Chapter 400 (1/2)
The small squadron was different than most Space Force squadrons. A single frigate and six destroyer hulls. They were built along the lines of fish, agile and sleek, moving through space and not-space smoothly without causing ripples or cavitation or eddies. They dropped from an esoteric not-space and into what most people thought of as space an entire light year from their target and went still.
The frigate deployed massive arrays of scanners, sent scanning drones off in a complicated web, the drones moving with their own stealthed drives. Once the drones were in position, they deployed their own scanning arrays that were sensitive enough to detect even the most exhausted photon's passage years after the fact. Every available scanner known to the Terran Confederacy was deployed, from simple visual and audio scanners (the latter not as laughable as it would have once been thought, with the return of the Black Fleet) to gravity sensors to sensors that could detect Deadspace emissions as well as track the progress of chronotrons.
The six destroyers all waited for a period of time, then moved out in sequence on their own appointed routes.
All involving a vast thick nebula.
Each destroyer made 'microjumps', coming closer and closer to the nebula from different angles, all deploying scanners.
The last destroyer, nameless, only a hull number and the crew to distinguish it from the others, made the trip inside.
The Captain, Jane Thomas Choi, sat in her command cradle, her hands clenched on the 'oh shit' bars on either side, the bottom of her boots pressed against the plate at the bottom, her body tense even while her mind was linked to the ship itself.
The ship's computer was a simple thing, barely qualifying as a Virtual Intelligence, and it had no curiosity, no wonder, it just performed the tasks as they had been laboriously encoded into it.
The three Digital Sentiences were in heavily shielded disaster frames, all designed to minimize emissions as much as possible. There was no VR network for them to lounge in, it was meatspace or nothing.
None of them minded, this was one of those missions. The ones you might read about centuries after the fact, that nobody knew ever happened, but was vitally important enough for ships to be custom built or retrofitted and the crew hand selected.
Captain Choi watched through every scanner the ship possessed while still in maximum stealth mode. From how particles caressed the hull to how the engine hummed and pinged, to how the crew reacted.
It dropped from stringspace as the engine cut out and Captain Choi held her breath. Stringspace could be risky to a ship not guided correctly. A knot could be hit, a ship could come out sideways or inverted, the ship's engine could get tangled and be torn from the hull.
But the risk was part of it.
The ship floated, dead in space, no emissions. Beyond no emissions. Most navies strived to make their ships a hole in space. A hole could be spotted. Space Force filled in the hole to the point where most particles moved across the stealth systems as if it was empty space. It didn't help the ship that the location they had dropped into was difficult at best to adjust for.
Which is why the entire crew were hardwired to one another for conversations. The crew system was completely isolated from the rest of the computer systems. Fiber optic cable only.
Months spent with only electrodes to keep the muscles toned. Specially crafted foods through a tube that were designed to prevent organ atrophy.
The crew members that moved moved in total silence, their cable connected allowing them to communicate.
Every vibration was accounted for an muted.
”Scans coming back,” Captain Hooker sent from the maneuvering scan station.
Choi glanced at the former tank E/W officer. It wouldn't have been her first choice, to go outside of Space Force for a scanner technician. She had peeked at his record and had been startled. Three hundred eighthy years as an armored vehicle E/W systems tech, guiding everything from armored scout cars to heavy main battle tanks. He'd even spent twenty years as a BOLO operator.
She had realized that Space Force had figured a man who could guide his tank and fellow crewmates through burning cities and hellish atmospheres would be the man who would put together the best path for the ship to take.
”What's it look like?” Captain Choi asked.
The interior of the nebula had been cleared at some point in the past. It looked as if a nova or supernova had gone off, pushed the particles and gasses that made up the nebula into a shell around empty space.
”We've got super-structures,” Hooker sent. ”They're...”
Hooker suddenly reached and slapped a red button next to his cradle.
To Choi it felt like the ship suddenly inverted as the temporal reversion drive was kicked on. It wasn't ”exactly” a drive in the sense that it didn't ”exactly” manipulate time. Rather, it had the particles reverse motions between two set points. The set points were when the ship had started the jump and when the button was slapped.
The ship jumped backwards in space, not in time, as the temporal section was used merely to provide an instructional baseline.
All six of the destroyers came jumping back at roughly the same time. The six alerts were transferred to the frigate, and all seven ships jumped to stringspace and vanished.
The nebula sat, silent, as it had for millions of years.
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Captain Choi walked into Rear Admiral (Lower Decks) Lucas's office, seeing that she was in good company with the other five destroyer commanders. She took her seat and waited.
Unlike most Space Force meetings between ship captains, this one was in meatspace.
”I've looked over the records,” Admiral Lucas said, tapping a dataslate screen. ”I'm going to endorse your decisions, but...”
The word hung there for a long moment.
”We have to go back in,” the Admiral said.
”Sir, I assume we're going back in with novasparks and planet crackers?” Captain Sørensen asked.
Admiral Lucas shook their head. ”No. We need more data. What we've found could answer some of the biggest questions we've had.”
”Is the timing right, sir?” Captain Norman asked, her anxiety shown by the way his fingers kept tapping his uniformed leg.
”I've done the numbers, the angles. This place fits,” the Admiral said.
There was shocked silence.
”How much mass does Confed Intel thin the Lanaktallans have amassed over the last hundred and twenty odd million years?” Captain Choi asked.
”Enough to have built it all. Every bit of it and then some,” the Admiral said. ”We need better scans. We need to get a look in at the whole thing.”
The six captains all nodded.
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”Captain, I've been matching the surface scans taken from earlier encounters of the superstructures to planetary scans of Lanaktallan systems we've scanned,” Commander Jaisley said.
”Go ahead,” Captain Choi said, tapping her toes against the stress plate at the bottom of her crash couch.
”They match. For the most part. There's a hundred million years of continental drift, in some cases its only vaugely recognizable, but I've got a lot of matches,” he said. ”I've been able to match 42% of the cartography of the superstructures to various Lanaktall systems,” he heaved a large breath. ”Including Telkan-1 and Telkan-2.”
Choi nodded. ”Beyond that, anything else you've been able to deduce?”
Jaisley shook his head. ”There's a 'dent', so to speak, in the nebula,” Jaisley stated. ”I've done some estimations, and it looks like I may have hit on why.”
”Go ahead,” Choi said. Jaisley was one of those people who were never happy just knowing something, they had to look into how and why the something was like that.
”By my estimations, a small stellar mass, probably the size of a superstructure micro-stellar, was nova sparked over a hundred and twenty million years ago. The blast wave pushed the nebula in at this point,” Jaisley said. ”It explains why the nebula has thicker 'banding' on the outside than the inside.”
”So....” Choi started.
”STATUS CHANGE!” Commander Dechutes called out. ”SHIPS ARRIVING! TWO - FIVE - SEVEN POINT SOURCES!”
”GO TO SILENT RUNNING!” Choi snapped out without thinking about it.
”BELAY THAT!” Hooker said. ”I've got Confed Transponders. We go to silent running someone might run us over.”
”Twelve point sources, all squawking Space Force and Confed ID's,” Dechutes called out. ”One's the In Quest of Answers, looks like the flagship. It's a battleship hull.”
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Both the fleets hung in space as handshakes were exchanged and verified. Weapon systems were taken offline and the heavy battlescreens were allowed to spin down, leaving only basic particle screens in place.
The Admirals of both fleets met.
Each had the same question.
What are you doing here?
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Dreams of Something More stared at the holotank in front of her, giving the Mantid equivalent of a smirk. Mister Rings was in her arms and she was slowly petting him with her bladearms.
”This was unexpected,” Words Spoken We Fear, also known as Speaks said softly, staring at the holotank.
Dreams nodded slowly, absently petting Mister Rings, who was happily chewing on the rubbery flesh of a Pacific Northwest Mollusk and winding his tentacles around Dreams's bladearms. His rings were dark, almost blended in with his brown skin. His eyes were wide as he stared at the holotank, wondering if there was something delicious inside and why it was so interesting to his caretaker.
”So this is where Sees path has led us to,” Speaks said softly.
Dreams nodded again, reaching down to touch her modified Animeland kimono, the cherry trees painted on it wavering as if a breeze had gone through them.
Dreams thought for a moment about the dark comedy that had led her here. To this place.
A simple diplomatic mission to meet a new species. One with a large area, massive population, true, but still a new species all the same. Then it had turned out that it was a new species to the Terrans but an old species, an old enemy, to the Mantid. Then the Lanaktallan had attacked the Terrans, as almost every species the Terrans encountered had a habit of doing.
I should name it the 'Behold Humanity Paradox',Dreams mused, letting Mister Rings climb around her to sit on her back. She absently handed back a Pacific Northwest Wooly Tree Snail to him as she looked at the holotank.
She could see the other Terran fleet hanging in space. See their icons. According to the Captain, the ships were nearly invisible, stealth ships.
Scouts, she thought to herself. Somehow the Confederacy discovered the location of what we had been hunting. Both of us following tracks left by others to what we did not know was our prey.
”The Admiral is ready to link us in,” Speaks said. He touched the dataslate on his hip. ”Each of us will sound like crazy beings to one another, except within that nebula lays our prey.”
Dreams nodded again, clicking her mandibles.
Mister Rings slid off her back, using his strong tentacles to pull him across the rocks and into the stream, where he rolled several times to wet his skin before holding onto two rocks and banging the treat against another.
This is momentous, something galaxy shaking, something that changes everything we know about major historical events, the gold mantid thought to herself, smoothing her kimono. She reached up, nervously, and patted her hat to make sure the boxy flower adorned head covering was securely in place.
”Link us in,” Dreams said.
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Captain Choi took deep breaths as the countdown started, holding her breath when the ship dropped from stringspace to realspace.
Stringspace was mangled there, her navigator, like the other six scout ship's navigator, had pointed out that there had been two stellar class explosions, which had tangled the strings and made it so that the navigator required a direct neural link to the navigation systems instead of any other link. That no matter which way a ship went, they slid through the tangle, adding real hours to the trip.
The ship slid into realspace silently, just appearing.
To Choi it looked like the world suddenly went white. For a moment reality was made up of strings, tightly woven or unraveling.
For a moment her mind teetered on the edge of madness as the scout ships made unprotected translations into realspace.
”Scanning arrays out. Link us up with the rest of the Task Force,” Choi said. She gripped the oh-shit bars tightly and pushed her feet against the pad covering the stress plate before the kinetic gel was pulled and the pad converted to a covering.
It was silent for a long moment. She looked at the communications level graph in the upper right of her vision, projected there by her datalink. The crew was 'talking' rapidly to one another on the official and technical channels, very little on the personal communications channel. It was verging into dangerous territory for interpersonal discussions, but the crew was still on mission, even if they were silent.
The ship's morale generator tossed her a meme and she sighed.
It was a blank box with ”TEXT” at the top and ”BOTTOM TEXT LMAO” on the bottom.
The same meme it had been kicking out for nearly a month.
It had been a long time, this mission, for a full lockdown stealth run.
When I get back, I'm respeccing as a male and hitting the red light districts for a week straight, she promised herself. I'm taking two weeks downtime, minimum, and hitting the lotus planets and eat my fill.
”Scanner data coming in, sir,” Hooker said softly. His hand reached out and slapped the red button again as wired reflexes kicked in. This time the button didn't work, cut off at Captain Choi's orders.
By Chromium Saint Peter, Choi thought to herself as she stared at the data that Hooker was threading into understandable information.
The nebula was pushed back for nearly a light year along the same plane as the galaxy. It was pushed back for a light month to the ”Up and Down” of the Galactic Core.
The space was not empty, even though the space dust had been pushed away.
It was what was in the space that made implanted reflexes keep firing in half of the crew.
Massive superstructures.
”Life signs?” Captain Choi asked.
”Results aren't back. Lots of energy signatures. One of the structures is fairly active,” Hooker answered. ”Data right now is a year old, but I'm catching up.”
”Transmit the data to the Admiral,” Choi ordered.
Deep within the little scout ship, surrounded by more stealth systems than even the engines, mechanisms began changing the state of a handful of strange matter particles. Those particles rapidly fluctuated as the data was sent out.
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Aboard the frigate one of the communications arrays went live, data streaming in from Captain Choi's scout ship as the strange matter particles, mirrors of the ones on the scout ship, began changing state to match the ones of the scout system.
The data poured into the frigate's systems. Where normally, aboard a ship of that class, there would be massive ammunition bays, huge guns, extensive targeting systems, data analysis systems had been installed. The gun crews had been replaced with analysts, all of whom began to do over the data.
The frigate streamed the data to the recent arrivals and the systems aboard the battleship sized diplomatic vessel went to work on the data. The two ships talked back and forth, comparing data, making estimations and guesses, as the data kept streaming in.