Chapter 26

Arion star system, outer star system.

Approaching the stealth container.

"Alright, I've got a full scan of the thing." Said Elteria as her hologram reappeared on the bridge.

"And?" Asked Sarah as she leaned forward in her command seat, resting her head on her fist.

"Well....It's not exactly encouraging." The AI gestured, and a hologram popped up in place of the system display, before deconstructing itself into different components. "The cargo container itself appears to be heavily stealthed. So much so I can't tell for sure what the hell is inside. All I know is that it doesn't ping right to my sensors and I'm getting a whole bunch of errors. The rest of the container is more concerning. Whoever made this thing really didn't want it to fall into the wrong hands. There's a fusion bomb strapped to it, as well as what looks like a sensor package and some communication systems. I'd be ready to bet this thing is set on a proximity fuse, with orders to blow up if any ship gets too close and doesn't ping it with the right codes."

"I see..." Alexandra tapped her cheek with her index. "Can we take out the bomb?"

"We certainly can. Although given that everything is more or less lashed together, we'd take out the coms and sensors alongside it."

"Shame." Sarah smiled. "But I'll take what I can get. Any guarantees that there aren't any other bombs hidden in the cargo, just in case someone gets through the other security and tries to open it?"

"I don't think so. There are no radioactive elements, charged capacitors or active containment fields inside the container for sure. My material scanners just can't make out what is in it."

Sarah nodded. Without either radioactive elements to make a fission bomb, or the capacitors or containment fields to light up a fusion bomb or contain antimatter, there was no way there would be a dangerous enough bomb to endanger their reinforced cargo hold.

"Very well then. I assume you'd like to take out the bomb with a shot from our point defence guns?"

"Yep. Low power, obviously." Anything else would risk just shredding the container of course, so Sarah nodded. "I'll prepare some follow up shots just in case, but I don't think we'll need them."

"Very well then. You have my benediction to proceed."

"Aye aye ma'am!"

*****

"So, your thoughts?" Said Sarah as she contemplated the large...brick, for the lack of a better word, of stealth composites sitting in the cargo hold through one of the engineering workshop's holographic screens.

"Well, it's definitely High Verge stealth composites, but we pretty much already guessed that." Said Turral as she poked at her datapad. "We did full, deep scans, and there are no signatures indicating chemical, nuclear or antimatter explosive devices of any sort." Sarah shivered at the casual mention of antimatter. Unlike her chief engineer, she'd seen the stuff used in combat. It was rare, and expensive as hell, but antimatter weapons still made up most of the anti-super capital ship weapons in the Alterian Directorate Navy's arsenal, and most of it's planet killer arsenal as well. "So not really any danger there. The one thing I can't figure out is what the hell is in it. I've compensated for the stealth composites as best as I can, and even now I can't tell. All of my sensors are returning readings that just don't make sense, but they should be able to give me at least something even with the remaining interference!"

Sarah smiled, and patted her chief engineer on the shoulder.

"It's alright Turi, we'll just open the damn box. As long as it's not booby trapped it shouldn't be a problem, right?"

"Right. I'll just issue the crew with full hazard suits anyway. Just in case."

Sarah nodded.

"Let's get on with it then."

"Aye aye ma'am."

A few minutes later -and a hearty amount of profanity from the engineers having to put on the bulky, heavily armored radiation and damn-near-everything proof suits the ship's lockers packed for potentially hazardous duties-, Sarah watched the screen with intent as the engineers slowly walked to the container, and opened it.

For a few seconds, nothing happened, and one of the engineers picked up something from within the container, and stepped back into view of the camera.

"Well, I have an answer for those 'contradictory readings' chief." Said Cindy over the coms, before lifting a dull green ingot towards the camera. "This fucking container is packed full of divinium ingots!"

Sarah's eyes went wide, and she exchanged an astonished look with Turral.

*****

"This...complicates things." Said Elteria as her hologram brushed it's hand against the ingot. It glowed briefly as the hologram touched it, before returning to it's inert state.

"No kidding." Said Sarah, and for once without even the slightest hint of irony.

They were currently in her office, alongside what passed of the heads of the various departments of her ship, which were basically engineering and marines in the forms of Turral and Hector, as Elteria handled pretty much everything else. Turral had also brought in Seria, although in this case it was mostly because she needed someone to take notes and all of her other people were busy going over the entire container and it's cargo with a metaphorical molecular toothbrush. It was also quite possibly to just keep an eye on her so she didn't go wandering off and hurt herself without supervision. A bit overprotective, but that was Turral's usual behavior with newbies.

"I don't get it, why is this so important?" Said Seria as she gestured at the ingot. "I mean, everyone knows the Dominion only came in Thaumor to mine this stuff."

Sarah nodded.

"True, but do you know why they're doing it?"

Seria shrugged.

"Not really, no. It wasn't exactly part of my curiculum."

"Right. Well, do you at least have an idea what divinium is?"

"Yes!" Seria blinked. "It's an extradimensional material right? Or rather, a bunch of materials, coming in from another reality, with anomalous properties that make them very precious? I don't remember much of it, it was part of my physics class, but some of them are like room temperature perfect supraconductors?"

"Basically, yes. All of the divinium materials, there's about a 180 total, but about 150 of those are so rare as to be non existent, are from...somewhere." Sarah gestured vaguely in the air. "Even the Infinite Systems Federation can't track down where, and they've been trying for as long as the Federation has existed." Which meant a million years, more or less. "In any case, divinium is very, very precious. Not only because some of those properties are outright miraculous, but also because deposits of it are very, very rare."

In fact, very rare was vastly understating it. Most galaxies had a few dozen exploitable deposits at most. Out of hundreds of billions of star systems. The thing was that any deposit found was usually gigantic, on the scale of whole planetoids made out of the stuff, and could be spread over several star systems, which made it's deposits of extreme strategic importance.

"Right, I know that, but it's just...rare metals, basically, right?"

Sarah shook her head.

"No, it's much worse than that. Problem is, everyone needs those materials for something. Even the Infinite Systems Federation, with their high tech synthetic replacements still trades for those materials from time to time. And they're quite possibly the single most isolationist bunch of nations in the Known Universe. Well, in their particular way anyway. The Near Verge always needs more of the stuff as well. The Dominion didn't start an intergalactic colonization effort because of some shiny metals, or go to so much trouble to hang onto said colonies right after emerging from a civil war. Divinium is also one of the few materials outside of antimatter you can truly consider universally accepted, and it's far less regulated. Dominion credits aren't worth crap to a Near Verge nation, but a ton of divinium? Many merchants will take it without question as payment."

"So, it's..."

"The reason why the SLF and the NAR had such high tech on their side. Whoever is funding them must be paying some intergalactic arms smugglers with this." Sarah tapped the ingot. "It's practically the only way they'll get them to give that much gear, or even Near Verge tech to begin with without getting stupidly expensive." A fact she was painfully aware of, as it had been an issue she had collided with face first upon her first attempt to replenish her spare parts and missile stores upon becoming a mercenary. "So this changes things, and in a lot more ways than one."

Seria frowned.

"Why?"

"Because we don't know if it comes from the Protectorate Core Worlds' mines, or somewhere else." Chipped in Elteria. "If it's from the Core Worlds...then the Protectorate, hell, the Dominion, has someone highly placed enough to 'lose' tons of the stuff to fund what looks to be an entire interstellar network of rebels and terrorists. If it's not..."

"If it's not, the entire strategic balance changes." Completed Sarah. "If it comes from somewhere else, it means the Dominion no longer has the exclusivity to large quantities of advanced technology and intergalactic commerce they fondly believe they do. The kind of exclusivity their entire damned strategic doctrine is based upon in the Protectorate. Could you imagine what would happen if a fleet of decommissioned Mid Verge warships ended up in the hands of a rebellious star system? Or if a handful of High Verge ship fabricators were given to an organization like the New Arion Republic?"

Seria's face went white.

"The Protectorate would collapse."

"Not instantly, but...yeah. The Dominion's playing a dangerous balancing act here, they know they have to hold on to Thaumor, or their dissenters and remnants of the civil war will rise up and tear them apart. At the same time they have to keep a firm boot on those dissenters' necks to keep them from thinking they can rise up anyway. If the Protectorate goes down, the entire Dominion will probably go up in flames with it." Sarah shook her head. "What we just found...What we just found could change the face of the galaxy."

Seria gulped.

"S-So, what do we do?"

Sarah sighed.

"We get more information. I'm not heading into this mess blind. What we know right now is worth a lot of money, but it's worth so much that told to the wrong person it could be worth out deaths, pure and simple. Elteria?"

"Yes?"

"I want you to contact our Dominion friends, ask them about carrying out a live fire exercise in the wreckage while we're still in range. If they don't agree fast enough do it anyway. Nuke the entire damned area, make it look like we're trying to deny the locals salvage or something as some form of petty revenge. They've been enough of a royal pain in the ass I'd have been tempted to do it anyway honestly. With a bit of luck, our rebel friends will believe we chanced out and blew up their precious cargo by accident."

The AI firmly nodded.

"I'll get right on it!"

"Alright, next, we're changing our destination. I know we were planning to lay a little low after we went to Sidernis, but that's no longer an option."

"Where are we going then?" Asked Turral.

"To Stuggart, where else?"

Turral and Hector looked distinctly uneasy, and Elteria winced, but Seria only looked at Sarah with excitement.

"The planet of mercenaries? We're going there?"

Sarah nodded.

"Indeed we are. It's where most of our contacts are based, in one way or another, and, well....expensive as he is, I think this warrants calling up Old Joe."

"Right." Hector sighed. "If nothing else his guarantees of safety are worth their weight in antimatter."

"Indeed. And hey, you'll get to see your wife."

Hector smiled.

"Yes, but I'd rather avoid getting her in the line of fire."

"Fair enough." In her experience, Esmeralda could very much take care of herself, but Sarah wasn't about the contradict her marine sergeant on that.

Seria looked around at the officers' various expressions, then back at Sarah.

"Is there something I'm missing? You all seem very...nervous to go there. Isn't Stuggart supposed to be a mercenary safe haven?"

Sarah smiled.

"Precisely. It's where all mercenaries go between jobs, or if they need something...and it's also where all of those mercenaries' enemies go to wait for them to come back."

Seria's expression fell.

"Oh."

"Yep. In short? We're guaranteed to be walking straight into an ambush, or at least get ambushed as soon as we leave." And that ambush wouldn't necessarily be from the Silver Syndicate either. She had enough enemies some of them might feel like it would be a good time to attack her, regardless of her recent...problems with the syndicate. Stuggart was a massive supply hub and a very good place to rearm, but it was also very dangerous to go to because of that.

"Couldn't we just, well, destroy the divinium, and pretend like this didn't happen?" Seria shrugged as everyone looked at her. "Look, I'm not advocating it, but it is a solution we have to consider."

Everyone looked at Sarah, and she shook her head.

"Even just knowing about it would make us a target. At least with having incontroversible proof we'll force our enemies to be a bit more circumspect if they ever find out. And quite frankly, this kind of information is worth a lot of money." Piles and piles of it actually. Just the container's contents had to be worth gigacredits at the very least. Gigacredits that she could use to get Near Verge gear they desperately needed vastly more easily than by using the Dominion's currency at that. "If there is a breach like that in their divinium supply chains, or hell, another deposit, some Dominion admirals or higher ups would be willing to sell their souls to know about it."

"Fair enough. Mercenaries, right?"

Sarah chuckled.

"Right. Well, in any case, I don't believe we need to trouble our friend Gries about this. Pass the word around for everyone to keep their mouths shut and stay sober in public until we at least have an idea of what we're dealing with. Then as soon as we are in Sidernis, get a message to Stuggart to prepare a secure berth for us." Sarah winced. "It's going to cost us a bunch, but it should help. And have everyone update their wills. Because things are going to get dicey once we get there."

Everyone nodded. There was no need for a verbal response.