Gap Stories #2

[Shooting Star Orbital Reclamation]

Log Date: 5/10/12764

Data Sources: Vaunted Archives

Witness Log 12764-6-2-Mokasha-1-146

Location: Vaunted Enclave, Vinnerheim System

6/2/12764

Hunter Nochrin: Alright, we are live and recording now. For the record, this is Matt Nochrin, investigator for the Vinnei chapter of the Vaunted, and we are here today to gather witness statements from the crew of the… am I reading this right? Your vessel is named Lucifer’s Ex-Wife?

Jaree: Don’t look at me. I’m not the one that named the ship, I just captain and crew the damn thing.

HN: Alright. Fair ‘nuff. So, we are here today to gather witness statements from the crew of Lucifer’s Ex-Wife… ahem. With regards to the recent Collective invasion in the Mokasha System. For this deposition we will be taking statements from Jaree Leafly, captain of Lucifer’s Ex… okay I can’t do this, I’m just going to call it ‘the ship’ from this point on. We will also be taking statements from Jill Waltherhouse, the ship’s mechanic; Brant Hemsbree, the ship’s digital systems specialist; and Payton Harwatch, the ship’s drone mechanic. Is this all correct?

[murmured agreement]

HN: Alright, good. So, let’s get the basic stuff out of the way. You all work for Shooting Star Orbital Reclamation, which is…?

Jaree: It’s an orbital cleanup company. We shoot down or capture space junk that’s in orbit around planets to keep it from destroying satellites and shit.

Brant: We also do deep-space and non-orbit cleanup for higher rates.

Jaree: This is a deposition, not a goddamn ad spot, Brant. Stuff a cork in it.

HN: Mm. Yes. Interesting. So, the story as I have it so far is that you all were in the Mokasha System on a job, yes?

Jaree: Yes.

HN: Alright. You mind telling me more about this job?

Jaree: Well…

Event Log: 5/2/12764

Mokasha Orbital Starport

4:26pm SGT

“So, Stan over at your main office told me that you were the best cleanup crew they have on staff right now.” The words come from a gray-haired official walking the halls of a dingy starport, while a feline Halfie in an equally dingy uniform stalks along behind him. A vape hangs from the corner of her mouth, and every now and then a cloud of colored vapor is exhaled through her damp nose. “We really appreciate you coming out here on short notice, Captain Jaree.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you do.” Jaree mutters, studying the empty halls. “I won’t lie to you, magistrate. If Stan told you we were the best crew on staff, he lied. We’re down a couple drone mechanics right now. We’ll be the best once we’re not a skeleton crew anymore.”

“Oh. Well, I’m sure you’re still skilled in your own right.” the magistrate says as they come to an observation lounge. “I trust you were briefed on the job?”

“I got told y’all blasted an infested frigate to keep it from making it planetside, and now it’s spinning around in orbit, shedding debris like a longhair sheds its winter coat.” Jaree says, stepping into the observation lounge. Within are rows of old and unloved couches, intended for travelers needing somewhere to stop and rest, but now all emptied with the evacuation of the starport. The far wall is a long pane of reinforced glass, providing a view of the planet’s nightside curve. Lit by sunlight spilling past the starport is the jagged hull of a ship slowly revolving in space, encircled by a glittering cloud of debris. “Jeezus. The thing’s missing its front third. What did you guys hit it with?”

“We were obligated to deploy a tactical thermonuclear weapon, as our planetary defense squads would not have been able to stop it in time—”

“You guys dropped a tac nuke on this thing?” Jaree interrupts, pulling her vape from her mouth and looking at the magistrate in disbelief. “My dude. Why was this not in the job descrip?”

“Is that a problem…?” the magistrate asks.

“Hell yeah it’s a problem!” Jaree says, motioning to the spinning hull. “Shit’s irradiated now, it can’t be melted down and repurposed. That’s junk metal; we can’t sell that to a scrapyard. Whole thing’s gonna need to be towed to the nearest gas giant and chucked in. Y’all got a gas giant in this system, right?”

“Yes, third planet from the star…”

“Right, well that’s gonna be a radiation risk charge, a salvage tow charge by mile, and a hazmat disposal charge added to the bill, right off the bat.” Jaree says, listing off each charge on her fingers. “Anything else you’ve left out of this job that we need to know about?”

The magistrate shrugs. “There’s still Collective biomass on the frigate, from what I understand…”

“We knew that much. We brought Ragathiel drones with us to burn it out, but if it’s all irradiated, there’s no point cleansing it. All you can do is huck it into a gas giant and watch it burn up.” Jaree says, taking a pull from her vape. “We’ll work on pushing the frigate into a stable orbit. After that we’ll start on the debris cloud. We’ll be pushing each piece down towards the planet, into decaying orbits. Most of it’s gonna burn up in the atmosphere; the pieces that are big enough to survive reentry will probably land in uninhabited areas. How many you got living on this rock again?”

“Six hundred and fifty-eight million.”

“Eh. That’s decent, I guess. You got everyone clustered in cities, right?”

“Several of them across the surface, yes.”

“Good. Cuts down on the chance that any chunks that survive reentry will land in populated areas. We’ll take care of the main debris cloud first, then we’ll do an orbital survey to track all the bits that got away, and we’ll start hunting those down. Once all the debris has been cleaned up, we’ll secure the frigate and start towing it away.” Huffing another cloud of vapor through her nose, she looks at him. “You know this is gonna take a while, right? We’re lookin’ at two to four months here, depending on how bad the debris field is.”

“We were made aware this might take a while, Captain.” the magistrate says, straightening up. “We can offer some… incentives if you could cut some of the red tape and speed things along.”

“You don’t want a mess to clean up later, you gotta do the job right the first time.” Jaree says, turning off her vape and tucking it in one of her pockets. “Don’t try to rush it. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and all that.”

“Noted, but large portions of our economy are dependent on inbound shipments—” the magistrate begins, before being cut off by a loud crack. Both of them turn to see what looks like a large, deformed screw embedded in the glass observation window, with cracks starting to spiderweb away from it.

“Right, so, looks like we better get to work.” Jaree says, starting to back quickly towards the doorway they came through. “If you could have that initial payment sent to the company…”

“Yes, yes of course. I’ll do that as soon as I’m planetside.” the magistrate says, hasting through the door, which shortly closes and seals behind them. Less than a minute after they’ve left, the window shatters, venting the atmosphere in the lounge out into the void of space.

Witness Log 12764-6-2-Mokasha-1-146

Location: Vaunted Enclave, Vinnerheim System

6/2/12764

HN: So you were contracted to clean up the infested frigate and get it out of Mokasha’s orbit.

Jaree: That was the job, yeah.

HN: And to do this, you all brought a Venusian Hornet’s Nest-class drone carrier into the system.

Jill: An old Hornet’s Nest. The thing’s like a century and a half old and three generations behind the current generation.

HN: Still. That’s a hell of a muscle ship.

Jill: You wanna take that thing into a combat zone, be my guest. I’ll watch from orbit.

Payton: The Ex-Wife doesn’t have any of the original Hornet combat drones. It’s all mining drones rigged for orbital cleanup. She’s got the combat plating, but that just helps with weathering hits from stray junk when we’re working near debris fields.

Jaree: What we’re telling you is that she’s not equipped for combat.

HN: Figure a drone carrier would have a lot of extra space for additional personnel.

Jaree: We’re orbital cleanup, not emergency evac. If you think we were going to stick around and put our necks on the line for the Mokashans, you’re missing a few screws.

Brant: Besides, we warned them. We rang up the planetguard and gave them the heads-up. If we hadn’t had one of our survey drones out to map a path to the gas giant, they probably wouldn’t have even know the Collective were on their way until the swarm pods were hitting the atmosphere.

HN: So you saw there was a wildfire creeping up on your neighbor’s backyard, knocked on their door to let them know, then jumped in your car and burned rubber without waiting to see if they needed a ride out of town?

Jaree: Big words from someone that wasn’t there.

HN: I’m just sayin’. That’s a big ship y’all got. Pity it escaped the Collective with only four people on it.

Jaree: You ever dealt with the Collective before, Hunter?

HN: I’ve responded to my fair share of Collective cases across the galaxy.

Jaree: Respondin’ ain’t the same as being there when it happens. You pick through the ashes, tryin’ to figure out what happened after the fact. It ain’t the same as being there when the forest is burnin’ down around you.

HN: Why don’t you enlighten me, then.

Jaree: I think we will. Brant?

Brant: Huh? Oh right, sure. So, uh… we were about a week into the job when shit started going south…

Event Log: 5/10/12764

C.V. Lucifer’s Ex-Wife: Bridge

11:22pm SGT

“You know Mokashan billionaires only pay four percent in taxes?”

“You don’t say.” Jaree drawls. Sitting in the captain’s chair on the bridge of the Ex-Wife, she's currently working on a calendar, mapping out a schedule for her crew to follow over the coming weeks and months. Sitting at the tacticom console is Brant, halfway engaged in the responsibility of managing the Ex-Wife’s hundreds of drones.

“Yeah, seriously. These limey shits pay less, proportionately speaking, than the people in the lower middle-class.” Brant says, his pointed ears flicking as he glances back to the article he’s got up beside his other screens. “It’s just ridiculous. What do you even do with a billion credits? I literally could not spend that much money if I tried. Hell, you give me a million credits, and I’d struggle to spend that much!” He leans back in his chair, pulling his jacket tighter around his thin frame before looking to Jaree. “What about you? What would you do with a billion credits?”

“I’d pay you to shut up and do your job, Brant.”

“So you’d give me a raise?”

“We’ve been over this, Brant. You don’t like the pay, you’re free to walk and find another job that will take an ex-con.”

“Nevermind, I know what I’d spend my billion dollars on.” Brant grunts, leaning back towards his screens again. “I’d buy a new identity and a clean record. And some goddamn heating for this old rustbucket. You’d think we were living in a goddamn morgue with how cold the ship stays.”

“Heat burns fuel. The colder it is, the less fuel we use. The less fuel we use, the better our profit margins.” Jaree says without looking away from her screen.

“Easy for you to say; you’ve got a full pelt of fur.” Brant mutters.

“Nothing’s stopping you from buying some heated clothes.” Jaree says as she finishes scheduling the remainder of the month. “How are the drone swarms doing?”

“Been doing exactly the same as when you asked an hour ago.”

“I didn’t ask for sass, Brant. I asked for a status report.”

Brant gives an exaggerated sigh. “Alright then, let’s take a look. The orbital survey drones that we use to map the trajectories of space debris are… surprise surprise, still mapping. The beam drones we use to push debris into decaying orbits are — and you’ll never believe it — still doing exactly that. And the scout drone that we sent to go check out the gas giant is still in the middle of a gravitational sling maneuver around Mokasha’s moon.” Brant pauses for effect, looking at Jaree. “Exactly the same as it was an hour ago.”

“Good. How’s Payton doing on that relay drone that was malfunctioning?”

“I dunno.” Brant says, checking one of his screens. “The drone’s still giving me bad readings, so I assume he hasn’t fixed it yet. He hasn’t sent you any messages since he took the repair skipper out to go fix it, has he?”

“Nothing on my console.” Jaree says, flicking through one screen to the next month, so she can begin scheduling that. “Why don’t you call him up and check on him.”

“He’s probably fine.”

“Let me make that an order, then: call him up and check on him.”

“Ugggghhh fine.” Brant groans. Swiveling back around in his chair, he brings up a comms channel, opening an outbound line. “Yo Payton, this is Brant. Captain wanted me to check on you.”

It’s a few moment before a fuzzy response comes back over the line. “Oi. What’s up?”

“She wants a status report on how that repair for the relay drone is going.”

“Does she now? Well, you tell her she can status that report right up her ass and let me do my job.”

Brant’s face breaks into a smirk as he looks over his shoulder at Jaree, who raises an eyebrow, and her voice. “I heard that, Payton.”

“Oh shit! You didn’t tell me she was…” There’s a pause, and Payton’s tone is much different when he starts talking again. “Captaaaaaain! It’s so… good to hear your voice. So, I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and I think I might’ve woken up on the wrong side of the bed-”

“Spare me the groveling and give me a sitrep on that relay drone, Payton.” Jaree orders, starting to set the schedule for the following month.

“Right, of course, right away. So, I think there’s a problem with the drone’s navigational array, and I’ve narrowed it down to the distance sensors. Bottom line is, she’s having a hard time orienting herself relative to other objects because she’s getting back bad distance readings. She can still relay instructions to other drones in her chain of command, but she can’t keep up with them. I’m trying to fix it out here, but if I can’t get it figured out, we’ll have to pull this whole squadron back to the carrier so I can crack her open and figure out what’s wrong.”

“Just great.” Jaree mutters. “That’s gonna set us back on the schedule. Alright Payton, try to get it fixed. If you can’t sort it out, let us know and Brant will recall that drone squadron to the carrier, and you can grab the relay drone and tow it back to the carrier. If the nav array is screwed, I doubt that drone will be able to make it back to the carrier on its own.”

“Roger that, captain. I’ll keep you posted.”

Brant closes the channel with that, chuckling to himself. “Man, that was a one-eighty for the ages. I almost wish I could’ve seen his face.” A ping on one of his screens draws his attention, and he leans forward, tapping at it. “Huh. I’m getting a collision alert from the scout drone.”

Jaree’s yellow eyes flick towards Brant. “The one that’s making its way around the moon?”

“Yeah.” Brant says, pulling his keyboard towards himself so he can start typing. “It’s odd. The public registry doesn’t have any objects listed in orbit around Mokasha’s moon.”

“Sensor malfunction on the drone?” Jaree posits.

“I figure, yeah. I’m pulling the data feeds from the drone now.” Brant says, opening another screen to the side of the ones he’s got up. “We’ve got multiple arrays confirming the collision alert, so unless it’s a system-wide glitch, there’s something blocking the drone’s trajectory. Let me see if I can get a visual feed.”

“Put it up on the big screen once you get it.” Jaree orders, pushing aside the screen she was working on. “I want to see this.”

Keyboard clattering echos on the bridge for a few moments more, before the main screen on the bridge’s far wall comes online. A view from one of the scout drone’s cameras shows the pale, sunside surface of Mokasha’s moon — and near the center of the screen, what looks like a long, thin, irregular fissure in the fabric of space and time, leaking inky-black plasma.

“Is that… a tunnelspace breach?” Brant murmurs as Jaree stands.

“Do we know its dimensions?” Jaree demands, stepping down from the captain’s dais and towards the screen.

“Yeah, I can get those. Just a moment.” Brant says, tabbing through the windows on one of his screens. “Right, so… it looks small on the feed, but that’s because it’s far away from the drone. That fissure’s like three miles across and two hundred feet wide. And getting bigger.”

“Do we know how long it’s been there?” Jaree demands.

“Uh… no. Maybe a few minutes? The drone’s trajectory would’ve taken it through the far left edge of the fissure.” Brant says, shrugging. “If the fissure’s been slowly growing this entire time, it could’ve been there for hours and only just now got large enough to interfere with the drone’s flight path.” He looks back to the screen. “What kind of ship needs a breach that large? It’s gotta be a monster if you’re ripping open a tunnelspace breach three miles across.”

“There are a few ships, but none of them have any reason to be here.” Jaree mutters. “Can you get a line out to Mokasha’s planetguard? I want to know if there’s any orbital arrivals scheduled for today.”

“Yeah, I can try.” Brant says, bringing up another screen. “They ain’t exactly quick to pick up the phone, though. Last time they left me on hold for fifteen minutes before I finally got through…”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t take them that long to pick up.” Jaree says, slowly padding closer to the main screen. The undulating filaments of tunnelspace twist and curl within the growing fissure in the screen, occasionally seeping out into space and transforming into a diffuse black haze of exotic particles that quickly decay and disappear. “Brant? Is the fissure getting larger because the drone’s still moving towards it? Or is it actually physically getting larger?”

“Oh? Uh... I dunno. Lemme check.” Brant says, switching over to another screen. “Oh no, it’s definitely getting larger. The drone’s still on approach, but the fissure’s at six hundred feet wide, and it’s getting wider, fast. We’re watching it expand in realtime— wait, I’m starting to pick up friction lightning in the plasma cloud. Something’s starting to come through.”

“Thank you, captain obvious.” Jaree mutters as the black plasma seeping through the fissure starts to deform, billowing outward while something starts to exit the breach. A rounded edge starts to the exit the flickering cloud, and she can see that it’s irregular, a mottled grey-green protrusion, shot through with blue veins, that just keeps getting wider and wider as more of it exits the breach.

“The hell is that…?” Brant mutters, squinting at the screen.

“Shit.” Jaree hisses, turning and running back to the captain’s chair. Jumping in it, she opens up a comms channel as she closes down some of her other screens. “Jill! Jill, are you awake? I need you to get your ass in gear and start warming up the warp drive!”

“Captain?” Brant says, looking over his shoulder at her.

“That’s a Collective ship, Brant!” Jaree snaps at him. “Recall all the drones, we need to pack up and get the hell out of here!”

“Gnnnhargraga.” comes a groggy mumble from the channel that Jaree’s got open. “This better be good, captain. I’m supposed to be sleeping right now.”

“The Collective just arrived in this system, Jill! I need full power from the fusion core and the warp drive warmed up right the hell now!” Jaree snaps as she pulls screens back over in front of herself.

There’s the garbled sound of a body falling out of a bunk bed on the comms channel, followed by clumsy, disoriented fumbling. “Oh shit. Damn. Seriously? This isn’t a prank, is it?”

“GET THE GODDAMN DRIVE WARMED UP, JILL!” Jaree roars.

“Oh shit. Oh crap. You’re being serious. Okay, I’m… pants, I need pants— actually forget the pants. I’m going! I’m going! I’ll call you when I’m in engineering!”

“Captain, we’ve got more contacts coming out of the breach!” Brant calls, his voice growing pitchy with panic as his fingers scramble across his keyboards.

“Details, Brant, give me details, this isn’t a goddamn suspense movie!” Jaree orders, opening a screen with the navcom controls.

“Okay, uhm, um, the main one’s really big? It’s still coming out of the breach. That thing’s huge! It’s gotta be half a mile tall!”

“That’s a hiveship.” Jaree growls, starting to map a course around Mokasha. “Tell me about the smaller contacts.”

“Uh, well, the smaller ones are about the size of battlecruisers? And carriers? Some of them are showing organic through and through; others look like they’re ships that were assimilated.”

“Numbers, Brant, numbers!”

Brant runs his fingers through his hair before dropping his hands down to bang them on the edge of his keyboards, gritting his teeth as he stares at his screens. “Okay, so, if we’re classing them by size, there’s one that’s the size of a superstructure, four in the carrier class — well, I guess five now — six in the battlecruiser class, and like… more than a dozen coming in around the destroyer and frigate size, and like… jeezus, I can’t even keep track, there’s so many coming through… wait…” Brant’s eyes seem like they’re about to pop out of his head as he reads through his screens. “No, no no no… captain, two of the frigate class and one of the carrier class are changing heading and setting an intercept course for us!”

“They think we’re planetary defense.” Jaree mutters as she finalizes a slingshot course around Mokasha. “We’re the only military-class ship in orbit. They’re going to neutralize us first so they can set up in orbit, but we… are not stickin’ around for that.” With that, Jaree starts to dial up the power to the carrier’s thrusters. The brief feeling of motion almost immediately disappears as the inertial dampeners kick on. “I’ve set us on a slingshot course. We’re going to sling around to Mokasha’s nightside while Jill gets the warp drive warmed up, then we’re going to head to the nearest system to alert the Vaunted.”

“Wait, captain!” Brant protests. “What about Payton?”

Jaree’s eyes snap wide. “Shit! I forgot about him!” she hisses, slamming a fist on the arm of the captain’s chair. “Get a line out to him, he’s going to need to rendezvous with us around the other side of Mokasha. Have we gotten any response on the line to the planetguard yet?”

“Nothing yet; still getting hold music—”

“Lazy bastards are probably asleep at their desks, it’s no wonder the infested frigate got so close that they had to use a nuke to stop it.” Jaree fumes. “I’ve seen sandwich shops that have better security than this entire planet…”

“Captain, I’ve got Payton on the line!” Brant calls.

“Good. Payton, can you hear me?” Jaree demands, returning her attention to the map of the space around Mokasha.

“I can hear you, captain. What’s up?”

“I’m about to send you a sling route. Load it into your navcom and let the skipper do the rest. We’ll meet you around the other side of Mokasha and pick you up at the rendezvous point.” she orders, furred fingers flying over her keyboard.

“Uh… okay. But what about the relay drone—”

“Forget the drone, Payton. The Collective just showed up around the moon and they’re sending a couple frigates and a carrier-class ship after us.” Brant interrupts him.

“Oh ha ha, yes, very funny.”

“It’s not a joke, Payton.” Jaree rumbles. “They brought a hiveship and an entire fleet. I’m sending you the sling route now.”

“Wait, you’re not— oh shit. Oh. Shit.”

“My thoughts exactly. You’re too far away from us to make it back to the Ex-Wife without the Collective intercepting you, so you need to go in the other direction and meet us on the other side of Mokasha. Load the route into your navcom, let the skipper do the rest, and we’ll see you in an hour. Got it?”

“Oh my god, captain, this is insane!”

“It’s insane, yes. It’s also necessary if you want to survive. We’re going to be out of comms range shortly, so get your ass in gear and get that sling route loaded, Payton.” Jaree says, moving the screen out of the way as soon as the route has finished sending.

“Captain, got someone from the planetguard on the line finally!” Brant calls.

“Good. Close the channel with Payton and put the planetguard on.”

“Sorry Payton, we’ll talk to you later.” Brant says, closing out Payton’s channel before bringing up the line with the planetguard. “Hi, you guys still here?”

“This is Orbital Control. Is this Lucifer’s Ex-Wife?”

“Yer damn right it is, and you’re talkin’ to her captain.” Jaree barks. “Y’all got a Collective fleet of twenty ships, maybe more, slingin’ around your moon, and they’ll be in low orbit in a matter of hours. You need to get the word out to your people and start evacuating everyone you can to the starports.”

“I— excuse me, what?”

Jaree groans, unsheathing her claws and making grabbing motions at the air, as if she wanted to throttle the person on the other end of the line. “Why does everybody act so surprised? Is it really so hard to believe this is happening?”

“Look, it is a crime to prank call Orbital Control—”

“Oh, screw it and screw you!” Jaree retorts. “Brant, send them the footage from the scout drone. You want proof, there’s your proof. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. Now if you don’t mind, we are getting the hell out of here, and best of luck t’ya, chaps. Wouldn’t wanna be ya.”

With that, she closes the line, slumping back in the captain’s chair and taking a moment to massage her brow. “Brant, how are we doing on that drone recall?”

“They’re haulin’ ass back to the carrier, captain. There’s still a lot out there, though, and it’s going to take the ones on the other side of the planet a while to reach us, especially with how fast you’ve got us moving. We might not be able to recover all of them if we keep on like this.”

“I ain’t slowin’ down just so we can pick up all our stray toys, not when the Collective’s got ships trying to intercept us. If we lose some drones, we’ll just have to write ‘em off. I’m not going to risk getting assimilated for the sake o’ company property.” Jaree says, opening a channel to engineering. “Jill, you down there yet?”

“I’m here, captain, I’m here, sorry. I’m warming up the warp drive right now, she just needed a little bit of elbow grease. We’ll be ready to go to warp in, pfffffaaaahhhh, fifteen minutes, maybe? Give or take a few?”

“We won’t be going to warp for another hour; we’ve still gotta collect Payton around the other side of Mokasha. Any chance you could get the tunneldrive primed before then?” Jaree asks tersely.

“Uhhh… I’ll be honest with ya, Cap, the tunneldrive ain’t happenin’ ‘less you wanna risk gettin’ stranded in tunnelspace. I’d need at least a few hours to make sure this thing wouldn’t crap out on us halfway through the witchdark.”

Jaree puffs out a breath. “Fine. Make sure the warp drive stays warmed and ready to go on my order. The nearest Colloquium system is four lys away, so we’re going to need to push the warp drive up to at least 400 or 500 Cs if we’re to get there in a reasonable amount of time.”

“I’ll see what I can do, cap, but you know how the warp drive gets once we cross 350 Cs. Pushing it to 400 Cs is going to have her running just under the red the whole way there.”

“I know, Jill. Normally I’d take it easy, but this is the Collective. We can push the envelope in this situation.” Jaree says, sitting back in her chair. “Call me if there’s anything else you need to report.” With that, she closes the channel, and sighs.

“I need a vacation after this.”

Witness Log 12764-6-2-Mokasha-1-146

Location: Vaunted Enclave, Vinnerheim System

6/2/12764

HN: So that’s it? You just ducked and ran the moment the Collective arrived in the system?

Jaree: We warned Mokasha.

HN: But after that you ducked and ran.

Jaree: Hunter, if you’ve got any bright ideas for taking on a fleet of twenty Collective ships with a single old-ass drone carrier, I’m all ears.

HN: I’m just saying, you could’ve stayed to help evacuate people.

Brant: Dude, they put two frigates and a carrier on our ass. What were we supposed to do?

HN: Could’ve gone to the night side of Mokasha and helped people there evacuate.

Jaree: Don’t make me laugh. You’re acting like there would’ve been a crowd of people waiting at the starport on the nightside of Mokasha when they didn’t even know there was a Collective fleet rolling up on their doorstep. It would’ve taken them hours to get enough people to the starport to load up and get them out, and by then the Collective would’ve had a high-orbit blockade in place.

Payton: Man, why are we even sitting for this? This guy don’t know shit.

HN: We’re just trying to build a timeline of events and get a comprehensive picture of how, exactly, Mokasha fell to the Collective.

Jaree: You’re looking for someone to blame. The COS is looking for someone to blame for losing one of their border worlds.

HN: We’re trying to identify oversights and points of failure that we can address, so this doesn’t happen in other border systems.

Jaree: Alright then, here’s a point of failure for you: why didn’t the Vaunted or the COS post a defense fleet in the Mokasha system after they barely kept an infested frigate from landing on their world? That didn’t put up a red flag for you all? A single infested frigate, sent in with no support, to a border system. You know what that sounds like to me? That sounds like a scout. The Collective sent a ship to poke around, didn’t find any defense ships posted in the system, and were only stopped when those milkbrains shot a nuke into low orbit because they didn’t have anything better to throw at the Collective. Of course they sent an assimilation fleet to follow up! Mokasha was practically free for the taking!

HN: I’m not here to comment on the Confederacy’s security approach.

Jaree: No, of course not. You’re just here looking for scapegoats who can take the fall for the COS’s failures.

HN: Let’s move on. I do see here in your written statement that there was a mention of having engaged the Collective in combat?

Jaree: Ha! Combat! Is that what we’re calling it?

HN: The written statements describe a series of offensive exchanges between your ship and the Collective vessels that were pursuing.

Jaree: Ha. Yeah. Okay. Fine. Sure. If y’all wanna call that combat, you can call it combat. I assume you’re gonna want the lowdown on that as well.

HN: If you would.

Jaree: Fine. Brant, you mind filling them in on exactly what that ‘combat’ looked like?

Brant: Sure…

Event Log: 5/11/12764

C.V. Lucifer’s Ex-Wife: Bridge

12:19am SGT

“I ran the numbers again, captain. They’re going to be within engagement range before we pick up Payton.” Brant says, still typing away at his keyboards. His screens are now dominated by maps of the space around Mokasha, particularly tracking the movement of the Ex-Wife, Payton’s skipper, and the Collective ships moving to intercept them. “The carrier’s falling behind, and one of the frigates has peeled off now that they’ve gotten a good scan of us, but the other frigate is going to be able to break even and cut across our trajectory.”

“Figured that’d be the case.” Jaree mutters, slouched in her chair as she studies the maps with narrowed eyes. “Dunno why they’re chasing us when we’re retreating. You figure they wouldn’t go through the trouble since they’ve got a whole planet down there to assimilate.”

“I know, right?” Brant agrees. “Maybe if we told them there were only three people on this ship, they’d leave us alone. No point in sending an entire frigate to go assimilate three people, right?”

“They may want the ship more than they want the crew.” Jaree rumbles. “If we tell them there’s only three people aboard, they may view us as easy pickings. There’s no way we could repel a boarding action with only three crew. Best we stay silent and not advertise that fact.” Lowering a hand, Jaree brings up a comms channel to engineering. “Jill, how’s the fusion core looking?”

“Lookin’ fine, cap. Keeping the warp drive primed is eating into generation capacity, but not enough to impact propulsion.”

“Alright. What if I told you we might need to turn on the point-defense arrays?” Jaree asks.

Jill can be heard sucking in a sharp breath on the other end of the line. “Oh, I don’t know about that, cap. We’d be pushing it. It’d be doable, but keeping the drive primed, along with full propulsion burn and getting the PDAs online… the core’s fuel consumption is gonna go up.”

“I figured.” Jaree says, her eyes tracking the Collective contacts on the map. “And we need to reserve as much as we can for when we’re actually at warp. The Ex-Wife is a real bitch; her fuel efficiency goes to shit when we’re pushing high Cs, and I don’t want to run out of fuel just trying to get to the next system over.” After a moment, she looks towards Brant. “Brant, most of the drones are back in their hangars, right?”

“All the ones we’re gonna get back, yeah.” Brant says, checking the hangar inventories. “The rest are too far away to recover with how fast we’re going and what their thrusters are capable of.”

“You think you could get them anchored on the port side of the ship using the magtracks on their graspers?” Jaree asks.

Brant has to sit for a moment and process that. “Are you… you want to try and use the cleanup drones as a point defense guns?”

“They have their own independent power sources. It’ll be a way to provide defense without pulling power from the fusion core.” Jaree explains.

“Captain, all the drones have are mining lasers and pulse beams!” Brant protests. “That’s not on par with military-grade PDAs. We use these drones to push junk into decaying orbits, not to punch through ship hulls.”

“Yes,” Jaree agrees. “but hear me out: we’ve got a shitton of these drones.”

Brant opens his mouth, then closes it. “…okay, yes, but…”

“Our other option is that we go to warp right now and leave behind Payton.” Jaree says, leaning back in her chair.

Brant narrows his eyes at her. “You know he still owes me fifty credits after that last round of 22.”

“Then if you want your money, we should see about getting those drones into position.” Jaree says, returning her attention to the channel with engineering. “Jill, if I provide instructions, can you rig a few of the survey drones to blow?”

“Umm… are you sure? The scanner arrays for the survey drones are pretty damn expensive…”

“I’m aware. We’ll be removing the arrays before packing the empty space with the explosive from disassembled breaching charges.” Jaree explains. “If the Collective frigates do what I think they’re going to do, we’ll deploy the survey drones as mines to deter them from trying to ram and board us.”

“Sure. I can head to the hangars and do that, but of something goes wrong in engineering, I won’t be able to fix it right away.” Jill answers. “How long do I have?”

“Thirty-six minutes until they close within engagement range, Jill.” Brant calls.

“Oh geez, give me a lot of time, why don’t ya… ain’t gonna lie, cap, I can get one, maybe two survey drones rigged to blow in that time? Two would be pushin’ it.”

“Do what you can. We’ll let you know when it’s go time.” Jaree answers, closing the channel. “Brant, are we getting those drones moving?”

“Working on it, captain. A lot of this is going to end up being manual-control positioning.”

“Send me control for one of the hangars, I’ll help get them out and on the hull of the ship. Try to line them up side by side; they won’t be able to fire if they’re stuck behind each other.” Jaree says, pulling up another screen off the arm of her chair. “And let’s hope to god that Payton’s on time.”

Witness Log 12764-6-2-Mokasha-1-146

Location: Vaunted Enclave, Vinnerheim System

6/2/12764

HN: Mining drones and jury-rigged suicide drones, then?

Jill: We made do with what we had.

Payton: It’s not like we wanted to. Those things ain’t cheap. Trust me, if I’d been on the ship, they wouldn’t have gotten within fifteen feet of my darlings.

Brant: If you’d been on the ship, we could’ve just gone to warp and gotten the hell out of there.

Payton: Oh what, it’s my fault for going out to fix the relay drone an hour before an invasion fleet showed up? What am I, a psion? I can’t read the future, dude.

Brant: You still owe me fifty credits.

Payton: Oh, cock right off with that. You were countin’ cards the last time we played 22.

Brant: Was not.

Payton: So you just happened to get lucky and hit above twenty three rounds in a row?

Brant: What am I, a psion? I can’t read the deck, dude.

Payton: You think you’re so funny—

Jaree: Boys.

Payton: …captain.

Brant: …captain.

Jaree: You do owe him fifty credits, Payton. If you won’t pay up, I’ll cut it out of your next check.

Payton: …fine.

HN: If you all are done now.

Jaree: You want to know how our makeshift drone PDA worked out.

HN: Well, obviously it worked, since all four of you are sitting here right now.

Brant: Yeah, but you want to hear how it went down.

HN: Not particularly…

Jill: Well, we’re gonna tell you about it anyway.

HN: Really, that’s not necessary—

Jaree: So anyway, we started shooting…

Event Log: 5/11/12764

C.V. Lucifer’s Ex-Wife: Bridge

1:05am SGT

“Captain, they’re starting to send these projectiles at us in volleys!” Brant calls over his shoulder. Rows of screens in front of him are tracking the drone groups anchored to the port side of the Ex-Wife.

“Son of a gun. Okay, focus down the closest ones and then go from there.” Jaree orders. The main screen on the bridge holds the view off the port side off the drone carrier; thin razors of light are cutting the darkness as the drones focus their beams on projectiles that are practically invisible to the naked eye, since they’re currently around the night side of Mokasha. The same goes for the Collective ship that’s firing them — while visible on scanners, the ship itself is impossible to pick out against the star-freckled darkness of space. Not because the ship itself is black, but because there’s no light reflecting off it in the shadow of Mokasha.

“Captain, this is Payton, can you hear me? I just crossed the fifty-mile mark to our rendezvous, and I’m beginning the merge turn. You got the hangar doors open, right?” Payton’s voice comes over one of the screens that Jaree’s got open.

“Yeah, the doors are open, Payton. Get your ass in here, you’ll be lining up to land in hangar three.” Jaree answers before sidelining that screen and pulling up another. “Jill, gimme the good news. I want to hear that those suicide drones are ready to go.”

“I mean, they’re ready to go, I don’t know how effective they’ll be, but…” Jill answers.

“I want you to launch them both on my order, and then after that you get your ass back to engineering to make sure the warp drive is ready. We’ll be picking up Payton shortly and I want us to warp the moment he’s in the hangar.” Jaree orders.

“Captain, I can’t shoot them all down, some are going to hit in like ten seconds!” Brant shouts, sounding panicky.

“Understood, Brant, stop the ones that you can.” Jaree replies. Moments later, alarms go off on their screens as systems start reporting back damage from various impacts, and on the screen, a few drones are torn off the ship as blurs of motion go ripping clean through them at high speed.

“Aaaahhhhh, we’ve got six confirmed hits across the port side, sealing the corridors where we’re detecting atmosphere leaks, penetration on the exterior hull but I’m not getting anything further into the ship, so there were no punch-throughs.” Brant reports, scrolling through his screens. “We lost fffooouu… five drones. What the hell are they shooting at us?”

“Chitin spikes.” Jaree mutters. “Same stuff that beetle shells are made out of, but it’s easy to chemically modify, so they can use variations of it for different things, and their ships can grow most of those variations. They basically manufacture their own ammunition onboard, like Mercurial mining vessels do.”

“Are you telling me they’ll just keep shooting these things at us?!”

“Chitin spikes don’t grow that fast. It takes days to form them, and hours for them to harden.” Jaree says, checking the map and tracking the location of the second Collective frigate, which is trailing behind them. “They will eventually run out. But they are capable of fully replenishing their stock of munitions without needing to visit a supply depot like our ships would.”

Brant squints over his shoulder. “…you know a lot about the Collective.”

“Did my time in the Protectorate’s astronavy. Saw a lotta shit I wouldn’t care to see again.” Jaree responds. “Focus, Brant. We can be expecting another volley in the next minute or so.”

“Ah. Yeah, right, I’m…” Brant’s squinting turns now to his screens. “They’ve already got the next volley out. They got something else with it, though, it’s… big.”

Jaree pauses. “How big?”

“Like… garbage-truck big.” Brant says, flicking through screens. “I’ll send you the dimensions. It’s moving behind the rest of the spikes.”

A screen pops up over the arm of Jaree’s chair, holding the outline of what looks like a turnip with tendrils drifting behind it. Upon seeing it, her eyes go wide. “That’s a goddamn breaching pod! Focus all drone beams on it! Every single one!”

“All of them?” Brant says incredulously. “But the spikes— if we don’t stop those, we’ll lose drones—”

“That pod is gonna be stuffed full of Symbiotes ready for boarding action, Brant!” Jaree snaps. “If that pod reaches our ship and latches on, it’s going to melt a hole through the hull and start spitting spores and soldiers into our carrier. That pod cannot reach this ship, do you understand?”

“Okay okay, I’m having the drones target the pod, they’ll start firing once it comes in range!” Brant concedes, fingers starting to fly over the keyboards again. “I’m just sayin’, our drones are gonna get savaged by those spikes; I don’t know if we’re going to have many left after we get hit by that next volley…”

“I know. The Collective knows too; that’s why they fired the pod just behind the spike volley. They knew the interval wouldn’t give us time to handle both the spikes and the breaching pod; they knew we’d be forced to pick which one they wanted to handle.” Jaree growls. “Jill, launch those suicide drones and get your ass back to engineering!”

“Drones away, cap! Control is yours if you need to manually pilot them!” is Jill’s response over the channel.

“Noted. Payton, come in. You cannot botch your hangar landing, do you understand? You will not get a second chance to land.” Jaree orders urgently, filtering through her screens.

“Jeez, captain. Talk about putting on the pressure.” Payton replies. “I understand. I’ll make it count.”

“Pod’s in range, captain, I’ve got drones focusing all beams on it!” Brant calls over his shoulder. “The membrane looks tough though, it’s dispersing heat from the focal point pretty effectively!”

“Dial up the output! Overclock the drones if you have to, I want that pod sliced up like a salsa tomato!” Jaree orders, pulling one of the screens to herself and so she can take manual control of the suicide drones that Jill launched. “Crank it! Don’t be shy about it; a lot of these drones are about to get shredded, so we might as well get our money’s worth out of them!”

“I’m crankin’, I’m crankin’!” Brant replies as he selects groups of drones and dials up their power output. On the main screen, the dozens of beams lancing through the dark go from thin lines to unstable, wavering blades of light. Far out at where they meet at a barely-visible outline, a glowing spot is starting to develop as the concentrated power of dozens of mining lasers starts to cut through an organic hull. “Captain, I don’t think we’re gonna be able to crack this nut in time—”

“That POD cannot REACH this SHIP, BRANT!”

“Okay okay okay, I’m tryin’, I’m tryin’!” Brant says as the glowing spot starts to rotate out of view. “It looks like they’re trying to spin the pod to reduce continuous exposure to the beams; what do we do?”

“Shit.” Jaree mutters, her eyes jumping from screen to screen as she checks numbers. Velocity, distance, the speed of the carrier — all critical considerations in the next ninety seconds. “Launch the drones. All of them. Turn off the beams, have them put everything into propulsion, and ram the pod at the highest speed you can get them to.”

“What?!”

“Do it, Brant!” Jaree snaps.

“Payton’s gonna kill me.” he mutters, selecting the entire fleet of drones, disengaging their beams, and starting to launch them off the side of the carrier in groups. “It’s not going to work! The pod’s armored and it’s got too much mass; it’s not going to stop it from hitting us!”

“It won’t stop the pod, but it’ll slow it down. Jill, are you back in engineering yet?” Jaree demands to the screen off to her side.

“I’m gettin’, I’m gettin’!” is Jill’s breathless reply.

“Get faster! Once you’re in engineering I need all the power you can get to primary propulsion. We’re gonna have to outrun this breaching pod since we can’t outgun it.” Jaree orders.

“But cap, what about Payton—”

“I’ll take care of Payton, you get your ass to engineering and get me more power for propulsion!” Jaree snaps, looking up. “Brant, how far out is the breaching pod?”

“We’re sixty seconds from pod contact, forty seconds from spike contact! We’re starting to lose drones!”

“Noted.” Jaree says, pulling up Payton’s channel. “Payton, change of plans. Adjust your flight path to intersect four miles ahead of the original rendezvous. When I give the signal, go to full burn in your skipper.”

“But captain—”

“This is do or die, Payton, you either do it or you die.” Jaree cuts him off. “Brant?”

“Forty from pod, twenty to spikes!”

“Where’s my power, Jill?” Jaree demands.

“Just got to engineering, gimme a minute—”

“You don’t got a minute, Jill, you got fifteen seconds!” Jaree snaps. “Where’s my power?”

“Captain, ten til spike impact!” Brant calls over his shoulder to the captain.

“I need that power, Jill!” Jaree says, pulling up the navcom screen in front of her.

“Working on it—”

“Power, Jill, NOW!” Jaree shouts.

“Five til spikes, captain!” Brant calls.

“There’s your power!” Jill shouts at the same time.

“Now, Payton!” Jaree yells as she starts dialing up the power going to the thrusters. “All hands, brace for accelerrrrr…!”

Jaree peters off as she’s pressed back in her chair by the abrupt acceleration. Brant grunts as the same happens to him, and loud thuds and tremors reverberate through the ship as it’s pelted with a volley of chitin spikes. Damage warnings start going off in force, detailing points of impact or depressurization where some of the spikes managed to breach the hull’s armoring. It’s a few seconds before the carrier’s antiquated inertial dampeners start to catch up, relieving the pressure on everyone; Jaree hunches forward, gasping as she feels her blood start to flow in the right directions again. “Brant. Status on the breaching pod.”

Brant is braced on his console, coughing as he tries to get air moving through his lungs again. “Pod… pod just passed through our thruster tail. Missed by a few dozen feet.”

“HELL YEAH!” Jaree shouts, punching a furred fist in the air. “Fumruckin’ eat it, you moldy parasites! You ain’t catchin’ this old boat today! Payton, come in. Did you make it into the hangar?”

“Just barely! You damn near killed me, I almost got splattered against the side of the ship like a bug on a windshield!”

“Yeah yeah whatever, you’re alive.” Jaree says, flopping back in her chair. “Jill. How are things doing down there?”

“I’m going on vacation once we get back planetside and the company better cover it.”

“Same, girl. Same.” Jaree sighs. “Alright, let’s get back to it. It isn’t over yet. Jill, let me know when the warp drive’s ready. Brant, if there are any drones that survived, send them at the Collective frigate behind those suicide drones we rigged up. That’ll force them to spend their next volley of spikes on defending themselves. Payton, get the skipper parked, then get the repair drones and the Ragathiel drones running. We’ve got spikes embedded in the hull; I want the breached sections sealed off, the spikes dislodged, and any spores or biomass burned to oblivion. Got it?”

“Right away, captain.”

“I’ll let you know when we’re ready to go to warp, cap.”

“Whatever you say, captain.”

“Good. Get to it.” Jaree says, sitting forward and pulling one of her screens towards herself. “And I’ll see about putting together an emergency report to transmit to the Vaunted…”

Witness Log 12764-6-2-Mokasha-1-146

Location: Vaunted Enclave, Vinnerheim System

6/2/12764

HN: So you escaped without doing any substantial damage to the Collective ships.

Brant: I cannot believe this guy.

Payton: Is he being forreal right now?

Jill: Unbelievable.

Jaree: I got my crew out alive. That’s all that matters.

HN: You could’ve gotten a couple hundred Mokashans out as well, if you had stayed to help with evacuations.

Jaree: Tell ya what. Next time there’s a Collective invasion, why don’t you grab a creaky old war rig with almost no weapons and go try to evacuate people. Start a timer when you enter the system, see how long it takes your sense of self-preservation to kick in.

Jill: Yeah, and do it with a skeleton crew and limited fuel.

Brant: Not to mention we only had enough food to feed four people for a month, not two hundred people for three days.

Payton: The food stores alone would’ve lasted us less than a day with that many people onboard.

HN: Moving on. So you came back here to Vinnerheim and reported the invasion.

Jaree: And stayed for repairs and resupply, and to report back to our company.

HN: Naturally. I’m sure they’re glad to hear you survived the fall of Mokasha.

Brant: Nah, they fired us.

HN: Come again?

Payton: Yeah, when they heard how many drones we’d lost while trying to escape, they got a little… wiggy.

Jill: They weren’t too happy about the damage to the Ex-Wife, either.

Jaree: They were happy that we escaped, up until the point where they found out what it took for us to escape.

HN: And then they were less happy after that.

Payton: We got our termination letters and our last checks about a week ago.

Brant: You still owe me fifty creds, by the way.

Payton: Oh, cock off, Brant. I need it to pay for food and housing.

HN: So I take it you all aren’t staying in the refugee camps that have been set up here?

Jill: We’re not allowed to. We’re not from Mokasha, so we’re technically not refugees.

Brant: And we don’t have a ride anymore, since the Ex-Wife is in the shipyard for repairs and Shooting Star repo’d it and invalidated our access credentials while it was stuck in there.

HN: Quite a run of bad luck, there.

Jaree: When it rains, it pours.

HN: So you all are out of a job, lost your ride, and can’t even get free housing in the refugee camps. What’s next for you all?

Jaree: We’ve actually got a lead on a group that’s hiring, so we pooled our money and bought a few tickets on an offworld flight headed to Valcorria so we can interview with them. Flight’s leaving in a couple hours and we need to get down to the starport, so can we wrap this up?

HN: I think I’ve got everything I need, so you all can go. Try not to get caught up in any more planetary invasions, yeah?

[chairs scraping and being pushed back]

Jaree: No promises. Too often trouble comes looking for us, and not the other way around.

HN: If you don’t mind me asking — what’s this group you’re interviewing with?

Jaree: They’re called the Valiant Project. You probably never heard of ‘em before.

HN: Can’t say I have. Well, good luck on getting the job. Smithers, don’t send in the next group yet — I need to get some coffee. Been doin’ this shit since seven a.m. and I need a sanity break.