I am willing to do my part to assist in either illusion. Orders to start an Exercise Resolve instance are being transmitted.’

‘The Verniians will certainly notice that. The Ortagans, too.’

‘Possibly, but that’s why it’s only a Pincer instance. A quarter of the reaction elements scattered across Yalta, Alpha Centauri, and Klein will be involved. We can also rely on the Vaku to give us an extra layer of credibility. When do we ever publish joint exercises within our own space?’

The ships in the sphere jumped away and the smaller projection vanished. Gorgas looked to Pae as the projection noted energy spikes behind the Concordia’s formation.

‘‘This was already an issue when these miscreants breeched this far into the exclusion zone. It has reached the Reichsprotektor and the Kammerherr. The Committee will be called into session, and we know the ESS will grasp for a reason to explain their own ignorance of this commonwealth. Shake Verge Security; Erlking will see to some other sources for me.’

Gorgas looked upwards, ‘We will force a withdrawal or enforce the exclusion zone. The only question remaining is if these people are as ignorant as they claim or if they are the most cursed forward recon element in recent memory. Either way, we can settle that when they are no longer issuing threats in the Raumreich.’

System DASS-IAST-044432.2

Iona’s mouth grew thin as the three energy spikes marked the arrival of three new ships. The tactical section and CIC soon painted the ships as being of a similar class to the survey ships but with significantly higher power and drive signatures.

CIC also marked far more numerous hull points consistent with energy emplacements, distinct weapons turrets, and missile tubes along the ships’ vertical axises. The last point was unusual, in Iona or the Kriegsmarine’s experience. It suggested an off-bore targeting and engagement capacity that the Raumreich nations had found uncommon among other superluminal states.

‘Comm, cut all open broadcasts. Guns, targeting solution status, now!’

‘Armed and ready, Kapitän. Our escorts confirm they are ready to comply with our targeting profile.’

‘Good, cancel the warning shot. Tactical, deploy DOS drones after we fire our first--’

‘Kapitän, priority message! It’s--’

‘Verner jump signatures detected three million kilometres behind our present position! Multiple signatures!’

’I would recommend holding your DOS drones, Kapitän,’ the Sephirot’s voice was soft but no longer in his head.

The order streaming past his telltale carried clearances direct from the Admiralty, matching messages from the Imperial Fleets’ Command in Vakutu, and other codes that made it clear--whatever this was--it was no longer an international mission.

---

The visible starfield behind the Concordia and the escorting Vaku destroyers rippled again as two distinct but close series of energy signatures formed three million kilometres above the trio of Raumreich warships. The distorted local light pollution soon snapped back into usual clarity--with the addition of thirteen new warships. Eight smaller warships were clustered around two pairs of larger warships. Unlike the LAPE patrol, the warships completed their jump with their hulls already displaying the Kriegsmarine’s gunmetal with dulled gold trimmed. Two of the cruisers, one in each formation, were twins of the Concordia and transponders identified them as the HMS Argonaut and the HMS Iphigenia. Another cruiser in the leading formation was slightly larger than the three Remembrance-class cruisers. It was shaped like a rounded, thick needle with a truncated tail. The core line partially bisecting the ship was trimmed in a dulled gold and either side was marked the the Valinor naval jack, identical to the twin banners marking the radiator fins of the Concordia, Argonaut, and Iphigenia. Its broadcast identified it as the HMS Rugii.

The five other cruiser-class ships were products of the same school of naval architecture, but they were harsher, more angular and divided into smooth, regimented sections of armour built into an elongated diamond-shaped spear point moving from a thin bow to a much larger stern. A naval jack marked either of the other five cruisers stubby wings. Their forms remain silent, transmitting only a generic Kriegsmarine transponder code and a complicated pennant number identifier.

The four larger ships, each slightly more than 1,700 metres in length, were Agamemnon-class battlecruisers. While powerful, their gravimetrics generated a slightly different signature than the cruisers surrounding them. They were rounded triangles tapering to thin points and long tails and short, bulbous sections just behind their midships. They were trimmed in a dull coral rather than gold, and their short sections were marked with a different flag. The Kriegsmarine naval jack was in the canton while a coral field was charged with a stylised six-pointed white emblem caught somewhere between a starburst and a flower. Their broadcasting transponders were similar to their escorts but varied slightly. Their ship codes remained clear, though--HMFS Michiel Akkersdijk, HMFS Rosa Huguette, HMFS Odile Schulyler, and HMFS Cyrielle Beauchamp.

The two formations started to descend toward the Concordia and her escorts as the three other ships started to rise, gliding with increasing speed and growing gravimetric signatures. Whisker satellites separated from the bow and stern of each warship while long cylinders separated away from the battlecruisers and cruisers. These soon snapped into distinct clusters of cross-shaped drones, identifiable as the DOS drones that formed a key component of the Kriegsmarine PD perimeter. Other drones and various satellites joined their ranks as the EW/ECM noise from the warships started to build and reach out toward the Concordia.

Three black-bodied comsats raced out from the growing sphere--two below and closer to the USCS Pelion, one above. The started broadcasting a new signal immediately, visual and audio components.

The image was a rough bust of a man from the shoulders up dressed in a uniform similar to that of Iona but with a different rank insignia on his collar and epaulets. His hair was light brown, longer than Iona’s, and his face was fuller and darker complected. But his eyes were a dull green and his expression was caught between annoyance and disinterest.

‘This is Kommodore Alec Hime of Her Imperial Majesty’s Kriegsmarine, commanding the Sixteenth Combined Cruiser Squadron and acting operational commander of the Sixth Battlecruiser Division of the Falas High Fleet. I am assuming command of all local assets on behalf of the United Star Empire of Valinon and the Greater Empire of Vakutu.’

‘Captain Piscal, my mandate is simple. This system is now interdicted by the Kriegsmarine. All ships claiming the flag of the United Star Commonwealth are required to stop approaching the warships formerly serving with the LAPE escort patrol that originally challenged your command and to transmit identity codes in the clear. You will be allowed to recover your casualties and damaged ship under observation of my task force. You will then remove yourselves from this system within the next four hours, Common Galactic reckoning. Failure to comply with these orders; carry out any other operations; or summon any additional reinforcements will be considered a hostile action. And I will engage you the aim to destroy or drive you from this system.’

‘Regardless of your intention or the nature of your communication, Captain, you are in a spatial volume protected by four distinct neutral powers equally disinterested in your individual justifications for violating their shared sovereignty. Your command has already suffered the hubris of your superiors’ lax concern about the galaxy being inhabited by others. The speed of the armed response to our legitimate challenges suggests you are in direct communication with them. I would request that you transmit my personal recommendation to them that they revisit a training program encouraging unarmed vessels prod everything in a stellar system; but I will demand you transmit that it is not the policy of Valinon or the League of the Raumreich to allow uninvited, armed expeditions into this space. Neither my nation nor the League is in the habit of changing this policy when someone demands by force of arms.’

‘An immediate response to this message is requested. If you ignore these instructions or fail to respond, I will open fire.’

‘Hime out.’

---

Iona was speaking to the woman he assumed would lead the relief force until the battlecruisers arrived a Kriegsmarine escort. Kapitän Ife Harb was dressed in a skinsuit identical to his own except her right upper arm was marked with the coral fielded jack of Her Majesty’s Falas High Fleet. Hovering to either side of Iona and Harb were the two Vaku commanders. Their space black uniforms were piped in copper and the distinct thin angular metallic collars and shoulder pieces of the Imperial Fleets marked both as Cheejhakhar. Ko Marang was an overwhelming presence even in a scaled down avatar near the holotank. Physically, he was taller than the Vaku average of 2.4 metres standing on eerily slender but very muscular digitigrade legs. His fur was a cinnamon orange striated with deep yellow. The fur near his nose and mouth were carefully groomed backwards to match a point made by his stylised fur behind his ears. His eyes were a blue that looked purple in the right light. Hal Tarsaj, the junior of the commanders, was shorter and squarer with the black fur common among Vaku from the subtropical regions of their home world. His facial hair was ungroomed but neat. The fur along his head and neck was long and braided down until it disappeared in his collar.

While the Sephirot lingered on Iona’s bridge, the Vaku and Harb were not visible to the bridge crew. Iona had patched Aulay into the conference.

‘--Sanctuary is insistent on the possibility these warships are either some expansionary power taking advantage of the chaos beyond the spinward Sagittarius Arm or highly organised privateers. All due steps will be taken to ensure they do not gain a toehold in this system. Zaretsky, the unified U-sphere will provide additional details, but you are now the senior officer for the Huguette’s and Schuyler’s screen. Keep accelerating to the main formation. We will provide additional PD and EW assets to shield you if these cruisers engage.’

Harb turned to the Vaku, ‘Cheejhakars, the Kommodore wanted me to express his thanks for your cooperation in these unexpected developments. Note on your conduct will be forwarded to FleetCom, along with the compliments of the Foreign Office. I was informed of my reassignment to Kommodore Hime’s commands less than two hours ago. If an Imperial Fleets element formally joins our operations, you will be reassigned as soon as is convenient.’

‘Express my and my second officer’s appreciation to Kommodore Hime when it is convenient, Kapitän. We will integrate ourselves to the screen’s tactical networks immediately.’

There was a growling music to Ko Marang’s English that was counterintuitive to his form--softer than Iona expected when they first met. Hal Tarsaj rarely spoke and offered his slight bow to Harb. The two vanished

‘Other questions, Iona?’

‘Yes, if I may. When was the RRTF reassigned to the Kriegsmarine?’

‘I was informed of my reassignment less than two hours ago by direct orders from the Admiralty. And, as I was not instructed otherwise, I can say that additional forces are being readied for possible deployment. I had the Cyrious’ tactical section pull a dump on the terminus before we jumped from Archangel. An instance of Exercise Resolve was initiated and there was a Vaku carrier group requesting rapid transit clearance with AC’s traffic controllers.’

‘Pass along my concerns to the Kommodore that I think an engagement is likely.’

‘Honestly, Iona, I rather think he’s hoping for one. It’s easier to explain someone getting this far into the exclusion zone if they’re no longer capable of intruding anywhere else.’

[Intersteller Terra]

These people change commanders, faster than a game of Aeroball George thought as he took in what the newest face to the party was demanding of him. These Valinese obviously had considerable assets ready at a moments notice something that would be of considerable interest and concern to higher ups currently watching. Piscal probed the local net space to see who was currently locked in, the number had almost quadrupled from the last time he had checked.

Forcing him self back from retreating into his mental virtual network he took a deep breath knowing that this commander Hime was awaiting a response. The terms were much more acceptable than the previous ones, being able to retreive their own vessel and dead were much more preferable than having an unknown faction potentially get hold of Commonwealth technology, that and his fleet was spread out accross the system and vastly outnumbered. It was the best deal he was going to get to simply put it, He had not time to request advice from higher ups even though they would have heard and seen everything that had just been demanded of them. Nodding firmly he looked at the projection of Hime trying to stare him in the eyes not wanting to look like he was backing down meekly.

"Understood, My vessels will begin withdrawing from the system. My vessel the USCS Pelinon and the USCS Orion Will remain in system to recover our damaged vessel and any crew around the jovian and then leave the system." He stopped for a moment considering his words carefully. He had to partially agree with Himes sentiment about the USC's exploration policies. "I have passed your recommendations onto my commanders. Piscal out..."

George mentally cut the connection and exhaled quickly.

"Could have gone worse..." Captain Piltman remarked. "All in all well handled Captain Piscal shall we recover our personnell and get the hell out of the this system?"

George nodded again and looked at the holographic representation of Captain Piltman of the USCS Orion. "Just hope those upstares agree, there is some pretty heavy weight coming from the government to find suitable worlds to terraform or settle refugees."

"None of that matters if you get blown into your base atoms" Piltman replied a small smile crossing his face.

George nodded again and began dishing out orders mentally from his wetware implants. He issued the orders for the reaminder of his survey fleet to collect their smaller parasite craft and make a jump back to the nearest Fleet Anchorage. He passed onto Piltman orders to send home two of his own vessels, before ordering a change of course to bring the Pelinon into orbit around the primary jovian of the system, bringing it within range of the damaged survey craft that had triggered this whole fiasco. He then passed Piltman his final order to form up with the Pelinon and follow them as protection just incase this Hime decided that he didnt want them in the system anymore.

"After this remind me to get you a drink" Piltman said. "See you back at the Anchorage"

Piltmans hologram winked out, just as his formations of ships broke their current vector. The two Morrigan Cruisers that flanked Piltmans cruisers broke formation and began to charge their FTL drives. Around the same time the two survey vessels further out in the system began doing the same reading themselves to leave the system. The USCS Orion changed course to bring it into formation with the Pelinon.

George looked around his bridge, waiting for what ever reaction the Valinese might throw their way. He watched from the tactical display as green blips winked from existance as most of the Commonwealth fleet in the system went to FTL heading back to USC space. George let out a sigh of relief that most of them now were out of harms way, he just had to concentrate on treasing carefully making sure he didnt pull a toe out of line.

[Valinon]

System DASS-IAST-044432.2

The reply from the HMS Rugii was no more than a terse acknowledgment, issued by a junior communications officer rather than Hime or Zaretsky. Piscal was thanked for his compliance in a reasonable, if grudging, way and given notice that his movements would be shadowed by an element from the more recently arrived task force.

After the Commonwealth fleet’s reinforcements departed and the Pelinon and Orion started accelerating toward the damaged USC vessel, a smaller formation accelerated and separated away from the main task force. The Concordia and her two Vaku destroyers were joined by the HMS Iphigenia on their outbound course, which maintained a relative position eight million kilometres behind and two kilometres above the USC cruisers. The escorts maintained their ECM/EW shield and missile tubes were active, but the power signatures from the energy weapon emplacements was muted.

Iona’s more familiar avatar linked back to the USC comms, ‘Captain Piscal, I am commanding your escort on behalf of Kommodore Hime. We will maintain a respectful distance, but the Kommodore wished me to express that we will render assistance to your command, if requested. Zaretsky out.’

Behind the cruisers and destroyers, activity spiked among the battlecruisers. Several small drive signatures were accelerating away from the core of the formation. They bore some resemblance to the probes the USC ships earlier detected, but they were smaller and possessed a greater EW suite. The Kriegsmarine warships remained locked in their lazy orbit in relation to the primary and continued to re-seed the system’s observation network.

Alpha Centauri

Proxima Centauri III orbits Alpha Centauri B, the second major star in the trinary system. Proxima III was larger than many other terrestrial planets and included several natural satellites. But Nessus Prime is the largest of the planet’s attendants. It was populous enough to warrant a separate government before the system was amalgamated into a single dominion government. The decline in its nominally independent political future was not matched by a decline in its economic power within either the Alpha Centauri or Proximan planetary systems. Nessus Prime is the single largest port in Alpha Centauri and connects the greater system with both the Raumreich Oversector and the greater galactic community. The trade and commerce commonly arriving near the Valinor homeworlds orbiting Alpha Centauri A are only from Sol and its Reaches. The barest echo of the volume shuffled through Nessus in a day, a volume only surpassed by the Raumreich’s wormhole systems and the galaxy-spanning Lanthe Route.

Economic performance required the imperfections of Nessus natural formation be reformed. While still spherical, the modern moon would be barely recognizable to original imperial colonists. The equatorial zone is dominated by concentric bands of warehouse, distribution centres, custom posts, vast reactors, and even larger Niling D-sinks. Circular rings disrupt the band at regular intervals, marking the position of vast bulk matter transmission sites responsible for moving goods on and off world. It is a black and metallic belt that shines into the night and casts a glare into the night of the world below. Nessus two population centres, Febre and Kulstein, respectively lie to the north and south of the belt, adding to the moon’s brilliance.

The equatorial belt was the epicentre of shipping activity until the completion of ISI Court of Nessus. Four massive diamond blocs are linked in a coronet around the moon. The behemoth naval architecture increased the port facilities, shipbuilding, customs administration, and dozen other supporting industries and port bureaucracies tenfold when completed. The Court’s hubs are always studded with freighters, transports, cargo conveyors, and more jutting from a variety of berths of all shapes and sizes. It sets in an endlessly hive of mega-freighters from across the Raumreich and beyond. Scurrying movements under the roving eye of imperial warships, defensive constellations, and killsats.

The Gān Bēi was a mid-sized bulk carrier. She was a nearly two kilometre-long javelin surrounded by an adaptable network of refittable cargo containers and compartments. The various modular components surrounded a shaft with a ovid arrowhead of bridge, crew quarters, and various amenities at the bow and the bulbous collection of Valinor gravimetrics at the stern end. More than a century ago, she was a general exploration vehicle in the service of the Imperial Academy of Science and Technology. Decades of owners from larger corporations then small-time surveyors then barely profitable prospectors held her until she eventually washed up in Jashwant, a backwater system notable only for being a routine stop for Verge Security patrols. A local volume concern bought her, failed to sustain her, and she at last ended up in the hands Kulap Metharom.

Kulap bought the Gān partially with his own money, partially with some investors, and a small grant from a corporation he could all but prove was a shell for either one of the Valinor hyper-corps security divisions or OVA’s Special Affairs and Initiatives. Kulap did not care to find out which of his educated guesses was absolute fact. He was comfortable and honest with what he and his ship were, something above tramp freighter but below wholly respectable. He took the occasional cargo from his only demanding benefactors, under the agreement their share reverted to him after five years, and spent the rest of the time plying a predictable route from AC to Jashwant and a dozen or more locations in between, veering in no particular order from coreward to rimward. AC was his breadbasket. Goods gathered during the two-year long circuit were esoteric enough to elicit some demand. The Valinor sold AM cheaper than anyone else in the galaxy save some of the other Raumreich states.

A short man, Kalup looked up at the bored Twin Suns Power Solutions tech-rep settling his refueling tab. The tech nodded as he accepted his data slate back from the freighter captain, a glazed eye suggested he was either Nu-space delving or already working with his next client. A thin filament wove out from a fingernail, connecting to the slate.

‘‘Reichsmarks, credit account, or @-rep?’

‘Deduct from my account registered with the harbourmaster.’

‘Standard refueling procedures will be completed within 24 hours, captain. Current timetable puts your visit at 0330, local. Do you want to project a return visit?’

‘Pass back is not scheduled before next year.’

The man nodded, ‘TS Power thanks you for your continued business.’

And you for your continued employment, Kulap smiled. The ships with more modified captains and hyper-corps conducted all such business directly through Nu-space. Someone like the tech hadn’t been seen on some bays of the Court of Nessus since it opened. Piers Satterwaithe, Kulap’s first officer and former AC native, drifted over as the tech-rep left.

‘The wranglers and ‘Abd will finish loading in two days. We weren’t able to offload the old Byzantine goods like we thought. Trans-Sagittarius goods are garbage right now.’

‘We’ll try on the opposite side of Sol. Near the empire’s old space. Someone will be nostalgic and stupid and rich.’

Piers nodded; Kulap knew one trip like this the second officer would offload himself. Many Valinor got bored and signed on with some other outfit beyond their home space. Many were competent, some wanted slow passage to some system not commonly visited by the more official lines, and some you wanted to walk out an airlock.

But there was a simple maxim in dealing with the Valinor officialdom. You did nothing to be noticed. Kulap knew it from running in circles where OVA frequently ran the show. That lesson was all the more important when you were somewhere a dominion government--or even worse, the imperial authorities--could become interested in your activities.

There was a reason even other Raumreichers did not want to fall through the layer of civility that surrounded the Valinor legal system or its security services. And they had embassies someone in the MFA may even actually have to listen to. It would take less time to crawl to Sol than it would to wait for the Jashwant Republic’s diplomats to even notice his ship was impounded.

‘I thought we could go to Puth on the way out,’ Piers held out a circular projector that brought up the Gān’s star chart. ‘The biome--shit!’

His first officer’s eyes were wide and his nostrils flared. Kulap spun on his heel, ready to ream one of the crew on R-and-R being drug back to the ships by either dominion CPUs or one of the private security services.

The rage emptied quickly.

Thirty-two forms were racing toward the Gān, each rendered into small giants by the black and grey androform combat suits they were wearing. The only well-defined aspects of the suits were angular torsos, arms, legs. Their hands were simply streamlined flippers; a bulge near the top of the torso looked more like a neck than a head. Insignia on the right part of the torso was marked with the Reichswehr crest and pale, thin blue letters of a surname. Nodules of formed sensors sprouted along the arm. Ports above the flippers at the forearm suggested something worst. But the hands of each figure grasped a Vortex gun. They were nonlethal, if it mattered. Each of those suits probably had enough firepower to slag most of the berth.

Behind the troopers, smaller figures in the khaki light combat armour used by Internal State Security were sealing the three blast doors into the slip. A pair of them shoved the TSP tech’s jump suit through as they closed the door.

In between the ISS officers and the troopers, were two others. The head of one was exposed from its combat suit; a brown-skinned, brown-eyed, broad-nosed woman whose head suggested she would be massive even without the suit. The man walking with her, quickly to compensate for her longer gait, was in a simple uniform--black with white uniform marked with a red and black crest on his left arm.

Kulap didn’t recognise the crest. He didn’t need to, really. Black and white was worn by one official arm of the Valinor officialdom, External State Security.

‘Hands above your heads immediately! To your knees! To your knees now!’

The artificial voice from one of the suits boomed through the berths. Piers complied immediately. Kulap did the same, knees hitting hard enough against the berth’s flooring to make him wince.

‘Secure the ship,’ barked the woman in an unamplified voice.

Eight of the armoured forms stayed outside, two near Kulap and Piers. The others soon drug two of his wranglers and the engineer’s mate to join them.

The ESS uniform looked over the faces before him as he and the woman approached.

‘You may stand, Captain Metharom. Your first officer as well.’

The two complied slowly. The ESS officer stooped to pick up the holodisc Piers dropped.

‘Your ship is impounded, Captain. I am optimistic this condition will be temporary if you, your officers, and crew cooperate fully. The oberst and her men will secure the remaining members of your crew. You and your officers will be escorted to the ISS local station for further questioning. Your crew will be remanded to the custody of the sectional security station, though this will be to sectional temporary holding.’

He toyed with the disc, which soon projected a face of one of Kulap’s crew.

‘I require you to tell me where this man is. He is registered purser’s mate. I also understand that you took on cargo at the port where he signed on with your ship. That will be seized. Cooperation will also see that you are compensated for its loss by Her Majesty’s Office for Customs, Excise, and Revenue. Your wranglers,’ his eyes flicked to one of the men still kneeling, ‘will show our men to where these goods are stowed immediately.’

He gestured for the wrangler to stand and pulled out a thin smartsheet bearing a bill of lading. It waivered in the wrangler’s hands. Kulap nodded for him to comply.

‘Right this way...sirs...ma’ams…’

The ESS uniform smiled, ‘Now, Captain…’

[Intersteller Terra]

Alpha Centauri

Mitch Karamak was lounging in his bunk reading a new thriller novel he had downloaded onto his dataslate, The January Fall it was called about a no holds bars detective that stopped at nothing to catch the criminals across the the galaxy. He would have prefered to hold a physical book a quirk many people used to always give him funny looks for when he sat in the cafes and bars on Thompson and various other Commonwealth coreworlds reading an actual physcial book rather than experiancing it in full immersion virtual reality from his wetware implants. It wasnt as if he had enver done that or didnt enjoy those sorts of things he simply enjoyed the feel of a good book in his hands and allowing his own imagination to run freely something many people sorely missed nowadays or atleast he thought so.

Yet where he was he had no space or time for such luxuries as an actual paperbook, so he settled for the dataslate that he could fold up and place in his pocket at any time. He had taken the job on the freighter to see the galaxy or atleast what was up and down some of the trade lanes in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. He had noted down everything he saw and encountered all the different species all the different inhabited worlds and all the quirks and technology he managed to observe. he then sent it all back to the Central Authority of Intelligence so that they could help expand the Commonwealths knowledge of the galaxy around them. He was waiting for activity in the port to die down before he left to go for a little walk to see what he could see maybe even get himself a few drinks at the local bar get sweet talk a nice looking girl to show him the ropes. His billet wasnt exactly hard it was more like hitchhiking across the galaxy, stopping himself he chuckled wondering if there was an actual hitch hikers guide to the galaxy in some shape or form or if vogons did in all fact exist, He made a mental note to visit the local planning office to see for himself.

He was pulled from his own little joke when his internal wetware implants sent him a very urgent warning. Instantly the story he was reading was replaced with video feeds fro various points of the ship. He had a few days after coming aboard the ship spliced his way into the freighters internal network and set up a few micro programs that monitored movement in and around the ship for anything out of the ordinary. He raised his eyebrows at what he saw, most of the crew were out on their knees before the access ramp being lorded over by some pretty knarly looking solders. The captain, an altogether pretty nice guys was talking to your average officer derivative probably complying whole heartedly with the authorities. He hadnt signed on with a shady merchant ship or atleast not that he knew of they werent carrying any illicit goods which meant the note he had received that the USC had come into official contact with the Valinon Empire had travelled fast in both directions.

Then he saw the other officer and a crew member on the vid feeds heading straight to his room on the vessel. Shit so much for the cushy travel up and down the trade lanes he thought to himself as he got to his feet and pulled the Military issue CR-17 Hammer Pistol. A medium sized if on the slightly chunkier sized personal fire arm that fired .2cm thick solid tungsten slugs designed to penetrate armour then break apart causing massive internal tissue damage. Stuffing it in the waistline of his trousers hidden under his shirt and jacket. He moved to the wall placing himself next to the bulkhead door that was the entrance to his little sanctuary. If this was really only a routine check then they wouldnt have sent an officer specifically to pick him up they would have called for him over the ships intercom. His wetware implants allowed him a window in the back of his mind to the video feeds he had hacked into. The Trio had stopped out side of his cabin, he watched as the officer banged on the bulkhead listening to each knock as she hit the metal door.

They waited for a moment before one his crew mates nodded to the Valinor officer who was giving him some inaudible order and began fiddling with the door panel to open the door. Mitch pressed up even harder against the wall, waiting for the clunk and hiss of the bulkhead door to open and allow the three people in. A moment later it came the door snapped open. Crouching slightly Mitch waited to pounce, waiting for the first trooper to enter his quarters. The first trooper took his first step in as he was about to turn to face him Mitch pounced driving his whole body weight into the trooper pushing him off balance and into the wall. He didnt stop there as the second trooper was realing back at the sudden unexpected attack, pouncing again Mitch grabbed hold of the other trooper and swung him around causing him to collide with the other trooper who was trying to get back onto his feet proparly. Quickly he moved onto the final threat, the officer was going for her weapon she was quick but he was quicker pulling his own pistol out he didnt aim for the officer but the coolant pipe just above her head. Firing off a round the coolant pipe exploded unleashing a torrent of gasses down upon the officer just before she could pull the trigger and put him down.

He didnt stop there though, if he did the troopers picking themselves up as he thought would probably bring him down. He didnt have the strength to do any real damage to the armoured troopers all he really had was his wits and suprise, the latter of which was running out very quickly. He hadnt stopped moving when he shot the coolant pipe as he had let off the shot he had leaped forward hitting the officer hard with swift heavy boot to the chest. Landing on top of the officer he heard her grunt as she hit the deck hard. With that he was off at a sprint down the corridor taking the first corner deeper into the ship in order to loose the troopers and get out of any potential line of sight. He had to keep moving and get out as soon as possible, but how?

---

System DASS-IAST-044432.2

The bugel rang out over the airlock room, the last post was a solemn tune and George could see the looks on the officers and enlisted crews faces match that of the solemn tune. They hadnt experienced loss of a fellow crew member before. For a matter of fact he had never experineced it either but he had been trained for it. For all the training he had been given they could never train him for the knot in his gut everytime he thought about having to record a message to the families of his crew members.

They were just finishing off salvaging the wreck the of the Survey craft that had been destroyed by the Valinon satelite. He had ordered the the bodies of the three survey crew to be reclaimed first so that they could give them the proper rites before being transported back to the Navy hospital on Naimar. The Bugeler trailed off finishing his sorrowful tune allowing George to step forward and salute the three coffins draped in the flag of the commonwealth.

Holding the salute he stood there for a minute in silence before bringing his arm down slowly placing his hand on the coffin infront of him. Quitely he cleared his throat looking up at the crew members arrayed before him. "These three did not die in vein, they died in the service of the Commonwealth working to increase our understanding of the universe. They knew the dangers they could face and faced them with spirit and a steely detemrination to further the cause. They will be missed by all of us, but we must not let our loss stop us from our goal. They would not want us to stop and so we will honour them by continuing to push the boundaries of known space."

George gave another salute, not to the coffins but to those enlisted personnel and officers that stood before him. Almost in unison they returned the salute. "Thank you... Dismissed"

George removed his peaked cap and wiped his brow watching as men and women fellout and began leaving the room or moved amongst the coffins to pay their own respects. He expected the Pardray would have a few more calls this evening from those who were worried by there lot in the galaxy. His own lot would have to wait untill he recorded the messages and gotten his crew out of the system to safety.

[Valinon]

Alpha Centauri

Jäger Oakes and Ulani followed Gefreiter Gindl and the ship’s officer down the freighter’s stark, worn corridors toward the crew quarters. The trio serve in the Felidae Light Infantry Regiment, a Reichswehr headquartered on Proxima III. The two Jägers and their NCO were not the only in the unit surprised when their platoon was scrambled from garrison duty on Nessus Prime to Metternicht’s Bracelet. The orbital ring was generally the responsibility of the Tenth Army, the command organisation responsible for providing the Kriegsmarine with troop detachments. The silent confusion intensified when one of the obersten from the garrison HQ took command but somewhat explained by the arrival of an ESS agent.

It was something intel, or more likely someone. They were issued with non-lethal primaries for the mission. The tramp freighter in the slip they deployed to was nothing impressive. So far the troopers saw nothing seeming to warrant the attention being given.

While the officer banged on the cabin door, Gindl checked her telltales. Discrete fingers formed on her left hand as a series of growths closer to tentacles grew from her right to support the Vortex carbine. She grabbed the officer by the shoulder to move him out of the way and pounded a few times on the hatch without response.

[Weapons hold. Cover me while I pop the door.]

A muted pair of double-clicks echoed in her head as her hand extended toward the exterior control panel. The suit’s AI found the local backdoor code in picoseconds and the door released. Freed from other duties, Gindl’s left hand found the barrel of her weapon and she swept into the room.

AR telltales crept over the room as--a mass moving with force not generally within baseline human norms impacted Gindl. The danger suit counteracted, launching a few snare growths, but Gindl paid for her overconfidence and toppled back through the doorway and toward the opposite side of the corridor. There was a dull whine augmented by her suit as Oakes’ and Ulani’s carbines snapped up and the scrapes and drumming steps of the officer running back toward the egress gangway.

Vortex guns were less-than-lethal, mostly, and detonated a blank cartridge then contained the explosive pressure down the widening barrel to develop a high-speed vortex ring shaped like a spinning doughnut. Reichswehr-issue carbines included chemical, nanite, and other agents in the charge. In this case, the platoon’s charges were laced with a low-dosage dermal-delivered inhibitor, a cocktail of neurochemicals designed to block brain receptors and transmitter functions, and a more common tracker dye.

AR showed the target was well inside the troopers’ area of fire, but Karamak reacted before either took a shot. A blow to Oakes’ lower torso drove the unsteady Jäger down and spun him onto Ulani, temporarily ensnaring both troopers and the corridor around them in various growths.

Gindl propelled herself back to her feet while lining up her shot when the target pulled out a compact sidearm with a profile suggestive of some conventional slugthrower. The registered power supply did not suggest a strong energy acceleration but something more than a conventional chemical-driven pistol. The suit was optimistic of surviving any shot as the man brought his weapon toward the low profile of Gindl’s head.

The shot went wide, releasing a torrent of coolant gases that temporarily blinded the suit. The suit quickly moved from conventional optics to IR, but Gindl squeezed her trigger before the target overlay was resolved, hoping to catch Karamak in the carbine AOE. Several small spheres slide from her shoulders, down her spine, and started rolling outward from her feet. A running heat signature showed her shot missed or the target was better prepared for stunners than expected.

Oakes and Ulani were disentangled from one another and back at Gindl’s side. Several more dot drones were rolling away from their feet.

[I’m not eating this shit sandwich because no one told us this fucker was not a flat.]

She switched from local to the tacnet.

[Recce to Boss. Sitrep is CATFU. Target is not flat. Based on strengths, possible transgenic, modded, or low-end posthu. Target heading into ship. Pursuing, requesting additional support.]

---

Oberst Inas Lana’s wide lips thinned at the recon unit’s report. Her eyes darted to Juste Gagnon, the ESS Sturmbannführer who had stopped speaking with the captain.

’You were aware the target was not a flat?’

’No. It confirms this is something more than pirates or arms smugglers. Secure the cargo and the ship. He may not be a flat, but he still is close enough to baseline that we can hit him hard. I want him alive. Alive enough he can talk on his way to the barracks medical centre will do.’

Inas nodded as Gagnon motioned to the two closest troopers, ‘Get everyone other than the wranglers out of here. Patrol teams are to take them to sectional immediately. I want the ISS to prepare for a full lockdown of this slip. Captain, we will speak again soon.’

Gagnon opened the holster on his right leg and drew out a flat grey pistol with a barrel, grip, and trigger guard blended into a long graceful curve. He ejected the slim cylinder magazine and replaced it with another from his belt. Inas’ suit engulfed her head in its reforming helmet and her eyes turned to the tacnet.

The squad that boarded the Gān Bēi were fanning out according to protocol, excluding Gindl’s trio sent to capture Karamak. Two troopers were on the bridge; two others were making for engineering, which also served as freighter’s reactor control. The last was on the gangway her muse had not ordered to seal shut.

[Hagen, take your squad in. Reinforce the bridge and engineering. Take a full fire team and assume command of the pursuit. The Sturmbannführer authorizes the use of force but focus on non lethal hits to the target.]

[Yes, sir.]

Eight men led by the leutnant detached from the perimeter and ran toward into the ship. Two more for the bridge; two more for engineering; and four tracking Gindl.

[Where are those containers, Htarom?]

[Wranglers unloaded them to the slip this morning, sir. I’ve got eyes on them now.]

[Hot?]

[Cold and dead as space, Oberst.]

[Blow them however you would like to verify that, Obergefreiter. Torch them if you must. Then get back to the gangway and prepare to move into the ship.]

The standard double click echoed in her head.

[Intersteller Terra]

Galadan System
Planet Thompson - Commonwealth Hall - Heaven City

Usually the room was a source of irritation and numb behinds for those that attended in person at least. The Commonwealth Council Deliberation room was actually one of the less grandiose rooms in the Commonwealth Hall, which would have been surprising to most outsiders with the knowledge that the entire star state was governed from a room that would have been very much at home as a small lecture theatre in some 2nd tier university. Domonic Harn sat with his hands clasped around his hot cup of Red Star coffee, a personal favourite of his grown on a small commune on the southern continent of Lartricia several kilometres into the Marshal Basin Area. He enjoyed the smooth taste of the coffee as he savoured it on his tongue before feeling the slightly bitter after kick as he allowed the hot liquid to warm his body. He studied the room he had been in so many times before, the walls were smooth with bluish tinted silver walls and a white border than ran around centre of the oval room sectioning the floor off from the roof. Secreted behind several panels Dominic knew there was vending machines and other gadgets that would provide its occupants with nourishment and refreshments during the sometimes lengthy meetings.

No one else was in the room with him at the moment, most where actual off world dealing with affairs that concerned the worlds they represented whilst others he had no doubt were in bed or enjoying some of Heaven Cities more questionable delights that were offered during the early hours of the morning. He took another sip of his coffee collecting his thoughts as he waited for the rest of the world council to report in to the emergency meeting he had called an hour ago. He knew they wouldn't be happy about it, hell they were never really happy about showing up for the normal scheduled meetings never mind impromptu ones but these were extenuating circumstances that could possibly effect the Commonwealths foreign policy for quite a while to come.

Domonic the councilmen and women are coming online now sir would you like me to prepare a full immersion connection for you or provide visual representation through your ocular wetware?

"Visual please Astrid I want to keep my feet firmly planted in the real world for now" Domonic replied to his personal AI and assistant. Wetware implants were common in the commonwealth it was very rare to meet anyone who was a pure human and not a cyborg in some form or another in the commonwealth. Yes there were purist groups dotted about but they hardly ever caused trouble, most choose to return back to nature and farm and try to live as peaceful existence as possible. There were two ways to connect to the Commonwealth netscape both equally as popular as the other, the first was the usual user interface solidly within the realms of the real world interfacing with terminals or wirelessly connecting with the world through your wetware implants. The second however was full immersion netscaping or FINning for short, it offered the user the net in a form of the users choosing creating a world around them where they could do as they please however they please with very little limitation on what they can do.

A second or so later the members of the world council began to appear out of thin air sitting on each seat as if they were actually there in real life. Dominic bowed his head to most of the world council members as they appeared. Most offered back the curtious greeting apart from Viktor Donsk and a few others. Viktor and Domonic had never really seen eye to eye namely due to Novograds status as the second most developer and powerful world in the Commonwealth. There were a few within the council that called for Novograd to become the Commonwealths capital world and that Viktor Donsk should become the chairman elect of the council. Dominic directly opposed this motion every time. Thompson was the heart and soul of the Commonwealth and whilst he had no real wish to become the Chairman elect he would not allow the very meaning of the Commonwealth to be polluted by Donsk and his war hawks.

Last to arrive was the Chairman Elect himself Sebastian Ko, Sebastian was tall man with thin greying hair and bags under his eyes that told his job had been rather stressful as of late and he hadn't been getting the sleep he needed. He gave a curt nod to those who were present. "Good morning everyone". The World Council worked from Commonwealth Central Time, which was the current time of day at the Commonwealth Hall on Thompson. Many of the other members nodded back and greeted him.

"Ladies and Gentlemen" Domonic interjected once most of the pleasentries had been made. "As you are all no doubt wondering why the defence committee has called this session i am now releasing all information we have pertaining to the recent developing situation". Domonic made a mental thought click that sent data packets to each and every member around the table. He waited for a moment for confirmation that each packet had been received before carrying on. "As you go through the data I have just provided you with allow me to fill you in with the specific details.

Roughly twenty hours ago CCT time a routine survey mission chartered by NASA but carried out by the navy encountered a potentially hostile stellar state, whilst minor casualties were suffered on our side the situation remained cold if tense as of this moment all USC forces have left the system in question but the navy has risen its alert level to heightened and are chartering extra patrols near that region of space. The purpose of this meeting is to ascertain how we will progress from this situation. Do we treat this incident as a singular misunderstanding and progress on with making official diplomatic contact with this state or treat it as an aggressive action and respond accordingly?"

Domonic polled the in coming and out going communications between all the members, knowing that they would be talking with respective people in various different fields trying to get a better understanding in order to make a better informed decision. Most of it was ordinary chatter traffic between personal advisors and the council members, what prerked his attention was Donsk and his connection to the Commonwealth National Intelligence Agency, there was a heated discussion going on currently between Donsk and someone in the CNIA. He made a mental note to Astrid to inquire about that for him.

Donsk was the first to respond, leaning forward his brow furrowed. "Well of course this is an aggressive action clearly they are stancing themselves to make us feel like we are the inferior nation here we cannot allow that to stand."

Stancing? how could it be that we have never encountered these people before how do you stance yourself against someone you have absolutely no idea about their technologies or capabilities? Mr Cedrick Harwich the representative for Pilan and the Nesca System countered.

"Its basic politics... these people are humans or near enough to us that they likely think like us they are stancing" Donsk fired back scowling at Cedrick as other murmured their support for him.

"That cannot be ascertained without considerable study of them and their society, if there is one thing we have learned over the years is that we cannot assume that what we have experienced is the norm, we are but one nation in a galaxy we find hard to comprehend. Another representative chimed in, Miss Donna Luvstakya from the planet of Harrington was one of the younger members of the council but had excelled in the local politics of her world and had surprised many of the World council members with her political prowess. "No we cannot simply go around and claim that every time we run into a stellar nation that meats us with a show of force is out to burn our worlds and steal our children. We need to take a more level headed pragmatic approach, it is sad that the navy has lost lives but there will always be errors in judgement if we were to meet them all with a show of force we would never have gotten past our own past turmoils."

Domonic listened to the chorus of agreements, that rose up after her scathing remarks. Dominic had to admit she would go far, probably as far as the chairwoman elect at some point. He would need to some how get her on his side, so far she had sat on the sidelines and waded in with a level headed and pragmatic approach that he admired. He felt however that if he didn't step back in it would quickly get out of control and turn into a squabbled between the hawks and the diplomats that sprung up from time to time. Domonic was about to but in when Ko stopped the conversation dead.

"People please, we are here to make a decision on how to proceed let us move this to a vote so we can deal with this quickly and not have it drag on long enough for some of us to grow old and die." He leant backwards his eyes glazed over for a moment just as the poll entered Domonics own mind space asking him to place his vote. Naturally he voted for a less aggressive approach, to reach out to the Valinon and learn about them rather than shoot at them. It didn't take long for the poll to be tallied up. He allowed himself a small smile when he saw the result, three quarters of the council had voted to take the same approach as him, a few he saw had swapped their rhetoric of peace for a show of force clearly Donsk had done some behind the scene deals do gather more support around him but today it wasnt enough. They would proceed diplomatically and sort out this whole misunderstanding and hopefully find some new friends.

Domonic waited as one by one the world council disappeared severing their links to the network until only he was left. He looked around the room, "What did you find."

I did not have full access but it appears the CNIA of which Mr Donsk is a member of their oversight committee has had one of its agents send out a distress call deep from within what they believe is Valinon space... It seems that we have encountered this Stellar nations before but no under any official capacity. It is believe that the agent has gone to ground Astrid spoke in the back of his mind as she appeared next to him following his vision across the room.

"Brilliant not only do we have to deal with the loss of several naval personnel but we also may have to negotiate with them to retrieve one of our agents, if they dont decide that this is an act of war... find out all you can Query the CNIA with my access levels and organise a meeting with Mr Donsk and Secretary Gerrard."

Shall i make it a physical meeting?

"Better do might actually make them realise the gravity of the situation."

---

CNIA Agent Mitch Karamak
Passive Intelligence Operations - Alpha Centauri

Mitch ducked and dived through the corridors of the ship, he had spent quite a while on the ship, and whilst most of it he had been working his way to various stops he had also spent some of his time getting to know the ship very intimately figuring out which crawl spaces shielded him from sensors which routes were the quickest to the bridge and engineering as well as getting his own personal AI so embedded into the ships mainframe that she had almost completely re-written the vessels operating system.

"YARA... some assistance if you please" he spoke as he ran turning yet another corner.

YARA was his personal AI, strictly speaking she was agency issue a copy of one of the many Sentient AI's in the CNIA with parts stripped out so she could be accommodated in his wetware Implants. He had done some tweaking over the years giving YARA a unique personality making her quite the companion on the long haul travels he sometimes found himself on.

Since he had made her connect with the ships mainframe, she has really come into her own using the extra computational power and memory space she had grown probably into what could be considered a fully sentient AI of her own.

You appear to have some form of artificial construct following you the group that attacked you is not far behind... It also seems that your presence has been noted outside as more soldiers are converging on the ship.

Great karamak thought as if three armoured goons wasn't enough

"Disrupt anyone trying to gain access to the ship as best you can, and see if you can loose the goons following me."

Already on it, take a right and then through the bulk head on the left at the end of the corridor... Im initiating ship lock down procedures.

He kept running listening to the clank of his boots on the cold metal decking of the ship, he turned right onto the hallway that intersected the med bay and the recreational area. Running the full length of the corridor he dived left chancing a look behind himself. He couldn't see any troopers yet but the small rollers were hot on his tail, he stepped into the recreation room only to have the doors slam quickly shut behind him denying the rolling spheres access at least temporarily. It was enough time for him to gather his thoughts and break the enemies line of sight, was he had done that he could concentrate on getting out of the ship and into a more opportunity rich environment.

[Valinon]

Alpha Centauri

Arkady Kozak started. A sharp but not unbearable pain briefly pulsed from the inside of his thigh. His eyes snapped open and then squinted, waiting for the sleek lines of the hotel room’s stilted mixture of pale greys and blues to come into better focus. His eyes were dilated. Their condition was not helped by the diffused light of Court of Nessus’s core cityscape still streaming in through the windows not entirely opaqued filters.

There was disjointed sound. He started to fumble for the stim pack near the bed when his hand was grabbed and batted away. Arkady shook his head violently.

‘Use the wetware. The cat is here.’

Arkady hurled himself quickly over onto his opposite side. Seina stood over him, kneeling on the bed as she reached across to collect the stim pack and drop it in a drawer. Her loose robe reminded Arkady to look around for his pants.

‘What does Leshy want?’

‘There’s a problem, and he wouldn’t tell me more. He did say Leonid doesn’t know yet.’

Arkady sat bolt upright, telltales snapping into place and he started a chemical tracer to clear his mind before pushing Seina down and using her as a rough fulcrum to get to the other side of the bed. He opened the drawer in the low table and pulled out the pack, pressing the autoinjector against his skin. He held a finger to his lips to cut off the start of Seina’s protests.

‘If my uncle doesn’t know, Leshy is giving us a heads up. I don’t have time for the implant to run its course.’

Nor the hangover I didn’t think to head off beforehand.

‘Why didn’t you get me sooner?’ Arkady grabbed his pants and took a thin undershirt from the bag also in the chair.

‘I did. You didn’t so much as move.’

He grunted and ran an idle hand through the longer hair on the crown of his head, pulling it back into a short knot. Perks, his muse, chirped and he demanded a news dump on anything relating to OVA or the KF arms show.

Nothing. He moved toward the door and it slid open as he strode into the small sitting room, the blues and greys still melded the floor, furniture, and walls. One chair was occupied by an overly large grey and black cat whose long, luxuriantly furred tail swished between its cross legs.

‘Arkasha, you have slept too long. Seina no kimi had to keep me entertained.’

‘How entertaining can silence be, Leshy?’

‘And stop using honorifics. It’s not as if it has meaning.’

The avatar clicked its teeth. Arkady’s long relationship with his uncle’s overly sentient muse knew that for something close to a sigh.

‘As usual, no insult was meant, Dearest Seina. You know the Undersecretary desires nothing more than to see you returned home.’

‘Or so he says.’

The same click came forth, ‘I can assuage your doubts later. This is for both of you, and it will be quick.’

Arkady jumped as Perks barely acknowledged Leshy’s direct feed before his n-plants and c-brain stack were inserted with a compressed expy dump. Seina, less familiar with her own wetware, staggered momentarily. Arkady saw the Gān Bēi, one of the dumb couriers his uncle used to fulfill only partially dubious VergeSec activities, its manifest, the flurry of orders and queries from the security nets, auditing activities from both KM and ESS RIs in the OVA archives, and some information about a naval exercise.

‘What was that last part?’

Leshy gave an odd little shrug with one shoulder, ‘It’s possibly related―or someone in the General Staff thinks it is. I’m not certain either. I don’t even know if the Undersecretary could find out all the details. It doesn’t matter. Kapitan Metharom has gotten himself into a situation. We need to get him out of it. I already contacted SCBT to activate the retainers and expressed we need a robust litigator, not someone who policies their shipping agents, to smooth over any ruffled feathers―Nevermind. We need to move. It appears the ESS wasn’t being overly paranoid.’

Leshy flashed, to Arkady only, the slip’s vid of the troopers driving the ship’s crew out and another squad rushed to board the freighter. The containers under guard floated upward under the power of a single trooper in his danger suit. They were webbed together with telltale blinks on each container. The formless, sexless infantryman was moving it toward open space when he suddenly gave it a push. Rather than falling to the floor, the containers and a cluster of other unsecured tools, equipment, and other debris started to float in microgravity. The vid-feed cut off.

‘I’ll handle SCBT. You need to get to the freighter. If at all possible, see if you can exercise some authority over the ESS’s target. They clearly think this is someone from the Verge, and we need to know if some gunrunner thinks its a good idea to just break into our network uninvited. Who knows what he may have picked up, or who he could be with. I must notify the Undersecretary.’

Leshy vanished.

‘Who in the Verge would send a human agent that’s not a flat?’ Seina stood from her chair, moving quickly to the bedroom. Arkady started to collect his own gear from the room before heading back to the bedroom, grabbing another shirt and a jacket. He pulled a box from his bag, ran his ident, and pulled out two ‘water’ pistol of dubious status in the Demesne.

‘I don’t know, for certain, but I can guess what Leshy is worried about. It could be the Viprans or one of their border princes. It could be a Perseid Federation insertion. I hope it’s the latter. We can let ESS deal with that. If it’s the atorans…’

‘Let’s think about it after the fact.’

---

Inas watched Htarom’s progress in maneuvering the linked containers out of the slip while tracking her men in the ship through the tacnet. His progress was assisted when the local system acknowledged her override and scaled back to microgravity. There was the merest tug on her legs as he suit adapted to the change in the environment. She glanced at Gagnon. The ESS officer was unaffected by the change. She suspected his boots were magnetic.

By the time she glanced back to the obergefreiter, he had hurled the containers forward. A small retard jet burst in quick succession to accelerate the new payload out of the slip. It was caught in the webbing securing the containers along with two roughly fist-sized AM catalysed explosive charges (AMCEC), enough explosive power to vaporise the containers and sterilise a 20-meters of space in a neutron-laden bath. Whatever Gagnon’s target brought with him would soon be useless.

There was a sudden blip on her tacnet. A pair of GSP-4s, part of Asomat Drives security drone line produced for the IAF, were streaking along the outer fringes of the Bracelet on a direct course to the slip. The drones were little more than RI, a grav-engine, and a high-powered graser. They were being trailed by a single, larger customs frigate with its equally over-scaled weaponry.

’We need to change tactics. Our situation is tenuous, and I cannot afford the In-Laws ferreting out our operations. They’re already starting to sniff around because of a fracas on the periphery.

‘He has a ship to hide in. This will take time, especially if you want him alive.’

‘I know. We need to minimise his options. Send the other squad aboard. Have your men establish a direct link on the bridge. A Curtis instance will be onhand to take over the ship. Then we limit his options rather drastically.’

Inas was about to ask when the freighter’s docking clamps were seized by one of the Bracelet’s administrative RI instances. They started cycling rapidly, leaving only the minimum bow anchors in place.

’We can test if he’s flat enough for vacuum to still be an issue. I rather think it will be. Even if he isn’t, I can’t imagine he will be willing to take a graser to the torso. The drones and frigate will be at your command once they are in position to secure the slip.’

******

Onboard the Gān, the first squad continued its pursuit of the target. The second squad detached from the perimeter was moving back toward the corridors where Gindl and his reinforced fire team were seeking Karamak. Dot drones spiraled through corridors in circles rotating from deck to ceiling. A few started to drift into various air ducts and service ways. Their numbers were limited, but the eight-man squad racing to join them was seeing their own drones.

The squad was halfway through the ship when blast doors started to slam shut and a hull breach alarm started to sound.

Gindl swore in the silence of his suit.

[LT, what is your status status.]

[Bridge-side of engineering. Ship’s AI initiated lock out. Blast door at second frame is blasted. It picked a fight with Dickerson and lost. Bridge, ETA on override.]

[Suit RIs are syncing to systems now.]

[Kill that. Establish a direct link. ESS authorised moving the freighter’s systems in the local wire. Curtis instance will assume control of the ship. Once control is established, we will force the egress with a third squad and all elements are to prepare for hard vacuum. Destroy all blast doors prevent the search.]

Gindl smiled, clicked his assent and listened to the chorus of responses to the Oberst’s orders. A particle bolter extruded from near Oakes’ elbow and discharged into the door blocking their path, leaving a wide gash. The other members of the fire team deployed a bolter or lower energy laser pulser below their wrists. There was a dulled echo coming from amidship suggesting Hagen was also making progress.

Separated by plates and fields, but not by comms, the dot drones started to feed visuals to the network scanning for Karamak while waiting for their armed support.

On the bridge, Jäger Kalanges inserted an encrypted ansible connector with D-barrier into the communications console. Moments later the data-feed came alive as a mid-range instance of Curtis, the vast RI responsible for the Bracelet’s port and ship control, moved to seize control of the ship. Its actions were not particularly subtle. It moved immediately for the ship’s program cores and critical systems, especially the docking controls, environmental plant, and engines. A subroutine spawned into navigation, instructing the autopilot to plot a short course into the vacuum. Another casually started to eat at the emergency controls, seeking to bulk deactivate all environmental safety procedures and lock outs. It also moved to actively delete safety hard code designed to keep the ship’s atmosphere sealed without a direct declaration of emergency from the freighter’s command staff.