Chapter 35

Stuggart star system, inner system.

Stuggart Prime, Secure Berth Delta-31.

"Argh." Said Sarah as she held her head.

Technically, what she was experiencing wasn't a hangover -her implants would prevent her from dehydrating that badly-, but it was the closest thing she could get to, and that was when her implants had been so overloaded they'd enacted...emergency measures. The kind that released a chemical cocktail that would make sure that whatever fun she'd gotten last night, she would very much think it hadn't been worth it for a few hours when waking up.

Doctors could be surprisingly vicious when it came to bullying people into taking care of their bodies, and it seemed cyberneticists were the worst of them all.

"Feeling a bit better?"

"Fuck you Elty."

Elteria's hologram chuckled, and hopped off Sarah's desk as the AI went to Sarah's side.

"Well, I mean if you can't handle your liquor..."

"I can handle it. My implants are just too sensitive."

"Oh really? Because I have your medical readings and-"

"I can and will transfer you to a portable data core and shove it in the brig if you finish your sentence."

Elteria laughed out loud, before calming down.

"Alright, alright, I'll stop teasing you." Her face went serious. "Although seriously, you might want to take something from the medbay. You've scheduled your meeting with Runan for this evening, remember?"

Sarah winced.

"I'll be fine. It'll have cleared up by then."

"Well, it's your choice."

"Anything new while I was asleep?"

"Not much. Received the invoice for Seria's power armor, and we have some intel coming from our usual contacts."

"Ah, so Hector did get her one. Pricy?"

"Not really. He found her a suit of force recon armor."

Sarah blinked.

"Force recon? Tech level?"

"Mid Verge, so not as good as the rest we've got, but it should do the trick."

"Let's hope so. We're not facing pushovers. Anything interesting in the intel?"

"Nothing exceptional. The Dominion has started to truly respond to the crisis. Entire battlegroups are being drawn from the Core, and they've started stomping on the bloodier insurrections, hard."

Sarah winced, hard. The Dominion's version of 'stomping down' on insurrections was saturation bombardments and planetary invasions, which inevitably killed almost as many civilians as rebels.

"That's...a bit farther than I expected them to go."

"I think they're trying to outrun the shipyards. They're trying to stabilize the situation as much as possible before those fleets come online."

"Those fleets are only a supposition."

"One they clearly believe in."

"Will it work?"

Elteria shrugged.

"Fifty-fifty. They're doing their best to intervene hard only when they're fully justified, but they're still drawing the ire of a lot of systems in doing so. Whatever they do they won't be able to solve it all in time. They'll probably reduce the number of systems requiring their aid and be able to consolidate, but whether that'll be worth the amount of people they've drawn into the other side's arms remain to be seen."

"I suppose we'll see." Sarah sighed. "Alright, any news from Old Joe?"

"Just got told that his network is working on it. It's probably going to take a while you know."

"I know, I know. I suppose I'm just nervous."

"Everyone is." Elteria paused, and sighed. "Do you think we bet on the wrong horse?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"The Dominion. Are you sure...are you sure it was a good idea to align ourselves with them?"

Sarah opened her mouth, then closed it.

"You're expecting a purge."

Elteria laughed.

"And you don't? You know how most of these revolutions goes. The revolutionaries make lofty promises of amnesty, overthrow the government...and everyone who followed those amnesty promises get quietly 'disappeared'. Then the revolutionaries tear themselves apart once their common enemy is gone. If we follow the Dominion and they lose, we'll get ourselves on a very short list for a bullet to the forehead."

"I doubt it'd be very different if we side with the rebels. You said it yourself, they'll tear themselves apart within a year of victory. We'll end up on someone's kill list regardless." Sarah closed her eyes as she sighed. "Besides, I'd rather side with the people who don't resort to murdering millions just to cover their damned tracks."

Elteria nodded.

"Point taken. So, what now?"

Sara chuckled, and tapped her desk, bringing up the holographic display.

"Paperwork, what else? I haven't even made a dent in the backlog our offices sent me."

Elteria smiled.

"See? That's why I never wanted to be the captain."

"Right. Just warn me when it's time to meet our dear arms dealer."

"Aye aye ma'am!"

Sarah rolled her eyes as the AI gave her a mock salute, before vanishing, and started working on her digital mountains of paperwork.

*****

"Ah! Sarah! Welcome! Welcome!"

Sarah smiled as she stepped out of the elevator, Turral in tow, straight into the....room.

There was no real term that could be applied to this place. Technically it was a warehouse...but it was more something that looked like a cross between a workshop, a lab, a temple and an armory.

Tables covered with tools and partially disassembled equipment were everywhere, some accompanied by votive candles and icons, jammed between weapon racks, containers and even literal grav tanks.

And in the middle of it all stood a man. He was of average height, around 1m80, gaunt, and would have looked like an eccentric scientist, complete with the shaggy hair, if he wasn't wearing a business suit like he was born in it. His skin was so dark it seemed to outright absorb light...which it actually did. Most humans had a bio-modification called 'polychromatic skin', which adjusted your skin color and composition to adapt to the environment. In bright light it darkened your skin, when in a highly radioactive environment it modified it to be more resilient to ionizing radiation, ect. It was highly practical and so universal people barely thought about it.

Runan on the other hand had his skin ripped out...and replaced with stealth composites. Even for Sarah, whose best friend was an AI moving around as a hologram or in an android, it was a bit much. Apparently it had something to do with the weird cult of technology Runan was part of, which also more or less composed his smuggling network, as well as ran a number of philantropic endeavors, some of which personally overseen by Runan himself.

"Runan! It's good to see you." Said Sarah as she closed the distance, extending her hand, which the arms dealer grabbed in a firm handshake.

"It is good to see you as well!" He smiled widely, which was almost a dazzling contrast to his skin. "What can I do for my most humble saviors?"

Sarah chuckled and shook her head.

"Come on, it's been decades."

"But you did save my life."

"And you repaid us for it a long time ago."

"Perhaps. Perhaps." He withdrew his hand, and gestured at the vast warehouse around him. "What can I do for you on this fine day?"

"Well, as you probably summarized, we're here to buy." Sarah gestured at Turral, who showed her tablet. "More precisely, we need 84 Artemis missiles or equivalent, as well as a hundred replacement drives for the same missiles if possible."

The replacement drives were for the missiles they'd thrown at the NARN, but hadn't ended up making it in time, and they'd turned off for recovery after the station had surrendered. The problem was that missile drives were essentially one use, and had to be completely replaced. They could fabricate replacements, but that many drives would take too long to fabricate, especially with all the other demands on their poor fabricator, to help maintain their aging ship.

Runan stroked his chin.

"Ah, big battle eh? Well, that can certainly be arranged. My weapon stocks have been selling like hot cakes, but I kept some for special clients. As for the drives..." The arms dealer shrugged. "I probably can find some, but not a hundred. 50? Maybe 60."

Sarah sighed.

"Well, it will have to do. Thank you Runan."

"My pleasure. Is that all you came for?"

"As in we specifically wanted? Yes. But you always have some things that might interest us."

"Indeed I do!" The arms dealer smiled once again, before gesturing for both women to follow him. "There's a shipment I just received from one of my brothers in Weiter Stern. I thought it might interest you. It was not easy to acquire, or to get here, but it has been more than worth the trouble I believe."

Sarah's eyebrow rose, but she kept quiet as she followed. She knew that while he had a flair for the dramatic, Runan would get to the point.

"And given your profession, and expertise, I believe you will find them most interesting." The arms dealer stopped near a pile of objects covered by tarp, and tapped them.

"Missiles?" Politely said Sarah, as the arms dealer stopped, clearly waiting for her to say something. It wasn't a hard guess either, the 10 meters long, 1 meter wide cylinders were quite distinctive.

"Not just any missiles." Runan dragged off the tarp in a single gesture, revealing 10 missiles, stacked in a near pyramid. "The Azimut V7, latest in the Loki Republic Navy's arsenal."

Sarah looked at the missile...and swore viciously, half a second after her chief engineer.

"Those are fucking hyper-missiles!"

*****

Silence reigned in the missile magazine, as Sarah, Turral, Elteria and Hector gazed upon the 10 innocent cylinders.

"I thought this tech was beyond the Loki Republic? Or the Heinsinch Empire for that matter."

Elteria shook her head.

"From everyone in Weiter Stern actually." The AI looked up at Sarah. "Where the hell did Runan even get these?"

"From the LRN. Don't ask me how, but apparently they have them. Stars know where from though."

"I might have some answers for that." Said Turral, almost absent mindedly as she tapped her tablet, and the gantry of scanners she'd set up above the missiles twitched and whirred.

"How so?"

"The traditional components of the missiles themselves are Republic. Warhead, laser rods, everything. The hyperdrive..." She pressed a button on her tablet, and a hologram popped up in the middle of the room. "The hyperdrive is most definitely not. I can't pin down where it's from, but that thing is at least 3 centuries beyond what the Lokis should be able to produce." The chief engineer shrugged. "Technically it's not completely outside of their reach, the components are fairly simple, but the theory to manufacture them..."

"The theory isn't something they should have yet." Completed Elteria. "How much did we pay for them?"

"1 megacredit per missile."

The AI winced...but didn't argue.

Probably because if there was a weapon worth that price, hyperspace missiles were definitely it.

"Can we even fire them?" Asked Hector.

"They were made for standard missile launchers." Replied Turral as she tapped on her tablet. "So yes. And Runan got us the guidance software. But..."

"It sucks." Bluntly said Elteria. "I reviewed it, and well...it's not atrocious, mind you, but I wouldn't want to take it against a prepared High Verge opponent, let alone against a Near Verge one."

"That bad?" Asked Sarah.

"Yeah. Especially as this thing barely carries a dimensional interference drive worthy of the name. If you get the emergence coordinates wrong, you're screwed."

Sarah nodded. The main advantage of hyperspace missiles was that they, well, could jump to hyperspace. That allowed them to hit virtually any target in the entire star system within a minute of launch, without any risk of intercept until they emerged back into realspace...as long as they were far enough away from a gravity well. The problem was that hyperdrives weren't exactly small, and to fit it in standard missiles you had to sacrifice significant capabilities by downsizing the drive, warhead, ect.

Their inability to receive any message while in hyperspace were also a massive disadvantage. Most missiles lost contact with their mothership sometimes hundreds of thousands of kilometers from the enemy vessels, as the sea of jamming enveloped them and random dodges to avoid point-defense fire made laser communications impossible, but they still received constant course corrections and status updates up until that point. Hyperspace missiles had the data they were launched with, and that was it. Which meant they could emerge from hyperspace in an enemy formation that had radically changed, and target the wrong ship. Furthermore, objects exiting hyperspace were 'anchored' to the gravity well they emerged in, which meant that they had, roughly, a natural elliptical orbit there, with the velocity that came with it. Which meant that no matter the velocity you had when making the jump, you were going to emerge in the middle of the enemy fleet moving at a crawl by warship standards, which meant that most missiles had seconds at most to detonate, and with their downsized drives and energy supplies couldn't catch up to most ships. And even if they did they'd be sitting ducks for point defence fire.

"Range they can fired at from a gravity well?"

"We can fire them from, or at for that matter, anywhere within high orbit of a planet, as long as we're in the outer system, but if we get into the inner system, past the gas giants...." The AI shrugged. "Some might get through if we keep it to the outermost areas, but after that I'd recommend getting as far away as we can to the missile before triggering the hyperdrive."

Sarah winced. The safety hyperspace limit for hyperdrives was there for a reason. Technically you could execute a jump to hyperspace closer to the star than that...it just was a horrible idea. A very, very horrible idea.

If you were lucky, your hyperdrive exploded. Very violently. If you weren't...

If you weren't, you jumped to hyperspace. And then the hyperdrive exploded.

Needless to say, you wouldn't survive the latter. Hell, the only reason anyone knew what happened was because the Infinite Systems Federation could detect ships travelling through hyperspace and ran some tests with automated vessels.

Hyperspace missiles were capable of jumping much closer to a star, but they traded that for basically frying their hyperdrive when they re-entered realspace, but even that tradeoff had it's limits.

"Better than I expected honestly. Still, it could come in useful."

Elteria sighed.

"They could. If nothing else, we can seriously wreck anyone running for the hyper limit."

"Fair enough. Cycle time will be three hours correct?"

"Same as our hyperdrive, yes."

The last limitation for hyperspace missiles was a key weakness all hyperdrives shared: when powering up or emerging from hyperspace, all hyperdrives within the hyperspace field had to 'cycle'. It didn't matter if they weren't the hyperdrive currently moving the bubble or initializing the transition to realspace, all of them were...destabilized somehow and had to be cycled. Sarah didn't even begin to understand why or how, interdimensional physics at it's simplest was an 8 years long course for the basic theory, but even for the most advanced hyperdrives it could take several hours to fully cycle, and at 3 hours the Seeker's drive was one of the fast ones. It was one of the reasons hyperspace ships were rarely used as parasite crafts, or why the defenders had a massive mobility advantage during a star system invasion.

"Well, it sure won't be a first strike weapon."

"It never is." Elteria looked at the missiles. "You know, with our sensors...this opens up a lot of possibilities."

"Yep. Why do you think I bought them?" After all most people used hyper-missiles as just faster missiles because they couldn't really exploit their full capabilities. With their sensors they could hit a target across an entire star system. Probably. "And it's going to be your job making sure we can. Requisition what you need from Turral, and get on it. I want those missiles fully operational by the time we leave."

"Aye aye ma'am!"