Chapter 43

Hyperspace

Approaching the Narval System

"Are you...are you sure it's the right thing to do?"

Sarah looked up from her desk at the young woman standing in front of it.

Seria shifted her weight from one foot to the other, then back again, and Sarah once again wondered why the hell Turral kept sending the girl to deliver her reports. Granted, the armorer had to be kept out of the way from time to time, and she had something of a soothing effect, but still!

"What is?"

"The..." Seria swallowed. "The nanoswarm."

"Ah. That." Sarah winced. "Do you want an honest answer?"

"Yes, please."

"It's not. But it's the only option that I think won't end up in a bloodbath in our ranks." Sarah held up her hand as Seria opened her mouth, forestalling her. "Yes, I know it will massacre our enemies, but that's not my problem."

"But-"

"Seria, I helped sterilize a planet afflicted by a nanoswarm." Said Sarah, and the armorer's mouth closed with a snap. "It was a century ago. Some corporate idiot had decided to cut corners and hire the lowest bidder to reprogram the terraforming nanites they were using to transform a planet into a paradise world. Of course, lowest bidder meant an unaccredited corporation, who had no fucking clue what they were doing. They ended up creating an hegemonizing nanoswarm. Plants, livestock, humans, whatever, it consumed them to create their 'perfect paradise'." Sarah shook her head. "We were on site before anyone else, my squadron had been undergoing a series of deep space exercises nearby. We tried everything we could, but we just...couldn't stop the damned thing! Nukes, kinetics, our own neutralization swarms, whatever! It just kept spreading. We tried to evacuate as many people as we could...and we lost half our marines and a good quarter of our shuttles doing just that. You think I don't know how amoral this is? I saw my own gunnery sergeant get dissolved alive in front of my eyes!" Sarah's hand slammed against her desk and she met Seria's gaze as the young woman took a step back. "So believe me, I know exactly what I'm going to unleash on them."

Sarah took a deep breath, and relaxed back into her seat.

"At least I won't have to watch a world die afterwards." She whispered. "When we lost contact with the last city, the commodore gave the order. Saturation bombardment. You believe the Dominion's weapons are powerful? Our squadron almost shattered that world. And that was before the Gold Silver Concordat arrived. They didn't bomb the place. They deployed something that caused the nitrogen in the atmosphere to undergo nuclear fusion. They turned the entire fucking atmosphere into a nuke." Sarah shook her head. "So yes, I am well aware it's not the right thing to do. It's just the best option we have."

Seria swallowed, and nodded.

"I-I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up."

Sarah shook her head.

"No, it's fine. It was a valid question to ask." Sarah combed her hand through her hair. "So, was that all, or...?"

"Well...A century ago? How old are you?"

Sarah looked up at the armorer's surprised face, and snorted.

"Me? I'm 186 years old."

That caused Seria to look at her like she'd grown a second head.

"Come on, it's not that much. I was a pipsqueak by the standards of the Near Verge. Hector's 5 centuries old for example, and he's far from the oldest person on the ship."

"Who is?" Asked Seria, her curiosity clearly gaining the upper hand over her stupefaction.

Sarah chuckled.

"Our resident AI, who else? Elteria!"

The AI's hologram materialized on top of the desk, and Sarah smiled as Seria startled, before settling back down. The girl was indeed learning fast.

"Yes captain?"

"We were discussing our respective age. Mind telling our dear newbie how old you are?"

"Oh? Of course captain!" Elteria turned towards the armorer. "I'm 16 cycles old."

Seria frowned, and Sarah sighed.

"Quit playing around Elty."

"Killjoy." Said the AI as she rolled her eyes. "I meant Imperial cycles. The Empire of Mara has a weird way of counting time. In terran years, I'm 16 863 years old. And yes, that means that while your very distant ancestors on Seltari were trying to figure out what agriculture was, I was already venturing among the stars."

That rendered the armorer completely speechless.

"So see?" Said Sarah, tapping her torso. "Pipsqueak. Just like you, in a way."

"Oh yeah, just like you." Elteria waggled her eyebrows, and Sarah frowned, which only caused the AI to grin. "Well, I'd love to stay longer, but I have some things to attend to. We are going to try to take possession of their database intact, and with my previous experience with their systems, I think I'll be able to code some specialized malware. Hopefully we'll get more than just the coordinates out of their system. If you'll excuse me?"

Sarah nodded, and the AI vanished, winking at Sarah at the last second.

"What's up with her?" Asked Seria, and Sarah shook her head.

"I have no idea."

That...wasn't quite true. But there was no need to tell the armorer that she fit precisely into her type. And if her own damned AI stopped playing matchmaker it would make all of their lives much easier. At least she was fairly sure Turral's motives for constantly bringing the newbie to meetings were straightforward, what with the chief engineer being about as asexual as someone could be.

Sarah sighed.

"I think I need a drink. Let's go see what Cindy has cooked up in the still this time. If you're interested?"

"Oh you bet! Ah, uh, yes ma'am!"

Sarah chuckled, and shook her head.

"You can just call me Sarah, as long as we aren't in combat."

"Right, of course cap-Sarah."

"Better! Now, let's go sample some of that fine liquor. Hopefully it won't incinerate my taste buds this time!"

*****

"Hyperspace emergence in 3...2...1...Emergence!"

Sarah leaned forward slightly as the system display blanked out, their sensors blinded by their emergence flash.

"Status?" She asked Elteria as the AI stopped pacing on the bridge.

"We have arrived in our jump zone, 160 kilometers from the center. Still perfectly within acceptable parameters. Detecting...No vessels within missile range. There are several ships with a direct line of sight to us, but all of them appear to be purely civilian, and should be too far to have detected our arrival."

Sarah nodded. That was good. An hyperspace emergence flash was hard to hide, unless you had set out from the get go to build the hyperdrive that way, and the tradeoffs were...severe. Fortunately especially in the Low Verge, the only thing that could detect them emerging was either a massive sensor platform, or a satellite or ship being too close to them, which was why Sepia hadn't even known they were coming until they contacted traffic control themselves.

Unfortunately the TRF had thoroughly proven it had access to high tech gear to rival the Eternal Seeker's own systems. Hence why they'd chosen to come out far into the outer system, putting one of the planetoids hanging out of the plane of the ecliptic like Sol's old Pluto between them and the inner system, emerging at nearly 5 times the required distance of this system's hyperspace limit from the star. It wasn't perfect, but even if the TRF had somehow snuck a Near Verge sensor platform into the inner system they would have only shown as a minor anomaly at most.

Coupled with the fact that they'd turned off their transponder or any type of identification system, they were about as stealthy as they could get.

"Alright. Let's run dark, and get closer to the hyperspace limit. ETA to the gas giants?"

Elteria blinked.

"Well, we're limited at 300 gs of accel if we don't want to ping a Near Verge long range sensor, so 22 hours."

Sarah winced.

"Well, at least we'll have the time to scan the system. And find one of those ships."

"They only send a handful every week at most, so it's probably going to take a while, especially if we don't want to jump the first one that comes in."

"I know, but I can hope." Sarah sighed. "Alright, stand everyone down from battle stations, and warn me if you find one of those ships." The captain stretched. "I'll be in my office. You have the bridge."

"Aye aye ma'am, I have the bridge."

*****

"Did you find one of them?" Asked Sarah as Elteria's hologram materialized in her office. The AI had pinged her barely 6 hours after being in-system, which was...odd, as she should have identified every ship in the system hours ago at this point.

"No. There were no new hyperspace emergence, if that's what you're wondering. It's this."

Elteria gestured, and a hologram appeared above the desk.

"That's...a planet."

"Yes. It's the second innermost world in the system. A Venus-style hellworld."

Sarah nodded. Such worlds were fairly common throughout the Known Universe, and they more than deserved their title. And atmosphere hot enough to melt some metals, literal clouds of acid, it was about as inhospitable for humans as you could get.

"A remarkably busy hellworld world then." Commented Sarah as she gestured at the cloud of orbital infrastructure and ships surrounding the planet. "Mineral rich?"

"And then some. According to them the surface is so rich in heavy metals it's more worth it to mine it here than in the asteroid belt. However I'm not sure believe that."

"Why?"

"Because of this." The AI gestured, and the hologram zoomed in on a space station. "That's one of their surface transfer station, decked out with specialized super-heavy shuttles for surface landings of heavy machinery and bulk materials." Sarah nodded, landing without specialized equipment on this world would be effectively suicide, so most systems with such a planet simply forbade anyone from attempting it, and ran a series of stations with the equipment necessary to ferry people and goods safely to and from the planet. "The problem being that the activity here doesn't line up at all from what info I have on the system."

"What do you mean?"

"According to my data, and the official government's tax and development declarations to the Dominion." Sarah didn't comment on the fact that the latter was something they shouldn't have access to. "The infrastructure here should only be getting a fraction of the traffic." Several ship icons highlighted. "These three freighters for example are supposed to only be picking up a cargo of heavy metals, and leave. Instead they've been disgorging cargo like you wouldn't believe. They've at least transferred a good 10% of their entire holds down onto the planet, over 3 million tons of stuff, while we're here, and it doesn't look like they're stopping. Plus, well..."

Elteria gestured again, and the map zoomed back, showing several points highlighted on the planet.

"Those are massive anomalies. It's impossible for me to be sure of anything, the atmosphere plays hell with my sensors, even if I went active I probably wouldn't get more details. But if I'm not wrong, that's half a dozen gravitational containment fusion power plants. And I'm talking the kind that the entire New Arion Republic's home station was built around, at the very least."

"That's..."

"Enough energy to power a Dominion naval shipyard. Or whatever the hell it is they're doing down there. Hell, this is more energy than the entire main planet needs! And they have a hundred million people down there, with the industry to match, unlike Sepia!"

Sarah swallowed.

"Well, I suppose we found one of the hubs of the their logistic network, not just a divinium transfer point. Let's say most of the freighters supposed to only transfer minimal amounts of cargo here are actually fully running gear for this operation, dropping off machinery and parts necessary to complete the systems made from the raw materials down there, what could they build?"

Elteria's hologram froze for a split second.

"That's...a terrifying thought." She blinked. "Fuck. Most of the freighters that come through here only pick up small shipments, because the heavy metals are high value compared to their mass and volume, but...they're all bulk haulers. Big ones." She shook her head. "If even half of them are working for the TRF and hiding how much they're actually offloading and getting from the planet? Screw 'Fringe' system status, this planet alone would be outputting more stuff than a lot of entire Periphery star systems. They would be able to build...well, damn near everything. Spaceships wouldn't be a good idea, but they could have supplied the New Arion Republic with the components they needed. And several dozen operations like that, at least if they kept only to high tech, critical systems and didn't try to ship the hulls or something."

Sarah winced.

"I was afraid you'd say that. What are the system's defenses?"

"Along the line of Calver's. Half a dozen monitor frigates, 3 dozen corvettes, a hundred cutters or so, plus 3 asteroid defence platforms. Thought that was odd given their industry, but, well, they're further towards the frontier than Sepia. Raids have to be a bigger concern here."

"The corvettes alone would make raiding this system unprofitable, at least given what they publicly have as resources." Well at least by the standards of the raiders nowadays. The Dominion's latest suppression campaign, half a decade ago, had crushed the most active raider clans, and send the rest scrambling to dig the deepest hole possible and close it behind them. Raiding Fringe systems was one thing, fighting Dominion battlecruisers was another, and after one of the raiding fleets had the brilliant idea to drop an asteroid on a planet that had resisted their tribute attempt, and ended up wiping out an entire colony and it's ten million inhabitants, the Dominion had been out for blood. "The frigates are pure overkill. Calver needed them because their industry is space based and dispersed all across the system, but everything is nominally concentrated on the planet and a few captured asteroids. With three defence platforms that's a tough nut to crack, especially for such a paltry prize."

"Right, fair enough. So defenses for their hidden industry?"

"Probably. Or at least some muscles to keep curious people away. Are the freighters delivering to the hellworld armed?"

"Not proper weapons, no. Some point defence lasers, but that's it. They look, well, regular."

"And they should. At least if they're only using the armed ones for the divinium transfer, it means their shipyard capability has to be severely limited. Alright, try to pull in as much scan data for that hellworld." She smiled. "Even if we're wrong, if we pull off the intercept and find the Divinium's source the Dominion will be willing to buy every scrap of info we have at a premium."

"Right. I'll keep watch for what the other freighters visiting the system are doing as well, just in case."

"Good call. Alright, warn me if you find anything else unusual."

"Aye aye ma'am!"