The PCV
Luxor was not, by any measure of the term, an elegant vessel, despite its narrow, tapering design or the vast degree of precision engineering tucked away underneath its thick armored hull. Rather, it for all practical purposes seemed to be a dull-tipped lance flanked on one side by an of odd, boxy turret with a barrel too large to ever fit a reasonably sized shell and on the other by an array of delicate sensors currently turned out of their armored shell and aimed at nothing in particular. Occasionally, a lazy puff of light would flash at the ship's nose or bow, setting it spinning ever-so-slightly to test the sensor array's gimbal or tracking systems, or the four curved spines jutting from its rear fuel bus would flex, then contract, adjusting to a sudden influx of heat or of chill and extending or contracting in response. Other than that, and apart from the little cylindrical vessel clambering across its surface with a pair of articulated arms, it seemed a perfectly dead hulk, traveling a lazy course along the few light-minutes between gate and in-system refueling port.
It had no reason to do anything more; its entire reason for coming in this system was to conduct a general scan, refuel, and make the transit back to its origin, and it had done that. Hell, the first objective had been completed within a few hours of entering this worthless star's immediate vicinity; all that was left was to conduct an overglorified U-turn and remind the locals their hired guns were still about. In fact, it was with these locals that one Jessica Reese, radio operator and ESW specialist in the employ of licensed PMC 8912 "Sacha's Valkyries", was currently engaged in comms with.
Though, like the
Luxor itself, to call her little conversation a conversation was a bit of a misnomer; the hab she'd connected with was currently light-minutes away, and as such their discussion was limited to a chain of very slow emails, each attempting to predict what the other might say and failing rather miserably. But, ultimately, it didn't matter whether, say, the traffic controller on the other end of the line owned a potted plant or not. It was just a chain of pleasantries attempting to pass a dull voyage that served very little purpose whatsoever. Oh, well. Things could've been worse. Much, much worse.
Reese had just send out a response to a badly-worded query apparently translated from Dutch about her health when the headphones resting on the controls next to her and still jacked into the
Luxor's deployed sensor array flared to screeching life, screaming out some sort of looping message that to her ears sounded like a very loud burst of a repeating pattern of static. Wincing at the sudden noise, she turned away from one console and flicked to another, nearly flinging herself out of her chair in the process. Microgravity was easy enough to get used to, but it could still catch one off guard now and again.
A flick of a knob and the hissing from the headphones had resolved itself into an understandable message, or at least an understandable portion of a larger one. While it seemed to largely iterate through a series of garbled, incomprehensible words she was uncertain a human mouth could even
make, a small portion of it was clearly spoken in English, albeit clunky, poetic English at that:
WE SUMMON THE SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE
A GALAXY AFLAME REQUIRES YOUR TALENTS
YOU WILL BE REWARDED ACCORDINGLY
FOR THE GOOD OF ALL CHAOS
...what the..? Reese's brow furrowed, and after jotting down those words with a grease pencil in a hurried hand she pivoted in her seat once more to face out the hatch of the
Luxor's sensor suite and into the main control room. This made no sense. Something had to be checked. "Hey, Carlos?"
A moment later, and then a slurred reply- "Yeah?" Apparently Carlos had been at the ship's liquor again. Silently Reese sank back into her seat and sighed. Well, that made sense. He lived for the thrill of the assignment, like the stereotypical soldier of fortune, and there wasn't anything particularly thrilling about the past few days. Though if Reese's hunch was right-
"Can you get me a full-sphere scan on thermals? There's something really odd going on h-"
Before she could finish, he cut her off in an angry tone, shouting over her from his seat two rooms away. "Get it youshelf, I's busy."
Goddammit. "Can't. Primaries are still cycling through their test run. But they just gave me some... really odd results. I need a proximity check on the secondaries."
A moment's silence, then the sound of shuffling from the other room, and after a few seconds more of uncomfortable grunting yet more slurred speech. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a tall, lanky man in coveralls, his face flush with alcohol, pulling himself in front of a control panel that cast his face in an altogether different hue. "Nothing. Now can I ple-" His swiping at the panel stopped as
something swung into view.
Even a few meters away from her coworker as she was, Reese could clearly see the dark green of an empty feed on his screen replaced by the hot orange of a heat-bloom- a cloud of expanding exhaust, only a few degrees Kelvin hotter than the ambient temperature of space, but blatantly obvious to even the
Luxor's second-rate sensors nonetheless. In a much more sober tone Carlos voiced what they both knew:
"Vessel. Uh... range... 0.3 light-seconds. Radiators out, her tail's lit up like a Christmas tree. She's not even trying to be stealthy. Drive cut out a moment ago, it looks like. Plume is still close."
Reese fell back into her chair and sighed.
How'd that thing get right on top of us while we were doing a systems scan? We didn't even know it was there until it blew my ears out with that message. Shakily, Reese turned back to her console, passing along a halfhearted acknowledgement to Carlos. "U-understood. I... I guess we should get the others."
"On it." Carlos swung out of his chair and pulled himself off towards the
Luxor's lower compartment. Reese could see his hands shaking from her seat; from fright or the drink she didn't know. But there were more important things at hand. Like responding to this newcomer. Flicking a switch, she terminated the primary test schedule- it was far enough along anyways, and it wasn't like they
needed to verify that every system remained triple-redundant immediately- and brought the
Luxor's signalling-laser around to face the odd, daggerlike vessel now clearly framed in the ship's radio and thermal telescopes' sights. Reese pulled out an odd little device, a chrome-plated Morse transmitter, and tapped out a quick message in reply, the transmitting laser sending out pulses of light at the other vessel broad enough to be picked up on its passive sensors as long as it was aimed in the ship's general direction.
COPY YOUR MSG STOP
ROLL TO SHOW RECEIVER STOP
WHEN DONE STANDBY FOR MSG STOP
That done, she leaned back in her seat and waited, her heart thumping with excitement and a modicum of terror. The ship's senior gunnery officer was currently sleeping two decks down; if this vessel had been hostile they'd be dead now. But apparently it had a vested interest in keeping them alive.
In fact, if she'd heard the transmission still looping through her headphones even now correctly, it seemed to want to...
hire them.
This little trip had gotten
far more complex than just a simple goodwill run.