Chapter 49

Battlestate

09:45 Ship Time

“Exiting hyperspace in three ... two ... one ... zero.”

With a flash of blue our two ships transitioned back into normal space. The familiar asteroid field was directly ahead of us, though there was something different this time.

“Picking up some sort of debris interspersed between here and the asteroid field,” Alexis said.

“Confirmed. Looks like the remnants of a battle. It’s hard to tell how many ships we’re picking up or determine what class they are.”

“Sending something over to your screen, Ben,” Alexis replied. “Does it look familiar to you?”

I looked over to Ben’s console and saw that a real-time image of a ship was being sent over. It was rotating so it was hard to see at first, but as the ship spun I was able to recognize it.

“That’s definitely part of the starboard hull and one of the thrusters of an Awaga-Class Cargo Ship,” I confirmed. “Our friends, maybe?”

“Give me a few minutes to scan the wreckages and we’ll know for sure. Whoever this was absolutely got their asses handed to them, though.”

“Shields up, ladies. I don’t want us to be caught flatfooted if whoever did this comes back.”

“Affirmative,” Lucille said.

“I think we’re going to hide inside of the asteroid field while we’re mining, it’s too risky to stay out in the open the way we were doing it. Ladies, your job will be to intercept any asteroids that might impact the Fenrir, which means you’ll need to go around and find asteroids, Mace.”

“We can take a few minutes now to mark asteroids while you’re getting suited up,” Tessa replied. “It should speed up the first few hours quite a bit.”

“That works. How’s it going, Ben?”

“Just about done. I can tell you that the ship definitely belonged to the group we were competing with, but I don’t see the second one. There is also the remains of a Zeon-Class Frigate, but no sign of the other three. Those ships were either captured or escaped.”

“No sign of what destroyed them?”

“Not a scrap. There is an interesting bit on the hull here,” he replied, bringing up a picture of the starboard hull which had half of what would have been a gaping hole. “Based on the radius of the hole and the melted hull around it, the computer is saying that the people who attacked these guys were using a high-intensity particle beam. The beam would’ve punched through the hull like it was butter before melting through the casing of the power core. The massive influx of energy would’ve been enough to cause it to go critical, causing a massive explosion. I’m surprised that there are any pieces of the ship left around here, it all should’ve been vaporized or propelled so far away that there wouldn’t be anything left for us to scan.”

“What type of ship has a weapon that powerful?” I asked.

“Nothing short of a Battlecruiser,” Tessa replied. “Even then, it would have to be a bigger-than-average battlecruiser. Not because it is a particularly large weapon, it’s just that the more powerful energy weapons require their own dedicated power cores. My dad was looking at them when he had the fleet commissioned but ended up deciding not to use them. There are just too many downsides.”

“What sort of downsides?” Mason asked. “They seem like they’re pretty damn good weapons if they can cut through a ship like that.”

“Oh, they are, it’s just that they take at least a minute to charge up before they can be fired and there is a lengthy cooldown period after firing. They generate so much heat that you’re lucky if you’re able to fire once every five minutes. You can get around that by mounting them in pairs or fours so they’re always alternating but there are generally better options that take up much less space.”

“So what you’re saying is if they come back we won’t stand a chance?”

“They wouldn’t have a problem dealing with both our ships. The good news is that they can’t just appear and immediately fire at us, with that weapon at least. It needs to charge up and they can’t do that while in hyperspace. Our shields should hold in the meantime, but we should be prepared to jump as soon as Mason is back on board and everything is secured.”

“Alright, let’s get going then,” I said, standing up to give Ben the controls. “The odds of them returning continue to go up as long as we’re sitting around wasting time. Ladies, go find us a few asteroids while Mason and I get suited up, and then I’ll position The Fenrir in the asteroid field.”

It wasn’t easy moving The Fenrir’s two hundred twenty meter length through the asteroid field. The massive rocks were always moving, crashing into each other and, occasionally, breaking into smaller pieces. It was after we started that we realized we should have put some thought into how the girls would actually deflect asteroids while we worked. Small ones weren’t an issue, they could just grab onto one with their tractor beam and put it on a new course.

No, the issue was with the truly massive asteroids. There weren’t many, but they bullied all of the other asteroids around them, smashing them into little bits while only small amounts of material were shaved off in return. As the weaponry on the Osprey was primarily kinetic, that meant that deflecting them was a very expensive proposition.

They did have four forward-firing pulse lasers, but those took anywhere from two to three minutes of sustained fire to cut through an asteroid and break it up, depending on the size. The mass driver did a better job of it, taking only one or two shots, but it took twenty seconds or so between shots. It was also about twenty-five hundred credits per round, which wasn’t much considering how much we had sitting accruing interest, but that would quickly add up.

Since no one else knew how to fly the mining pod, we kept Mason there but transferred Anja over to The Fenrir to man the weapons. Over here, she would have access to the six much more powerful pulse cannons on either side of the ship, allowing her to cut through asteroids in a fraction of the time.

Right after the Osprey docked and she came over, I piloted us into the asteroid field, finding a better position for us to use. What I found was a moon-sized asteroid that was almost completely stationary, which would do two things. The first is that it would keep us hidden from our arrival point. If the ship responsible for the destruction we had seen were to jump in close to where we did, then we would be completely invisible to their sensors. It would also block any asteroids coming in from one side, allowing Anja to focus her attention elsewhere.

It was pretty smooth sailing once we got started. Since Anja was taking care of the asteroids from The Fenrir, that allowed Tessa and the Osprey to check the area for the types of resources we were looking for, just to speed up the entire process ... They were also able to give us some advanced warning if another ship did jump into the system, allowing Mason to get back aboard. If he wasn’t here already, that is.

For this mining run we weren’t going after anything except for radioactive materials. The fact that they were worth so much per ton and that we were the only ones mining the stuff meant that we would actively lose credits by going after other materials. That was fine with us, though. The emitters did a very good job of clearing up any harmful radiation so it was almost like we were mining anything else.

It was when we were about halfway filling the crates that we started running into problems. The arm that allowed Mason to grip onto asteroids and hold them as he broke them down started to malfunction. It would randomly open and close as he moved the arm, which made it seem like something was wrong with the wiring. It behaved normally if he kept the arm in one spot and only used the clawed hand, but as soon as he moved it then it would cease being under his control.

We tried to work through it, but took a break when I almost got crushed by an asteroid he was bringing back. Once the crate we were in the process of filling was secure and the emitters did their job, Ben returned gravity to the ship so we could get to work. Mason had read through the manual and we both thought it was an issue with the wiring, so he headed to engineering to grab some tools.

He was back a few minutes later and used a device that was a mix of a drill and a screwdriver to quickly undo the bolts that secured the two panels to the arm. The panels themselves were actually on hinges, so once the bolts were removed, all he had to do was flip them open to get at the inner workings.

There was a lot going on inside. Much of the space inside both the upper arm and forearm was taken up by metal rods which gave it the majority of its strength, while servos and wiring took up the rest. It was amazing that there was very little difference between Earth technology and the stuff we were using, but the motors were probably a lot more powerful, even with their small size.

Hydraulics would probably replace the electronics if this were a pod meant to be used on a planet, but hydraulics don’t work at all in space. It is way too cold and it would make the pod quite a bit bigger to house heaters to prevent hydraulic fluid from freezing.

The wiring inside was neatly bundled together in two bundles on either side of the arm, which made it extremely tedious to go through and find where the problem was. He had to undo the clips securing the wires as I held a flashlight, and then go through and check each and every wire to find where the problem was. We didn’t end up finding anything wrong with the wires themselves, but neither of us were electricians. We were looking in the wrong spot.

The issue ended up being a wire going to the actuator that controls the claw. Somehow, either by use or laziness, the wire had come loose and was only just barely contacting the positive connector. When he tried to reattach it fully, he realized that the wire didn’t quite have the length needed.

Going back along the wire’s path, he found that it was caught up at the joint and was being pulled whenever he moved the arm. Freeing it up, he then reattached the wire to the connector. Before closing everything, he climbed into the pod and went through a variety of motions, making sure everything was working properly. Satisfied, he refastened the bolts and ran to put the tools away.

Just as he put his helmet back on and climbed into the pod, Tessa’s voice came over the radio.

“Umm, guys? Three very big problems just showed up.”

Mason waved me away and turned to work on securing the mining pod. Turning, I ran over to the hatch and opened it before making my way up to the bridge.

“Mind elaborating on that a little bit?”

“I landed The Osprey on top of a relatively stable asteroid and then shut down the majority of our systems so we could keep an eye out without being detected. Three ships just jumped into the system. One seems like it could be the ship responsible for the debris we found, while the other two look like mining ships. We could get more detailed readings if we went active on our scan, but that would give our position away.”

“Hold off on that for now,” I said as I arrived on the bridge. Ben moved over to his station and I took a seat. “We’ll be heading over to the secondary asteroid field as soon as Mason has everything secured. What makes you think that they’re mining ships?”

“I’ve seen more than my fair share of mining ships over the years, and these ones look similar to the ones my dad’s company uses. They are typically cylindrical or rectangular ships that have an opening at the front. Sometimes the opening is an aperture and other times there are four doors that open individually to form one larger opening. The former is more common, but they allow mining ships to fly right up to an asteroid and engage a tractor beam, pulling it into the ship for processing. A mining ship could fill the cargo bay on The Fenrir in less than an hour. It wouldn’t be rough chunks of ore, either. It would have a purity of over ninety percent and fill each crate completely.”

“Alright, so if these were the guys that took out our former competition, then they’re trying to claim this area for themselves. Do you think they would detect the mass driver powering up?”

“Oh, most definitely,” she replied. “Why, what do you have in mind?”

I laid out my plan and then our two ships started moving away from the asteroid field. We were definitely noticed as the battlecruiser moved so it was between us and the mining ships, but we weren’t interested in a fight. Not a straight up one, anyways.

When the battlecruiser had moved to where we wanted it, we jumped into hyperspace on a predetermined course. The jump only lasted for a few seconds; we just needed to get out of sensor range of the three ships. Once there, we stopped and flipped our ships over until we were facing the same direction we had come from. After making sure we weren’t being followed, Sonja began the process of loading one of the nuclear missiles into the mass driver. Well, she only had to press a few buttons, really. The autoloader did the rest.

When it was loaded and the target was programmed into the missile’s computer, the mass driver was charged up and the missile was fired. It was barely detectable on our own sensors, so we were hoping that it wouldn’t be detected before the rocket engine engaged. At that point, it would be too late for them to do anything about it.

About thirty seconds after it was sent on its way, our two ships jumped into hyperspace yet again. This was an even shorter jump, lasting less than a second, but it put us just ahead of the missile that was coming up behind us. As soon as we transitioned back into normal space Sonja began loading in another missile into the mass driver. The plan was to fire it just as the first one was about to pass us, so they would hit almost simultaneously.

Once the second missile was fired, our two ships turned again, though this time we were headed to the secondary asteroid field. Either the missiles would do their job or they wouldn’t, but we had a job to do. We would still be able to swing by later on and see if the missiles hit their mark or not.

“That’s one dirty trick if it works,” Mason said when we were on our way.

“Sure is,” I nodded. “If someone really knew their stuff, they could fire from hundreds or thousands of light years away and strike their target. A lot of stuff would need to be calculated, like stellar drift and the target’s exact location, but someone could destroy a planet without even getting close to it. If it were just a tungsten carbide round then it would likely be nigh undetectable as well. Obviously it would take a very long time to arrive, but it would almost be the definition of ‘fire-and-forget’.

“I just shuddered thinking about it. How would you defend against something like that, anyways?”

“A planetary shield would be the easiest option. Mass drivers are very good when dealing with a ship’s hull, but not so great if they have to go through a forcefield first. Depending on the size of the projectile we’re talking about, it would be like a bug hitting a windshield. A sensor net could work, but it would have to be placed far enough away from a planet to give ships time to intercept it with the speeds we’re talking about. Honestly, the best option is probably the same thing that the Confederation uses on their prison planets. They have a planetary shield up all the time, and the only way in and out is through a small opening. Barring insane luck or very precise timing, it would be the perfect defense.”

“Sounds like you’ve been giving this some thought,” Ben said as he joined the conversation.

“How can I not? I’ll be responsible for the safety of billions of people soon. I’ve already made one potential enemy in N’ardil Vilos and I have doubt that I’ll make more enemies in the future. I have to prepare for the eventuality of one of those enemies striking at a planet to try to get at me. Thankfully I’ve got Abi and Tich to bounce ideas off of. They’re both a hell of a lot more knowledgeable about all of this stuff than I am.”

“It’s still so hard believing that all of this is real. It’s bizarre to think that only a few months ago we were graduating from high school with not so much as a clue as to what was going on. Now we’re already over a thousand light years away from home and we’ve only made it a small fraction of the way to our destination,” Anja said. “It’s a little scary, if I’m honest.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Ben said before chuckling. “My mom was so excited about ‘seeing the stars’ that she couldn’t sleep and kept my dad up all night. I received a text from him at around 06:30 telling me that they probably wouldn’t be up before noon.”

“Wait, received a text? How?” Mason asked. “We’re not on Earth anymore.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” I replied. “Abi has a number of subspace transmitters or repeaters or whatever you want to call them placed on many planets. They allow for nearly instantaneous communication from Earth all the way back to the Scutum-Centaurus Arm, which is the region of space that Scyftans arrived on when they fled from Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy. Those transmitters are what allow us to play games like this one. Many of them were developed by companies in that area of space, after all.”

“Shit, I wish I’d known that! I didn’t bother bringing mine because I didn’t think it would be useful. It’s sitting on the nightstand beside my bed back at the base.”

“Eh, it’s not really a big deal,” I said. “You could probably get whatever the Pygmaeans use as phones when we get to Veria, though you’d have to go back to your regular old phone when we get back.”

“True, maybe I’ll pick one up, especially if we’re still planning on checking out a dungeon or two. I wouldn’t be able to assign attribute points otherwise...” he said before trailing off. A moment later, he continued, “I never got how a phone allows you to assign attribute points.”

“I talked to Abi about that a few days ago, actually. She said that it is more symbolic than anything. People across the universe have been spending attributes since their earliest recorded history. It was much more difficult though because you had to imagine which of the five stats you wanted to put your points into.”

“Imagine being a relatively young species that just started delving into dungeons. One day, a member of your tribe comes to you and tells you that he has learned how to become faster, stronger or tougher. Now explaining how to get stronger is easy, strength is ... strength, it’s probably one of the easiest things to understand. The other four are quite a bit harder though.”

“For example, ‘faster’ can mean two different things. Most people would immediately assume that you were talking about walking or running, not about reaction time and ease of movement. Someone thinking about the former would accidently put points into Strength, because Strength does increase how fast you can run, but that wouldn’t be what the tribe member meant.”

“On top of that, it wasn’t even clear how many points you were assigning or where you were assigning them, or how many different attributes there were. Each civilization had to figure that out on their own and disseminate that information to the entire populace. Nowadays it is well documented that there are five different attributes, but what if there was a sixth one that has thus far gone unnoticed? It’s unlikely, but possible.”

“The first time an interface was designed, it was a game changer. That was even further compacted when there was an evaluation designed to determine a person’s base stats before they even set foot in a dungeon. There were five different attributes and they were all well defined. People could easily imagine how they wanted to improve themselves and the interface kept track of how many points they spent. Stats like health, mana and stamina, and their respective regenerations, were added after decades of research to help give people an idea of their capabilities.”

“Things proceeded even further when people began carrying around smaller handheld devices that could keep track of everything. That included the abilities that someone possessed, what ranks they were at, and what they actually did. Before that, you would’ve had to take your Skill Gem to a library or your species’ equivalent of an Adventurers Guild and look through book shelves to find out what that skill did. Even then, the information contained might not be accurate,” I finished.

“I knew some of that already, but it really makes you think about what stage humanity would be at right now if Scyftans never discovered Earth,” Ben said. “The implementation of the Adventurer’s Guild over a thousand years ago undoubtedly meant that we had a big leg up on other species.”

“It’s hard to know for sure, but Earth probably would’ve followed the usual progression path. To Abi’s knowledge, the majority of races go through something similar to a Dark Age, where there is little to no societal progress because people are obsessed with delving into dungeons. How long that ‘Dark Age’ lasts is up to the species, really.”