Existential Threat: Chapter 4 Part 4 of 4 (Patreon)

“That was one hell of a battle last night. A true slugfest, winning or losing was on a blade edge,” Diego shook his head. “I thought she had you after that second wormhole pass, container missiles weakened them and then pouring rail gun fire into her freighters through wormholes when they came to do a resupply.”

“She did win in the end,” Jung-Su sighed.

“Not at all easily, Weskarth’s people fought well and pushed on, supply is his biggest weakness with those missile ships. The more we push one another, the better.” She tapped the desk in in quick staccato.

They both nodded.

“The independent fleets are getting damn good too. Being able to fight it out every day, you can see the improvement,” Diego said.

“You hear how the ground forces are doing?” Jung-Su asked.

“Talked to Foster the other day, the Independents are slotting right in, while the Coalition are having some issues because their current structure has been so ingrained. Ours is much more relaxed but stream-lined because of the access we have through the net. Though they still get the job done and with bots they’re a devil to try and defeat,” Dana said.

Diego and Jung-Su grimaced. “Glad their allies,” Diego said.

“You and me both. Anything else?”

Diego shook his head.

“Nothing else,” Jung-Su shrugged.

“Alright, well catch you both later,” Dana pulled up her interface jumping through spawn points.

“Have a boring watch,” Diego said.

The conference room was peeled back, Diego and Jung-Su disappearing as the Shoki’s bridge came into focus.

“Admiral,” Ayambe said. Her Avatar overlaid her bot. Her hair was a series of locks, spun into a bun and a braid hanging down the right side of her face, under her left eye a series of geometric white and blue painted lines contrasted with her skin, moving with her smile. Her blue and gold painted fingers worked the console around her.

“Morning Ayambe. How is the fleet looking?”

“All is good, ship crews are rotating, got another fifteen before all crews exchange.”

“Good. I like your nails.”

“Thank you, felt like changing them up from the yellow, debating getting a gold lip ring to match.”

“I think that would look good,” Dana said.

Ayambe’s bun bounced with her eager smile.

“Mornin’” Klinsky held up his hand from his place at the helm. His hair was bedraggled and mussed, up and forward, a few earrings. He half-opened his hand  in greeting. “Hey Dana.”

“Helmsman Klinsky,” She muttered. “What are we going to do with you?”

“Strap me into the biggest warship you got and see if I can tap out the maccarina?” He snapped off dead-pan.

“Can’t take you anywhere.”

Klinsky chuckled and turned back to his station, clicking his tongue and humming as he tinkered with his station.

“Did you get new avatar tattoos Leblanc? Is everyone doing a new avatar today?”

“I’m the same!” Klinsky called out from his chair.

“Stay in your pit, creature,” Leblanc drawled. She had a short fringe of white hair that flipped down to reach her left eyebrow, black eyebrow rings, like bars ran though it. Her lip sported purple lip rings on her bottom right lip, her eyelashes done up in a blue that turned black at the tip. Her left eye was a deep purple, contrasting with her hair and eyebrow rings. Her right eye was white with three black lines that made a crosshair, looking mechanical.

Lines had been cut into the sides of her hair, meeting at the back of her neck and angling down to the nape, a tattoo peaking out, hexagonal tattoos, becoming less organized and missing more as they reached up her neck, striking against her pale spacer skin.

“Ayambe and I went out for some Avatar mods,” Leblanc smile out the left side of her mouth.

“They had a deal on avatar body mods,” Ayambe said.

“I like what you’ve done, it looks good on you both,” Dana said, with feeling, looking them both in the eyes.

“You ever thought about doing any alterations?” Ayambe asked.

“Not really, the Iron Admiral has a certain look and it’s kind of stuck,” Dana sighed. There was also the fact she was nervous to change anything, she didn’t have the confidence it wouldn’t turn out horrible.

Take a fleet into battle, face down the Adraxi, she’d happily do that any day over figuring out which colors worked well and playing with tattoos, hair, jewelry and otherwise.

“How are we looking on sensors?” Dana perked her head up, pushing on before the conversation could go places she didn’t want it to.

“Everything is looking good, Phoenix Fleet is still at Sanctorium Lagrange point, Sphynx orbiting Sphere World Two and our own Iron Fleet is still orbiting Valhalla and SW one,” Leblanc focused on her station, flicking through holograms and screens.

“Weapons?”

“We’re locked and loaded, cycling weapons, de-charging and re-charging to maintain integrity and test.” She looked up. “I’ve been working with the other weapons officers and going through new parameters for the weapons based on the feedback in our last fight with Phoenix Fleet.”

“Good, Klinsky you been adding in those new flight commands?”

“I’ve got two presets I wanted to run by you, been simming it out with the other helms and ships,” Klinsky yelled up at the ceiling.

“Good work, status on Stone Cold one?”

“Alpha, Bravo and Charlie are on the float, drifting in the dark, Passives haven’t picked up anything moving near them. I’ve been collating their information with that of the scouts to plot out more systems outside out local sectors.”

“Smart, didn’t think of that, nice work Leblanc. Ayambe, could you cut orders to the scout crews.” Dana pulled out a map, checked it and flicked it over. “They’re to continue scouting along this axis of advance and increasing our hypernet coverage, mark the best locations for caches, but we’ll just seed the locations we have marked already.”

“Understood.”

The bridge went quiet, each of them carrying out different tasks. Dana went through messages, ammunition moving here, ships coming out of yards to enhance the fleets. Patrols reporting in.

Klinsky stretched and groaned. “Alright, I’m going to grab a-“

Beep Beep Beep!

Lights blinked red as their avatars disappeared, leaving the black bots with the white legionnaire marker on their shoulders.

“Not in our space.”

“Alert from a freighter in the Sereki system,” Ayambe said. “We do not have Hypernet access. We’re cut off.”

“Contact the system’s administrators, request permission to jump into the system. Location?”

Dana didn’t finish saying the second syllable when a map of the system centered on the freighter appeared.

“Reaction force spooling wormhole projectors, calculating jump,” Klinksy said.

“We have imagery, freighter it’s powering up its wormhole projectors. Cut them out, three minute image lag. Still no hyper,” Leblanc said.

“Ayambe?” Dana asked as she pulled up a hologram on the freighter in question. Large freighter, just loaded at Doderon by Set Shipping Solutions, heading for the second belt within Orion system. What the hell do we buy from Doderon?

“Waiting on the system admin,” Adeline said.

>Adeline, I need the manifest for Freighter L-19 [Dana]

“Freighter is charging jump-drive. Three minutes and they’re gone.”

“Get all the imagery you can of the wormhole. Ayambe?”

“Nothing yet.”

>Attached the manifest, what is happening? [Adeline]

Dana opened the attachment and scrolled through the manifest, it was just scrap.

“The hell would they want scrap for, they can’t-Leblanc you get me all the resolution you can from the wormhole that freighter jumps through. Check for any and all emergences in hyper-linked systems.”

“It’s formed a wormhole,” Klinsky said.

“Ayambe?” Dana ground out

“Still nothing.”

“It’s heading through,” Klinsky’s voice rose.

“Leblanc?”

“Pulling everything I can from the sensors we have access to, resolution is crap.”

“Wormhole closing.”

“Ayambe, contact Minnie and Adeline, get me an emergency meeting with Brad and Stuart I want both of them with me. Find me that freighter.”

“On it Admiral.”

“Okay, so how the hell did they just snag a freighter from us?”

“Went through the logs, we were routing through a hypernet node on Doderon station, we got cut off, someone must’ve jacked the signal and got in.” Klinsky said. “That kind of stuff you need to do at the point.”

“Sally.”

“Admiral?” She appeared on the upper catwalk leaning against the railing near the front. Her eyes were green pupils with a blue iris, she wore a Legion styled uniform hers was pitch black with white trimming, worn in the lazy way a teenager might wear a uniform when trying to look relaxed. Instead of opening at the side, hers opened down the front, a white rumpled shirt underneath. Blocky blue tattoos stretched across her chest and up her left side, into her shaved hairline.

Her black hair was braided with red from her part down over her inner right shoulder.

“Who hijacked our ship?”

Sally didn’t understand things like laws unless Brad and Stuart told her to. Information and data was her realm.

Her eyes shone as her tattoos glowed like a falling waterfall.

A video appeared on a tile of the main screen.

“This man here updated the hypernet node, adding in software that would re-route the hypernet signal.” A man disconnected a cord from the hypernet node, closing the access panel and closed up his suit, he glanced around and walked down a catwalk away from the node.

Set Shipping Solutions stood out on the back of his used coveralls.

“Brad and Stuart are ready, Adeline too, Minnie will be a minute,” Dana said.

A link appeared on Dana’s screen. “Okay, thanks, keep searching.”