This is a crossover of nBSG with the Sphere story debate that has probably just died on SB. Obviously, nBSG isn't mine, and Sphere was a collaborative effort that was, ah, inspired by various sources.
Look Before you Leap
Prologue: You Only get one First Impression
* * *
“What the fuck? Dan, are you sure these sensors are working fine?”
“I'm telling you, Mike, they're perfectly fine! All diagnostics check out fine.”
“Oh.” Dan Fitzgibbons swallowed audibly. “Well, then you better fire up the hyperwave and contact Ophen, then, because a hundred or so ships that weren't there a second ago just appeared on my scope.”
“What? What in God's name are you... oh shit. Mary!” the blond man in the uniform of the Ophen Defence Force Navy yelled down the companionway to the bridge. “Get our engines up! No, shields first!”
“What's the hurry, Dan? It's not...”
“Shut up! Just get those fucking shields up. There's a Goddamn fleet heading right for us.”
The unseen 'Mary' was silent for several seconds, then began cursing foully. Loud clattering noises drifted down to the comm room as she tried to convince the ship's shields to activate.
Blueberry, a forty seven year old ore barge pressed into service as a picket ship, did not cut the most military profile. Consisting of little more than a box with engines, a simple control centre and a small hab unit bolted onto one end, Blueberry was not a pretty vessel, and even when new, had not been particularly fast or spry, even for a civilian ship. Nowadays, her systems were thoroughly obsolete, and under most circumstances, she would be good for little more than scrap. Even Rim worlds wouldn't buy her.
These were not, however, most circumstances. The war's constant demands for more and more ships had stretched the ZOCU member navies to the limit and beyond. The voracious need for cruisers, destroyers and even frigates at the front-line systems that were major points of contact with the Core was beyond the ability of the Zodiacs to keep up with, even using the most simple, austere designs possible. The possibility of using valuable military ships to picket rear areas was simply out of the question. So, ZOCU had improvised.
Ophen, desperate for forward pickets in the wild space between it and the Core, had rescued Blueberry from the breakers and modified her to fill the role. The additions were as fast and dirty as it was possible to be and still work; a cruiser grade delta dust drive, shields and sensors had been added by the simple expedient of bolting them to the outside of the hull and punching holes into the cargo bay for any internal components. Most of the hold was occupied by a bulky, obsolete hyperwave transmitter that looked t be scavenged from an old Challenger class survey ship. The antennae protruded out of the open cargo bay doors, or where the doors would have been if the yard techs hadn't removed them to prevent an accidental closure from damaging the hyperwave. Blueberry didn't even mount a rudimentary point defence net, let alone actual offensive weapons.
“Who the fuck are they, Mike?” Dan asked as his fingers danced across the hyperwave controls in the corner of what the merchant crew turned naval personnel that crewed the Blueberry laughingly called the Combat Information Centre.
“I don't have a clue. I thought the only entrances into this chain were locked down?”
“They are. We'd have heard about it if the Core had forced the Mercians out of Albion. Same with the Asakurans and all their lot out of... uh... that Second Stage system I can never remember the name of. There's no way they could get a fleet down this transit chain before Ophen got word.”
“Well, somebody did.”
“Yeah, and if I wasn't busy shitting myself, I'd be dearly interested to know how.” Static crackled in Dan's headset as the transmitter finally warmed up. Adjusting the boom mic, he tried to speak slowly and calmly into the pickup. Unfortunately for his pride, he failed miserably.
“Wicket Keeper, Wicket Keeper, this is Batsman! The ball is on it's way! I repeat, the ball is on its way! There's an entire Goddamn fleet out here with us. I'm sending you all our sensor logs until this point, and streaming incoming data realtime.” He didn't know if he was being received, but the light indicating a connection glowed a solid green, and the one thing that hadn't so far broken at one point or another was the hyperwave.
“Oh shit. Dan, they're launching fighters!”
“Crap.” The channel to Ophen was still open, but under the circumstances, Dan wasn't especially bothered by the prospect of a reprimand for poor comm discipline. “Okay, where's the fighters come from?”
“The big sucker right there in the middle. I guess it's a carrier of some sort.”
“Right. I'll see if I can get them to back off. Maybe they're a fleet of Postie emissary machines or something.” Neither of them were particularly reassured.
“Okay, warn me if they do anything nasty,” Dan ordered as he set up a comm channel to the maybe-carrier that had sent a small brood of fighters charging towards the Blueberry and it's terrified crew.
“Unknown fleet, unknown fleet, this is the ODFS Blueberry. Please identify yourselves and state your intentions.”
“They're not doing anything,” Mike reported. “Those fighters are still inbound.”
“Not what I wanted to hear, Mike. Mary, how're those shields coming?”
“They're warming up now,” came the bellowed reply. “One minute!”
“Dan, they'll be here in about thirty seconds.”
“Okay okay, calm down. If push comes to shove, we surrender. That's what we're supposed to do; we've already done our job and got a warning off, so we don't need to do anything stupid.” Eyeing the plot over Mike's shoulder, Dan shook his head. “I'll ask again first, though. Unknown fleet! This is Lieutenant Daniel Fitzgibbons of the Ophen Defence Force Navy, in command of the ODFS Blueberry. Please identify yourselves.”
Silence.
“Nothing, Dan.”
“For Christ's sake, we're unarmed! Please, call off your fighters!”
“It doesn't look like they're going to...”
Mike's voice was cut off by the fusillade of railgun rounds that shredded the unarmoured Blueberry as if it were constructed of tissue paper.
* * *
Look Before You leap
Chapter One: Warning, Objects in the Rear View Mirror may be Closer than they Appear
Vice Admiral Charles Hendee fastened the harness of his command chair as the translation warning klaxon sounded over the CIC speakers. Sailors all across the Pallada class battleship Capricorn would be doing the same. Such a thing was almost never needed with most modern supralight drives, of course, but it was far easier to take the precaution, especially in a microgravity environment. Doubly so if they might be entering a combat environment upon emergence, where such things most certainly were needed.
“All ships report closed up at GQ and ready for translation,” reported the sandy haired lieutenant at the comm station. The ratings crewing the consoles around him continued their low muttering into the boom mics on their headsets.
“Very good. Confirm with navigation, and begin translation on our signal.”
Hendee examined the cluster of light codes on his chair's integrated data screens. The thirty eight icons represented just about every vessel available within Londonium, Ophen, Hassledorf, Astro Isabella and Transbaal for immediate deployment. Even then, nearly a quarter of the ships- a pair of Asakuran light carriers and a handful of Protons, a Mercian Royal Sovereign class battleship and a trio of cruisers and a flotilla of Khemetian Asp missile destroyers- were a Pac-Am arm light task group on their way to the fighting over Haraway who had been short stopped in Londonium when the possibility of a threat to the heart of the Zodiac Outworld Colony Union had manifested itself.
It was a pitiful force compared to the slightly more than one hundred ships that had composed the fleet in Blueberry's frantic transmission, and Hendee would have dearly loved to stay on the defensive in Ophen, where he could gain support from the orbital defences that had been seeded around the UNSO-035 jump zone, not to mention the significant number of aerospace craft operated from the non FTL hangar barges the Ophen Defence Force had set up to operate it's considerable fighter and mobile suit assets from.
As the weeks had passed and no attack had come, however, he faced more and more pressure to advance into -035 and find out what was going on. Even along an un-beaconed jump lane like the one that connected Ophen to -035, there was more than enough time for a fleet to make the transit. Eventually, he had been forced to acquiesce to the demands for action.
Fortunately, despite the small size of his force, he had a strong aerospace wing; two fleet carriers, three light carriers and two battleships with a similar capacity, not to mention the launch facilities crammed into the Protons and the cruisers. Granted, the Colossus and her three cruiser escorts were stuffed full of obsolete Mercian crap that amounted to little more than ablative armour against any sort of modern fighter or MS, but even so, that left him with almost two full wings of suits and an equal number of conventional fighters. A similar force of aerospace craft had demolished an apparently crushingly superior European fleet at Haraway in the opening stages of the war, suffering few losses in return. While the air defences of EU fleets was better now than it had been then, they were still vulnerable.
Assuming it was an EU fleet at all, of course. It could conceivably be the Americans and their cohorts in the CPTO. Considering the state of the war in the Pac-Am arm, it might even be more likely.
Maybe if the fucking Mercians would do their jobs, we wouldn't have to worry about that, he thought to himself. No, that's not fair. They've fought as hard as anyone when they've been allowed to fight. Even so, if their government would stand up to the Americans, we wouldn't have to worry about shit like this. The vulnerability of ZOCU's spinward flank- and it's cause- was a source of fantastic annoyance to Hendee, doubly so considering how vocal he'd been in his support of admitting New Mercia into the alliance.
“Thirty seconds to translation.”
Hendee grunted an acknowledgement. It would have been impossible for an unaided human, even an augment or a transgene, to choreograph a simultaneous translation with any sort of reliability. Fortunately, modern computer systems were more than capable of handling the task, when so directed by a navigation officer. The intricate datanet that linked the ships of the small fleet together allowed Capricorn to exert an almost perfect control over her cohorts.
With the computers handling translation, there was almost nothing for the crews of the various ships to do. Even so, tension was thick in their internal compartments; everybody knew that an almost impossibly large, seemingly hostile fleet was waiting in -035, and just how small their response force was. Weapon crews bent over their consoles and pilots fastened their breath masks in readiness for immediate action. Shield generators hummed as they were fed power and point defence clusters slid smoothly from their armoured housings.
“Ten seconds.”
Actual translation back to STL needed no announcement; there was no way to mistake the twisting, nauseous sensation of one's inner ear protesting a velocity change that was otherwise imperceptible. Thirty eight ships appeared in the Ophen jumpzone of -035 in bright bursts of Cherenkov radiation. The unfortunate crew of the Asakuran Proton class light cruiser Amatsukaze didn't even have time for shock as their ship ploughed into the completely unexpected vessel that was, in defiance of all sanity, sitting right on top of the jump zone.
* * *
The eight basestars hung motionless in the outer reaches of the dead, nameless star system, surrounded by a sparse shell of raiders busily searching the surrounding space. Devoid of life as it was, it was easy to see why the Colonial Remnant had risked a stop here, rather than in the trackless depths of interstellar space. Even the most cursory analysis of the system revealed significant deposits of tyleum ore, sufficient to last the refugees a significant length of time. The Cylons had intended to trap the survivors in the system, indeed, they had had almost twenty basestars in position to pounce on the fleet once they were loading the ore and thus pinned down and vulnerable.
It had been an unpleasant surprise to have the Colonials jump out of the system as fast as they could recharge their drives. Most of the basestars had been sent back to the frustrating cat and mouse chase with the fleet, but a small force had been sent to find out precisely what had spooked the Colonials into fleeing so precipitously.
They had not, honestly, expected to find anything; a star system was a huge haystack in which to search for a needle, after all, and initial, albeit brief, surveys by raiders many weeks prior had revealed no sign of anything suspicious. They had expected a far more extensive survey of the inner system to take weeks, but luck was on their side, it seemed.
The raiders despatched to investigate the last known approximate location of the Colonial fleet had identified metallic wreckage, rapidly dispersing into the void. Recovery operations had been initiated at once.
“This is disturbing,” Six said.
“You have an indisputable gift for understatement,” Five replied to the blonde. “I think the word 'terrifying' is more appropriate, personally.”
“Perhaps. We'll know more when the examination of the wreckage is completed,” One commented. “I think it might be beneficial to review the facts as they stand. The Humans jumped into the outskirts of the system, as we wanted them to. At some point, they obviously encountered an unknown ship of some sort and attacked, destroying the unknown. Then they left the system as fast as they could. Presumably, they thought that whatever they found was part of a trap laid by us.” His tone of voice left no question that he was not impressed by the Colonials failure to draw the correct conclusion.
“Of course, we know that it wasn't our ship,” said Two. “So, if it wasn't ours and wasn't theirs, whose was it?”
“Another survivor?” suggested Eight. “Maybe they made it out here on their own.”
“No chance,” snorted Five. “First, if it were a Colonial ship, it would have run out of fuel long before now. The fleet has managed to secure new fuel supplies that a single ship would never be able to manage. Second, the hull, what we've been able to recover of it, was composed of simple titanium. Nobody's constructed a ship out of unalloyed titanium in the Colonies since well before the first War.”
They all had access to the information, of course. Even so, it seemed to Five that only he had grasped the significance of some of the data.
“Okay, so they aren't Colonials,” allowed Four. “But if they're building ships out of something as fragile as titanium, why the hell should we worry about them?”
“Because of the third reason they can't be Colonials,” replied Five, indicating a section of data in their shared network. “We've recovered small amounts of extremely complex electronics. So complex, in fact, that they're beyond our ability to analyse. What it looks like is a distributed computing network running on processing nodes smaller than the average grain of sand. With no way to interface with it or activate it, there's no way to measure it's effectiveness, and it's simply to small to analyse effectively with the resources we have available out here. I think it safe to say, however, that it probably had massive computing power, and that neither we nor the Colonials can create anything like it. Additionally, we've isolated a number of unknown elements and compounds, again, of unknown purpose.”
“So, they're some sort of alien? If they're so advanced, why the hell would they put such impressive hardware into such a primitive hull, then?” Eight demanded, frowning as she examined the data.
“I don't know,” snapped Five. “They're aliens. Maybe they wanted to build the ship on the cheap. Maybe it was an expendable drone. Maybe they don't have the resources to make stronger hull materials. It doesn't matter what the reason is; they're clearly extremely advanced.”
“It's clear that these newcomers have been sent to us by God to help wipe out the Colonials. I can't think that they'd be happy about their ship being attacked and destroyed for no reason,” Three gushed, eyes glinting with religious fervour.
“Maybe,” One allowed. “I fear that that assumption is jumping the gun a bit. Going from anger over a lost ship to assisting in the destruction of a species, however justified it might be, is a large step after all.”
“And, of course, if they find out the root causes of this mess, they may well view us as an unacceptable threat,” added Six. “From their point of view, we would be an unknown race that has already shown itself willing to wipe out an entire species. Regardless of the circumstances, that would have to make them nervous. They'd have to wonder if they were next on the chopping block. I know I would be.”
“This is all useless speculation at the moment,” Five said. “We're projecting our own attitudes onto them; for all we know, they might wipe out planets as entertainment. We need to finish off the Colonials first. We can return to these aliens later, when we're less distracted.”
“Agreed,” said Eight. “Let's just avoid them for now.”
“What if we can't?” demanded Three. “They could be all over this area of space. If we try skulking around and they catch us, it would be a terrible first impression. We run the risk of being blamed for the Colonials actions!”
“You're assuming an improbably large number of star systems under their control, with absolutely no evidence. Not to mention the fact that they'd have to post scouts in the middle of interstellar space to spot us and the Colonials most of the time. There's just no way...”
One broke off suddenly, eyes widening.
He didn't have time to do anything else before the unfortunate Amatsukaze converted him, the other organic Cylons in the chamber and the basestar itself into rapidly expanding clouds of superheated vapour.
* * *
“Holy shit!” someone on the flag bridge yelped as the Capricon began a violent evasive turn. “They're right on top of the jump zone!”
Under normal circumstances, Hendee would have had something uncomplimentary to say about such an unprofessional report. Normal circumstances did not, however, include translating out of FTL right into the middle of an enemy squadron parked somewhere no sane admiral would consider. The straps of his harness dug painfully into his shoulders as the battleship's manoeuvring surpassed the ability of the inertial compensators to handle flawlessly. On the plot, the neat formation of the ZOCU fleet exploded into a mad swirl of confused light codes as individual ships scattered in an attempt to avoid repeating the fate of the Amatsukaze.
“Sir! The enemy have fighters in space!”
Hendee paled. With the fleet so disorganised, those fighters could pounce on individual ships and destroy them with minimal risk. The enemy's plan became abruptly very clear.
“Launch everything! Get them off while we have the chance!” he snapped. “Point defence free; enemy fighters are priority targets!”
“Yes sir,” the rating acknowledged.
“Captain Armstrong is requesting permission to open fire, sir,” announced the tactical officer.
“Granted. New fleet orders; all ships, fire at will. Burn those bastards out of my skies.”
“Aye sir.”
“Incoming missiles!” A third voice yelled.
The Cylon ships had reacted to the surprise far more quickly than the fleshy humans the controlled the ZOCU fleet. The raiders tat had been spread throughout the surrounding space began to converge rapidly on the cluster of wildly manoeuvring ships crowded into too small a space. The organic units in the undamaged basestars, still hoping for a peaceful contact, hailed on of the closer ships, desperate to explain the accident, but the ship their attempt was either missed or ignored in the confusion in the Asp class vessel's CIC and bridge.
The sudden explosion of fighters and other unidentified smallcraft from the alien vessels left no doubt as to the intentions of the newcomers. As reasonable a reaction as it was, under the circumstances, it put the Cylons in something of a poor position. Under the stress of the totally unexpected situation, the various basestars acted alone, the organic Cylons aboard making snap decisions that were, in some cases, ill advised. Two of the basestars launched full spreads of nuclear tipped missiles, empting their hangars of fighters before they realised what had actually happened. By the time they had, it was too late.
Without time to devise proper targeting plans, the two ships had simply fired at the closest unknown vessel. Neither the Asakuran Akagi class light carrier Zuiho or the Asto Isabellan Proton, William Tell were particularly well protected. With point defences occupied burning raiders from space, neither ship managed to intercept a single missile. Zuiho, her shields down to speed the launch of her aerospace wing, vanished in a boiling artificial sun with most of her brood still on board. William Tell, her four Sarrisa mobile suits already in space, took the salvo on active shields. The warheads savaged the immaterial barrier, smashing past it to tear at the hull with fists of atomic fire. The wreck that emerged from the maelstrom was a melted ruin that glowed a bright cherry red. There were no survivors.
Capricorn fired seconds later, her armament of powerful mega particle cannons- the 'sugarbeams' dreaded by Core spacers and pilots alike- locking on to the closest basestar, ironically one of the Cylon ships that was transmitting a desperate, unheeded first contact message. The sakuradite weapons flashed once, sending beams of bright pink energy slamming into the Cylon vessel. The energy punched into the central body of the ship like a hot knife cutting through butter, and the subsequent explosion reduced the warship to a rapidly expanding debris cloud. A second basestar was the subject of the ire of the trio of Mercian cruisers and a handful of Khemetian destroyers. The smaller ships poured fire into the larger vessel, shrugging frantic, poorly coordinated missile fire off of their shields. One destroyer broke apart under the pounding, then the basestar vanished in a violent explosion.
The raiders that followed the missile volleys towards the fleet were met by swarms of fighters and other, unidentified craft, all jinking wildly in manoeuvres that should have been impossible. The alien craft and the Cylon fighters exchanged missiles with each other, and both formations were briefly spotted with the fireballs of dying fighters. There were far more on the Cylon side. Then, they were in amongst each other, railguns and energy weapons blazing. The outclassed raiders, obsessively obedient to their orders, hurled themselves to the teeth of the ZOCU fleet's firepower. A very few survived to attack their targets, and the cruiser Freya belched atmosphere as the fighter missiles struck home.
Then, the Cylon ships and raiders blinked out of existence.
“Report!” demanded Hendee.
“I... don't know sir. They've just vanished. No sign of them anywhere in sensor range.”
“What?”
“It's true, sir. They just vanished without any warning.”
“If they vanished, they could be back at any time. Reorganise the fleet, and get a CAP out. Contact Hyacinth, tell they to warm up their hyperwave. High Command will want to know about this. Then tell Lieutenant Commander Mitsuru I want to see her. I've got a job for her.”
“Aye sir.”
Look Before you Leap, an nBSG crossover.
Moderator: LadyTevar
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Psychic_Sandwich
- Padawan Learner
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Psychic_Sandwich
- Padawan Learner
- Posts: 416
- Joined: 2007-03-12 12:19pm
Re: Look Before you Leap, an nBSG crossover.
Look Before You leap
Chapter Two: A Forest of Razor Blades
***Unscheduled Data-Burst Received***
***45128745841/84***
***Decrypting***
......... Cipher Integrity OK
......... Anti Tampering Protocols OK
......... Unpacking Compete
***Decompressing***
......... OK
*** WARNING***
Anomalous Energy Signature Detected At Grid 93568/85471!
***Analysing***
........ OK
Anomalous signature identified!
Component Type-001465987/584B
Component Type-001456321/846A
Component Type-001321684/319H
Component Type-001665475/141M
Multiple Unknown Components!
***Accessing Database***
........ OK
Multiple Unknown Components!
***WARNING!***
Unknown Craft In-System!
Defence Drones Online!
Referring To Higher Authority!
* * *
The wrenching disorientation of an FTL jump faded quickly, and Racetrack resisted the temptation to shake her head to dislodge the last stubborn traces of dizziness provided by her protesting inner ear. Her eyes scanned over the flight instruments, and finding nothing amiss, moved on to examine the space outside the cockpit windows. Space around the Raptor appeared as empty to the naked eye as her instruments said it was.
The yellow G2 star that was this system's primary was a small pinprick of light in the top right of the cockpit glass, clearly larger and brighter than the stars that formed the almost unchanging backdrop of interstellar space, but still too puny and distant to provide any useful illumination or heat; the temperature reading of the space outside the hull was unchanged from the interstellar void.
“I'm not showing any contacts, Racetrack,” announced Crashdown from his position at the EWO console. “Not even any asteroids in dradis range, no artificial emissions. This place is empty.”
“Yeah, that's what we all thought about the last system, and that led the fleet right into a Cylon trap.”
The orders to the Raptors that formed the Fleet's long range scouts had been modified in light of that experience, but wit the best will in the world, the Fleet just couldn't risk staying in one place long enough to complete a proper survey, not with the way the Cylons seemed to be able to track them. Taking the time to do things thoroughly ran the risk of the Fleet being forced to move on, even from the fall back rendezvous coordinates. Nobody wanted to be left behind like that, and they couldn't really afford to loose Raptors to such circumstances either. Even so, the new, more intensive survey procedures would take more than twice as long. That reduced the number of systems that they could check, but if the Old Man thought that the trade-off was worth it, Racetrack was willing to take him at his word.
Ideally, of course, they would have stuck to interstellar space, but tyleum sources were beyond rare in the gulf between stars, and the fleet needed tyleum. Without proper ore haulers and only a single warship, they couldn't bring raw tyleum from star systems to them in a practicable time frame either, and sending in the vital refinery ship alone was out of the question, as was leaving the entire fleet unprotected while Galactica shepherded the huge vessel. So the whole fleet had to go, and that meant that star systems made excellent traps. It had only been uncharacteristically poor coordination on the part of the Toasters that had saved them last time, and the thought of the cybernetic mass murderers banging their fists on bulkheads in rage over their blunder brought a smile to her face.
“Well, so far this place is even emptier than that system was. I've seen the data from that Raptor, and they could tell even from out here that the place was stuffed with Tyleum and all sorts of space junk, but here? Nothing. We'll have to go get a closer look.”
“Right. Drives are spooling.”
The low whine of the recharging FTL drive filled the crew compartment. The two Colonial officers sat in silence for several minutes, both keeping a close eye on their scopes, until the chime indicating a fully charged FTL system sounded.
“FTL charged. You got some coordinated for me, Crashdown?”
“Right here.” Crashdown's hands danced over his console, inserting the complex numbers of the jump calculations into the Raptor's systems. “Should land us ten light minutes out from the primary.”
“Got it. Stand by for jump... now.”
* * *
***WARNING!***
FTL Signature Detected!
New Contact Detected, Grid 70148/32098!
***ALERT! UNKNOWN CRAFT INSIDE DEFENSIVE PERIMITER!***
Initiating Response........ ERROR! RESPONSE AUTHORISATION NOT PROVIDED!
Requesting Response Authorisation........... ERROR
Contacting Backup Server 1254/B47.............. ERROR
Contacting Backup Server 5484/H82.............. ERROR
Contacting Backup Server 3651/B58.............. ERROR
Contacting Backup Server 4754/T46.............. ERROR
Contacting Backup Server 1674/A44.............. ERROR
Contacting Backup Server 1232/C27.............. ERROR
***WARNING! EXTERNAL LINKS OFFLINE!***
Reinitialising........... ERROR
Reinitialising........... ERROR
Reinitialising........... ERROR
Reinitialising........... ERROR
Reinitialising........... ERROR
Reinitialising........... ERROR
Initiating Emergency Override............. OK
Sending Wakeup Call............ OK
***DEPLOYING RESPONSE***
* * *
“Negative contacts,” announced Crashdown. “I've got a planet and moon system maybe a light minute closer in than us, and another small planet twenty light seconds further out. Asteroids all over the place, thick enough to be a real navigation hazard. Getting readings for water from the planet and the moon, lots of iron, nickel and platinum in the asteroids, but no tyleum.”
“A habitable planet?”
“Can't tell for sure without getting a proper look, but with that much water, it almost has to be. It's in the liquid water zone of the star, probably a bit chilly but, even so. No artificial emissions. Looks like a bust.”
“Things are never fraking easy are they? I'm starting the search pattern; feel free to scream and shout if you get a hit and we can go home.”
“You have my solemn word that I'll yell like a lunatic if we find what we're looking for.”
They hadn't covered more than a fifth of their search area before Crashdown's console started beeping insistently at him.
“Please tell me that thing's telling you we've found what we're looking for?”
“Not exactly. We've got dradis returns heading towards us from in system at well over 60 Gs acceleration. If they weren't on a consistent heading, I'd dismiss them as sensor ghosts they're so intermittent.”
“Spin up the drive. How long before they get here?”
“Not long. I can't get a firm fix on them, but call it... three minutes from now.” Crashdown's hands flew across his work station, trying to firm up the wispy, ghost-like contacts with little success.
“Frak,” that was considerably sooner than their FTL would be ready. “Okay, I'm showing them our ass.”
The little craft tumbled about in space, settling onto a new heading pointed directly away from the approaching mystery contacts. Even with the Raptor moving away from them, however, they would still arrive before Racetrack and Crashdown would be able to escape.
“I hope you're feeling light on your feet today, Racetrack. They're going to be all over us in less than a minute.”
“Well then shut up and le FRAK!”
She was cut off by the Raptor rocking violently. The starfield wheeled crazily outside the cockpit windows and her controls went dead. Behind her, Crashdown's curses suggested that his equipment had become just as useless. The tumbling stars outside had already led to a queasy disorientation, so she jerked her eyes away from the windows and turned to Crashdown.
“What happened?”
“At a guess, they shot us. From something like twice the maximum range of a Mercury class' maximum effective range, and scored a hit on their first try too.”
Racetrack winced. That was quite a feat, and a good indication that these people, whoever they were, were not Cylons. They wouldn't have needed sabotage to take the Colonies if they'd had such a technical advantage.
“I'm going to try and restart the engines,” Racetrack said, hands darting jerkily to her controls. Her ministrations led t nothing more than a shower of sparks from somewhere in the read of the Raptor and a flickering of the various cockpit lights, but nothing useful. “Frak. Crashdown, go see if you can work... out... oh, frak.”
Crashdown glanced in the direction of the pilots seat to see what had caused Racetrack to trail off, then did a double take. The... thing... that hung outside the Raptor looked like nothing he'd ever seen before, a vaguely humanoid shape in cold, stark white with flashes of glowing yellow or blue lights visible through it's external plating. Huge thruster assemblies rose behind the thing's shoulders, and it's eyeless, bulbous head was split in what seemed almost like a mouth filled with a double row of razor sharp teeth, and bunches of cable snaked over and under every surface. Even as they watched, two more of the giant... whatever they were... took up position behind the first, appearing to stop with impossibly abrupt suddenness, an illusion provided by their matching the Raptor's uncontrolled tumble with effortless ease.
The closest monster reached out and grasped the Raptor with a shrieking of metal, fingers punching through the outer hull and into he crew compartment as though the tough material of the Raptor's hide was no impediment. Air rushed out through the breach, and bot Colonial officers felt their suits puff up as the external pressure quickly dropped to match the vacuum outside.
Racetrack could almost swear that the thing was laughing, mouth opening wide as if it was going to attempt to swallow the Raptor whole. Then, as the interior of it's 'mouth' began to glow with a cold blue light, she knew she was staring at her death. Her final thought as she adopted the crash position was how stupid she must look doing so when confronted with a giant space monster that spat energy beams.
“No! Bad! Very bad! You stop that right this instant!”
Racetrack blinked. The unfamiliar voice, speaking perfect, unaccented Caprican, drifted out of the suit speakers. Glancing up, she saw the monstrosity outside backing away from the Raptor, it's head tilted in a way that reminded her vaguely of a confused dog. She almost burst into a fit of giggles at the absurdity of the mental image that provoked.
“You've been very bad, coming out here on your own. You know you're supposed to wait for me if you want to go out. Now, you go home right now.” The beast outside somehow projected an aura of abject misery. “No, it's no use trying that look on me. Now, get! Go on! Home, now!”
With a final glance at the crippled Colonial craft, the being turned and vanished out of her field of view.
“What... what was that, exactly?” Crashdown muttered, very slowly.
“I'm really sorry about that, mister,” the voice said. It took Racetrack a second to note that it hadn't come over the speakers, but from behind her, inside the cabin. The airless cabin. Crashdown, being in a better position than her to see the rear of the cabin, whipped his head around, then fell backwards off his chair with an embarrassingly high pitched yell of surprise, scrabbling backwards on his rear until his back hit the bulkhead. Racetrack herself choked back an exclamation of alarm when she saw what had upset the EWO so much.
In the rear of the crew compartment stood a rather pretty young girl in a simple, plain white tunic and brown leggings. A chain of small white flowers sat atop a waterfall of waist-length blonde hair, and her huge blue eyes stared imploringly at Crashdown. Combined with her flawless complexion, she looked every inch the adorable twelve year old. Except for the fact that she was glowing, floating six inches above the deck, and didn't seem to have a problem standing in hard vacuum without a space suit. Nor in making herself heard through said vacuum.
As Racetrack gaped at the impossible apparition, the girl smiled.
“Do you want to come in for some tea? Its the least I can do to make up for the damage those naughty drones did.”
On the face of things, Crashdown's protesting whimper seemed the best possible response.
* * *
Look Before You Leap
Chapter Three: The Knocking on my Chamber Door
The pilot's briefing room aboard the Yukikaze, the sister ship of the obliterated Zuiho, was packed with people. Representatives or the marine forces of eight nations crowded together in a bewildering array of colours, Asakuran white contrasting sharply with the black of Hassledorf, the red and black of New Mercia or the glittering gilt panoply of Khemet, all surrounded by the rusty red colour of other nations standardised ZOCU uniforms. The only way to tell the nationality of those officers was the differences in their rank insignia that showed no signs of being erased by 18 years of on again-off again attempts at standardisation. Despite the variety of colours and ranks, almost all wore uniforms of a similar cut, and held peaked caps trapped under on of their arms.
Lieutenant Commander Mitsuru Sayuri looked out over the assembles officers from her position behind the large, horseshoe shaped podium. The men and women before here were, in most cases, marines, or their nation's equivalent thereof, and represented the officers of every marine detachment on every ship in the fleet. She'd opted to brief them all at once rather than just the senior officers; Admiral Hendee had made it clear that there was a time pressure on the operation.
“Please be seated, ladies and gentlemen,” she said, cunningly disguised speakers projecting her voice clearly and flawlessly throughout the large room. “We've got a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it in, so we need to get down to business.”
The low murmur of conversation tailed off, and the assembled officers turned their attention to the large holoscreen floating above her. With a quiet tapping of keys, she displayed the image of a gutted enemy ship. Four of the six exposed arms were missing completely, along with a significant portion of the central body- both likely converted into vapour and the clouds of wreckage that surrounded the ship by the huge explosion that had destroyed it. A fifth hung in space, mostly intact but separated from the wreck, it's surface pitted and scorched. The major intact portion of the wreck itself was less than half the size it had been before the battle, it's internal decks largely open to space. Fiery plumes of atmosphere could still be seen escaping from somewhere inside the ruined vessel.
“Your objective, ladies and gentlemen. This is the largest semi-intact piece of wreckage that we have access to.” Not the most complete; that was an almost undamaged enemy fighter-drone that had been recovered almost immediately after the battle with what appeared to be only minor damage. Presumably, the AI had been damaged or destroyed by a lucky shot. “As such, we intend to learn as much from it as we can in the time available to us. We have no information on the location or disposition of the enemy main force, so time is of the essence. I have salvage specialists ready to enter the wreck at the earliest opportunity, but they aren't equipped or trained for boarding operations, and there are still signs of activity aboard the wreck. You job will be to clear us a path.
“We don't have a great idea of what's in there. They use drone fighters but their larger ships are clearly kept pressurised, as you would expect if they were crewed. Combined with the observed use of unknown FTL and STL drives and the apparent inclusion of extremely small hyperwave generators in their fighters, the current assumption is that somebody in one of the unsurveyed systems out here has found themselves an active or intact postie spire and decided to use the results to build an empire. They're certainly not from the Core; we've accumulated a vast quantity of signals data, and none of it uses anything like any known Core encryption protocols.
“Given what we know of directly postie-derived technology and the general conditions on unsurveyed marginal worlds, however, we can hazard some guesses. Such planets usually have low populations, so automation is popular if, like us, they have the tech for it. You can probably expect a lot of AI controlled defences and possibly drones and, depending on where they got their hands on the tech in the first place, they could sport highly advanced weaponry. In light of the fact that they were using nuclear missiles and rather poor railguns, however, it's more likely that they'll be using the usual sorts of weapons Rim worlds usually get their hands on.
“Your objective, as I said, is to clear the way for my salvage teams, with an eye specifically towards securing any surviving drive spaces, computer hubs and comm arrays before anybody left alive over there has a chance to destroy the equipment.”
There was a polite cough from the audience before on of the Londonium officers spoke up.
“Excuse me, Ma'am, you mentioned a time window. Do you know how long we have?”
“Unfortunately, no,” Mitsuru replied. “Admiral Hendee has tasked the three OSDF Sharks we brought along with picket duty, and the Mercians had a couple of flights of Icicle-C RDs with them, so we have a fair coverage out to about eight light minutes. That should give us plenty of warning.” The assembled officers nodded. Over distances as small as those within a star system, nobody wanted to microjump any closer than that. “That might not be as effective as it sounds, however. From the readings we took when they jumped out, there's no way they're using delta dust drives. They don't match any known theta dust or omega dust drives either, but we don't know much about how those work, so that's not surprising. Certainly, there's no way they could have stuffed a DD drive into a fighter, even if it was a drone.”
Her audience was nodding thoughtfully. She hadn't said so, but they had all instantly realised the significance of having multiple ships, down to fighters even, using such a superior drive technology, and the potential military benefits it represented to ZOCU if they could recover enough nanocomputers from the wreck to set up a duplication plant.
“You'll be happy to know that Captain Mansell redirected a pair of his drones to do a sweep around the wreckage. Plenty of IR sources from inside the hull, although most of those look to be fires. Most of the exposed decks are melted together, but there are a number of potential ingress points.” As she spoke, dots appeared on the hologram marking the positions of the apparent safe entrances. “The drones also identified what appear to be airlocks on the central hub, and on the surviving arm, the latter of which look like maintenance access ports for their drone fighters, at least some of which seem to have been carried on the outside of the hull. Nothing took a potshot at the RDs, so it looks like there aren't any functional weapons to complicate things.
“We have enough smallcraft to get all of your people over in two trips, but not enough access points to land each wave at once. We need to hash out a plan for this and put it into action ASAP; I shouldn't have to emphasise how important it could be. If you'll activate your slates, I'll distribute the data we have. Take your time reading it, then we can get this ball rolling.”
* * *
The shuttle slid itself into the space next to the shattered internal structure of the wreck with the deft, seemingly impossible movements of a fo/fi equipped craft, nimbly dancing around the larger drifting blobs of alloy and melted equipment with casual ease. Sarah Rosestad peered out of the veiwport next to her as the remains of the enemy ship passed along slowly outside the window. From here, it was clear that the majority of the damage had not been inflicted by the Mercian and Khemetian ships that had laid the vessel low. Missiles and particle beam cannons, even mega particle beams, couldn't hope to inflict such massive damage over every inch of an exposed surface. She supposed that it had been a magazine explosion or something similar, a lucky shot or missile piercing the thin skinned warship in exactly the right- or wrong, depending on your view- and setting of a catastrophic and ultimately fatal chain reaction of exploding munitions.
“Thirty seconds to contact.” The pilot's voice crackled over the intercom from the cockpit, clipped Londonium accent audible even over the tinny whine of the small speaker. “I suggest you seal your suits boys and girls.”
“You heard the man,” rumbled Sergeant Maritz from his seat next to the access hatch. “Drop 'em and seal 'em.” As he spoke, the raised faceplate of his helmet slid down over his face, locking into place with a hiss.
The nine marines strapped into the passenger compartment of the shuttle with him followed suit. With their opaque visors sealed, they resembled faceless statues carved from jet black stone, the Transbaal flag and unit patch stencilled onto their right shoulder the only small flashes of colour. That impression was only reinforced by the complete motionless powered armour made possible. Even Transbaal PA, with it's miniaturised ACE systems, didn't mimic the myriad twitches, shakes and trembles that were apparent in even the healthiest human being, nor did the armoured breastplates show the rise and fall of the marines breath.
As her faceplate clicked into place, Sarah felt a brief, familiar flash of panicked claustrophobia as it cut off the shuttle's internal lights, leaving her in darkness for several heartbeats. Then, the internal HUD flickered to life, replicating the outside world with pedantic faithfulness. Some people left the display littered with icons and indicators, but Sarah preferred an unimpeded view. More information was fed to her through the interface tattoos that connected her with the suit's ACE unit, granting her a somewhat warped 360 degree mental image of her surroundings, as well as the information not piped to her HUD.
“Sealed sarge.” Announced the man to Sarah's right. “Everything checks out green and ready to kick some postie killbot ass!”
“Save the machismo until we get back, Kruger. This ain't going to be a pushover.”
“Yeah man. Rosestad ain't gonna put out for you 'til you've brought her home some sensor clusters to mount on the wall!”
“Screw you, Uys. Not if he was the last man in the universe.” Sarah snapped.
“Ooh! Looks like you've got a lot of work to do, Kruger!”
“Fuck off, Uys,” Kruger snarled. “At least I still...”
“CAN IT!”
The combination of Matiz's yell and her earplug-like helmet speakers left a ringing sound in Sarah's ears.
“You can screw around later, once we get off of this hulk. 'Till then, I want 110% effort from all of you! These guys are apparently using postie tech, and that means that they're dangerous. I don't feel like getting fried or eaten today, and I'm certain you don't want that either, so stay on your toes, pay attention and quit the goddamn bullshit!”
The shuttle hit something with a deep 'clunk' sound, and a shudder evident even through the think armour. A glance out of the window showed that they were pressed right against the exposed exterior bulkheads of the shattered warship; she could see glimpses of scorched internal corridors through the layer of melted metal that had formed a lumpy, porous cap over much of the open surface, like wax running down the side of a candle.
“Contact. I'm venting atmosphere in five.”
Air hissed from the transport compartment with a hiss. Through her suit sensors, Sarah watched the pressure outside her suit drop rapidly towards that of the vacuum outside.
“Pressures equalised. Sorry we couldn't find you chaps an airlock, but we'll stand by to catch anybody that misses.”
“Don't. Miss.” Matiz said, before clicking his comm over to the intraship channel. “That's mighty generous of you lieutenant. I'm sure anybody you retrieve will be happy to buy you a drink later.”
“I'll remember that, sergeant,” the pilot chuckled. “Good luck in there.”
“Hopefully, we won't need it. I'm cracking the hatch.” An armoured gauntlet smacked against the touchpad on the bulkhead next the the rear-mounted hatch. The simple metal door began to swing outwards, scraping soundlessly against the metal of the dead ship thanks to the vacuum, eventually forming a neat horizontal walkway most of the distance towards a forbidding dark gap in the crust of re-solidified metal that covered the former interior areas of the ship where it had been exposed to the intense heat of the explosion that had killed it. The ramp fell just over three feet short of their entranceway.
“Make ready!” Matiz snapped over the comm. Most of the squad already had their particle rifles clutched to their shoulders and ready to fire. “Rosestad, Botha, you're up first. Uys, de Wet, cover them.”
“Got it, sir,” Uys said, settling his infantry support weapon more firmly into his shoulder. “Ain't no need to worry about killbots with me on the job.”
Sarah rolled her eyes inside her helmet as she approached the gap. For such a small distance, it seemed a long way, especially considering that they were in microgravity and thus didn't need to fear failing to make a jump. Liking suddenly dry lips, she exchanged a quick nod with the marine who'd moved up beside her and pushed lightly off the shuttle bulkhead towards the hole. A short burst of gas from the thruster pack they'd all been issued corrected her trajectory slightly, sending her drifting through the hole directly in front of Botha.
The inside of the hulk was charred black, warped and twisted by immense heat. Great tears and holes marked where debris had ploughed through the hull, and the whole access way in which she found herself looked as if it had been made out of hot wax and then been left to run a bit before it set. In the greenish tinge imparted to everything by her armour's light amplification systems, it was undeniably creepy. Nothing reacted to the presence of the two marines as they advanced away from the door, and the passage was just as dead to infra-red and more advanced sensors, so Sarah activated her comm.
“Jurassic One One, Jurassic One One Charlie. Negative IR, negative movement. Looks clear, boss, but real creepy.”
“Gotcha' Charlie. Kruger, you and me next, then Uys and Joubert, Rensburg and de Wet, Grayling and Scheepers covering our ass.”
The clunk of plasteel boots on the metal behind her heralded the arrival of Matiz and Kruger, the latter hefting the large, square barrelled form of an ISW. With the smooth motions of a man accustomed to operating for extended periods in microgravity, he positioned himself to cover the ruined corridor as the rest of the squad made the short trip. After what felt like an eternity but was, according to her suit clock, no more than thirty seconds, Grayling's boots thudded into a bulkhead.
Matiz completed a quick headcount, and satisfied that everybody had indeed made it across into the wreck, commed the pilot of their shuttle.
“Archer Three, Jurassic One One. Thanks for the lift. We're all safely across.”
“Good show, mate,” the pilot's voice drifted back over the general squad frequency. “I'll be available for pickup in fifty minutes. Until then, your emergency pickup is the beautiful Angel Two. Lovely girl, you'll like her. Godspeed, lads and lasses, and you'd better all be here when I come to pick you up.”
Matiz grumbled something about proper comm procedures, then pointed sharply at Rensburg and Joubert.
“You two, set up the first relay here, standard omnidirectional configuration. The last thing we want is to get lost in here with no comms. Grayling, de Wet, Scheepers, you're humping the extras. You all know the drill boys and girls; lets have no mistakes and no fucking body bags today, please.
The small group made their way deeper into the wreck, stopping only to set up relays when their contact with the outside world became to tenuous. Here and there, an isolated drone attempted to impede their progress, but the heavily armed marines buried the isolated constructs in flurries of particle bolts
“Where the fuck are these fucking postie defence systems then, sarge?” Grayling demanded after the umpteenth uncontested entry to yet another wrecked room. “All we've seen so far is metal bulkheads, shitty drones with even shittier slugthrowers, and this creepy muscle shit over all the equipment.”
“How the hell am I supposed to know? I can't see the fucking future, and I didn't build this heap of scrap. Maybe they didn't include any or they've been taken offline by damage.”
“Hey, ssssh. Quiet.” Sarah held up a hand in a 'stop' signal. “You see that?”
“See what?”
“There! That flickering around the next bulkhead. Looks like something still has power down here.” That wasn't all that surprising, considering how deep into the wreck they were; obvious damage from the explosion had faded a long way behind them, other than the greasy smudges all over the walls, and the thing was a warship. It was bound to have local, redundant power sources.
“Okay, Rosestad, Uys you take point. Don't take any chances.”
“Got it, boss.”
Sarah and her companion burst around the corner in a flurry of thruster exhaust, thumping heavily into the adjacent bulkhead rather than slow their movement and present easier targets. Nothing shot at them, however; the flickering light was produced by dangling,exposed cables showering sparks on the deck and bulkheads. She started. The deck and bulkheads? A closer look in the light provided by the electrical discharges confirmed it. There was a definite floor surface and a definite ceiling, rather than the uniformly constructed surfaces of every starship she'd ever been in, and the hand and footholds she was used to were completely absent.
“Sarge, these people have artificial gravity.”
“Don't be stupid Rosestad! That shit has been five years away for twenty years now, unless you have... postie tech. Shit!”
“She's right boss. I thought something was screwy here, but couldn't put my finger on it. Now she's pointed it out, it's so obvious a blind man could see it. Nobody puts a decksole on a bulkhead or leaves out handholds unless they have a reason.”
“Alright, I'm bouncing this feed to the fleet real time. Let the eggheads get a look at it now in case there's something nasty waiting for us further in.”
“Maybe not that far, sarge.” Grayling was fiddling with a hatch cover midway along the companionway. “I think there's atmosphere behind this.”
* * *
The Three was injured and delirious. She had been saved from death by being on station supervising the centurions and lesser autonomous support units as they tended to the basestar's central drive and power systems. Those comprised some of the most heavily protected areas of the ship, and that had saved her when the unknown fleet had, in what had to be a supreme example of bad luck, emerged from FTL in the worst position it was possible to be in and proceeded to gut her ship in the ensuing misunderstanding.
Now, she was barely conscious, the combination of a day and a half without water and the concussion she'd sustained when those hellish energy weapons had lit off the basestar's central tyleum bunkers. In her current state, she was content to just float and wait for death, unable as she was to concentrate long enough to kill herself and let the resurrection net have it's way with her. Perhaps she might even make contact with the aliens that the few remaining internal sensors had indicated were boarding the basestar.
Had she been more on top of things, she might have ordered the centurions to stand down when the aliens arrived at the other side of the main hatch, but as it was, they simply moved her to a sheltered location away from any direct lines of fire, and took up defensive positions.
* * *
“Holy shit!” Grayling yelped as the slugs bounced off of his armour and the bulkheads around him. He jetted out of the way with alacrity, just as Uys and Kruger opened fire with their ISWs. The sakuradite based weapons spat bright pink bolts of energy, punching melted, glowing holes in equipment, bulkheads and the drones that were spraying deadly accurate fire towards the open hatch. Unlike the osmium cored slugs used in modern railguns, however, the slugs were not up to the task demanded of them, and smeared themselves liberally over the marines powered armour.
The two ISW gunners continued to pour fire into the compartment, the bulky radiators that allowed their weapons to fire for the extended periods lighter energy weapons could not glowing cherry red as they tried to dump the vast quantities of heat being generated. The drones toppled backwards in showers of sparks and molten metal as the energy weapon punched into them, and with shocking abruptness, everything was still once more.
“Alright, get inside!” Matiz yelled over the howl of escaping atmosphere. “Then shut the fucking door!” With that accomplished, the squad fanned out to investigate the compartment.
“Looks like a drive room, sarge. I dunno what half this shit does, but I worked as a yard dog for a bit in a private yard in Horizon, and a bunch of this crap reminds me of the stuff you'd find alongside an FTL drive. No dust yet, though.”
“Well, keep looking. We'll hole up here and wait for the salvage crews; if it is a drive room, we aren't going to want anybody slipping in here behind us. Uys, Kruger, cover the hatch. I'll be on the horn to the Lt.”
“Well sir,” Sarah announced, floating above the prone form of the battered Cylon. “You'd better tell them we've got ourselves a live prisoner as well.”
Chapter Two: A Forest of Razor Blades
***Unscheduled Data-Burst Received***
***45128745841/84***
***Decrypting***
......... Cipher Integrity OK
......... Anti Tampering Protocols OK
......... Unpacking Compete
***Decompressing***
......... OK
*** WARNING***
Anomalous Energy Signature Detected At Grid 93568/85471!
***Analysing***
........ OK
Anomalous signature identified!
Component Type-001465987/584B
Component Type-001456321/846A
Component Type-001321684/319H
Component Type-001665475/141M
Multiple Unknown Components!
***Accessing Database***
........ OK
Multiple Unknown Components!
***WARNING!***
Unknown Craft In-System!
Defence Drones Online!
Referring To Higher Authority!
* * *
The wrenching disorientation of an FTL jump faded quickly, and Racetrack resisted the temptation to shake her head to dislodge the last stubborn traces of dizziness provided by her protesting inner ear. Her eyes scanned over the flight instruments, and finding nothing amiss, moved on to examine the space outside the cockpit windows. Space around the Raptor appeared as empty to the naked eye as her instruments said it was.
The yellow G2 star that was this system's primary was a small pinprick of light in the top right of the cockpit glass, clearly larger and brighter than the stars that formed the almost unchanging backdrop of interstellar space, but still too puny and distant to provide any useful illumination or heat; the temperature reading of the space outside the hull was unchanged from the interstellar void.
“I'm not showing any contacts, Racetrack,” announced Crashdown from his position at the EWO console. “Not even any asteroids in dradis range, no artificial emissions. This place is empty.”
“Yeah, that's what we all thought about the last system, and that led the fleet right into a Cylon trap.”
The orders to the Raptors that formed the Fleet's long range scouts had been modified in light of that experience, but wit the best will in the world, the Fleet just couldn't risk staying in one place long enough to complete a proper survey, not with the way the Cylons seemed to be able to track them. Taking the time to do things thoroughly ran the risk of the Fleet being forced to move on, even from the fall back rendezvous coordinates. Nobody wanted to be left behind like that, and they couldn't really afford to loose Raptors to such circumstances either. Even so, the new, more intensive survey procedures would take more than twice as long. That reduced the number of systems that they could check, but if the Old Man thought that the trade-off was worth it, Racetrack was willing to take him at his word.
Ideally, of course, they would have stuck to interstellar space, but tyleum sources were beyond rare in the gulf between stars, and the fleet needed tyleum. Without proper ore haulers and only a single warship, they couldn't bring raw tyleum from star systems to them in a practicable time frame either, and sending in the vital refinery ship alone was out of the question, as was leaving the entire fleet unprotected while Galactica shepherded the huge vessel. So the whole fleet had to go, and that meant that star systems made excellent traps. It had only been uncharacteristically poor coordination on the part of the Toasters that had saved them last time, and the thought of the cybernetic mass murderers banging their fists on bulkheads in rage over their blunder brought a smile to her face.
“Well, so far this place is even emptier than that system was. I've seen the data from that Raptor, and they could tell even from out here that the place was stuffed with Tyleum and all sorts of space junk, but here? Nothing. We'll have to go get a closer look.”
“Right. Drives are spooling.”
The low whine of the recharging FTL drive filled the crew compartment. The two Colonial officers sat in silence for several minutes, both keeping a close eye on their scopes, until the chime indicating a fully charged FTL system sounded.
“FTL charged. You got some coordinated for me, Crashdown?”
“Right here.” Crashdown's hands danced over his console, inserting the complex numbers of the jump calculations into the Raptor's systems. “Should land us ten light minutes out from the primary.”
“Got it. Stand by for jump... now.”
* * *
***WARNING!***
FTL Signature Detected!
New Contact Detected, Grid 70148/32098!
***ALERT! UNKNOWN CRAFT INSIDE DEFENSIVE PERIMITER!***
Initiating Response........ ERROR! RESPONSE AUTHORISATION NOT PROVIDED!
Requesting Response Authorisation........... ERROR
Contacting Backup Server 1254/B47.............. ERROR
Contacting Backup Server 5484/H82.............. ERROR
Contacting Backup Server 3651/B58.............. ERROR
Contacting Backup Server 4754/T46.............. ERROR
Contacting Backup Server 1674/A44.............. ERROR
Contacting Backup Server 1232/C27.............. ERROR
***WARNING! EXTERNAL LINKS OFFLINE!***
Reinitialising........... ERROR
Reinitialising........... ERROR
Reinitialising........... ERROR
Reinitialising........... ERROR
Reinitialising........... ERROR
Reinitialising........... ERROR
Initiating Emergency Override............. OK
Sending Wakeup Call............ OK
***DEPLOYING RESPONSE***
* * *
“Negative contacts,” announced Crashdown. “I've got a planet and moon system maybe a light minute closer in than us, and another small planet twenty light seconds further out. Asteroids all over the place, thick enough to be a real navigation hazard. Getting readings for water from the planet and the moon, lots of iron, nickel and platinum in the asteroids, but no tyleum.”
“A habitable planet?”
“Can't tell for sure without getting a proper look, but with that much water, it almost has to be. It's in the liquid water zone of the star, probably a bit chilly but, even so. No artificial emissions. Looks like a bust.”
“Things are never fraking easy are they? I'm starting the search pattern; feel free to scream and shout if you get a hit and we can go home.”
“You have my solemn word that I'll yell like a lunatic if we find what we're looking for.”
They hadn't covered more than a fifth of their search area before Crashdown's console started beeping insistently at him.
“Please tell me that thing's telling you we've found what we're looking for?”
“Not exactly. We've got dradis returns heading towards us from in system at well over 60 Gs acceleration. If they weren't on a consistent heading, I'd dismiss them as sensor ghosts they're so intermittent.”
“Spin up the drive. How long before they get here?”
“Not long. I can't get a firm fix on them, but call it... three minutes from now.” Crashdown's hands flew across his work station, trying to firm up the wispy, ghost-like contacts with little success.
“Frak,” that was considerably sooner than their FTL would be ready. “Okay, I'm showing them our ass.”
The little craft tumbled about in space, settling onto a new heading pointed directly away from the approaching mystery contacts. Even with the Raptor moving away from them, however, they would still arrive before Racetrack and Crashdown would be able to escape.
“I hope you're feeling light on your feet today, Racetrack. They're going to be all over us in less than a minute.”
“Well then shut up and le FRAK!”
She was cut off by the Raptor rocking violently. The starfield wheeled crazily outside the cockpit windows and her controls went dead. Behind her, Crashdown's curses suggested that his equipment had become just as useless. The tumbling stars outside had already led to a queasy disorientation, so she jerked her eyes away from the windows and turned to Crashdown.
“What happened?”
“At a guess, they shot us. From something like twice the maximum range of a Mercury class' maximum effective range, and scored a hit on their first try too.”
Racetrack winced. That was quite a feat, and a good indication that these people, whoever they were, were not Cylons. They wouldn't have needed sabotage to take the Colonies if they'd had such a technical advantage.
“I'm going to try and restart the engines,” Racetrack said, hands darting jerkily to her controls. Her ministrations led t nothing more than a shower of sparks from somewhere in the read of the Raptor and a flickering of the various cockpit lights, but nothing useful. “Frak. Crashdown, go see if you can work... out... oh, frak.”
Crashdown glanced in the direction of the pilots seat to see what had caused Racetrack to trail off, then did a double take. The... thing... that hung outside the Raptor looked like nothing he'd ever seen before, a vaguely humanoid shape in cold, stark white with flashes of glowing yellow or blue lights visible through it's external plating. Huge thruster assemblies rose behind the thing's shoulders, and it's eyeless, bulbous head was split in what seemed almost like a mouth filled with a double row of razor sharp teeth, and bunches of cable snaked over and under every surface. Even as they watched, two more of the giant... whatever they were... took up position behind the first, appearing to stop with impossibly abrupt suddenness, an illusion provided by their matching the Raptor's uncontrolled tumble with effortless ease.
The closest monster reached out and grasped the Raptor with a shrieking of metal, fingers punching through the outer hull and into he crew compartment as though the tough material of the Raptor's hide was no impediment. Air rushed out through the breach, and bot Colonial officers felt their suits puff up as the external pressure quickly dropped to match the vacuum outside.
Racetrack could almost swear that the thing was laughing, mouth opening wide as if it was going to attempt to swallow the Raptor whole. Then, as the interior of it's 'mouth' began to glow with a cold blue light, she knew she was staring at her death. Her final thought as she adopted the crash position was how stupid she must look doing so when confronted with a giant space monster that spat energy beams.
“No! Bad! Very bad! You stop that right this instant!”
Racetrack blinked. The unfamiliar voice, speaking perfect, unaccented Caprican, drifted out of the suit speakers. Glancing up, she saw the monstrosity outside backing away from the Raptor, it's head tilted in a way that reminded her vaguely of a confused dog. She almost burst into a fit of giggles at the absurdity of the mental image that provoked.
“You've been very bad, coming out here on your own. You know you're supposed to wait for me if you want to go out. Now, you go home right now.” The beast outside somehow projected an aura of abject misery. “No, it's no use trying that look on me. Now, get! Go on! Home, now!”
With a final glance at the crippled Colonial craft, the being turned and vanished out of her field of view.
“What... what was that, exactly?” Crashdown muttered, very slowly.
“I'm really sorry about that, mister,” the voice said. It took Racetrack a second to note that it hadn't come over the speakers, but from behind her, inside the cabin. The airless cabin. Crashdown, being in a better position than her to see the rear of the cabin, whipped his head around, then fell backwards off his chair with an embarrassingly high pitched yell of surprise, scrabbling backwards on his rear until his back hit the bulkhead. Racetrack herself choked back an exclamation of alarm when she saw what had upset the EWO so much.
In the rear of the crew compartment stood a rather pretty young girl in a simple, plain white tunic and brown leggings. A chain of small white flowers sat atop a waterfall of waist-length blonde hair, and her huge blue eyes stared imploringly at Crashdown. Combined with her flawless complexion, she looked every inch the adorable twelve year old. Except for the fact that she was glowing, floating six inches above the deck, and didn't seem to have a problem standing in hard vacuum without a space suit. Nor in making herself heard through said vacuum.
As Racetrack gaped at the impossible apparition, the girl smiled.
“Do you want to come in for some tea? Its the least I can do to make up for the damage those naughty drones did.”
On the face of things, Crashdown's protesting whimper seemed the best possible response.
* * *
Look Before You Leap
Chapter Three: The Knocking on my Chamber Door
The pilot's briefing room aboard the Yukikaze, the sister ship of the obliterated Zuiho, was packed with people. Representatives or the marine forces of eight nations crowded together in a bewildering array of colours, Asakuran white contrasting sharply with the black of Hassledorf, the red and black of New Mercia or the glittering gilt panoply of Khemet, all surrounded by the rusty red colour of other nations standardised ZOCU uniforms. The only way to tell the nationality of those officers was the differences in their rank insignia that showed no signs of being erased by 18 years of on again-off again attempts at standardisation. Despite the variety of colours and ranks, almost all wore uniforms of a similar cut, and held peaked caps trapped under on of their arms.
Lieutenant Commander Mitsuru Sayuri looked out over the assembles officers from her position behind the large, horseshoe shaped podium. The men and women before here were, in most cases, marines, or their nation's equivalent thereof, and represented the officers of every marine detachment on every ship in the fleet. She'd opted to brief them all at once rather than just the senior officers; Admiral Hendee had made it clear that there was a time pressure on the operation.
“Please be seated, ladies and gentlemen,” she said, cunningly disguised speakers projecting her voice clearly and flawlessly throughout the large room. “We've got a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it in, so we need to get down to business.”
The low murmur of conversation tailed off, and the assembled officers turned their attention to the large holoscreen floating above her. With a quiet tapping of keys, she displayed the image of a gutted enemy ship. Four of the six exposed arms were missing completely, along with a significant portion of the central body- both likely converted into vapour and the clouds of wreckage that surrounded the ship by the huge explosion that had destroyed it. A fifth hung in space, mostly intact but separated from the wreck, it's surface pitted and scorched. The major intact portion of the wreck itself was less than half the size it had been before the battle, it's internal decks largely open to space. Fiery plumes of atmosphere could still be seen escaping from somewhere inside the ruined vessel.
“Your objective, ladies and gentlemen. This is the largest semi-intact piece of wreckage that we have access to.” Not the most complete; that was an almost undamaged enemy fighter-drone that had been recovered almost immediately after the battle with what appeared to be only minor damage. Presumably, the AI had been damaged or destroyed by a lucky shot. “As such, we intend to learn as much from it as we can in the time available to us. We have no information on the location or disposition of the enemy main force, so time is of the essence. I have salvage specialists ready to enter the wreck at the earliest opportunity, but they aren't equipped or trained for boarding operations, and there are still signs of activity aboard the wreck. You job will be to clear us a path.
“We don't have a great idea of what's in there. They use drone fighters but their larger ships are clearly kept pressurised, as you would expect if they were crewed. Combined with the observed use of unknown FTL and STL drives and the apparent inclusion of extremely small hyperwave generators in their fighters, the current assumption is that somebody in one of the unsurveyed systems out here has found themselves an active or intact postie spire and decided to use the results to build an empire. They're certainly not from the Core; we've accumulated a vast quantity of signals data, and none of it uses anything like any known Core encryption protocols.
“Given what we know of directly postie-derived technology and the general conditions on unsurveyed marginal worlds, however, we can hazard some guesses. Such planets usually have low populations, so automation is popular if, like us, they have the tech for it. You can probably expect a lot of AI controlled defences and possibly drones and, depending on where they got their hands on the tech in the first place, they could sport highly advanced weaponry. In light of the fact that they were using nuclear missiles and rather poor railguns, however, it's more likely that they'll be using the usual sorts of weapons Rim worlds usually get their hands on.
“Your objective, as I said, is to clear the way for my salvage teams, with an eye specifically towards securing any surviving drive spaces, computer hubs and comm arrays before anybody left alive over there has a chance to destroy the equipment.”
There was a polite cough from the audience before on of the Londonium officers spoke up.
“Excuse me, Ma'am, you mentioned a time window. Do you know how long we have?”
“Unfortunately, no,” Mitsuru replied. “Admiral Hendee has tasked the three OSDF Sharks we brought along with picket duty, and the Mercians had a couple of flights of Icicle-C RDs with them, so we have a fair coverage out to about eight light minutes. That should give us plenty of warning.” The assembled officers nodded. Over distances as small as those within a star system, nobody wanted to microjump any closer than that. “That might not be as effective as it sounds, however. From the readings we took when they jumped out, there's no way they're using delta dust drives. They don't match any known theta dust or omega dust drives either, but we don't know much about how those work, so that's not surprising. Certainly, there's no way they could have stuffed a DD drive into a fighter, even if it was a drone.”
Her audience was nodding thoughtfully. She hadn't said so, but they had all instantly realised the significance of having multiple ships, down to fighters even, using such a superior drive technology, and the potential military benefits it represented to ZOCU if they could recover enough nanocomputers from the wreck to set up a duplication plant.
“You'll be happy to know that Captain Mansell redirected a pair of his drones to do a sweep around the wreckage. Plenty of IR sources from inside the hull, although most of those look to be fires. Most of the exposed decks are melted together, but there are a number of potential ingress points.” As she spoke, dots appeared on the hologram marking the positions of the apparent safe entrances. “The drones also identified what appear to be airlocks on the central hub, and on the surviving arm, the latter of which look like maintenance access ports for their drone fighters, at least some of which seem to have been carried on the outside of the hull. Nothing took a potshot at the RDs, so it looks like there aren't any functional weapons to complicate things.
“We have enough smallcraft to get all of your people over in two trips, but not enough access points to land each wave at once. We need to hash out a plan for this and put it into action ASAP; I shouldn't have to emphasise how important it could be. If you'll activate your slates, I'll distribute the data we have. Take your time reading it, then we can get this ball rolling.”
* * *
The shuttle slid itself into the space next to the shattered internal structure of the wreck with the deft, seemingly impossible movements of a fo/fi equipped craft, nimbly dancing around the larger drifting blobs of alloy and melted equipment with casual ease. Sarah Rosestad peered out of the veiwport next to her as the remains of the enemy ship passed along slowly outside the window. From here, it was clear that the majority of the damage had not been inflicted by the Mercian and Khemetian ships that had laid the vessel low. Missiles and particle beam cannons, even mega particle beams, couldn't hope to inflict such massive damage over every inch of an exposed surface. She supposed that it had been a magazine explosion or something similar, a lucky shot or missile piercing the thin skinned warship in exactly the right- or wrong, depending on your view- and setting of a catastrophic and ultimately fatal chain reaction of exploding munitions.
“Thirty seconds to contact.” The pilot's voice crackled over the intercom from the cockpit, clipped Londonium accent audible even over the tinny whine of the small speaker. “I suggest you seal your suits boys and girls.”
“You heard the man,” rumbled Sergeant Maritz from his seat next to the access hatch. “Drop 'em and seal 'em.” As he spoke, the raised faceplate of his helmet slid down over his face, locking into place with a hiss.
The nine marines strapped into the passenger compartment of the shuttle with him followed suit. With their opaque visors sealed, they resembled faceless statues carved from jet black stone, the Transbaal flag and unit patch stencilled onto their right shoulder the only small flashes of colour. That impression was only reinforced by the complete motionless powered armour made possible. Even Transbaal PA, with it's miniaturised ACE systems, didn't mimic the myriad twitches, shakes and trembles that were apparent in even the healthiest human being, nor did the armoured breastplates show the rise and fall of the marines breath.
As her faceplate clicked into place, Sarah felt a brief, familiar flash of panicked claustrophobia as it cut off the shuttle's internal lights, leaving her in darkness for several heartbeats. Then, the internal HUD flickered to life, replicating the outside world with pedantic faithfulness. Some people left the display littered with icons and indicators, but Sarah preferred an unimpeded view. More information was fed to her through the interface tattoos that connected her with the suit's ACE unit, granting her a somewhat warped 360 degree mental image of her surroundings, as well as the information not piped to her HUD.
“Sealed sarge.” Announced the man to Sarah's right. “Everything checks out green and ready to kick some postie killbot ass!”
“Save the machismo until we get back, Kruger. This ain't going to be a pushover.”
“Yeah man. Rosestad ain't gonna put out for you 'til you've brought her home some sensor clusters to mount on the wall!”
“Screw you, Uys. Not if he was the last man in the universe.” Sarah snapped.
“Ooh! Looks like you've got a lot of work to do, Kruger!”
“Fuck off, Uys,” Kruger snarled. “At least I still...”
“CAN IT!”
The combination of Matiz's yell and her earplug-like helmet speakers left a ringing sound in Sarah's ears.
“You can screw around later, once we get off of this hulk. 'Till then, I want 110% effort from all of you! These guys are apparently using postie tech, and that means that they're dangerous. I don't feel like getting fried or eaten today, and I'm certain you don't want that either, so stay on your toes, pay attention and quit the goddamn bullshit!”
The shuttle hit something with a deep 'clunk' sound, and a shudder evident even through the think armour. A glance out of the window showed that they were pressed right against the exposed exterior bulkheads of the shattered warship; she could see glimpses of scorched internal corridors through the layer of melted metal that had formed a lumpy, porous cap over much of the open surface, like wax running down the side of a candle.
“Contact. I'm venting atmosphere in five.”
Air hissed from the transport compartment with a hiss. Through her suit sensors, Sarah watched the pressure outside her suit drop rapidly towards that of the vacuum outside.
“Pressures equalised. Sorry we couldn't find you chaps an airlock, but we'll stand by to catch anybody that misses.”
“Don't. Miss.” Matiz said, before clicking his comm over to the intraship channel. “That's mighty generous of you lieutenant. I'm sure anybody you retrieve will be happy to buy you a drink later.”
“I'll remember that, sergeant,” the pilot chuckled. “Good luck in there.”
“Hopefully, we won't need it. I'm cracking the hatch.” An armoured gauntlet smacked against the touchpad on the bulkhead next the the rear-mounted hatch. The simple metal door began to swing outwards, scraping soundlessly against the metal of the dead ship thanks to the vacuum, eventually forming a neat horizontal walkway most of the distance towards a forbidding dark gap in the crust of re-solidified metal that covered the former interior areas of the ship where it had been exposed to the intense heat of the explosion that had killed it. The ramp fell just over three feet short of their entranceway.
“Make ready!” Matiz snapped over the comm. Most of the squad already had their particle rifles clutched to their shoulders and ready to fire. “Rosestad, Botha, you're up first. Uys, de Wet, cover them.”
“Got it, sir,” Uys said, settling his infantry support weapon more firmly into his shoulder. “Ain't no need to worry about killbots with me on the job.”
Sarah rolled her eyes inside her helmet as she approached the gap. For such a small distance, it seemed a long way, especially considering that they were in microgravity and thus didn't need to fear failing to make a jump. Liking suddenly dry lips, she exchanged a quick nod with the marine who'd moved up beside her and pushed lightly off the shuttle bulkhead towards the hole. A short burst of gas from the thruster pack they'd all been issued corrected her trajectory slightly, sending her drifting through the hole directly in front of Botha.
The inside of the hulk was charred black, warped and twisted by immense heat. Great tears and holes marked where debris had ploughed through the hull, and the whole access way in which she found herself looked as if it had been made out of hot wax and then been left to run a bit before it set. In the greenish tinge imparted to everything by her armour's light amplification systems, it was undeniably creepy. Nothing reacted to the presence of the two marines as they advanced away from the door, and the passage was just as dead to infra-red and more advanced sensors, so Sarah activated her comm.
“Jurassic One One, Jurassic One One Charlie. Negative IR, negative movement. Looks clear, boss, but real creepy.”
“Gotcha' Charlie. Kruger, you and me next, then Uys and Joubert, Rensburg and de Wet, Grayling and Scheepers covering our ass.”
The clunk of plasteel boots on the metal behind her heralded the arrival of Matiz and Kruger, the latter hefting the large, square barrelled form of an ISW. With the smooth motions of a man accustomed to operating for extended periods in microgravity, he positioned himself to cover the ruined corridor as the rest of the squad made the short trip. After what felt like an eternity but was, according to her suit clock, no more than thirty seconds, Grayling's boots thudded into a bulkhead.
Matiz completed a quick headcount, and satisfied that everybody had indeed made it across into the wreck, commed the pilot of their shuttle.
“Archer Three, Jurassic One One. Thanks for the lift. We're all safely across.”
“Good show, mate,” the pilot's voice drifted back over the general squad frequency. “I'll be available for pickup in fifty minutes. Until then, your emergency pickup is the beautiful Angel Two. Lovely girl, you'll like her. Godspeed, lads and lasses, and you'd better all be here when I come to pick you up.”
Matiz grumbled something about proper comm procedures, then pointed sharply at Rensburg and Joubert.
“You two, set up the first relay here, standard omnidirectional configuration. The last thing we want is to get lost in here with no comms. Grayling, de Wet, Scheepers, you're humping the extras. You all know the drill boys and girls; lets have no mistakes and no fucking body bags today, please.
The small group made their way deeper into the wreck, stopping only to set up relays when their contact with the outside world became to tenuous. Here and there, an isolated drone attempted to impede their progress, but the heavily armed marines buried the isolated constructs in flurries of particle bolts
“Where the fuck are these fucking postie defence systems then, sarge?” Grayling demanded after the umpteenth uncontested entry to yet another wrecked room. “All we've seen so far is metal bulkheads, shitty drones with even shittier slugthrowers, and this creepy muscle shit over all the equipment.”
“How the hell am I supposed to know? I can't see the fucking future, and I didn't build this heap of scrap. Maybe they didn't include any or they've been taken offline by damage.”
“Hey, ssssh. Quiet.” Sarah held up a hand in a 'stop' signal. “You see that?”
“See what?”
“There! That flickering around the next bulkhead. Looks like something still has power down here.” That wasn't all that surprising, considering how deep into the wreck they were; obvious damage from the explosion had faded a long way behind them, other than the greasy smudges all over the walls, and the thing was a warship. It was bound to have local, redundant power sources.
“Okay, Rosestad, Uys you take point. Don't take any chances.”
“Got it, boss.”
Sarah and her companion burst around the corner in a flurry of thruster exhaust, thumping heavily into the adjacent bulkhead rather than slow their movement and present easier targets. Nothing shot at them, however; the flickering light was produced by dangling,exposed cables showering sparks on the deck and bulkheads. She started. The deck and bulkheads? A closer look in the light provided by the electrical discharges confirmed it. There was a definite floor surface and a definite ceiling, rather than the uniformly constructed surfaces of every starship she'd ever been in, and the hand and footholds she was used to were completely absent.
“Sarge, these people have artificial gravity.”
“Don't be stupid Rosestad! That shit has been five years away for twenty years now, unless you have... postie tech. Shit!”
“She's right boss. I thought something was screwy here, but couldn't put my finger on it. Now she's pointed it out, it's so obvious a blind man could see it. Nobody puts a decksole on a bulkhead or leaves out handholds unless they have a reason.”
“Alright, I'm bouncing this feed to the fleet real time. Let the eggheads get a look at it now in case there's something nasty waiting for us further in.”
“Maybe not that far, sarge.” Grayling was fiddling with a hatch cover midway along the companionway. “I think there's atmosphere behind this.”
* * *
The Three was injured and delirious. She had been saved from death by being on station supervising the centurions and lesser autonomous support units as they tended to the basestar's central drive and power systems. Those comprised some of the most heavily protected areas of the ship, and that had saved her when the unknown fleet had, in what had to be a supreme example of bad luck, emerged from FTL in the worst position it was possible to be in and proceeded to gut her ship in the ensuing misunderstanding.
Now, she was barely conscious, the combination of a day and a half without water and the concussion she'd sustained when those hellish energy weapons had lit off the basestar's central tyleum bunkers. In her current state, she was content to just float and wait for death, unable as she was to concentrate long enough to kill herself and let the resurrection net have it's way with her. Perhaps she might even make contact with the aliens that the few remaining internal sensors had indicated were boarding the basestar.
Had she been more on top of things, she might have ordered the centurions to stand down when the aliens arrived at the other side of the main hatch, but as it was, they simply moved her to a sheltered location away from any direct lines of fire, and took up defensive positions.
* * *
“Holy shit!” Grayling yelped as the slugs bounced off of his armour and the bulkheads around him. He jetted out of the way with alacrity, just as Uys and Kruger opened fire with their ISWs. The sakuradite based weapons spat bright pink bolts of energy, punching melted, glowing holes in equipment, bulkheads and the drones that were spraying deadly accurate fire towards the open hatch. Unlike the osmium cored slugs used in modern railguns, however, the slugs were not up to the task demanded of them, and smeared themselves liberally over the marines powered armour.
The two ISW gunners continued to pour fire into the compartment, the bulky radiators that allowed their weapons to fire for the extended periods lighter energy weapons could not glowing cherry red as they tried to dump the vast quantities of heat being generated. The drones toppled backwards in showers of sparks and molten metal as the energy weapon punched into them, and with shocking abruptness, everything was still once more.
“Alright, get inside!” Matiz yelled over the howl of escaping atmosphere. “Then shut the fucking door!” With that accomplished, the squad fanned out to investigate the compartment.
“Looks like a drive room, sarge. I dunno what half this shit does, but I worked as a yard dog for a bit in a private yard in Horizon, and a bunch of this crap reminds me of the stuff you'd find alongside an FTL drive. No dust yet, though.”
“Well, keep looking. We'll hole up here and wait for the salvage crews; if it is a drive room, we aren't going to want anybody slipping in here behind us. Uys, Kruger, cover the hatch. I'll be on the horn to the Lt.”
“Well sir,” Sarah announced, floating above the prone form of the battered Cylon. “You'd better tell them we've got ourselves a live prisoner as well.”
-
Crayz9000
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Re: Look Before you Leap, an nBSG crossover.
I will just mention that although vacuum does not conduct sound, solid materials are an excellent conductor of sound. As such, the shuttle's hatch dragging across the Basestar would be heard inside the shuttle by the anchored Marines.
A Tribute to Stupidity: The Robert Scott Anderson Archive (currently offline)
John Hansen - Slightly Insane Bounty Hunter - ASVS Vets' Assoc. Class of 2000
HAB Cryptanalyst | WG - Intergalactic Alliance and Spoof Author | BotM | Cybertron | SCEF
John Hansen - Slightly Insane Bounty Hunter - ASVS Vets' Assoc. Class of 2000
HAB Cryptanalyst | WG - Intergalactic Alliance and Spoof Author | BotM | Cybertron | SCEF