Chapter 25

Arion star system, inner star system.

High orbit over Arion Prime.

Sarah sighed as she cut the communication channel and sat back in her seat.

"You know, the more I talk to these idiots, the more I'm wondering if we didn't chose the wrong side here. I mean, the bounty is nice, but at least we wouldn't have to deal with this complete bullshit."

Elteria nodded silently, dangling her legs off of the captain's desk, with the dreamy expression of someone on their implants, or in her case an AI having most of her processing power dedicated to something else.

"How goes the sensor checks?" Asked Sarah as she grabbed her mug of hot cocoa, and took a sip.

"Not....great. Haven't found anything significant yet. I've reviewed everything we had of the station, and it was definitely a reactor core failure. I detected an energy spike right before everything went wrong, but there was so much crap between the reactor and us, like, you know, an entire industrial space station, that it's hard to tell what it was. It could have been the containment field failing or a bomb, impossible to tell."

"Right. Anything else?"

"Not anything that's relevant. The frigates they were building were all at roughly the same stage of completion, plus or minus one month depending on the ship. I'm starting on reviewing the sensor records we have of their gunships and our fight with them and the merchant." The AI shrugged at Sarah's questioning gaze. "I know, it's unlikely one of them had a battle laser of doom that could dig through kilometers of station and set off the reactor, but it's not going to cost us much and you know those bastards down below will ask us for that kind of analysis anyway."

Sarah nodded grimly. The reaction of Arion's government had been...both better and worse than she'd feared.

Upon receiving the news, the planet had gone crazy. Or rather, it's political class had. A significant minority, which she tagged as probably having ties to the NAR, either through bribes or outright membership, were asking for her head, throwing around accusations of genocide at whoever would listen to them. Another faction, unfortunately far larger, was asking for a 'very thorough enquiry' and basically advocated for arresting her and her ship until the matter was 'resolved fully', basically keeping her under their thumbs as a convenient scapegoat if need be.

Fortunately, either the prime minister disagreed or he'd realized how staggeringly stupid of an idea that would be, and had firmly shut down the proposal before it'd made it past what passed for a parliament on that planet. If she'd had any doubt about who ruled this world, seeing dissenting voices in the ruling party vanish the second the prime minister made his position clear had dispelled them. Combined with the political summaries Elteria had given her, she would honestly be surprised if the king managed to lace his shoes without the express permission of his 'loyal prime minister'.

In any case, the government had simply suggested that she stayed put until the Dominion arrived to sort everything out. Fortunately, a task force (for the Dominion's definition of a task force anyway) had been dispatched as soon as the news of her capture of enemy gunships had reached the Dominion, and the local embassy had reassured everyone that the commanding officer of said task force would be qualified to make the final call. It had also not so subtly reminded everyone that said task force, despite being basically a single battle carrier -a militarized freighter really- with a handful of purely sublight gunships and corvettes aboard, would also be able to more or less level the entire damned system if it so wished, and that everyone should stay calm until it arrived.

Some hadn't taken the hint, but most people had realized that pissing off the Dominion at this juncture would be a very bad idea. Generally the Dominion Navy had it's hands tied intervening in Protectorate systems, but one of the rare cases where the gloves came off was in cases of mass murder, and this definitely qualified.

After all, according to the remaining New Arion Republic stations, almost a million people had died on the shipyard. That was mostly because at it's core the station had been a habitat, but over a third of the people on it had still been yard workers. Which also said a lot of very worrying things about what kind of tech they were working with, because as far as she was aware no one below the Protectorate Core Worlds had the tech to build 8 freaking frigates with three hundred thousand workers. Yes, they were escort ships, but they were 600 meters long warships nonetheless, and even just assembling the components would have taken more people than that in most Protectorate star systems, at least while staying at the rate of construction they'd appeared to have been sustaining.

Which meant that not only she had fought potentially complete maniacs, willing to kill a million of their own people just to prevent their own capture, but she had also fought people with tech they really, really shouldn't have had access to.

Sarah sighed, and took another sip of her hot chocolate, before freezing as Elteria suddenly straightened up.

"What is it?"

"Captain, we have a problem."

Sarah frowned, already halfway up from her seat, before Elteria threw up a hologram on top of her desk.

"What- Wait, that's...a shuttle, right?"

"Yes." Answered the AI, before gesturing and adding to the hologram a representation of the retrofitted merchant ship. "It seemed to have separated from our friend here seconds before we blew it to hell. Which can mean only one thing..."

"We didn't blow it up." Sarah swore viciously under her breath. "Okay, so they evaced and blew their own ship up to cover their escape. How the hell did we miss them?"

"Because I wasn't expecting stealth. This." She gestured at the shuttle. "Is High Verge tech, at the very least. Since I wasn't sweeping for stealth systems, I missed it, and my systems categorized it as debris. Hardly surprising given the amount of crap flying around after we blew the gunships to bits."

"Shit." Sarah winced. "That...complicates things. Can you find their vector?"

Elteria shrugged.

"I can make a guess, but...this is a freaking high verge stealth ship, with a dimensional interference drive most likely. If it stays low power and doesn't raise it's shields, provided it has some to begin with, I can't detect it unless I manage to ping it directly with an active sensor burst, or it gets too close. Given how far it must have gotten by now..."

"You'd have to scan the entire damned system to find them, and that would take decades."

"Technically it would take an infinite time, the area they could be in would grow faster than I could reduce it by scanning."

"Right. Still, give a full sensor pulse along their most likely vectors, just to be safe. Anything else?"

"Yep. This." Another hologram appeared, this one of a strange box. "It looks like some kind of stealthed cargo container. It's smaller than standard containers, but it was ejected at the same time as the shuttle. However, contrary to our friend, which immediately started getting the hell out of the way, this one didn't move. At least not until I switched our sensors off onto the station."

"Oh. So you mean it could still be there?"

"Yep. If it didn't start moving immediately, it probably didn't have propulsion systems of it's own altogether, so it should still be on the same vector."

"But...why leave it behind?"

The AI shrugged.

"High Verge tech can make a lot of things happen, but their stealth has it's limits. If I had to hazard a guess? They couldn't take it with them without going over the limits of their drive, or slow their shuttle so much they would put themselves at risk. That shuttle is very small to accommodate a full crew of such a large ship for a long time."

"So designed like an escape pod...but without the safety margins."

"Yeah. Otherwise it would be Near Verge tech, and in that case I wouldn't have seen it at all. Not at that distance."

Sarah nodded. Their gunship could actually pierce Near Verge stealth tech, but only within a few million kilometers, which was knife fighting range in space warfare terms. They could also, theoretically, pierce a cloaking field at point blank range, although she dearly hoped she'd never get to verify that theory. Stealth ships were dangerous, but had a lot of inherent limitations, and were relatively cheap to make. Cloaked vessels terrifying...and so high tech and expensive even the Alterian Directorate Navy fielded about one cloaked ship for every thousand conventional warships it possessed.

"Fair enough. Can you plot a course?"

"Already done. Well, actually, Normensk did it, but you get what I mean."

"I know." Sarah smiled. One of the good things about Elteria is that unlike far too many shipboard AIs she understood when she could, or needed to, delegate to her human subordinates. It was also what made her such a great executive officer. "Well, I suppose our surface friends would go crazy if we tried to pick it up now, so if you could arrange something with Gries? Suggest to him that we would like to pass through the area while leaving."

"That will seem suspicious as hell."

"Not if we phrase it like we want to brag to our client about our victories in their name. We're chest thumping mercs, remember?"

"Right." Elteria smiled, there were upsides to the stereotypes of mercenaries sometimes. "I'll get right on it captain!"

"Good. And while you do that, I'll try to get on the galactic network, and get some friends to tell me what the hell is going on. I can buy why someone would give the kind of crap they armed the SLF with in such a vital system as Sepia, what with the Dominion base and all. But here? There's nothing worth a damn here."

"Not that we know of, after all it's what we thought of Sepia at first, no?"

"Fair enough. Can you conduct a system scan?"

"Already had it scheduled."

"Good. Alright then, dismissed."

Elteria nodded, and gave her a quick salute, before the AI's hologram simply vanished from her desk.

Sarah rolled her eyes, before activating her implants' interface. It was time to place a few calls.

*****

"It's good to see you captain." Said Sarah formally, as the holographic screen appeared in the middle of the bridge.

The middle aged man, clad in the surprisingly utilitarian and yet resplendescent uniform of a Dominion Navy captain, smiled.

"The pleasure is all mine captain Ciel-étoilé, believe me. I usually don't have much time for mercenaries, but I am more than ready to make an exception for someone of your talents, especially when putting an end to such....bloodthirsty terrorists." The Dominion officer's eyes darkened. "Of course, I wished their end hadn't been so abrupt or bathed in blood, but hopefully I will be able to dispel the ridiculous accusations going around about you."

Despite herself, Sarah's eyebrows rose slightly at the captain's tone. Sure, she'd helped the Dominon here, but she'd hardly expected him to be on her side as much as he obviously was.

"Ah, sorry captain, I'm afraid I haven't fully explained the situation." Said the Dominion officer, his smile widening. "Admiral Soliensky in Sidernis made sure certain files were released to me before I set out. I am fully aware of some of your past accomplishments, hence my...reluctance to believe you would step down to committing such atrocities."

Sarah nodded. It was rare for the Dominion to release information from missions undertaken by it's mercenaries -the bounty board only provided a rating and list of qualifications, not a list of missions undertaken-, but it was an impressive sign of trust if nothing else. That or the officer in Sepia didn't want her to be trapped anywhere and under the power of someone liable to get the secret of his base's presence out of her. Fat chance of that, but after the whole fiasco with the SLF they were probably edging on the side of caution.

"Fair enough captain. Well, in that case I believe there will be no problem with us departing shortly? My charge is about ready to leave, and I am still charge with escorting them to Sidernis."

The Dominion captain chuckled.

"I highly doubt he would need escorting for that trip, but I understand that contracts are contracts. My ship is on it's way to the NAR's remaining stations as we speak. I will expedite the process as much as possible, but I don't expect it to last longer than 6 hours really." He shrugged. "If nothing else, even the sensor records from their anti collision systems should make it clear neither your lasers or your missiles took out the station."

Sarah nodded. The Dominion officer brought up a fair point after all. Sidernis wasn't the sector capital or anything, but it was generally accepted as the largest trade hub for half a thousand astras, and one of the most developed and heavily industrialized star systems in the entire sector. As such the Dominion had lost no time in establishing a very official and very large presence there, manifested in this case by a full fleet base and it's accompanying warships. It wasn't up to it's nominal strength of course -no naval deployment was after the civil war had almost annihilated the Dominion Navy-, but it still packed enough firepower to make the system completely and utterly safe from anything short of an entire invasion fleet.

"Very well captain. In this case I will await your all clear before proceeding."

"Hopefully, you will not have to wait too long, captain Ciel-étoilé."

Sarah smiled, and after a brief exchange of goodbyes and pleasantries, cut off the communication.

"Well, this went about as well as could be expected. Has our course been filed with traffic control?"

"Yes ma'am!" Answered Normensk. "They were surprisingly helpful. We are fully authorized to leave as soon as the Dominion gives their go ahead."

"Then we should probably be in hyperspace by tomorrow. Alright, cycle everyone, I want everybody ready for when we near that container, I know we have tractor beams but if we have to take it along I'd rather avoid any bad surprises."

"Aye aye ma'am!" Chorused her bridge officers, and Elteria smiled as her hologram turned towards Sarah.

"Does that include me as well, oh fearless captain?"

"Once you're done with your scans, yes, but not later. Besides, hyperspace is basically sleep mode for you."

"Right." The AI shrugged. "Well, for what it's worth I don't believe we'll find anything at this point. I'm almost done with the full system scans, and I haven't found anything yet. Pinged all the likely vectors for the stealth shuttle too, nothing."

Sarah winced.

"Well, it was worth a shot. Hopefully that cargo container will prove more helpful."