Chapter 45

The scout, the Misty Cloud, drifted in space at the edge of the once disputed Vraik/Imperial border. Whilst it was a regular patrol, there were no designated tasks other than start at point A and finish at point B within a certain time limit. Then you got two days off and had to repeat the task.

“Odd,” Mutra murmured to her husband, the pilot of the craft.

“Odd?” Janta replied as he simply sat comfortably in the pilot’s chair watching a tridee series on the monitor.

“Not picking up any emanations from the Hammerhead,” Mutra replied, frowning.

“That is odd. Fancy taking a look?”

“Yes, please.”

Janta took the ship off its autopilot drift and, using the heavily shielded gravitic drive, started the Misty Cloud on a course towards the distant Vraik outpost, known to the Empire as the Hammerhead. The outpost itself drifted in interplanetary space and marked the boundary, such as it was, of Vraik territory. The Vraik used the huge asteroid as a forward observation post and had spent a great deal of time making it just about impregnable. They had then discovered that the Empire basically ignored it as it was no impediment to their movements into Vraik space during the recently concluded war between the two Realms. Despite the massive detection arrays built upon it, the Empire simply didn’t give a damn if the Vraik detected them or not and weren’t going to waste time and lives taking it out when they didn’t need to.

“Plotting XD microburst in 3, 2, 1 ... done. We should be within easy observation range now,” Janta stated.

“Nothing,” Mutra replied after a few seconds.

“Life signs?”

“None. It’s just dead, like there’s nothing there.”

“No evidence of a battle?”

“No. The construct is there; the asteroid is there; but there’s no power; no evidence of a hull breach; and no Vraik patrols either, come to that.”

“Best send a report back to Actilonia. I’m pretty sure they’ll send a patrol out to check,” Janta replied.

“Yes. Extending array ... and done. Report sent.”

Two rotations (about one minute) later a reply came acknowledging the report, plus orders to continue investigations whilst a patrol was sent out to them.

“Going to bring us into visual range,” Janta informed his wife.

“OK. I’m about to fire up the aggressive sensors.”

“You sure?” Janta asked, looking concerned, as while the Misty Cloud had a very powerful aggressive sensor suite, he couldn’t recall the last time outside a base test that they’d actually used it. The Misty Cloud was not, under most circumstances, permitted to give itself up to detection and an aggressive probe would almost certainly do so.

“Yes. If it is a trap, they’re being unusually subtle about it as the base temperature readings are close to absolute zero.”

“Rather lose a scout than a flotilla,” Janta chuckled, seeing Mutra’s grin.

“Yep, but I think it’s safe enough.”

“Go for it.”

Several powerful pulses of detection waves were sent to the Hammerhead, but all provided no response whatsoever. Mutra then reported this back to their base at Actilonia, simply getting a confirmation.

“Wonder what they’re up to now?” Janta asked somewhat rhetorically as he was pretty sure Mutra didn’t know.

“They either abandoned it as they can no longer man it ... or lizard it (the Vraik were similar in appearance to Saurians). Or they got recalled to fight elsewhere,” she shrugged.

“You’d expect at least a skeleton crew, if only to keep up appearances. This looks like it has been deliberately shut down.”

“Yes, though they don’t react like humans. We’d probably do that or destroy it in place.”

“True.”

“Detecting flotilla. They’ll be here in four hundred rotations (2 ½ hours).”

“Damn, that’s quick.”

Commodore Tilnoss frowned at the continuing datastream from the Misty Cloud. It was all in order, but made no sense at all.

“Speculations?” he finally asked his command captains who were attending the briefing via tridee communications, except for the bridge captain of his command battlecruiser.

“We know their Realm is collapsing, perhaps they’re just packing up and going home while they can,” Captain Osmus of the Destroyer Warpbane posited.

“Certainly a possibility. Though they never abandoned it during our recent squabble, despite our destroying much of the local infrastructure and putting them under a type of siege,” Tilnoss nodded.

“It is ... or was self-sufficient, hence our strategy of simply ignoring it whilst jamming contact and communications,” Captain Ewess of the Frigate Cronell added.

“Yes, too far from our border to really scan and too tough to waste lives on taking it out,” Tilnoss agreed.

“They could be facing a greater threat elsewhere,” Captain Arrva of the cruiser Debrissa speculated.

“Must be a hell of a threat to draw them away from our border, they’d have to know we’d investigate eventually,” Ewess replied thoughtfully.

“Raffagee?” Osmus posited.

“Disturbing thought,” Tilnoss nodded. “Comms, order the Misty Cloud to head for the Kavasg system and see if their main sector fleet base is still operational.”

“Orders sent. They’re heading out, sir,” the Comms Officer replied.

“Your intentions, sir?” Flag Captain Roov asked.

“Investigate and occupy, unless we’re commanded to withdraw. It will make a pretty good forward base for Eighth Fleet along with Actilonia,” Tilnoss replied.

“Yes, sir. I’ll prepare boarding teams to look for booby traps and to bring their power systems online.”

“We have three other flotillas inbound as well as a science team, sir,” the Comms Officer reported.

“Very good. Let’s go and claim our prize,” Tilnoss nodded with a grim smile.

The Misty Cloud dropped out of XD space at the far edge of the Kavasg system, the nearest Vraik main fleet base to the Empire after the destruction of much of their offensive capabilities by the various Empire Fleets involved in the recent war.

“Picking up Vraik scanning emissions,” Mutra reported.

“Well, at least we know now they haven’t totally vanished,” Janta chuckled. “Beginning drift, will take a day (50 Earth hours) to reach closest proximity.”

It was a long and boring wait, for Janta at least. Mutra had work to do, though this was mostly handled by the shipboard AI with her merely scanning the results, looking for anomalies and/or the Vraik detecting them. Both pilots had been trained in various techniques to alleviate boredom though, including various mental states via a form of meditation which prevented them going stir crazy.

“Planetary defence grid is operational as are various energy sources on the planet ... but, no warships in orbit, not that they had a lot but you’d expect at least some patrolling,” Mutra announced.

“So, Vraik on the planet, but nothing in space, except the orbital base?” Janta asked.

“Pretty much it, yes. Even the base looks to be running on minimum numbers if the comm delays are anything to go by.”

“Wonder where the hell they’ve gone?”

“Don’t know, but if we were to invade, there’s no way they could stop us.”

“Not worth having,” Janta chuckled. “Whole point of the war was they wanted our planets, not vice versa. We just wanted them to remain their side of the border.”

“Hence we wrecked their space side infrastructures and fleets, not their planetary populations. Though there was a bit of Ground Force action on that moon where they were extracting lantinium,” Mutra agreed.

“True, they haven’t developed their mining and resource management very well; they have lots of resources in space but never built the means to harvest them, lugging everything up from their planets.”

“It’s to do with their biology. They can’t work alone for any great length of time but need to have other Vraik around them,” Mutra shrugged. “The suspicion is they somehow got hold of grav-tech and XD technology from elsewhere as they aren’t known as innovators, merely predators.”

“The Ghangan manage,” Jantra countered.

“Oh please! They’re a totally different species and form massive co-operative prides as opposed to the Vraik who squabble even amongst themselves,” Mutra replied, rolling her eyes.

“True,” he chuckled.

“Detecting a ship coming out of XD space, some sort of destroyer.”

“Helpful. They’re all some sort of destroyer, small, medium and large varieties.”

“It’s a small one,” she giggled. “Picking up a broadcast ... it’s in the clear, no encryption,” she finished with a frown.

“AI translate?” Janta asked.

“The Vraik Realm has been invaded,” the AI replied. “They are calling for volunteers to go fight this new enemy in their huge ships.”

“Oh, this can’t be good,” Mutra opined.

“No, it can’t. Best report back.”

“Extending array. Message sent. What now?”

“Continue to nose around whilst they’re distracted, that is the mission.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Orders are orders, my love.”

“True,” she sighed. “I’ll get on with it.”

The Security Group listened in silence as High Admiral Vuspic gave his report to them, outlining what had been discovered about the Vraik so far.