Chapter 16

Sepia star system, inner system.

Low orbit over Sepia.

"Point X in 30 seconds." Said the navigation officer, and Sarah nodded.

A single command brought up the ship's all hands channel.

"All hands, all hands. This is the captain speaking. We will engage in orbital drop maneuvers in 26 seconds. Brace for combat atmospheric reentry, I repeat brace for combat atmospheric reentry."

Sarah shut down the channel, and looked at Elteria expectantly.

"Captain. Requesting permission to deploy weapons of mass destruction on an inhabited world." Formally asked the AI.

"Permission granted." Formally answered Sarah. Out of all the traditions they had kept from their navy days, this was one of the most important ones. In theory, every warship in existence could wipe out a planet, if only by turning themselves into a 'relativistic' projectile, by the old Terran terminology. Due to this, countless regulations, agencies and boards existed to restrict the use of such devastating firepower on inhabited worlds. For the Alterian Directorate Navy, that power rested on the shoulder of a ship's captain. It was the single, and only order a ship's captain could refuse to carry out from a superior officer, and not suffer a dishonorable discharge. Oh, chances are the captain would be quietly kicked out of the navy, but they wouldn't be stripped of their ranks or court martialled over this.

Too many atrocities had been committed by the ADN for it to be any other way.

"Aye aye ma'am. Launchers 1 through 6 loaded with strategic bombardment munitions. All launchers green. Targeting solutions locked in. Launch in 5...4...3...2...1...Launch."

The ship didn't even shiver as the launchers spat out half a dozen missiles. Compared to the other missiles resting in the ship's magazines, those barely deserved the title. They didn't even carry warheads, barely being more than giant slugs of metal with capacitors and misshapen grav drives.

There was a very simple reason for that. And that reason became clear as the missiles calculated that the reduced initial push given to them by the launchers' acceleration rails had brought them outside of the safety zone surrounding the ship. Impossibly powerful, but short lived grav drives flared to life, and space itself bent under the strain as for a fraction of a second, the missiles accelerated at a hundred thousand gravities before their drives simply failed.

It didn't even take them that fraction of a second to hit the ground. 80 tons of high density alloys and various drive and power systems impacted the planet at a thousand kilometers per second, not even half a percent of Terra's lightspeed. But each of those missiles still carried the kinetic energy of 9.5 megatons of TNT, and the SLF's hidden and heavily fortified sensor sites surrounding their stronghold simply ceased to exist in a flash of hellfire to rival thermonuclear bombs.

"Status?" Calmly asked Sarah as she contemplated the spreading shockwaves on the planet. Everything within several kilometers of the sensor sites had spontaneously caught on fire from the thermal energy released by the impact, but she could see the flames being snuffed like candles from the spreading shockwave fit to topple skyscrappers. It was...beautiful, in it's own unique way.

"All SLF sites neutralized. Confirming no major damage to the SLF's central installation." That had been a big factor in deciding to lower the initial acceleration the launchers could give the missiles. After all, the launchers were made to give them an initial three thousand kilometers per second of velocity, or about a single percent of the speed of light of humanity's home dimension. The only problem was that had they done that the missiles would have hit with around 40 megatons of force, and quite possibly vaporized the SLF's headquarters as well. It still will have damaged their surface installations as well, but it shouldn't have affected the more important, shielded bunkers underneath it too much. Unfortunately it also meant the surface fortifications were almost certainly still online as well. "Helm?"

"Point X...now. Engaging drives at combat acceleration....Entering atmosphere, shutting down main drive, switching to grav drive."

The ship shivered as for a fraction of a second it accelerated at a thousand gravities, and the 8 or so kilometers per second that had let it stay in orbit simply vanished, and the Eternal Seeker plunged towards the planet's surface, it's drives pushing it to rush the SLF's headquarters. Sarah gripped her seat's armrests as the ship began to shake around her. For all of it's technological might, the Eternal Seeker was never intended to do atmospheric combat drops. That's what marine assault barges were for after all!

"Confirming active sensor pings. The main installation's defenses are coming online. Enemy has target lock. Sustaining fire."

"Anything we should be concerned about?" Asked Sarah.

"Negative. Railguns and surface-to-air missiles, nothing capable of penetrating our shields." The ship shook slightly. "And as expected, some of those missiles were armed with nuclear warheads. Low yields though, a few kilotons at best."

Sarah nodded, she hadn't really expected anything different. After all, the heavy defenses had been entrenched at the sensor sites that protected the SLF's headquarters, and they'd just turned those into craters. Those had also....complicated their plans somewhat. Until they were dealt with, neither Eternal Seeker or any of Elran's shuttles or vehicles could get close to the SLF's headquarters without starting every alarm the SLF had....and quite probably eating some serious firepower on the way. She wasn't exactly worried about her ship -if they had anything else like the anti-ship missiles they'd thrown at her they'd have used them when they tried to shoot her out of the sky-, but the Sepian's vessels were somewhat more squishy. Hence their current plan, by taking out the sites from orbit they'd cleared the way for the 3 airborne battalions circling just outside the SLF's detection range. But they still needed to get boots on the ground as fast as possible, and the Sepian's shuttles were fast...if they came down from orbit. They could drop fast, but they weren't made to get back up at any kind of speed.

"Target the launch systems and destroy them. How are our Sepian friends doing?"

"Just fine. They're a hundred kilometers behind us and we're throwing enough ECM around I'm not even sure the SLF sees them." The main display blinked as the gauss point defence turrets opened fire, albeit at massively reduced power to prevent just annihilating the installation's surface. They could have used ground support missiles, but those were for precision first strikes, when surprise was paramount or you had troops engaged. Surprise was somewhat superfluous when their enemy was peppering them with nukes and they had no one down there yet, so they might as well save the money. "Not that it would matter, all enemy weapon emplacements have been neutralized."

"And...we have finished decelerating. We are hovering at 300 meters altitude above the main installation." Said the navigator as he sat back in his seat. Every maneuver had been programmed in advance of course, but he still had monitored every step of the execution. A single glitch, after all, could have made them suffer the same fate as their kinetic weapons...And even the Eternal Seeker wouldn't be able to survive hitting a planet at several kilometers per second.

"Excellent. The Sepians?"

"Touching down in a few seconds captain."

"Excellent people! It looks like our role in this op is done. Maintain overwatch for fleeing enemies, and keep the turrets warm."

"Aye aye ma'am!"

*****

"Colonel. You look like shit." Bluntly said Sarah as she looked at the sepian's hologram. She was still sitting on her bridge, although she'd activated the privacy shields. "I assume you encountered resistance?"

"Not nearly as heavy as we'd feared, but yes. At least their equipment was equivalent to our own, if not worse, in many cases. But these people were cornered, and they knew it." He shook his head. "They fought as fiercely as my men and I did in the palace. We won, but too many of my men will never come home to their families."

"I'm sorry for your losses. Did you manage to capture anything significant?"

"Unfortunately no. Their operational command center, archives and officer's quarters self destructed before we could get to them. We did manage to intercept the self destruct sequence for the engineering facilities and the armory, but they were both more or less empty anyway."

"I think everything was more or less empty colonel. All our intel points to them being in the middle of shutting down their whole operation. Have you found their leaders?"

"I think they blew themselves up in the command center. At least one of them did, the self destruct sequence was launched with their highest level of clearance from it, by someone codenamed 'Papyrus'. Must have been some serious hard ass."

"From what I've seen, most of their fighters were hard asses. Not necessarily very skilled ones, but...well, anyone who wasn't a complete fanatic would have left, or at least tried to, once they started targeting terraformers." Sarah sighed. "We've managed to neutralize every vehicle they've tried to evacuate with. A single civilian shuttle and half a dozen grav vehicles, with around 30 or so ground vehicles." Needless to say, there were unlikely to be any survivors, not with the mess their gauss point defence turrets left. "Several runners went on foot, but your troops managed to grab them in time."

"So I was made aware." The colonel straightened. "Thank you captain, you assistance has been invaluable. I have little doubt that if you had no been here today, many more of my people would be dead, and some of the SLF's scum might have escaped justice."

"Just doing my job colonel."

"Of course. Well, if you'll excuse me, I have an operation to wrap up. It was an honor serving by your side captain."

"Likewise colonel, likewise."

*****

"Well, you sure know how to deliver, captain." Said the governor as Sarah was ushered into the room.

Sarah nodded, and calmly took a seat on the sofa opposite of the governor's, as she processed her surroundings. She'd never been in the governor's quarters, only in the now destroyed offices upstairs, but she had expected something else honestly.

From her experience, the offices of those in power tended to be either gaudy and covered in various precious substances, or simple and efficient to the extreme. This was none of those things, it was tastefully decorated, but that had taken a backseat to the memorabilia strewn about the place. It felt like...a home. Which meant that this was one of the governor's true private retreats, probably her boudoir.

"I aim to please ma'am." Sarah chuckled as she grabbed one of the already filled glasses on the table between them, and took a sip. It whiskey, pretty good one actually. "Particularly when it means I get paid."

The governor laughed.

"Fair enough. Very well, Costan, could you show him in please?"

One of the omnipresent, heavily armed gubernatorial guards nodded, and briefly stepped outside, before coming back with a man in the unmarked tight fitting jump suit that doubled as an emergency space suit, worn by spacers throughout the Known Universe. It took only a single look for Sarah to decide he was a naval officer...and a decently high ranking one. The way officers carried themselves was characteristic, even more so for any space navy, and superior officers always had this faint aura of command mixed with calm that belonged on a ship's bridge, or a flag bridge.

"This is Eolar, an associate of mine. He insisted to speak with you. He is...a part of why the payment was assembled this fast."

The last piece of the puzzle clicked in Sarah's mind.

"I see. And who, exactly, is he?"

"It is slightly complicated, he is, well..."

"The commander of the Dominion refueling station hidden in the innermost gas giant?" Completed Sarah.

The room froze, and Sarah hid her smile behind her glass as she took another sip.

"How..." The Dominion officer shook himself. "Nevermind. I'm not going to bother denying your claims, but I won't affirm them either. But yes, I work for the Dominion. I'm here because I felt that at least some explanation of where your money was coming from, and, well..."

"You were afraid the SLF would have stored your little secret in one of the pieces of equipment we'd taken for ourselves, and were planning to essentially bribe us to get them into your hands, correct?"

Eolar blinked, and sighed.

"Well...yes. Obviously, I was too late."

Sarah took another sip, and didn't bother to answer. If that was what the officer wanted to believe, that was his problem. She wasn't going to volunteer the fact that Elteria had detected their base with the ship's scanners.

"Well, in that case, I believe you will ask for a fee for you to keep this information to yourself, won't you?" Asked the governor.

Sarah shrugged.

"I wouldn't put it so crudely, but....yes, essentially."

The dominion officer sighed, and sat down.

"I am authorized to transfer you an additional 10 megacredits to buy your silence, and that of your crew captain." He shrugged at the governor's surprised look. "Just because we weren't expecting this did not mean no contingency plans were drawn up for it. So, captain?"

Sarah smiled wolfishly, and leaned forward.

"You can do better than this mister Eolar. 50."

"You're insane! 15 megacredits."

"Who said I wasn't? 35."

"25, and we'll find you a merchant escort contract out of the system."

"Deal."

Sarah sat back and took another sip. She'd have geeked to 25 anyway, but the contract was nice. Sepia, for all of it's status as a backwater world was visited by a surprising number of merchant ships, mostly due to their biochemical exports, and having to follow one around for a few weeks would at least give her a direction to go in while getting paid.

"Excellent. Then, I believe your total fee is around....195 megacredits, plus a few hundred kilocreds for the prisoners."

Sarah had to hide a smile. That was a very nice paycheck. Enough money to easily buy another gunship if she wanted actually, or hell, even a frigate, if she'd ever had the crew to man more than a single vessel. She, after all, only recruited trusted personnel. Besides, her gunship had more combat power than a Dominion heavy cruiser, so buying one of their escort ships, even if it was top of the line, wouldn't make much of a blip on her company's combat potential.

"Indeed. Well, this has been a pleasant discussion. Now, was there anything else you wished to discuss?" When the Dominion officer and the governor shook their heads, Sarah nodded. "Very well, in that case, I have to prepare my ship for departure. I'll trust you'll find that contract soon, mister Eolar. Until then, you know how to contact me."