As Derek looked over yet another stack of reports; his Captain had him running through the catalogue of people stored in the database, feeding Dr. McCloud the names of people who looked like good candidates for revival here in IPC; he glanced up at the central viewscreen on the bridge; looking at the enormous project the Anvil had become.

At the moment, the entire region was chaos. All of the prefabs had been deployed, in many cases broken apart and reshaped, to build a structure larger than the 13 herself; albeit, initially, just a mass of box-like empty structures, airlocks, and tiny power cores built to help maintain a construction-in-progress. The new; possibly temporary; shipyard had the clean lines of four ship's spines leading away from them; and hundreds of workers moved over them, spending however much time their robotic frames were able to working on the construction.

Inside the temporary structures, the 13's compliment of Squids were working on the single most complex job the machines could be tasked to perform; building yet more squids. The multi-limbed construction bots were loosely based on something the Survivor had seen before returning to earth, and once the assembly line had been complete, more machines had poured out each day; to join the others working on harvesting raw materials or building the ships.

He'd been running at roughly 250% for a while; allowing him to do in-depth reviews of candidates; while at the same time doing prelimenary analysis of the telescope reports of the systems. The cluster had 187 stars in it, split into sixteen binary pairs, one trinary, and 152 single stars; an exceedingly unusual blend. He would have expected most of the stars to be parts of binary pairs; but having so many single stars, and so many of those with planetary systems...

There were over one hundred systems that he might be able to build a habitable planetary surface on. And a few that might already have such a thing; one world had almost the perfect orbit and composition, and a human could walk on its surface with only a breathmask to keep out the toxic; but properly temperate; atmosphere. This place was a gold mine. The reasons for targetting it were clear.

But... they might be running away. He'd seen the reports on the aliens; and the weapons their military and civilian craft were armed with. Nothing that the Tisiphone, or even the Alecto, couldn't handle... but not if they were outnumbered thousands to one. If the aliens discovered hyperdrives, these creatures could be a bigger threat than the Enemy.

Which brought him back to his current job... Helping the captain find marines.

***

Twenty-five unique humanoid machines were standing in formation on the cargo bay floor; clean and freshly assembled, they were very different from the much lighter, almost skeletal-looking robots the others inhabited. The machines were built on a solid Tungsten skeleton, and components that were carbon and silicon in the standard model had been replaced with gold, silver, and iron as much as possible; looking almost like 2-meter tall armored knights as much as robots.

One of these robots could trudge waist-deep in that goop the aliens fired at the Alecto's gunships, and only be hurt if a projectile pierced to its computer core.

Magnetic rail-pistols built into the shoulders, monomolecular-edged vibro-blades extending from the forearms, and even a plasma rifle with attached net-gun, and a head-mounted laser. No visible camera lenses; these machines strictly 'saw' through sonar while their visors were shut. On the outside, they looked like an army of armored death machines. To the men inside...

With the overlay activated, twenty-four UN Marines in uniform stood in two lines of twelve. The heights varied; the skin-tone varied. But they all had an identical close-cropped haircut; and none of their expressions showed the shock and fear they'd had just subjective hours before. These people had trained hard; some of them had fought hard. Before them marched a clearly hispanic man who had a nasty scar running from his forehead down one eye, reaching his nose. The cybernetic eye had been there on his original body; and unlike some others, Sergeant Vasquez had tuned his image to perfectly match the original.

As he marched down the line of soldiers, the way they stood so perfectly unmoving disturbed him at some level. For him, it had only been a few dozen subjective hours since he was awoken; and asked if he'd be willing to try to capture some aliens.

The answer, of course, was hell yes. He'd immediately looked over the roster of marines they'd been trying to foist off on him; the absolute highest-capability people they had 'in the databse'; and rejected half of them immediately; and included his people. About half of them, at least. That meant that three of his six fire-teams would be ones he could be sure of.

"Alright, boys and girls. In one real-time hour, we're going to be loading up on the Tisiphone. For those of you educated in america, thats one of the Furies; which means her job is to seek out and hunt down the evil in this world. You people are good. Half of you were with me when we took out those pirates over Phobos. But thats not what we're facing here. We're facing a completely unknown alien creature; one that lives in an aquatic environment, and we need to capture at least one for questioning."

"That is one. Only one. Once we've got at least one netted... feel free to kill the rest of the bastards."

***

The Tisiphone entered Hyperspace with a target in mind. Two days previously, the Alecto had returned to EPC, bringing with it a complete and detailed map of every radio signal it had found; and of one target, moving through deep space at less than 0.1C, heading from the most heavily populated system at the edge of the sector to one of the more sparse ones. With the remarkable efficiency; and incredibly low power; of those engines it must have been accelerating for years; and had at least a decade left to go.

The target was classified as a Type 1; the largest classification of enemy civilian ships. It most likely contained some unknown number of Type 5s, and while it was the same roughly cylindrical shape with tendrils on one end as the others, it had massive bulges of what were most likely cargo bays, as well as bays for storing the smaller vessels all the Type 1s were seen accompanying.

She was probably loaded down with fuel to make her trip; and they knew exactly what her weapons looked like, after the encounter with the Gunship in emergence point Beta. She was alone; and the perfect target.

As the ship reached the appointed spot in hyperspace; according to readings she should be right about... there.. Peterson called out the order. "Navigation, bring it to realspace. Weps, light her up, fire plan alpha, as soon as we emerge. Vasquez, get ready."

The Tisiphone emerged from hyperspace ten light-seconds away from the target, deep in the void between stars, and fired missiles almost immediately; while she could launch up to fifty at a time, they'd pinpointed eight of what they believed were the weapon sites; and so, with shields active, launched precisely eight laser-head missiles.

The alien swiftly turned; firing hundreds of spike-like silicon projectiles at the incoming missiles, as well as at the Tisiphone; and actually shot down two of the incoming missiles, before the silmultaneous detonation of the six survivors slammed bomb-pumped lasers into the ship's hull; melting and burning long holes through the vessel, sending its internal liquid atmosphere spilling into the void, even as some internal process worked to seal the hole.

The Tisiphone manuevered to ensure the projectiles couldn't reach it, firing four more missiles; and with four final detonations, the remaining launchers were removed. A few seconds of acceleration ensured none of the projectiles could even come close.

After waiting a few minutes; ensuring the enemy wasn't doing anything but remaining in place; the shuttle bay opened.

A long, sleek shuttlecraft, most of its internal structure torn apart to convert it into a simple frame with twelve humanoid robots attached, emerged; curving as it headed for the target. Almost immediately, a second jury-rigged frame, holding 13, emerged, following its own course. A single point-defense laser had been mounted at the front of each shuttle.

The Tisiphone launched twelve more missiles; only these lacked the high acceleration of the others; practically drifting through space. Their course would be simple; they'd hold position in a rough sphere around the alien; and detonate if the ship showed hostile moves. None of the type-5s had emerged yet; Peterson half expected to have seen a swarm of them by now.

"Vasquez, watch yourself. She hasn't deployed any of the fighters, shuttles, or whatever they are. She might be a different model from what we've seen. Expect heavy resistance."

"Always do. Its why I stayed alive."

***

For the marines, it was the strangest combat drop they'd ever been through. No screaming atmosphere. The shooting already stopped; not that they'd heard a round fired. And zero information about their targets. Based on close-in scans of the previous enemy, the first shuttle attached where it was believed the enemy crew was; and fired up her point defense laser. The steady humm of capacitors discharging, the faint tingle of EM fields running through their bodies; and then the spray of liquid jetting out of the ship.

The hull looked like a solid black mass, with faint glowing blue lines running beneath the surface, emanating away from the point of impact.

Improvised clamps slam into place, forcing the opening to remain, just in case the hull has some sort of auto-repair function... and the first marine leaps forward into the enemy ship, weapon raised. The emerging liquid... has that faint blue glow. Just like the dissolving mess from the video. Of course. He casually shoves a handful of gel-like mass aside; it doing nothing to his rigid tungsten fingers; and dives headfirst into a pool of it.

The other soldiers hesitate a moment... but then follow. While the thick glowing blue jello was more dense than water, the machines easily push through it, built-in sonar painting a picture of the nearby passageways. They could see that these jello-filled corridors move all the way across the ship, accessing the guns that the missiles had taken out.. and further on, all together in one central chamber, the crew.

As they moved together, weapons raised; though almost immediately, the plasma rifles gave warning signals that something inside them was failing, leaving only the net-gun portion of the external weapon operational. The corridors were oppresively cramped, sections of them leading off into paths too small for a marine to pass; and some sort of thin mass, more grey-blue than the surrounding black and grey walls, barred access to that final crew chamber.

The ship shook as the marine cut through the wall, forcing his mono-blade through it to reach their target; outside, the other marine shuttle had burrowed its way through the thicker hull at its own location; and encountered one of the type-5 craft. All across the ship, dozens of the same hull sections opened; and twenty shuttle-sized alien ships blasted free, firing at the waiting missiles and sending out the 'Distress' radio pulse the Alecto had recorded previously.

Hopefully, nothing was close enough to listen.