DNV Loch Morlich: The Lonely Sentinel (A Starsector story)

HarakoniWarhawk · Jan 24, 2021

This is something I've been meaning to delve into for a while now. I've always loved Starsector and it's got so much potential I just had to do it.

I'm really only doing this because of a nasty dizzy spell making Tales untenable at the moment, so this probably won't get many updates.

Space is, funnily enough, mostly empty space... pardon the pun.

It's a nugget of wisdom that's been passed down ever since humanity took their first steps into the void, on Long Lost Earth. Most Grounders never understood that fact, media and fiction presenting the incorrect assumption that planets were abundant, even the rare Terran types. Reality couldn't be any further from the truth, most worlds were airless rocks tumbling through space, surface lashed by meteorite impacts and scarred by the lashing tongues of the solar wind.

Even the Domain of Man, who's technology was capable of terraforming entire worlds in a mere century more often than not chose worlds close to the result they wished for. Just like any other colony expedition, the Perseus Sector was established on the worlds chosen by the Domain, people shipped from across the galaxy to colonize these untapped systems and their resources.

Supplied by the megastructures known as the Gates, the worlds of the Sector grew and prospered, their appetite for manpower and tech fed by the corporations who'd established breach offices there. Of course... when the Gates shut down with no warning, the Sector was cut off from the very things that let it survive. As the years passed, wars were fought, blood was shed and worlds died, begging the uncaring void for help that would never come.

What people nowadays know as the 'Core Worlds' represents at most a tenth of the planets, moons and habitats colonised in the Perseus Sector. Beyond systems where the remnants of Tri-Tachyon's drone fleets roam, where automated beacons provide navigational data for worlds long fallen silent, where the hulks of lost ships tumble through the void... there exists a body orbiting a red dwarf.

The planet was never named by those who discovered it, represented on bureaucratic records as merely an alphanumerical string. On the very edge of the habitable zone, sub-zero winds scoured the tundra that composed the thin strip of barely-liveable land around the equator. The people who called it home had fled from civilized space and travelled an incredible distance to land on this frozen hellhole.

They named the world Seonaidh's Folly, perhaps because naming the planet with oceans buried beneath kilometres of ice after a sea spirit was suitably ironic... the reasons why are lost to history as the people are. The fleet of civilians vessels and decommissioned warships they arrived on were nearly all scrapped and converted into housing and other necessities. Nearly all is not all though, for one ship remained intact and under power in orbit.

It was joked that the Tyrant class Fast Battleship was won in a drinking game with a Domain Sub-Commander who detested having the relic in his fleet. Of similar vintage to the venerable Legion and Onslaught, where those ships were the pride of fleets even to this day the Tyrant was an oddball at best, a mistake at worst.

However it came to be orbiting Seonaidh's Folly, the people knew her as Loch Morlich, though in respect for her history she kept the heraldry of the Domain Navy. Despite the expense of keeping her operational, Morlich was a favourite posting for young men and women wishing for a taste of life in space. Kept in geo-synchronous orbit above the colony, it was a common trend late at night to find the faux-star hanging overhead and thank the ship for her protection.

Of course, there was never any enemies or foes for the old warship to fight, not this far out from the hub of the Perseus Sector. In the end, the Colony's fate was that of many other worlds across the sector, a slow death by starvation when the gates shut off forever. Trading transplutonics for food, when the convoy failed to arrive on schedule there was little alarm. Delays were common and the people had stored extra for situations like this.

But as the months went by with no sign of relief, the handful of FTL capable vessels they possessed was sent one by one in search of help... none returned. In desperation, they turned to Loch Molich, but her FTL drive was centuries older than anyone alive and finicky to power up. As the world died below them, the Tyrant's crew did their all to get the drive operational... but it was too late.

While the majority of the crew departed to be with their loved ones in those final, bleak days, a bare handful stayed behind to keep working. Even those hardy souls succumbed to the crushing weight of dying alone and forgotten, choosing a short trip out the airlock without a suit or more sudden means to end it all. But one remained, even as the air grew thin and the scraps of food dried up, a young woman who was barely out of her teens.

Clad in a timeworn Domain Navy engineering voidsuit, the girl, through means unknown, managed to power up the FTL drive before succumbing to exhaustion and falling asleep. It was a slumber she never woke from, passing into the night as the final living soul of Seonaidh's Folly gave her last breath and died. Spacers are always fond of saying that ships had souls as surely as any person, touched by the lives of everyone who served aboard them. When the last human in the system died fixing the old Tyrant, it had an effect that none could have predicted.

Maintaining her orbit with automated course adjustments, Molich kept her vigil over the world that had looked to her as a protector. The ship wasn't sentient, but the centuries spent holding vigil over a dead world while being forced to listen to the cries for help from long-dead people transmitted by automated beacons... well, it was not pleasant for all involved.

That vigil was unbroken for three-hundred and six years, with not even a single visit from a ship of any kind. The warship slumbered, quiescent but rousing every few years to scan the system for any signs of life. The sole jump point, beyond the red dwarf's heliopause, warped and flared with exotic energies when something in Hyperspace forced the point open to permit exit into reality. Particles with names that required multiple doctorates to be understood erupted from the jump point as a ship emerged,

The Lasher class frigate had at one point served in the Domain 14th fleet, the legendary (Or infamous, depending on who you asked) fleet that had founded the Hegemony. Burning in-system with a speed that implied a lack of time or desperation, the frigate was picked up by Molich's sensor sweep. Recognizing the buried Ident codes in the Lasher, an automated handshake was sent and received by the tiny ship. In their haste to flee for the dubious safety of the system's asteroid belt, they missed the frigate's computer accepting the signal and transmitting a recording of the distress signal the crew had tried to use before being forced to escape whoever was chasing them.

The message itself was short, the man's panicked voice unknowingly mirroring the long-dead colonists. "If anyone is out there, please, help us!" Hounded to a dead system far from any kind of authority, the crew never expected anyone to hear their cry.

One ship heard their distress call, the hysterical and panicked words echoing through the battleships' bridge. In a cruel universe, the message would have prompted no response... but those eight words roused something never seen by the eyes of men. The figure in an engineering voidsuit slumped on the captain's chair twitched, despite having been dead centuries. Once might have been a fluke of the environmental systems, but as a second and third twitch shifted the body, something else was happening.

Vibrant golden eyes snapped open as what had been a desiccated corpse drew a shaky breath. Brain flooded by sensations both familiar and foreign, the young woman's gaze snapped towards the empty sensor pit where the distress call was being broadcast from. Unbidden, memories of thousands of similar and in some cases identical messages battered her mind, the voices of those she'd failed to protect coming back to haunt her.

Instincts at once familiar and alien had her bringing the Tyrant class fast battleship online, fusion reactors coming to life as powerful magnetic fields leashed the captured suns in their hearts. As the ship came to full power for the first time in over three hundred years, an unsteady hand touched a button on the chair's armrest.

Archaoetech transmitters gave voice to a message that harkened back to the days of the Domain of Man. "This is the Domain Navy Vessel Loch Morlich. Distress call received and acknowledged."

Marvelling at the impossibility of having a human hand, nay, a human body, Loch Molich was suddenly must less confident in her ability to help. Drawing from memories of her previous captain's lent her voice steel, but the enormity of her new existence came crashing down like a KEW strike. Her body seemingly reflected the state of her ship body, limbs tingling as subsystems received power and ran through checks.

Her ability to move was hamstrung by the need to bring her engines online slowly, lest the entire assembly rupture from superheated reactant mass being forced into a cold engine. It would be many hours, perhaps even a day before she could move, though only half that for the Lasher to receive her message. If they acted in time, the crew could reach her before whatever was chasing them arrived.

She'd failed the people of Seonaidh's Folly, these humans would not die, not if she had anything to say about it.

"Oh sure, Lennuel, let's accept the shady man's offer to secure an AI core in a dead system, what could go wrong!"

The four other people in the cramped bridge of Hot Rod, a dubiously acquired Hegemony surplus Lasher, groaned in unison. The pilot, Lennuel, had been saying variations of that for the last six hours ever since they'd jumped into this system. For all that the spacer was right about how things had gone tits up, nobody appreciated the sentiment repeated ad nauseam, let alone when they were being chased by automated ghost ships that shouldn't exist.

Resisting the urge to curse through sheer force of will, Captain Andrea Quasar kept her voice mostly level. "Len, shut up or man up. Your whining isn't helping us escape those things!" She regretted accepting the strange man's offer now, but at the time having all their debts wiped was a ray of hope.

Lacking a dedicated sensor station, the gangly young man's hands flew over the console in search for any sign of life. Sadly for the other crew, he could complain and work simultaneously. "We escaped that destroyer and its escorts by the skin of our teeth, but this system is even deader than..." Pausing his frantic button mashing, the spacer was looking at something on his screen in open-mouthed shock.

Curious but unable to see the screen with his body in the way, Andrea wanted answers. "You find anything? Those drone fucks catch up with us?"

In lieu of replying, Lennuel pressed a button on his console, the voice that came over the bridge speakers bore a strange accent and said things that were impossible. "This is the Domain Navy Vessel Loch Morlich. Distress call received and acknowledged." Everyone on board had been born in the Perseus Sector and knew not even the Hegemony navy identified themselves that way.

"I-It's gotta be a trick! T-The drones! They musta been waiting for us or something..." Len's babbling was cut off by a cuff to the back of the head, the Captain regretting the move as she shook her stinging hand.

"Panic later, details now!" Andrea knew she was being harsh, but shit was fucked any anything that could save their ass's needed identified sooner rather than later.

The old computers were playing up between sub-standard repairs and operating at full power for over a week, but the pilot managed to get a return on something. "S-Sorry Cap... Got a contact around the same planet the transmission came from, but it's too far to ident... Ludd's Beard." If it had been physically possible, his eyes would be the size of saucers. While the short-range sensors on the Hot Rod couldn't identify the source, the Lasher's warbook had done just that and spat the results out on the screen.

Struggling to control his trembling hands, Lennuel's smile was nigh-hysterical and creepy for Andrea to witness. "The Rod's sayin the ship it came from is a Tyrant class fast battleship... a Domain Navy warship!"

Piping up from the gunnery station, crewman Pike wasn't liking it. "Bullshit, the Domain's been gone for centuries, the hell could ah active warship be doing out here in the arse end of nowhere?" His question fell on deaf ears because the Captain was watching something on the sensors with dawning horror.

Throwing herself back in her chair, Andrea hurried to buckle in. "The destroyer just jumped in-system with friends, our only chance is to punch it and hope whatever's in control over there recognizes the Hot Rod as Domain fleet." Following their captain's example, everyone made sure their straps were secure before they began accelerating. "If it's hostile, we die... but the Drone's will kill us too. I'd rather die in a blaze of glory than get cut apart and hunted down by ghost ships!"

The old inertial compensators on the frigate protested the sudden burst of acceleration it underwent. Pressed back into their seats, the thirty-person crew of the Lasher prepared for what was to come in their own ways, most cursing the Captain for picking a shitty job. If the compensators held up, the ship would reach the second planet barely an hour before their pursuers, if that.

Despite knowing it was nigh-useless, Andrea began transmitting their distress call on every band their systems could reach. Maybe Ludd would have mercy on her ship for once, rather than being a spiteful asshole.

In the end, Loch Morlich's estimates were both correct and wrong simultaneously.

She'd regained control over the manoeuvring thrusters just in time for the Lasher to come into sensor range, but her main engines were still struggling to power up. Thankfully, while she couldn't move with any great speed, the ship could adjust along the X and Y axis, which meant her weapons could be employed. The only issue was she didn't recognize what half of them were.

While she could 'feel' the weapons somehow, bringing up the console's readout of them helped her visualise their roles. Thankfully, her Anaximander MRM launcher was intact and showing full magazines, with nanoforges standing by to replenish those with feedstock. The Vulcan PD network was all green and operating at 100%, tied into the fire-control provided by her Widowmaker Flak cannons, as was the wing-mounted Harpoon launchers.

Looking through the bridge windows, the trio of white-plated cannons looked out of place next to her Navy-issue paint scheme. While no manufacturer was listed, all three shared similarities that clearly meant the same company had made them. The pair of either side of her nose was revolver cannons loaded with smart-fused explosive ammo, though how it performed in combat was unknown. The centreline mount was similar in that it was also a revolver, except it was an electrothermal weapon firing some kind of long-rod ammo?

She didn't need to check the sensor console to know the frigate was still burning hard towards her, staying just out of range of the trio of unknown ships pursuing it. Just from looking at them, Morlich knew they were bad news. No human ship could pull that kind of acceleration while also staying completely comm-silent, it just wasn't done. It had taken studying them on passives to notice how precise the unknown's were in their movements, even their sensors modulated with a precision only a machine could match.

She'd fought during the Proxima Drone Wars, memories of similar vessels burning worlds to ash driving the embodied warship to finish her checkup before they got into range. Secure in their inertially-compensated barbettes, her pair of Gauss Cannons sent back the all-clear. The weapons were her heaviest armament, launching massive slugs of nickel-iron at velocities that would strain even the shields of Domain Ships of the Line. Of course, the abominations would detect their power up nigh-instantly... but the traverse mechanisms could run off mechanical backups and let her lay the guns in without drawing attention.

Hopefully, these new drones were as reliant on sensors over optics as the Proxima variants were, a thread of thought that brought her attention to the drones sitting in her hangars. The cameras were showing two squadrons of Broadsword fighters ready for launch, but her sensors and the strange feelings from her body said otherwise.

Both agreed the fighters were in fact automated themselves, the cockpit torn out and replaced by a relay hub. The weight saved from removing everything needed to support a pilot had been dedicated to an integrated light autocannon which supplemented the machine guns and flares of the base model. The only thing stopping Morlich from ejecting them into space and fragging them with the Vulcans was the sense that they would only obey her... not that she knew how that worked.

Her internal thoughts meant the desperately accelerating frigate was nearly on top of her hull, well within the range of her new revolver cannons. Holding a breath she didn't need to take, the ensouled Tyrant fast battleship waited for the drones to get close enough that escape would be impossible. All she had to do was wait...

"Cap, the drones are getting closer." Lennuel was starting to worry, Hot Rod had been fast enough to reach the battleship before their pursuers, except the warship wasn't doing anything!

Elation at seeing the powered up Tyrant had faded to concern then desperation when it never reacted to their coming into weapon range. Andrea furtively glanced at the bulkhead behind her, knowing the ghost ships were slowly but steadily gaining on them. She'd served with this bunch for too long to try and hide her fear for long, but she did suppress it to give them a little more hope.

On that front, the spacer pilot was giving her a panicked look, which she needed to nip in the bud. "Len, I know things look bad, but can you get us behind the envelope of that ship's shields? If they come online..." Thinking of it staying dead was a path she didn't need right now, so the woman squashed it hard. "When they come online, I don't want to bounce off like a pinball when our shields merge with theirs."

If that happened, their Flux cells would overload and leave them a sitting duck in space, while also blowing out the shield generators from the backlash. Giving her a shaky nod, Lennuel turned back to his controls and focussed on putting every spare erg of power into the engines, anything to keep them alive a little longer.

In the immortal words of a person long dead, 'When shit hits the fan, it tends to get messy'.

The threat sensors in the Lasher went wild as the Tyrant went to combat power, the alarms nearly deafening the over-stimmed crew in the process. Every weapon system on the Domain warship roused from their stupor, mechanisms whirring as barrels elevated to track the trio of automated ships. The Beta core directing the Fulgent class Droneship had believed the battleship was silent, the Remnant's reconnaissance of this system having been performed when the ship was slumbering at minimal power.

In the two seconds it took for the Gauss Cannon's capacitors to charge, the Ripper Flechette Guns hurled streams of smart-fuzed shells into the paths of the escorting Glimmer frigates. The fragmentation rounds hammered at the shields but did little to strain them, only momentarily blinding their sensors from the backwash. The Beta core tried to warn its Gamma core escorts, but it came too late for the frigates as each received a nickel-iron slug nearly as long as they were.

Like all Remnant ships, their advanced shield generators were akin to a human vessel of a size category above them. But no destroyer in existence could tank a hit from weapons meant to pressure capital ships, the rounds punching through the barriers with barely any resistance. As the escorts detonated from runaway fusion reactors going critical, the Fulgent was the target of all the other weapons.

Intended to cripple the engines of larger ships, nine MRM's roared from the Anaximander at point-blank range. As the EMP warheads pressured the destroyer's shields and Flux cells, the Whistler Jetfire fired a burst of penetrator ammo into the stressed barrier. At such close range, even the PD network was turned towards the drone, a dozen Vulcan PD guns firing as one in a deluge of kinetic fire, the proximity-fused shells from the Flak Cannons blowing chunks from the Fulgent's engines.

Watching their inexorable pursuers get shredded by the Tyrant, Captain Andrea Quantum couldn't help but give a cheer when two squadrons of Broadsword fighters came screaming out of the wing hangars and poured fire into the battered destroyer. That proved to be the last straw for the Remnant vessel, the fragmented hulk barely holding together by the time a pair of slugs spread it across the planetary orbit.

Parents told their children of the Domain and their fleets of all-powerful warships, fleets which the Hegemony could only muster a pale shadow of these days. Having come to a stop behind the warship, the crew of the Hot Rod watched on with awe as the Tyrant's engines lit with roiling plumes of orange before she ship began to move.

Light from the red dwarf illuminated the faded heraldry of a navy long gone and thought lost forever, yet, somehow, there here was one, dozens of light-years from the Core Worlds. While she wasn't particularly religious, she still joined in when Lennuel began a prayer to Ludd of thanks, even if the prophet most certainly hadn't been the one to save their bacon,

As the fast battleship completed its manoeuvre to point nose first towards their tiny frigate, everyone onboard held their breaths. Even the PD guns could shred their little ship without a few seconds of fire, anything larger would turn them into free electrons and memories.

Noticing the incoming transmission light was blinking, crewman Pike reached over and slapped it in place of a catatonic Lennuel. While the voice was a match for the one who'd responded to their distress call, the woman sounded more confused than anything.

"Sorry if this sounds stupid... but why is a 14th Battlegroup Lasher all the way out here being chased by Droneships? Wait, nevermind, I've left a hangar door open for you to park in, there's more than enough room! The air's a bit stale, so bring your own suits, please."

Sharing looks with the other crew, Pike grinned from behind his visor. "So, which one of ya wants to tell the nice lady that we're not 14th Battlegroup?"

I was feeling like shit most of the day and couldn't muster the energy to write a chapter of Tales, as that requires plot and I don't want to disappoint people.

Instead, I spent five hours writing something that's existed in one form or another since I first played Starsector. The ships changed, the concept changed, but the idea was always similar.

Starsector has so much going for it, including the room to add my own things which I have done.

HarakoniWarhawk · Jan 24, 2021

korat56 said:
Running a capital ship without a fuel ship well good luck with that.

I'm assuming the fast battleship has a lot in common with the conquest.

She's basically a Mastery Epoch version of the later battlecruisers and fast battleships, so older than the Conquest and Oddesy by a few centuries at least, if not far older.

Darik29 said:
Also also, there is a dead colony beneath them. I have a feeling the Tyrant has a full fuel store, which while likely not enough for distance travel, should be enough to get to a nearby fringe colony for resupply.

Starsector is my current greatest addiciton, and you writing this story gives me All of the good feels! Excellent work boss!

also also. Going by her loadout, and that she's a tyrant, i recognize Vayra's Sector, DME, and uh.

Not sure about the Gauss Cannons, to be honest. And the AI controlled broadswords with what look like Delta cores hardwired in seems like something awesome, but still.

Can't wait for more!

Edit:

oh my god i am the biggest gods damned idiot. Gauss Cannons! Fucking hell, its been so long since i actually used capitol ships i've forgotten what they're armed with naturally! Fuck me!

I've got so many mods loaded and played so much with mods that I'm not actually sure what's Vanilla or not anymore, but here's her loadout anyway.

HarakoniWarhawk · Jan 25, 2021

I got ideas, hence writing this.

That's literally how all my writing goes.

Music for the chapter, though it's more like Angel with a Gauss Cannon.

Seconds after inviting the crew of the Lasher onboard, Loch Morlich realized her mistake; She had nothing to wear. Well, her hull could really do with a fresh coat of paint and a number of the running lights were bust, but this new-fangled human body needed better garments.

From her very first captain until the... last, each had their own way of dressing that stretched from the double-breasted uniform jackets of Captain Malleakev's time to the power-armour of Captain Elita's era. While every memory of those officers differed in how to dress for greeting a fellow Captain, all agreed that a ratty and undersized engineering voidsuit wasn't suitable. With her engines online, the battleship's stride was steady as she made her way to officer country in search of an outfit. While she wasn't quite sure how this body came about, the voidsuit's smart-fabric had broken with time and left it unable to adjust to her form.

Taking the turbo-lift from the Bridge to the larger quarters took mere seconds, it wouldn't do for a Captain to run across half the ship in case of an emergency after all. It was quite disorientating having human senses while also tracking her own progress with internal sensor networks, akin to seeing a imagine ever so slightly overlapping. Having ditched the busted helmet back on the Bridge, shaking her head to clear that disorientation caused the weirdest thing to lash about; her hair.

Unlike the majority of her body parts, the knee-length copper-coloured strands of keratin had no ship analogue which was badly throwing her off. Stopping to run her hand through some of it, Morlich had to agree it was very pretty and smooth like a plasma conduit. Her last owners had never had much need for this section, merely pumping out the air and leaving the contents untouched, which hopefully meant there was something that would fit her.

She could have easily scanned all the quarters with sensors and only chose one when she'd found clothing, but the urge to try her new form stopped that. The first stop had been Lieutenant Ivanka Helios's quarters, she'd been a skittish cyborg whose family traced their lineage back to Pluto. Using the manual override rather than remotely opening it, the room beyond looked little different from when it had last been used, nearly five centuries ago. The quarters were minimal as fitting a Domain Navy Lieutenant, the bed, small dresser and a fold-out table giving way to a tiny washroom at the very back.

Morlich's attention was soon drawn to the lockbox at the end of the bed, hopefully still containing duty uniforms of some kind. The latch took a few attempts to open, the novelty of having fingers slowing her progress slightly. Throwing open the lid, the sight of an armoured dress uniform had the embodied battleship grinning. Giving the long-dead officer thanks for packing the wonderful garment, she pulled the burgundy jacket, pants and boots from the chest. Rather than the heavy, external plates of older times, Ivanka's uniform had the flexible, composite plates concealed by the fabric.

Best of all, without air to damage the mechanisms, the smart fabric should still work... hopefully. Before she could try and wear it, the voidsuit had to go. Centuries sitting in the, admittedly, thin air of the Bridge had left it badly degraded, the clasps having frozen solid and rusted in places. That revealed another facet of this body, while it looked human, something told her that her durability and strength reflected her hull... and she was a Tyrant fast battleship. Tearing the suit was as easy as giving it a hard tug and the armour rent like taffy in her hands, the discarded remnants being chucked into a corner for reclamation later.

The boots were easy to get on, though she had to use the room's sensors to see her feet for those. There was a fair bit of difficulty getting the pants on, most of that caused by putting on her footwear first, like an idiot. After that little fuckup, she was now proudly wearing half of a gunnery Lieutenant's dress uniform, time for the jacket!

Holding the garment up to eye-level, the battleship had to admit she was more fond of the frills and puffy arms of Admiral Tennyson's time on board, the court dress decadently fashionable for that time period. Slipping into the armoured jacket, the smart fabric adjusted perfectly to everything except her... bow? As a Ship of the Line and a Flagship at that, the crew who served on board had been the height of physical capability and were more often than not cyborgs for the higher ranks. None possessed a... what was the human word for it? bustline like hers, though her memories did include a few assistants with similar figures, though they'd been hired by the more corrupt officers. Thankfully, those stains on her honour were few and far between, even if their time onboard gave her a vague idea of how pleasing to the eye her new body was.

Five minutes of paint-stripping cursing had the jacket sealed over the lower third of her chest, a fact which annoyed her quite severely. A quick check showed the frigate was still entering her port hangar at a glacial pace, which gave Morlich time to find something to cover her bust. It wouldn't do to appear to a fellow Captain looking like some kind of... of harlot after all.

Leaving the room brought quite a lot more bouncing than entering it had, a fact which had her scanning the other quarters for an overcoat to help support things. Finding what she was looking for, Commander Yankovic's quarters opened for her and waiting there on the bed was a relic by his standards but a blast from the past for the battleship. The Navy greatcoat still had its tassels intact, the lengths of fabric swishing as she snatched the garment off the bed. Throwing it on, the top part did a better job of securing things, but there was still far too much movement after a bounce.

Frowning, she played with her hair while thinking of a solution, perhaps... the sub-armoury on this deck! Like most of this section of her hull, it had been kept sealed by locks her last owners never could override, which meant the gear should still be intact and not looted. Mindful that her guests were steadily approaching the ship cradle, her pace swiftly ate up the distance until she found herself entering the armoury. Ignoring the racks of ordinance and Marine Power Armour, the equipment belts and bandoliers on the walls were her destinations.

A bandolier went over each shoulder, which after tightening worked wonders in keeping her chest in one place. Just to keep things symmetrical, Morlich threw on a pair of pistol belts, though her hips were too wide to layer one above the other. In the end, she picked up a Magpulse sidearm in each hand and holstered one on each hip. Appearances were important after all and a battleship should be a show of force for friends and enemies alike. Just in case the newcomers were hostile, a dozen AM grenades went onto the bandoliers, alongside extra ammunition for the pistols.

Pausing as she was about to leave the armoury, a memory of Captain Kirrahae and his love of melee weapons prompted her to snag a Nano Cutlass from the racks of similar weapons, the weapon resting between her shoulder blades. Despite all the equipment and weaponry, the weight was so light as to be unnoticeable, though it did rattle when she left the room. Honestly, it was getting annoying that she'd gotten all this done and the Lasher still hadn't docked yet, Morlich had gotten dressed, swept local space and began using her repair bots to sweep the debris fields, all at the same time!

Muttering a few choice curses about slow-ass pilots, it was time to snag a bottle of micro-gravity moonshine that her... fourth crew stored away in a disused maintenance space and had never been found in the centuries since. Given the pocket was as airless as the rest of the passages, the stuff should still be good... maybe. She was a battleship, not a drunkard after all... though a few of her Captains had enjoyed their alcohol quite a lot. After a few minutes experiencing the novel feeling of being too developed to fit in some of the tighter places, Morlich grinned in triumph as she pulled out with a bottle of clear liquid in hand.

Clothing mostly sorted, even if her chest was forced upwards far too much, weapons secured and a bottle of alcohol to exchange in hand, Morlich took a scenic route towards the port hangar. As she walked, she fired off Admiralty-tier codes to unlock the systems that had been shut down when her last owners had purchased her hull. Using those codes while not being an Admiral was technically a violation of Code 291, subsection J, paragraph 8; On the usage and possession of restricted codes, but she was the ship so those didn't count. That did raise the question of what rank should she assume to her fellow Captain, under some very liberal interpretations of Navy regulations she could rightfully claim to be the ranking Domain Navy officer onboard... though that had baggage, like paperwork. Shuddering in disgust at the cursed word, any and all memories of that hellish task were locked away in the darkest hole in her mind.

Feeling the blasts of warm air on her skin while keeping track of the rising oxygen content didn't raise her mood as she'd expected. Rather, the embodied battleship felt remorse that she hadn't been awake to activate those systems for her last crew, even her nanoforges could have produced food in bulk if the locks hadn't been engaged. She'd been built back before the nanoforge had been created, so as a Flagship she'd gotten the very best of such tech after its invention and deployment across the navy. So many of her systems had been operating at perhaps 50% effectiveness when she'd been sold off, some like her hydroponics bays hadn't been functional at all.

Those dark thoughts soured her mood as she entered the port hangar, the enormous blast doors open to space to allow her CAP a speedy landing should the need arise. The sight of the battered Lasher in incredibly faded 14th Battlegroup colours brought a smile to her lips and a bounce to her step. The frigate looked worse for wear, a large strip along her starboard side lacking armour entirely while the engine bells were decidedly non-regulation. All in all, things must have been going very badly for Grand-Admiral Concorde's fleet if he let his screen fall into such disrepair, but a friendly face was a good one right now.

She lamented the lack of air in the hangar if only so the speakers couldn't play the Navy's anthem when the humans disembarked from their ship. Banking on her crew's memories to get this right, Loch Morlich assumed a parade-ground perfect stance, glancing at the rear wall where the flag of the Domain of Man was projected from a massive screen. If everything went well, both parties would turn and pay their respects then she'd formally welcome them aboard.

The urge to bounce excitedly as the airlock cycled very nearly drove her crazy, but an iron-will kept her boots firmly planted on the deck. The first figure that emerged was the heavily-armoured bulk of a Domain Marine; their Uriel pattern Power Armour bearing marking and tallies from a dozen campaigns. While she didn't recognize them personally, the 14th were assigned to an entirely different part of the galaxy so the lack of recognition made sense. The Marine paused upon seeing her, the shotgun in their arms kept lowered, the momentary freeze passing as they took the steps down two at a time.

Morlich smiled as she noted how clean their movements were, betraying decades of experience which said good things about the crew if their Marine compliment were that skilled. The woman who came next wore a shipsuit that was in the same shape as the frigate, which was to say bad. A tiny niggling doubt in the battleship's mind suggested that if this woman was the Captain like she suspected, then something must be terribly wrong with the Navy to let things slip this far. Despite their ratty outfit, the woman's azure eyes never left the Tyrant's body the entire way down the ladder. She could detect transmission between the Marine, Captain and the ship, but avoided cracking the terrible encryption out of politeness.

She managed one step forward on her way to greet the pair when a third figure emerged from the airlock. Dressed in a voidsuit that was undeniably civilian, the man took one look at Morlich before going mad. More accurately, he saw her standing there in dress uniform, screamed into an open mic and ran back into the frigate, the airlock slamming shut behind him.

Frowning, she opened a line to the Captain's shipsuit with her radio, hoping the woman knew what just happened. "My apologies, Captain, but is there something wrong with that man? Also, why would you have a civilian onboard, an inspector perhaps?"

The tiny doubt about things being wrong grew enormously when the woman facepalmed and began making rude gestures towards the ship. Morlich could hear their sigh before they turned back to face her, a raised eyebrow framing bloodshot eyes. "My pilot is very... superstitious, but for once he's right about something... not that I'll tell him that." That last part was whispered under their breath, but the battleship was too busy digesting the fact the civilian was the Lasher's pilot! "Lady... whatever you are, you do know humans can't breathe vacuum... right?"

Of course human's couldn't breathe hard vacuum, but she was a fast battleship which most assuredly could operate in space! "There's no need to state the obvious, even the lowest Rating could tell you that. I'm Loch Morlich, Tyrant class fast battleship, it's a pleasure to meet the crew of a ship from such a distinguished fleet as the 14th!"

The humans shared a glance, the Marines' body-language radiating confusion before the possibly not a Navy Captain sighed into her mic again and spoke. "Ludd preserve me... I think we need to do a lot of talking, is there anywhere we can crack these suits open?"

While the pair might not be from the 14th fleet, the laws governing guests still insisted she treat them properly. Beckoning for them to follow, there was one thought on her mind as they left the hangar; Who the heck was Ludd?

Several hours and a very long conversation later, Loch Morlich had learned a number of unrelated, but interesting things about her body.

One: This form was fully capable of crying to the tune of literal waterworks, having done so when she learned about the destruction of the gate network and the billions dead across the Perseus Sector.

Two: Trying to drown her sorrows in alcohol as Captain Evan did just made the gut-wrenching despair far, far worse. That segued into finding out her tolerance for the literal reactor fuel that was Engineering's moonshine was so high she hadn't found it yet, even after a dozen bottles.

Three: Her body was strong enough to shatter the battlesteel table like matchwood, which she found out after lashing out in anger about the previous news. The human's had quite rightly panicked at getting pelted by shards of ship plating, but recovered by the time a new room was found and pressurized.

Four: By the end of their incredibly depressing and kinda uplifting history of what happened after the gates shut down, the Marine had become relaxed enough to question her choice of clothing. That was how Morlich discovered this body was 'smoking hot' by human standards, a description that seemed a tad odd; human body temperature was nowhere near high enough to generate smoke and if it did the results would be fatal.

Divested of the majority of her equipment on account of lack of need, the Domain warship found the dress uniform to be surprisingly comfy to wear. Sure, the human's were avoiding staring at her chest for some reason and went red whenever she stored the moonshine bottles there, but she was long past the point of caring. Pouring another shot of moonshine, she rolled the glass between her fingers before downing the liquid.

The Captain of the Lasher, one Andrea Quantum, followed her moves with an amused expression, the smile vanishing when Morlich focussed on her. " So the Domain is gone, as far as anyone can tell?"

"Other than the 14th Fleet showing up sixty years after the gates shut down; then the 9th a few decades after that, pretty much." The lack of any real upset in their voice had the battleship grate her teeth, but it was old history for everyone but herself. That didn't make the empty hole in her chest any smaller though, the void a constant and painful reminder of her failures.

"And sometime after the Hegemony became established, Tri-Tachyon violated the Terra Nova Accords?" To think the same people who'd designed the most powerful warships ever constructed by the Navy would stoop so low as to break the ban on AI warships... it was sickening. Trillions had died during the Proxima War and here were corporate suits thinking they could succeed where the finest Domain researchers had failed.

Her disgust at their hubris was nearly enough to miss what Andrea said next. "The official story is that the Hegemony and Knights of Ludd defeated the autonomous fleets during the First AI war and wiped them all out... but there were always rumours of strange ships in dead systems far from the Core Worlds." There was a tremble in the pale woman's hands as she took a drink of her own moonshine, likely related to her run-in with the supposedly destroyed AI warships. "I always figured they were just that, rumours... but the fuckin evidence chased us across thirty lightyears and is spread across half the system by now."

"Hear Hear." Raising his own glass in a salute, the Marine whose named turned out to be Pike spoke up, having kept quiet for most of the discussion. "We always called those things Ghost Ships back in the Navy, it's fuckin fitting another ghost comes and kills those assholes."

Clinking glasses with her subordinate, Captain Quantum turned to question Morlich. "You still have no idea how you became... that?" Glancing down, the warship couldn't see what necessitated the emphasis in that; the only thing she could see was her substantial chest and the bottle stored there.

Not knowing the answer herself, she shrugged. "The first thing I remember is your distress call and responding. I have memories of my time as a ship, but the strongest is of my Captains. I really don't know how I became a human while still being the ship at the same time." She deliberately didn't mention the memories of her final crew, their fate was something best kept for a time when she could shut down for a month... or six.

On the topic of ships... the Lasher in her port hangar was something that needed to be clarified. " You're free to stay on board while your engineers work to fix your power plant, I have more than enough quarters free given my... lack of crew." Despite them not being Navy at all, the need to have her decks ringing with the sound of a crew was stronger than the distaste of having mercenaries on board.

Andrea winced at that, but her expression stayed apologetic. "I know most don't want to stay on a literal ghost ship, no offence, but if you've got space for us two, that would be appreciated. Lennuel will be impossible to live with for however long it takes to get back to civilization, I'd rather avoid that if necessary."

Considering the hysterical pilot continued to respond to her radio queries with prayers to this Ludd the humans had mentioned, Morlich was fine with that. "I'll get the cleaner bots to ready the Admiral's quarters then! By the time they're done the last of the Droneship wreckage will be recovered and we can jump." While the thought of pieces of those abominations on her deck made the battleship sick, the knowledge to be gained outweighed her feelings on the matter.

The talking continued for another while, the humans eventually heading back to the frigate to get their personal effects. Left alone, Loch Morlich made her way back to the bridge and sat in a chair that really should seat someone much greater than herself. It felt heretical to be sitting in the Captain's chair of her own hull, but leaving it empty would have felt far worse.

The decision to leave her post was a heart-wrenching one, but as she looked at the view of Seonaidh's Folly retreating into the distance; she knew it was the right one. While the people who'd called it home gave the dead reverence, the living always came first and that tipped the scales in favour of leaving. As the distorted ball of space-time that was a jump-point crept closer, she kept her sensors on the twenty-five humans that now resided inside her.

Refusing to leave her post and leave these people to die alone like her home had was never an option, not now and not ever. When she reached the jump-point and triggered her FTL drive, the warship took one last sensor picture of Seonaidh's Folly before the world twisted and her hull left the system behind... forever.

She was Loch Morlich; a Tyrant fast battleship laid down in the long-destroyed shipyards of Terra Nova for the defence of the Domain of Man and all of Humanity.

Her duty was clear; Defend the innocent and destroy the Abominable Intelligence where it hid in the shadows. Ploughing through the higher realm of hyperspace, Morlich swore to never stop until Proxima was avenged, even if it took a thousand years.

Her conscience demanded nothing else.

Yep, I wrote another chapter.

If it wasn't evident by now, Loch Morlich is very curvaceous for a ship avatar. She's not all that tall like an Oddessy or Conquest would be, but she's got hips for days and a very large bust.

Just look at her hull, she's wide as heck with tons of engine power while packing a lot of firepower too.

HarakoniWarhawk · Jan 27, 2021

Here we go, because I've got writer's block for Tales and it's hitting me hard.

Music for the chapter as always.

Having a crew again did more to lift Loch Morlich's mood than anything else in the last... two days, seventeen hours, eleven minutes and thirteen seconds! Pulsars, the most accurate clocks in the universe and perfect for telling the time... at least if you had the equipment to pick up the radio emissions from them of course.

Well, technically only two of the humans were actually residing in her hull, the others still inside the Lasher in her port hangar. She knew they were trying to repair their reactor which had scrammed not long after they'd docked, but that would be impossible. She'd taken scans of it on approach and the entire power plant was toast, to use a quaint human term. If by some miracle they got enough power to use the engines, the certainly wasn't enough for FTL, a fact which the battleship was kinda happy about.

On the one wing, it would mean more people, which meant more crew and that was always good. On the other wing, it would also include the crazy civilian who prayed to this 'Ludd', whose religious significance she was still trying to discover. Lennuel was more than happy to chant verses from the Church of Galactic Redemption's holy book, which was how she discovered their prophet had been arrested by the security services and deported not long before the Gates shut down.

Personally, she thought it sounded like a huge scam, not that she'd tell the humans that. Of all the religions followed by her crews over the millennia, the Spirit of Man of the Stars faith was the one she felt closest to. Captain Talon had been a strong believer in the faith and always took time from his day to say a short prayer to whatever star they were orbiting at the time. Keeping one eye and her sensor array on the surrounding pseudo-space of Hyperspace, Morlich allowed herself to drift down memory lane to happier times.

Despite knowing to the picosecond how much time had passed, her new body very nearly fell off the Captain's chair when the turbolift docked at the Bridge. Thankfully, this form's generous proportions meant it would take a bit more force to dislodge her hips, a fact that let the embodied warship swivel the chair to see who was coming. She could have checked the sensors of course, but experiencing things the human way was still novel and quite fun, no wonder her old crews loved to do these things!

The doors opened to reveal Andrea Quantum, the tall woman picking uncomfortably at her freshly-forged Navy-issue Voidsuit. Morlich thought it suited her, her rank and surname flash-bound onto the right chestplate while the four-pointed star of the Domain was proudly emblazoned on the opposite side. On Pike's urging, they'd chosen an older pattern Voidsuit, in truth light Power Armour.

Giving the human a wave, she was delighted to get a smile in return, just like the old days! "Good evening, Captain! It's currently seventeen hundred hours; Terran time."

"You are one strange battleship, you know that right?" By itself, the words could be insulting to some, but Andrea's mouth was quirked upwards in a slight grin, the woman picking a chair at random and sitting down.

The Smart-Material of the seat moulded to her body, Morlich quashing the subroutine that would extend jacks for cybernetics the human lacked. Spinning her chair solely for the thrill factor, the embodied warship let her hair whip around before slowing to face the tall human. "I'm just happy to have a crew again, even if your pilot is very rude. He seems to think I'm an AI!" Being compared to those made her angry, her hull reflecting the emotion with a microsecond fluctuation in her tertiary power grid.

Lacking the means to detect her anger, Andrea sighed and did that weird human thing of looking to the ceiling. "Lennuel is the best pilot I've ever known, but he's radical by Church standards." Keeping a few dozen microphones on task to listen, the battleship began to check the conduits above her head for whatever drew the human's attention. "I'm pretty sure he'd be in the Path if I hadn't broken his scrawny ass out of a Tri-Tach prison transport, hopefully, he'll come around..."

The Captain didn't sound very confident about that happening and Morlich found herself agreeing. On the topic of humans, what was her second favourite one up to. "How is Mr Pike enjoying the armoury? Most of the nanoforge time is going towards restoring my systems, so I can't restock it yet." For some reason Andrea was giving her a look which her memories identified as disbelief... that or they was afflicted with Valaxian gutworms.

"You've got more war material onboard than an entire Hegemony Assault Cruiser and you're saying it needs to be restocked?" The warship didn't understand their confusion, did Hegemony warships not carry a battalion of Marines onboard?

Any further questions on that topic got derailed by a communications request from the Hot Rod! Accepting the handshake, she cast the transmission onto a nearby holoprojector to give Andrea something to watch. The image took a few seconds to resolve into something legible, converting a 2D signal into a 3D hologram took time after all. When it cleared up, the person on the other end wasn't Lennuel as she'd expected, but the hulking mountain of cybernetics that was the Chief Engineer.

The twin clusters of green optics flashed rapidly before the floating head turned towards Captain Quantum and spoke in a surprisingly high pitched voice. "Cap'n, for the love of all that's holy please let us come onto the battleship! Ah can't take another second of hearin the Luddies chantin for protection from spirits, it's drivin us mad!"

In the time it took Andrea to speak, Morlich had already pressurized the hangar bay and cycled the airlocks. "Fuck me... right, come aboard and please shut everything down before you leave. The last thing we need is Lennuel trying to make a bomb to 'save us from the abomination'."

The Cyborg flashed a thumbs up even as their head bobbed in time with their movement. "Way ahead of ya, the Rod's ammo bins are sealed and the reactor is fucked so he's not got anythin to do with it. Please tell me ya got somethin better than sludge in there?" Some things were universal it seemed, like Cyborgs calling the biological regeneration fluid they ingested to keep their squishy bits intact sludge.

Wresting control of the transmission, she gave the Engineer a smile with plenty of teeth, just like humans did! "If you head to the Messhall, there'll be a container of strawberry flavour waiting for you." As the official flavour of Gunnery Lieutenants everywhere, strawberry was loaded up and dispensed inside a minute.

The poor quality signal from their end made their expression difficult to read, but they sounded happy. "Ah'm sorry for callin you a creepy fuckin ghostie, yer a star, Lass!" With that the hologram cut off, her sensors tracking the group that emerged from the ship in a rush.

Biometrics showed only three life signs remained aboard the Lasher, being the pilot and other Luddites most likely. As the remaining crew followed the freshly repaired navigation signs towards the Mess, the embodied battleship was over the moon... not literally, they were in Hyperspace after all. She couldn't wait to hear boots ringing on the decking and sense human's drawing oxygen from the air, she could almost see th...

"Uh, Morlich?" Slowing her revolving chair, she wondered what had Andrea interrupting her fun. Facing the human, their face was all red, either embarrassment or a fever. "Your jacket is slipping... a lot." Now that they mentioned it, the uniform had shifted again, darnit!

Modulating the Smart-Fabric got it supporting her chest again, thankfully before all the stuff she'd stored in there got loose and fell out. While it was quite annoying getting stuck in tight places thanks to it, her bust made a perfect space to place things that didn't fit in her pockets. She wondered why the Captain didn't do the same, though looking at their much smaller chest perhaps she didn't have as much room. While she wasn't a hospital ship, her onboard medical facilities could remedy that problem with a simple surgery or three, maybe throw in some balancing too.

The part of her mind that kept track of the input from her sensors noticed something that didn't match the background frequency of Hyperspace. It was flickering in and out of range, the rhythmic pulses of a beacon of some kind briefly cutting through the interference. Shifting from a broad sweep to a narrow scanning beam cut through the hash and show a Domain standard warning beacon.

Creating a composite image from her multi-spectrum sensors on the holoprojector, Morlich question her human companion. "Do you recognize this? My charts may be out of date, but a stable A-class star shouldn't need an avoidance beacon in only a few hundred years."

Andrea's face paled, the blood fleeing for parts unknown. That was the cue for something that had her heart racing. "T-That's the same kind of beacon that was outside the system where we got ambushed. I think it's a system where the drones lurk."

With a thought, Loch Morlich adjusted her course to head towards the beacon, intent on cleansing the system. Andrea noticed the move but chose to stay quiet for the moment, which the warship appreciated. A faint tremor went through her hull as she plunged into the roiling pseudo-lightning of a Hyperspace storm. When it came to autonomous fleets, time was of the essence and the tiny strain on her FTL was worth it to cut her travel time in half. Enough of her past Captain's had performed storm-riding for her to have picked up the skill, even if her hull wasn't suited for it as a smaller ship would be.

Hyper-focused on the beacon, she nearly missed the arrival of Pike onto the Bridge, the Marine greeting his Captain before seating himself in the Gunnery section. Unlike his crewmate, the man possessed the necessary implants to accept the link-jacks, which let Morlich experience synching with a human for the first time in this new body.

Gunnery officers were a breed of their own, bonding with their ships to the point they missed the connection. The Navy called the condition Link-Sink, but while it was officially a condition that would earn a discharge, in practice crew with it were kept on for their skills. That chain of thought was derailed by the feeling of a human mind brushing her own, her shock mirrored by Pike. In reality, it manifested as a brief tremble in their bodies before the contract was finalized and settled down.

Trying something new, the battleship thought out loud. 'Can you hear me? If not just say... wait, that won't work, dammit...' A sensation akin to laughter filtered through the link, Pike's mind radiating amusement.

'Never expected a ship to ramble when I jacked in, that's one for the books. I can hear you just fine, Lady, no need to overdo it.' The gentle admonishment worked to centre her thoughts, many, many memories of similar events bringing a blush to her cheeks that must be confusing Andrea.

'Just... just perform system checks on the PD network, the Widowmakers aren't relaying the targeting info fast enough for some reason' Getting the equivalent of a salute from Pike, she turned her attention back to the beacon.

Anchored in the calm space exerted by the star's gravitational field, what she'd taken to be a Domain standard model was lower-tech than she'd realized from range. It still had a power source that would last a few hundred thousand years, but the transmitter was woefully underpowered to ensure the transmission would punch through Hyperspace. Whoever emplaced it didn't even take the time to spin up a defensive station... though perhaps they didn't have the tech to do that these days.

Regardless of the worrying level of tech degradation in the Sector, the battleship drifted close enough to pick up the looped transmission clearly enough to decode. The carrier signal was in Domain common, but there were numerous signals hitching a ride that repeated the same message in different languages. Her brief admiration of the builder's thoughtfulness died a bloody death when she actually read the message.

DANGER: This star system is known to contain potentially active autonomous weapon systems. Access to this system by unauthorized parties is forbidden by Hegemony Navy diktat 224.34

"Well, that proves the Navy was lying their ass off about beating the fleets back during the first war. Fuckin COMSEC." Pike's words summed things up pretty well, given there wan tangible proof of AI war fleets lurking in that system.

The Fringe Jump-Point was showing all clear on the micro-probes she launched through the gap, local space showing no active signatures. With that in mind, the warship turned to address the humans on her bridge. "Strap in and brace yourselves, we're hotdropping."

Automatic restraints snapped across the seats as she triggered the General Quarters alarm. In every room onboard, the voice she'd chosen, her voice, rang out. "All Hands, Man Your Battlestations!" The order was useless as the humans on board didn't have Battlestations, but it felt good to announce it regardless.

This next bit would require a hell of a lot of concentration, so she focussed all of her attention on her hull, specifically the FTL and sensors. The roiling ball of space-time that was a Jump-Point loomed before her, the interaction natural weak point into Hyperspace allowing entry to the star system. Standard drives allowed a ship to emerge in the centre of such points, being the safest and most predictable of emergence points. Devoting the majority of her navigational sensors to sweep for gravitation eddies, if you had a powerful enough sensor network and enough brute force, it was possible to arrive outside the calm zone.

Good thing she had both in spades, Flagship grade sensors and FTL drive allowed her plenty of wiggle room for a hot-drop. If she was right, the Drones would follow standard protocols and leave pickets with their passive sensors facing inwards, maybe a platform or two for extra strength. But if she played this just right, she'd arrive back to realspace in their blindspot and have a few extra seconds to shatter their abominable hulls.

Her human body's fingers dug into the armrests as she waited for the right moment, thrusters easing her hull forwards at a steady pace. Wait for it, wait fo... there! Morlich's stomach lurched when the FTL dumped its stored energy into forcing open a rift back to reality, her fusion plants ramping to War Emergency Power to give her a little extra speed.

Holding station around the Fringe Jump-Point, the small Remnant fleet had zero warning as a Tyrant screamed from Hyperspace ready for a fight. Caught with their metaphorical pants down, the Ecstacy Lancer Cruiser AI had just enough time to rouse from storage before a pair of nickel-iron slugs cored its hull through and through. With her main guns recharging, Loch Morlich tagged the cruiser's escorts with her secondary and tertiary batteries, the Fulgent on the port side raising its shields just in time to eat fire from three revolver cannons and promptly Flux out and then explode shortly after.

Spared destruction and targeting by dint of being on the far side of the wrecked Ecstacy, the Shimmer Droneship carrier had time to raise its shields and sortie its complement of fighter craft. To face the four squadrons of Sparks was two overstrength squadrons of Broadswords, Remnant strikecraft meeting Domain interceptors in an orgy of violence amongst the cloud of debris that was all that was left of the Fulgent.

Faced with twice their number of shielded enemies, the Broadswords lack of shielding began to take its toll, but Morlich's craft gave as good as they got. Watching and feeling her fighters get shot down one by one, the battleship was cursing herself for not loading them with missiles before the engagement. Her forward shield bore the debris strikes with ease as she plunged through them at flank speed, intent on shattering that carrier before it tried to jump away. Jacked into the ship, Pike was helping optimize the PD network, decades of experience and intuition allowing him to guess where hostile strikecraft would be better than the computers could.

Sheer numbers had worn down the interceptors to a half-strength squadron when help arrived in the form of 3.6 Megatons of pissed off fast battleship. While her main battery spoke in anger towards the fleeing Shimmer, the slugs followed by a salvo of MRM's, her smaller weapons fired indiscriminately into the mob of fighters around her hull. The direct link to the Broadswords allowed the unshielded craft to skirt around streams of fire that sought out Sparks with unerring accuracy.

A feeling which an organic would have identified as fear began to infect the Beta Core's circuitry, the latest Gauss Cannon salvo stressing its shields to the breaking point. The connection to the last of its fighters died as the unfortunate craft got run over by the hostile battleship, a star briefly forming as it's reactor exploded violently. The nanoforges were struggling to produce any new LPC's given all its power generation was dumped into the engines to eke a few extra gravities of acceleration out of them. PD lasers homed in on the MRM's chasing it, which proved to be a lethal mistake as the missiles masked the remaining Broadswords from detection just long enough.

In a move that would have had Morlich Court-Martialed if her fighters were crewed, the five remaining craft redlined their engines before slamming into the Shimmer's painfully weak shields. Hitting with the force of a standard pattern Heavy Autocannon shell, the impacts tipped the Drone's Flux banks into the red and forced an automatic shutdown. Left defenceless and drifting, the AI could only watch as the Domain warship's primary battery erupted in a pulse of electromagnetic energy, the slugs crossing the distance between the two ships to smash into thin armour plate.

While its shields were cruiser grade, its armour was comparable to a destroyer which did worse than nothing when getting hit by Gauss rounds. Holes the size of a Mercury shuttle were blasted through the centre of the Drone, spaced close enough it nearly cut the ship in half, the still-firing engines completing the job a second later. Before the two halves could drift more than a few hundred metres apart, another salvo of fire reduced what was left to pieces ranging from car-sized chunks to finger-sized shards.

With sensors picking up nothing with a power source in the immediate vicinity, Loch Morlich allowed herself to relax. As her hull worked to dump waste heat into the deploying radiators and shunted ammo casings back towards the nanoforges, her body was coming down from an adrenaline high. The only reason she knew that was the medical sensors built into the chair she was using, until that data came in, she'd thought she was dying.

Leaving the sensors to sweep on automatic, the warship stuck her trembling hands between her thighs, needing to do something to halt the jitters racing through her body. Colours began to look washed out and her vision wavered, the 'crash' after a fight something her medical records described but were little help now she was experiencing the phenomenon. Dimly, she directed the sole Broadsword that didn't participate in the suicide run to return to her starboard hangar, the little fighter limping back on one engine and missing a chunk of its wing.

While her eyes caught Andrea getting off her seat and walk over, the warship's attention was hyper-focussed on a sensor ghost drifting on the far side of the Jump-Point. She wouldn't have noticed it if not for scanning a large chunk of Drone and getting a return from behind the debris. Cutting back on her broad sweeps to direct more power towards the small vessel, the result was something that had no right being there.

Visually resembling a shrunken Eagle class cruiser, the Alastor class frigate bore the signs of repeated micro-meteorite impacts across its hull. It wasn't the fact a Domain Navy frigate was lying derelict in a system occupied by Droneships that surprised her... it was the burgundy with a gold trim paint scheme that had her speechless.

Her warbook helpfully provided its results at the same time as her hull got close enough to scan the frigate with optical sensors. Loch Morlich had last seen the little ship half a galaxy away preparing to depart as part of a convoy escort, shortly before she'd been sold off.

Running lights helpfully illuminated the name of the Alastor, DNV Buttercup... of the 3rd Fleet... her old fleet.

Today's chapter is brought to you by me trying to write Tales and hitting writer's block, trying to write Candi and then hitting writer's block then writing this.

I'm really gonna need to start planning these if my writer's block for Tales keeps up longer than a day...

HarakoniWarhawk · Jan 28, 2021

No clue what to write so we're back again. Well, that and writer's block.

Music for the chapter.

Ascending the ramp of the freshly-forged Kodiak Assault Boat, Loch Morlich was surprised to find two people waiting for her in the craft. Pike was manning the weapon station, his Uriel Power Armour exchanged for a set of Cataphract Boarding Armour. Andrea waved from the pilot's seat, no doubt already familiarizing herself with the controls. The embodied battleship wasn't exactly sure how to take this development, she'd intended to board the Alastor by herself after all.

"You don't have to come, it could be dangerous and I'd rather not lose anyone this soon." Her attempts at reasoning fell flat as the humans gave her unimpressed looks before going back to their checks.

Putting on his helmet, the crimson sensors on Pike's helmet conveyed his derision... somehow. "We've done boarding operations before, you haven't. Besides, fragging those fighters weren't enough, I want payback and I know the Cap does too." Jacking into the Kodiak, the Marine went still and that was the last word from him.

Pushing her shotgun onto the wall-mounted weapon rack, Morlich slid into the Co-pilot's seat beside Andrea. It took a bit of wiggling to get comfortable, but every seat on the boat was designed to handle PA which gave her plenty of room. Just when she thought the Captain would stay quiet, they spoke, still examining the controls. "Never thought I'd be flying one of these, the Hegemony keeps a strangle-hold on the production line and even that only turns out a few every month."

The embodied warship was still trying to wrap her head around the horrific state the Sector was in, how could something as simple as a Kodiak be rare? "The more I hear about the future... the more I hate what I'm hearing." Controlling her hull while not being on it was weird, but she still managed to trigger the depressurization sequence regardless.

Sealing the helmet of her Voidsuit, Andrea managed to get the craft aloft on gravitics with only a slight wobble. "I always thought these were complex as fuck, but the controls are so simple even a child could operate this thing." As the massive armoured door before them opened to space, a Pike escort fighter took up position on each flank.

Recognizing how badly her Broadswords had been at engaging superior numbers, Morlich had fabbed up a handful of Pikes to act as a screen in the absence of heavier units. Looking through the armaglass before her, she could just make out the glints of an Interceptor squadron running CAP. While it wasn't visible from this distance, she knew the lead craft was her sole remaining fighter from the first battle, damage repaired and kill tallies painted below where the cockpit would have been. Of course, her hull loomed above and behind their craft, close enough to the dead frigate that the running lights were illuminating it.

It hurt the warship to see one of her fleetmates in such poor condition, hull battered by micrometeorite impacts and paint faded from who knew how long being exposed to stellar radiation. As Andrea guided the Kodiak down below the frigate towards the primary airlock, Morlich swept local space for anything odd, aware that the system likely had more Droneships lurking somewhere. The escort was dead in space with barely any power detectable, but that was no problem for the assault boat.

Domain Universal Adaptors ran through innumerable combinations thanks to the nanotech making up the mechanism, extending to the airlock once a match was found. The background hum of the reactor increased in pitch once the seal was formed, power being pumped from their boat into the frigate to avoid needing to force the airlock. While the humans prepared themselves for action, Morlich hopped out of her seat, grabbed the shotgun from its rack and quickly scaled the ladder extended from the roof.

She was confident enough that anything that might be in wait wouldn't be able to harm her, but she kept the shotgun at the ready just in case. A dimly lit hallway greeted her, emergency lights flickering weakly from the current from below. The light clipped onto her gun's barrel fell on a crumpled suit of Power Armour, but she didn't investigate until the humans climbed up and joined her.

With the powerful floodlamps on the Cataphract lighting the area, it was easy to see there'd been some severe fighting onboard. Bullet holes, carbon scoring and the distinctive scoring from flechette rounds marked the deck, walls and ceiling, most centred on the wall opposite the airlock. Making her way to the fallen Marine, the cause of their demise was the hole blasted through the visor of their helmet, half a grinning skull peeking from behind the shattered armaglass. Though their armour had withstood an incredible amount of punishment, the headshot was what had killed the soldier in the end.

While she didn't recognize the markings on the suit, Pike did. "Now I'll be damned, that's a Knight of Ludd." Brushing past the battleship to crouch down beside the corpse, his hand brushed off some dust to reveal a pair of crossed scythes on the dead Marines' pauldron. "1st Gilead Sythes if I'm not mistaken, but what the hell are they doing on this ship?"

Glancing at the blast door the Knight had his back to, Andrea's gaze was considering. "A better question is what was he guarding... and whether his killer is still about." Stretching her new senses to the limit, Morlich's paranoid worry about being ambushed gradually faded as the only thing she heard was the faint creaking of the frigate's hull.

Saving the humans searching for plans, she scanned her warbook for the deck plans of an Alastor. "Through that door is cryo-storage, the designers put it close to the main airlock to facilitate easier rescue in case of need." Being careful not to disturb the corpse, she tried the control panel. "It's also backed up to the Engineering section so the power runs were less vulnerable to internal damage, ensuring the pods would stay online. Power is out on the door though."

"I've got this." Deploying the arm-mounted breaching jaws, Pike shoved the blades into the tiny gap between the blast door and deck.

With a screech of damaged metal, the mechanisms keeping it shut were forced to give ground. With the door slowly rising as the Marine got a better grip on it, Morlich lifted the Knight's corpse and moved them closer to the airlock. If she was human, the body with armour would have outweighed her by at least five or six times, but she wasn't and gently lowered the body to the desk. He'd done his duty to the very end and the least she could do was ensure his body wasn't being stepped over constantly.

With one last cry of tortured metal, the blast door to the cryo-storage was clear to move through, the human's chatter dying which prompted Morlich to see what caused it. Easing past the pair, she wished she hadn't been curious.

At a glance, the twin rows of cryo pods looked intact, the people within shrouded by the ice that had built up on the exterior surface. But every pod she could see had a minuscule hole bored through them at head-height, the cause of that locked in a lethal embrace with a skeleton against the far wall. Pike kept the gangly collection of servos, power units and dagger-like limbs covered with his rotary room-sweeper, the battleship joining Andrea is cleaning the pods to see the occupants.

Ice crystals glimmered in the light from the Marine's suit as she wiped them away to reveal a skull with a few wisps of hair defiantly clinging to fleshless bone. "I... I'd hoped to never see this... this sight again." It had been a favoured tactic for the Proxima drones and these Tri-Tach abominations clearly followed the same playbook.

Morlich's words got the Captain's attention. "Again? When did you see a horrific shitshow like this?" It was hard to tell with their polarized visor, but the woman sounded disgusted and furious in equal measure, the gyro-jet in her hand twitching towards the machine in the corner.

Frantically searching each pod for damage, each skeleton within caused her voice to crack when she finally replied. "During the Proxima war, the Drones there loved to infiltrate ships and do this... this horror... to crews in cryo suspension. If that mad bastard hadn't killed it, the thing would probably have been lurking in the vents waiting to ambush us."

Being the one who was investigating the machine, Pike kept his finger on the trigger in case the robot twitched. He'd seen the worst humanity could do during his time in the Hegemony Marine Corp, but there was something unnerving seeing such depravity performed by an AI. Crouching down with a whine of servos, he could see how the skeleton had killed it, a plasma cutter shoved into the boxy core of the automaton. They hadn't survived the encounter, a drill-arm shoved into their chest where it was still lodged however many years later.

Turning his floodlamps on the pod behind the body, it was open which explained where the corpse had come from. But it was second to last which meant... his lights played over the final pod, a pod which lacked the hole bored in it! "The son of a bitch got the robot before it could kill the last pod! We've got a live one!"

The foul mood infesting the compartment vanished as Andrea non too gently pushed him aside, despite the fact he was in Power Armour, fingers dancing over the control panel. Rather than stand around being useless, Morlich tried the door to engineering which surprisingly opened to reveal the sole fusion reactor that powered an Alastor.

The chamber was empty bar a single body slumped over the control console, still wearing the remains of an Engineering Voidsuit. Curious about the scene, she let the door close behind her and strode over to the reactor. By all rights, these Drones should have been able to reactivate the frigate and suborn it for their twisted purposes... yet they'd left it adrift. Offering the dead Engineer an apology, she reluctantly pushed the bones aside to access the panel, wincing at the noise they made hitting the deck.

The reason the Drones hadn't touched the ship took the form of a single line of code blinking on the still active display, undoubtedly powered by a backup nuclear battery of some kind.

FUSION REACTOR LOCKED DOWN. INSERT 3RD FLEET OVERRIDE CODE TO DISENGAGE LOCKDOWN.

While their very strange embodied warship companion investigated Engineering, Andrea was trying to get a proper ready from the occupied cryo-pod. Despite the fact it was the standard pattern, none of the codes she knew worked to get a readout on the person's health. Gritting her teeth, she slammed a fist into the panel, the display dissolving into static for a moment before returning.

Her initial elation as the vital signs appeared vanished once she saw the brain data; The occupant was braindead. Mocking her, there was a certain kind of twisted irony to finding an intact cryo-pod that had survived when all its friends hadn't, only to discover the occupant was alive but lacking higher brain functions. Feeling a powerful hand land on her shoulder, Andrea glanced at her longtime friend who inclined his helmet minutely downwards. Struggling to find words to say, the lights overhead snapping on very-nearly blinded her.

Accompanied by a faintly-growing whine from the direction of Engineering, she could feel the frigate come alive under her feet... but it wasn't the only thing that came alive. Pike's hand on her shoulder abruptly clamped down hard, his free arm pointing towards the pod behind her.

"Cap... brain activity just spiked." His words were impossible to believe, but when she whirled to study the display, the Marine was correct. No matter how many times she thumped the panel, the multitude of indicators showing brain activity continued glowing a cheery green rather than the red from before. Having no clue what the fuck was going on, Andrea's attention turned to the blast door to Engineering when it opened, Loch Morlich grinning with far too many teeth when her eyes landed on the cryo-pod.

Andrea winced as the hand she held out sank into the warships oversized chest, but it stopped them in their tracks. "The occupant was braindead before you turned on the power... it could be a trick." Watching the other woman's expression turn ugly, she hoped they wouldn't do something rash.

"If it's a trap... I don't care." The barely-controlled fury in her voice had the humans backing away rapidly, knowing exactly how much damage the avatar could do when driven to it. Punching in codes faster than a human could, the pod emitted a cheery ping before starting the dethawing sequence.

Keeping their weapons trained on the pod, the cloud of vapour that emerged did nothing to stop the pod's occupant falling out. Catching the uniformed woman before she could hit the floor, Morlich caught a glance of buzzcut green hair before the person stirred in her arms. Daring to hope, the feeling in her chest grew exponentially as the woman's eyes opened, hazel orbs blearily focussing on the battleship's golden eyes.

The part of Morlich that was the weird avatar side was insistently telling her that she should know the person, but she was coming up blank. Given the occupant hadn't become a disguised robot assassin by this point, Andrea and Pike lowered their weapons but kept scanning the area just in case. The survivor heaved, gooey cyan fluid dredged from their lungs as the oxygenation gel was expelled all over Morlich's feet. The embodied Tyrant didn't even notice, because the woman in her arms finally recovered their bearings and spoke in a voice hoarse from cryo-burn.

"M-Morlich? I-Is... is t-that you?" How... how did this woman fresh from cryo know her on sight... unless... Poking at the feeling of recognition, the knowledge hit her like a bomb.

Helping the trembling woman to her feet, her voice was barely above a whisper and hoarse for entirely different reasons. "Buttercup?" Morlich felt tears drip down her face when the hum... when Buttercup gave her a weak grin and stood up.

Proving without a doubt it was no one else, the Alastor snapped a perfect salute. "DNV Buttercup, Alastor class frigate, reporting for duty." The gesture was undermined by the glop of gel she puked up a moment later, but the trail down her chin did nothing to dim the joy on her face. "It's... it's been a very long time, Ma'am..."

Recovering her wits a few seconds before her companion, Andrea was understandably very confused. "Okay... what the fuck?" Admittedly, she was still struggling to wrap her head around the sight, so the question wasn't a great one.

The Tyrant's avatar wasn't really sure herself but had no intention of looking this gift horse in the mouth. "This is Buttercup, the best damn escort frigate a flagship could ask for." Looping an arm around said frigate's shoulders, he gestured towards the humans. "Buttercup, the tall lady is Captain Andrea Quantum while the Marine is Gunnery Sergeant Pike. It's thanks to them that I'm like this... I think."

Giving the pair a nod, Buttercup's eyes fell on the corpse entangled with the assassination robot. Wrenching herself from the taller ship's embrace, the green-haired avatar drove a fist through the machine's core, her other hand tearing off the drill-arm impaling the skeleton. Expressing a strength a woman her height could never have, her boots rose up and down, reducing the bot to a smear of fluid and shrapnel on the deck.

Wiping synthetic musculature off her boot, the frigate spat on the wreckage that remained. "Fucking abomination snuck onboard when my crew was trying to repair the FTL, they didn't deserve this fate... not after everything." Morlich yelped when her fleetmate grabbed her by the collar and all but snarled at her face. "Morlich, we need to kill the Drones that remain in this system, will you help?"

Standing a safe distance away from the spoopy bullshit, Andrea was at just the right angle to see the battleship's face go dead, like every time Drones were brought up. It was honestly pretty disturbing to watch a humourless grin spread across their face, which prompted her to grab Pike by the arm and pull the man away.

There was an intensity to the Tyrant that had even her fellow ship avatar backing away, nothing physical that could be pointed to... but the light in her golden eyes bore more than a passing resemblance to staring down the barrel of a plasma cannon. Sparing one last glance for the butchered crew of the frigate, she strode out of the room with her greatcoat's tassels trailing behind her.

Fitting Buttercup in her starboard hangar involved a bit of reshuffling which left half the Broadsword squadron hanging off ceiling racks. The frigate herself was entering her hull with bodybags and returning with them filled one by one. Once she laid them on the deck of the hangar, Morlich loaded them into flash-forged coffins and carried them to a waiting ammo hauler. The Domain crew of the frigate were being given the traditional sendoff for any dead Navy personnel; being fired into the closest star.

Of course, not all of her crew had been Navy, the handful of Knights of Ludd were placed in a separate area to be given a blessing by an uncomfortable Lennuel. While Buttercup handled the remaining Luddic bodies, Loch Morlich was happy to see Hot Rod's pilot had emerged from his refuge. She didn't know what her fleetmate had said to the man, but he'd emerged not long after and made a beeline to the Knights of Ludd who'd died defending the frigate.

Resisting the urge to smile at the man when he glanced her way, she offered him a curt nod and wandered across the hangar towards the sole Interceptor that stood out. All her memories were of the craft from the perspective of her hull, which belied how large the fighter really was. Standing beside the nose, the fuselage was nearly two feet higher than the top of her head. Abusing her strength to lift herself onto the wing, the embodied warship traced her hand along the line where new wing met old, the physical marks of such absent as befitting nano-repair. Below her was the five barrels of the 17mm HVAP machinegun, its twin mounted under the far wing.

Where the canopy would be was a solid dome studded with sensors, but gazing at it she felt like something was looking back. The Broadsword might be autonomous, but the feeling she got was what her memories agreed a dog felt like, eager to please and utterly loyal. A tremor ran through her hull as her paired Gauss Cannons fired, the sensation repeating every two seconds. Buttercup had pinpointed the last known position of a heavily damaged Remnant station, which her optical telescopes had picked up soon after.

Accounting for over a hundred years of orbital shift was simple with her computers, hence firing nickel-iron slugs on a ballistic trajectory towards the base. Her nanoforges could keep ammunition supplied easily, but she wasn't actually heading towards the station, merely passing it by. Instead, her fleetmate had identified the site of the systems final battle between the Hegemony/Knights of Ludd alliance and the Tri-Tachyon Autonomous fleet. While it was likely the Drones had slaughtered any surviving crew, perhaps she could recreate her own awakening to find others like her and Buttercup.

Morlich's ruminations were interrupted by movement from the ammo hauler, more specifically the green-haired woman sitting in the cab. Giving the warm plating on her fighter one last pat, she hopped off, took the required minute to get her bust under control and went to deliver the slain Nany personnel to their final resting place.

Tradition was important, even moreso when everything you knew was gone. A battleship never backed down and never gave ground, not in the face of adversity and certainly not in the face of Abominable Intelligences.

We meet Buttercup and find out why the Alastor was derelict.

Sir Isaac Newton is one scary son of a bitch, especially without the limits of game mechanics.

With gauss cannons and nothing to slow the slugs down, cross-system strikes are entirely possible on targets with predictable courses... like say, a damaged Remnant station.

HarakoniWarhawk · Jan 31, 2021

Back again, wheeee. ;(

Music for the chapter.

Taking the first step onto her new command, Captain Elita Helios, Domain Navy, was greeted with a scene of organized chaos. The cavernous port hangar was open to space, swarms of autonomous work drones being directed by Voidsuit-clad shipyard crew working away at the internal reinforcements. Letting her armour's boots mag-lock onto the deck, the lack of artificial gravity was of little concern for someone who'd grown up in the Kerebos Belt.

A figure dressed in similar gear to herself strode through the crowds of workers and drones, raising their hand in greeting before the suit-comms kicked in. "Welcome aboard, Captain! Sorry about the mess, the yard-dogs ran into an issue with the blast doors yesterday which delayed work." Extending an arm to clasp, Elite locked forearms with the man in the Navy manner. "Lieutenant-Commander Andrei Chekov, a pleasure to meet you, Ma'am."

As first impressions went, she took a liking to Andrei, an XO that sounded happy was a damn rarity. "Captain Elita Helios. Shall we head inside, I think the workers are annoyed we're intruding on their territory." While the Lieutenant-Commander laughed, he promptly led her towards the primary airlock.

Enduring the pressurisation with the ease that came with life in space, she was damn happy to crack the seal on her helmet and breathe something other than canned air. She caught a strong scent of paint, ozone and only the smallest hint of body odour, a sure sign this was a brand new ship. If that wasn't enough of a hint, the hallways were downright sparkling under the illumination of powerful lights, the deck unworn by the passage of feet.

Taking his own helmet off, Andrei ran a hand over his buzzcut silver hair and gave her a smile. "Nothing quite like the new ship smell to cheer a spacer up, hell, everything about this ship is new. I'll give you the tour, show off the ruinously expensive boondoggles that have the beancounters crying."

Hiding her smile behind a closed fist, Elita gestured down the hall. "Lead the way, Commander, you've been here longer than I have." Reinforcing her good impression of the man, he forwent saluting and beckoned for her to follow him.

The pair fell silent as they traversed the pressurized areas of the warship, the civilian workers giving the officers a wide berth while the handful of Navy personnel stopped whatever they were doing to salute. Ten minutes of walking, three elevator trips and one incident of nearly being run over by a cargo haulier led them to a sight that had Elita gaping in shock. The room itself was merely a control room for the immense mechanism visible through the observation windows, a dozen chairs wired up to state of the art fire-control systems.

Turning his back to the window, the XO spread his arms wide and gave her a shit-eating grin. "Captain, it's a pleasure to introduce you to the finest piece of artillery ever produced by human hands." Behind him rose a titanic ammo lift, the mechanism half-filled with metallic slugs the size of a Shilone heavy bomber. "This is just one of two Vickers-Enfield Interstellar Cumhaill Gauss Cannons. The biggest, baddest weapon a Warship could ever want and we have two of them!"

Andrei's excitement was infectious, a smile of her own breaking out as she approached the window to study the system in detail. "So they finally got the teething issues with the coils sorted out?"

"Better than that, they tweaked the capacitors to give the final product a 37% increase in fire-rate. These babies will launch a round downrange every two seconds on the dot." Making a show of searching for eavesdroppers, he leaned in towards the Captain. "I've been calling these the McCool cannons, it's the translation from the original language to Domain Standard."

Taking in the incredible feat of engineering across the bay, she had to agree. "McCool indeed..." There was something viscerally pleasing about a weapon like this, one which she didn't need a doctorate to understand. "They'll be far easier for the crew to maintain in comparison to the new lasers that BuOrd are developing."

From the way Andrei's head snapped towards her, Elita realized he probably didn't know her last command. "You speaking from scuttlebutt or...?" As she sauntered over towards one of the Gunnery stations, she played down her response for kicks.

"Oh, I just captained Wagner for the last six months, nothing that exciting." Her companion was struggling to pick his jaw off the floor, understandable enough given the ship she'd been in control of.

Taking note of her amusement, the silver-haired officer glared at her. "Ah, yes, 'I was just the Captain of the testbed for energy weapons', nothing major, honest." The man's excitable nature quickly brushed away the annoyance, eyes gleaming with manic energy. "How was she? I heard the lasers can tax shields as well as armour, that true?"

Elita's mood fell as she sat down on the chair, the momentary distraction had made her forget the reason she was here. "Wagner was cramped, her energy weapons were finicky and blew out relays with every few shots and don't get me started on her vulnerability to flanking... but we all loved serving on her. We were supposed to test the FTL last week when we got the news about the program being shut down, budget cuts they said."

"B-But why?" Her fellow officer had to steady himself on a fire-control computer, disbelief etched across his face. "Genuine energy weapons on a platform that can anchor formations and they cancel her?" She'd had the same reaction as he did, though hers had been a bit more violent.

Turning her eyes to the deck, she bit back a curse. "The Omega Initiative, that's why. With the success of the fleets in Proxima Centauri, the Admiralty is planning to expand it to include the Home Systems. The money for that has to come from somewhere, so they decided to stop pouring money into the Wagner class on account of it being 'too expensive'."

Falling into the seat beside her, Andrei shared her disgust over the decision of the higher-ups. Automation may be a fact of life in the Domain, but very few people in the Navy below the rank of Admiral were enthused about AI fleets taking their job. The mood had only soured when the Omega Initiative proved itself an unparalleled success in wargames against a Navy taskforce.

Dwelling on that was likely to ruin the rest of the tour, prompting Elita to inquire about the ship. "Sorry about that, Commander. One thing about this vessel always confused me, I know she's being built as a Flagship, but what is she meant to lead?"

The Commander's eyes narrowed, perhaps thinking this was another jest. When he found nothing but genuine curiosity, the smile that lit up his face returned. "I only know this because I slept with the secretary of Admiral Coleman, so keep this bit quiet until they announce it." Leaning in close, his voice was barely above a whisper. "They're saying she's supposed to be the Flagship of a new fleet!"

Mind struggling to comprehend the information, a number of pieces fell into place and suddenly it all made sense. "The last Didact's shipbuilding program! Scuttlebutt agreed it was to make good the losses 2nd Fleet suffered during the Theocracy campaigns... but it's the core of a new Fleet... 3rd Fleet."

The foul mood now a thing of the past, Andrei hopped up and gestured for her to follow. "Great minds think alike, Captain. C'mon, I had to bribe the Foreman to get the plans, but I'll show you the Fleet Command Centre." Sparing one last glance towards the Cumhail, she left it behind to follow him.

Given the sensitive nature of their discussion, both officers resealed their armour and continued speaking over laser-comms. Returning the salutes of a party of crewmen they passed, Andrei lead her deeper. "Now, I have no clue what sort of composition the new fleet will take, but these fast battleships are 3.6 Megatons yet can keep pace with a Retribution light cruiser. I think we both know if the heavy hitters are this fast, then the doctrine is likely to be, strike hard and strike fast."

Holding open a blast door for the XO, Elita let it slam shut behind them as they continued. "That explains the hangars, no way in hell would a Bungalow keep up at that speed. Any idea what's going to be flying off the deck?"

As the approached the FCC, Andrei kept quiet, only giving her a shush gesture before they entered. Heading through one last blast door, the room beyond was dominated by a massive holo tank taking up most of the space. Waiting for her to enter, the Commander punched in a code to seal the door before taking his helmet off. Not even bothering to hide his grin, Andrei deployed his wrist-mounted interface cable and jacked it into the holo tank. Flaring to life, the room was illuminated by a huge wireframe diagram of the ship floating above their heads.

"Domain Navy Vessel Loch Morlich, Tyrant class fast battleship. Like what you see, Ma'am?" Still linked to the machinery, he rotated the hologram to bring attention to the hangars. "As for what we'll be operating, I know the model says Talon's, but that changed once Omega came online."

Feeling like a kid in a candy store, Elita marvelled over her new command, though it didn't stop her questioning his words. "Let me guess, the production lines are being retooled for the Brattice variant and that's sucking up all the production?" With the shift towards automation, a drone variant of the Navy's premier Light Interceptor was inevitable, but the slight still irritated her.

"Ayup, instead of those, we're getting something called a Broadsword?" The diagram that appeared showed a fighter much larger than a Talon and while Andrei didn't know it, she did. The prominent wings and control surfaces for atmospheric operations combined with the distinctive engine assembly made it only one craft.

Extending her own linkage cable, she jacked into the machine and browsed the Navy database for a few minutes, throwing the design up beside that of the Broadsword. "That's the Epsi's primary scout craft with a paint-job and twin rotary cannons underneath the wings. I'm surprised the Navy hasn't used them earlier, they're a treat to fly."

Understanding dawned as the man looked between the two designs, the similarities undeniable. "The Navy paid for the rights to Epsilon-Utopia's scout craft?" He spent a while examining the diagrams, tweaking the display to show exploded versions to get a proper comparison. "Twice the armour of a Talon with an active-flare system, not even 50% slower and it's atmo-capable. What's this thing supposed to do, escort bombers or strike planetary targets?"

With her higher-level access codes, Elita was able to draw a few more details from the Navy database, highlighting the relevant portions with a finger. "Officially, it's a Heavy Interceptor, but they've got hardpoints for loading everything from guided missiles to dumb ordinance. The closest thing to a multi-role craft the Navy has and I bet they're chomping at the bit having to pay the Epsi's for it."

Dismissing the fighter's with a thought, the Captain's attention was now solely on her new ship. Like any good spacer, weapons drew her gaze before anything else. "I'm seeing the Gauss Cannons on here, but where're the other weapons? The shipyard hasn't installed them yet?"

While the interior was still being worked on in places, the wireframe showed the hull to be complete, from the flared wings to the dagger-like bow section. The pair of Cumhaill's sat on either side of the centreline, behind the bridge. The trio of smaller hardpoints further towards the bow sat empty, as did the PD mounts along each wing and aft. Thinking back to the heavy weapons, they'd probably been installed first given the integrated nature of their support systems, that level of Inertial Dampening wasn't modular in the slightest.

While she was distracted, Andrei had wandered off and returned with a seat in each hand. Offering her one, the silver-haired officer gestured towards the bow. "The yard dogs are busy with installing the MRM launcher there, given the ammo bunkers are towards the stern they're having reloading issues that is slowing things down. Once they've got that sorted, then they can install the rest, here, let me bring up the plans."

Bringing her attention to the trio of medium hardpoints first, the blank voids were filled with twin-barrelled turrets. "Morlich's getting fitted with Krupp-Oxos Thalia Autocannons for dealing with armour. HVAPDF ammo as standard, but we can feed it cluster-shot for dealing with swarms of fighters if the situation calls for it." With a sweep of his arm, the empty PD slots came into existence. "Axios just unveiled the newest variant of their Flak Cannon line, the Widowmaker. They don't just have two barrels for twice the fun, the mount is designed as a combined fire-director and synchronizer. When combined with the Vulcans for CIWS, we'll be shredding anything lighter than a frigate that tries to get close and I wouldn't bet on the frigate getting out alive."

In Elita's opinion, the Tyrant seemed to be the brainchild of someone who thought a Legion was too slow and had a thing for going fast. The oversized engines, the hangar bays, let alone the weapon fit, this ship was the anti-thesis of current Fleet doctrine. That called for lines of battle that crept towards the enemy behind a shield of heavy armour and shells thick enough to walk on. Hell, the only thing Loch Morlich shared with the other capital ships was that she also possessed an overcharged system for temporarily boosting speed.

"Captain?" Turning to look at her companion, the Commander's voice carried an odd tone as he stared up at the hologram. "Ever since I came on board, I've been wondering why this ship's such a divergence from doctrine, but I could never figure out why that was bothering me... until you explained the Broadsword."

Curious about the change in his demeanour, she decided to humour his line of thought. "Well, we can pretty much confirm she was designed to lead a fleet commissioned by the last Didact, perhaps that explains it?"

Slowly chewing his lip, Andrei sounded unsure. "That still doesn't explain the deal with Epsilon-Utopia, the only link there is that both were and are strongly opposed to AI-controlled fleets..." Trailing off, Elita knew the lack of colour on his face wasn't because of the light from the hologram. With a fading hum, the environmental systems died, leaving the room sealed from the rest of the ship.

Casting a worried glance towards her companion, the fear on his face kept her quiet and let him speak. "Elita, you remember the Pluto Declaration where the old Didact laid out his opposition towards the Positronic Intelligence being developed by Tri-Tachyon?"

Of course, she remembered that, if only because the man had died a few months after and speculation had been rampant about his death. "I remember it, but he died of natural causes. The only people who thought he'd been murdered by Tri-Tach or others were the conspiracy theorists who think the Earth was blown up by Lizard People."

"I'm not saying there's a link... but take a look at this." Her implants pinged with an incoming message, an anti-viral scan revealing nothing before she opened the message from Andrei. "I'm probably not supposed to have that, but Coleman's secretary loves cyber-sex and her firewalls are atrocious... so I did a little digging when I found out about the plans for 3rd Fleet."

Shuddering at the method which he'd acquired this, Elita scanned over the text file. It wasn't much, merely a shortlist of Admirals, under the header of 'Opposes the Omega Initiative'. Top of the list was Admiral Coleman, head of BuShips and the man who controlled Terra Nova's shipyards. It took a moment to recall the next name, one Admiral Cometary... she had a relative who commanded one of the Epsi Exploration Fleets. Rear-Admiral Ortega, who'd been the driving force for the Wagners, Admiral Kirk, he'd been in line for Head of the Navy before the old Didact died and the new one picked someone else.

The picture that was forming was a disturbing one in the slightest and far too close to treason for her liking. Seeing Andrei's expectant face, she realized he'd come to the same conclusion.

"Everyone here has strong reasons to curtail Omega, you don't think..."

Her subordinates smile was a macabre thing, befitting the topic. "We're on a ship that can run rings around any of the Capitals used by Omega, meant to lead a fleet that's designed to strike hard, fast and withdraw before sufficient lighter ships can come to swarm us. Either 3rd Fleet is a contingency in the event the autonomous fleets are subverted... or another faction is preparing for a civil war."

Elita nodded along, everything he was saying made sense to her. That is, until the end when his final words implied something... strange. Keeping her expression steady, she went over those last few words, wondering what about them set her danger sense off. On the surface 'another faction' was innocuous given he'd spoke about people subverting the AI fleets... but she had a feeling it meant a faction other than the one Andrei was part of!

Drawing her sidearm in one smooth motion, Elita pointed the muzzle at her XO's chest. "You very nearly had me there, Lieutenant-Commander, who the fuck are you working for!?" To her confusion, the officer merely kept his hands on his lap, expression placid.

The reason for that stepped out from behind a console, the figure unarmed and clad in the Navy dress uniform. Her pistol twitched towards them before the illumination from the holo tank revealed their face and made her shove the weapon back into its holster. Holding up their hands placatingly, Rear-Admiral Ortega made her way around the tank towards the pair.

Coming to a stop behind Andrei, she placed a hand on his shoulder. "I apologise for the deception, Captain Helios, but our foes would stop at nothing to eliminate us. Commander Chekov is part of my faction like you guessed, including the Admirals on the list you saw. No doubt you have questions, feel free to ask and I'll try my best to answer them."

Blindsided by her former commanding officer on Wagner appearing and turning her world upside down, Elita managed to choke out a question. "M-Ma'am... why all this cloak and dagger business?"

Admiral Ortega's cybernetic eyes narrowed, mechanic irises whirring as she studied the younger Captain. "If I tell you, then you'll take this secret to the grave... through any means necessary." The implicit threat of getting killed if she tried to flee went unsaid, everyone present knew that all too well.

Giving the shorter woman a shaky nod, Ortega gave a narrow-lipped smile. "I knew I made the right call bringing you in. Regardless, the true reason 3rd Fleet is being formed is that a certain faction with backing from a number of notable corporations and members of the Admiralty wish to use the Omega Initiative for their own ends. You were chosen as Loch Morlich's captain on account of having no political affiliations and being a true believer in the Domain of Man and everything it stands for."

"We fight for humanity, Captain Helios, and Omega is a threat to that. Now, let me show you what we're working with and against..."

"Morlich? You okay there?"

Feeling like she was awakening from an incredibly vivid memory, Loch Morlich blearily gazed at the faces staring at her in the Fleet Command Centre. Andrea was giving her a concerned look, Pike was in the midst of field-stripping her sidearm while Buttercup was keeping Morlich steady with a hand on her back.

Seeing that the embodied battleship was awake, the Captain tried again. "You alright? I showed you the transmissions we picked up from the Drones then you fell asleep standing up, Buttercup had to stop you falling over."

She remembered seeing the message, then suddenly she'd found herself observing her first Captain while she was still being completed over Terra Nova. Despite the impossibility of what she saw, the truth of them was never in doubt. Frowning, the warship tired to figure out what linked the Drone messages to that memory, the sole example bei... Omega.

Commanding her hull to charge the FTL, everyone in the room noticed when she reversed course and burned out of the system. At the same time, her Gauss Cannons quit firing, retracting into their reinforced barbettes in preparation for Hyperspace. Mentally composing her response, she gave the confused humans and one frigate a solemn look.

"I thought these new Drones took inspiration from the Proxima-era ones, but it's much worse than that. If these transmissions are accurate, they're searching for Omega, the guiding intelligence of the Proxima war fleets."

Being the sole person other than herself that knew how bad that was, Buttercup's face lost all colour. "We need to warn the Hegemony and Church! If Omega is active... the Sector doesn't have the forces to defeat it if the Remnant finds it."

Knowing Andrea and Pike had no context, Morlich commanded the holo tank to display recording from her earliest days, leading to the events that sparked the Proxima Drone War. "Just so you know the threat we're facing, let me tell you about the Omega Initiative..."

A bit of backstory that couldn't get out of my head, so enjoy.

A long time ago, over a planet very far away, a woman learned of a threat facing humanity and swore to help any way she could. While everyone there long gone, the ship is still there and she remembers... remembers why she hates.

HarakoniWarhawk · Feb 5, 2021

Ayup, here we go!

Music for the chapter is a jolly good one!

When Lennuel had first (reluctantly) boarded Loch Morlich, he'd expected it to lack a room for prayer, just like the majority of vessels he'd served on. Every ship, station and outpost of the Church had such a room, even if it was a mere cupboard converted into a shrine to Ludd. However, after the second Ship Spirit had been roused from her slumber, he'd agreed to talk considering they had been a Knights of Ludd warship in times past.

Nothing in the Holy writings described such beings, yet as far as he could tell, Miss Buttercup was entirely human. The only reason he'd asked about a place of worship was to consecrate the remains of those who'd fallen in service of the Church. To his surprise, she'd led him to the hall he was presently in, kneeling at one of the pews. While she referred to it as an 'All-Faiths Chamber', Lennuel could feel the sacred nature of this place, just like the greatest of Cathedrals on Gilead.

The pews were made from no wood he knew of, an incredibly fine tracery of silver veins running through the grain. It was one of a dozen in total, the chamber itself narrowing to a point at the far end where an inactive holoprojector stood atop a pedestal. The pillars that flanked it were rough-looking compared to the walls and furniture, every part unlike its neighbour and all bore the damage of combat.

Why someone would use pieces of destroyed ships to make them was something he didn't understand, but those thoughts were not why he was here. Lacing his fingers together, the wiry pilot bowed his head and began to offer prayers to the Prophet and his chosen representatives, as much from long-ingrained habit as spiritual need. He had found his faith tested many times during the last few weeks, though more recent events had helped ease those wounds somewhat.

Mid-way through a benediction of strength to the Cardinal-Commander of the Knights, a voice pulled him from his prayers.

"Do you mind if I join you?" Glancing towards the isle, Miss Buttercup was watching him with a hopeful expression.

Waving towards the seat beside him, Lennuel greeted the Ship Spirit. "Prayer is more fulfilling with a fellow member of the Faith, please, join me."

Returning to his own prayers, he felt the woman sit down next to him and bow her head. Prayer, especially in a consecrated place like this, was a private affair. He felt no need to pry as to her methods of expression and knew she would regard him in the same manner. Ludd accepted all forms of worship, from the humble farmer offering his goods to those who needed them to a mechanic blessing the machine they were working on to never fail its duty. Finishing the Ten Reflective Prayers of St Uriel, he lifted his head and took a deep breath in... then out.

The meditative exercises had been taught to him by a fellow member of the Church during his incarceration by the Tri-Tach dogs. He had been oh so angry during that time, echoes of that all-encompassing fury causing his breath to quicken. Centring his thoughts, Lennuel ran through the breathing exercise once more, letting those blighted emotions be banished to memory where they belonged. If not for that wandering pilgrim, he would have gotten himself killed long before an unlikely rescue had arrived.

Unbidden, a smile crept across his face as he remembered the moment Captain Quantum had arrived in a hail of gunfire. The debtor prison had been a small one, merely a transit station towards the re-education camps the Corporation used to create its workforce. One moment he'd been watching the guards patrol past the bars of his cell, the next a form in Power Armour had come barreling down the hall and flattened the Corp goons. As they cut down the guards, a second figure had passed by each cell and blew the locks off with her pistol.

It had been oh so hard to imagine he would escape in that hellhole, but when the woman had blasted his cell door open and offered him a hand up, Hope had flared in his chest. Andrea had earned his loyalty that day, which made his recent behaviour all that more sobering when cast in that light. The smile faded as he recalled the curses he had thrown at her, back when he'd believed her to be consorting with an Abominable Intelligence. Prayer alone would not redeem his honour for the insult offered, but the familiar motions helped soothe his troubled mind.

Before his thoughts could dwell on that overlong, he made to leave. Before he did more than stand up, Lennuel remembered the Spirit who had her head bowed in prayer. There was a number of questions he wished to know an answer to and she would be the most amenable to the conversation. The only other choice was Morlich and that... that bridge would need repairing before he dared cross it.

He studied the pillars while the green-haired woman prayed, mentally cataloguing the battle damage he recognized from this distance. The shattered plates courtesy of kinetic strikes were by far the most prominent, while the melted-wax look of energy weapon fire was less so. It was only by studying each piece in turn that he realized each one all shared the same colour, ranging from rich burgundy to the same colour but badly faded. Feeling a light touch on his elbow, the pilot turned to see Buttercup following his gaze towards the pillars.

"You're wondering about the pillars, Pilot Lennuel?"

Keeping his voice low, he refuted that title. "Please, call me Lennuel. I recognize that they're made of wreckage, but why is that? Though why they're all the same colour is another thing I'd like to know."

"Follow me and I'll tell you a story." Lennuel followed the embodied frigate as she left the pew and walked towards the pillars. She stopped between the pair and assumed a rest stance, one he copied while she spoke. "This happened long before my time in the Fleet, around sixteen-hundred years going by the current date. Did Captain Quantum tell you about the Proxima Drone Wars?"

Nodding, he'd wished that he'd never seen the recordings. The images of planets being burned by soulless abominations had haunted his sleep ever since. "She did... though I didn't know Loch Morlich was that old. Even the Hegemony have difficulties maintaining their Domain-era warships and those are much younger."

A faint smile broke through the ship's mask, for a brief moment appearing far younger than her eyes betrayed. "Morlich was the first ship built of 3rd Fleet, the Flagship as it were. The legend goes that during the escape from Proxima Centauri, the crew of Loch Morlich were forced to watch as the unfinished hulls of their Fleet were destroyed by Omega. It's said they swore an oath to return and collect a fragment from every stillborn ship to form a memorial for those lost that day." Breaking her stance, Buttercup approached the right-hand pillar and laid a hand on a dinner plate-sized chunk of shattered armour. "This pillar was formed from those that had died in their docks and from those who had fallen during the battle to defeat the Drones. As you can see... it's from many ships indeed."

Given the thing was nearly three times his height and wider around than he could wrap his arms, it was a sobering sight to witness. Just on this side, he could make out hundreds on individual chunks, each representing a ship that died to the Abominable Intelligence. When the Spirit beckoned him to approach, he was hesitant to touch it initially. The piece he laid a hand on was barely larger than his finger, a side warped from incredibly high temperatures.

To his surprise, the metal was warm to the touch, despite the room being on the frigid side. There was... something pressing against his mind, like a sensor contact that faded in and out of existence. Unlike most pilots, Lennuel relied on his intuition as much as technology, so he followed his instincts and began the breathing exercises. During the fourth repetition, the feeling came on stronger and the emotions he felt were certainly not his own. A fiery determination... stoic acceptance and... and courage so powerful it took his breath away.

Snatching his hand away, he couldn't believe what just happened. "W-What... what the hell was that! That was, that felt like someone else's emotions... somehow?" The Scriptures spoke of items tended to by the faithful becoming consecrated... but this was much more than that!

"That fragment was recovered from the wreckage of DNV Inglorious Bugger, a Hatchetman class Cutter. Lieutenant Sorrel and her crew of twenty souls held off a pair of Drone light cruisers long enough to allow a refugee convoy to escape Tihoven VII." Striding towards them without a sound was Loch Morlich's avatar, the embodied battleship coming to a stop just shy of the pillar. "By the time reinforcements arrived she'd been reduced to floating debris, but they mauled the cruisers before expiring. Captain Elita laid that piece with her own hand, then held a funeral service for those who'd died in the line of duty."

Buttercup had fallen into position flanking her fellow Spirit, leaving Lennuel alone to question the woman. "How does that explain what I just felt? How can a fragment of a ship destroyed over a thousand years ago do that?"

Morlich gave no answer, only moving to begin running her fingers along the pillar's hundreds of fragments. When she did speak it was barely above a whisper, hoarse with an unidentifiable emotion. "Ever since I... awoke, I suppose, this place has become more active. While I am a cumulation of all my crew's experiences and those of my hull, each of these are imbued with the final moments of their crews..."

Speaking up from the far side of the Spirit, Buttercup's voice was equally solemn. "This is where the honoured ships of 3rd Fleet come to rest. It was... a tradition for the commanding officer of each vessel in the Fleet to visit here at least once in their service. One thousand, nine hundred and seven years of service is recorded in these pillars, it's a point of pride that no ship of the 3rd ever succumbed to the breakers yard."

Why this place felt consecrated suddenly clicked in Lennuel's mind, this was the final resting place of every ship in that fleet! "So these." Spreading his arms, the pilot gestured towards each column. "Are sacred to your Fleet? The Knights have something similar for their fallen on Gilead, a tomb where a section of armour from every Knight who had died is kept."

The elder Ship Spirit shook her head, her copper-coloured knee-length hair shimmering under the faint illumination from the wall-mounted lamps. "You surprise me, Pilot. After your insults and threats, I wasn't expecting you to recognize the importance of this place." Turning those intense golden eyes on him, her expression made Lennuel's blood pounding in his ears. "I was tempted to throw you out for disturbing their rest with your presence... but my Captain's would have stopped me, and rightfully so."

Without a warning, the holoprojector flared to life, displaying a hologram of a planet he didn't recognize. "This is a place for every faith to worship in their own ways. I would appreciate if you both left, there's something I need to do that I've been putting off for far too long."

Knowing a dismissal when he heard one, Lennuel hurried from the room, casting one last look at Morlich before the doors shut behind Buttercup. The last thing he saw was her kneeling before the pedestal, one hand outstretched to merge with the holographic planet. Left with a lot to think about, he went in search of the Captain; he owed her an apology.

Left alone, Loch Morlich took a knee facing the hologram of Terra Nova and began to recite a list of names. "Crewman Second Class Jaeger, Crewman Second Class Monos, Crewman Second Class Aunduy..." 3rd Fleet's list of the dead was hundred's of thousand's of names long, names which she intended to remember for as long as she lived.

Gazing up at her long-lost homeworld through eyes blurred with tears, that meant starting with those who'd died the day Proxima Centauri burned...

"What was the name of this station again? It's not on my navigational charts."

From her position in the XO's chair in the Command pit below Morlich, Andrea replied. "It's called Druzininik's Anchorage, the closest friendly port where we can get some R&R without some asshole trying to swipe you from under us."

Morlich couldn't find any reference to such a station in her charts, but then those were three hundred years out of date, so it of course newer things weren't on it. Hot Rod's partial charts had been uploaded a while back, which included a polity she had no records of. Casting a holographic map of the Core World's in the middle of the bridge, she pointed at the cluster of worlds closest to them.

"What about this... HMI? Samael is only a few hours away, so why not there?" To her and Buttercup's (who was sitting in the Gunnery pit) confusion, the three humans on the bridge shuddered as one.

Pike went to spit on the deck but to her relief refrained from doing it. "Samael is a cursed world, Lass. Nobody sane goes there and the only thing it exports is the one thing every government and corp declares illegal unanimously."

"Hazard's goons have a habit of stealing valuable ships for their own use and a Domain-era Flagship is very valuable." Jacked into the navigator's console, Lennuel spread a crimson shroud over HMI territory. "Druzininik's is the best bet, it's quiet and has berths for super-freighters, which you'll be able to use."

Sharing a look with her escort, Morlich shrugged. "You lot know the Sector better than I do. Also, how are we handling contact with the Anchorage? I can pretend to be my hull's Captain for a time, but my human-fu isn't good enough to keep it up for long."

To her surprise, the others bar one agreed on a choice unanimously. "Andrea." Being the sole dissenter, Andrea wasn't keen on the idea at all.

Glaring at her subordinates drew shit-eating grins from Pike and Lennuel, making her sigh. "The largest thing I even commanded was a Lasher, I have no damn clue how to be a battleship Captain!"

Tapping her chin, said embodied battleship gave the officer a considering look. The woman was wearing a Domain Navy Voidsuit, even if it had taken a few days to get her to accept the Navy colours too. She didn't have enough cybernetics to pass herself off as a real Navy Captain, but deploying the helmet and polarizing the visor should hide that nicely.

"It's been too long since I've had a Captain, no ship should ever lack one." Getting off the Captain's chair, Morlich offered it to Andrea. "It's all yours... just make sure to polarize your visor so people don't see your lack of implants and get curious."

Dragging her feet all the way to the seat, Andrea threw one last glare at her friends before reluctantly sitting down. The sensation of the seat adjusting to fit her was still alien enough to be strange, but she was slowly getting used to it. 'Slowly getting used to it' pretty aptly summed up her time on Loch Morlich. No matter how familiar stuff appeared at first glance, it usually had some advanced function that took her off-guard, like the chairs.

Without the necessary hardware to Jack right in, she was left manipulating the controls on the arms, but even those were incredibly versatile. With a tap, she could display everything from shipwide sensors to a real-time map of everything within one AU... which was insane! She'd never even heard of a ship that carried FTL sensors of such power, yet Morlich had those and more squirrelled away.

For the first time in, well, forever, she felt in control. "So this is what makes Onslaught commanders stuck-up assholes... the amount of power at my fingertips is immense."

Her dreams of power were shattered as always by Pike, who spoke to Lennuel sotto voce. "I think the Cap's going mad with power already. Should we break out the rubber ducks?" The usually taciturn Marine broke down into a fit of giggles, joined by the Pilot a second later.

Lacking any context, the embodied warships were incredibly confused. "Sorry to butt in, but what's that about rubber ducks?" Buttercup's query was met by renewed laughter from the men while Andrea buried her face in her hands.

Having a vague idea of what was going on, Loch Morlich leaned down to her fleetmate. "I think this is what humans call a 'Noodle Incident'. Though I'm not quite sure how noodles are involved, maybe they eat them in a weird way?"

The urge to punch her shipmates warred with the need to stay on the seat and configure it, so she sat back and did just that. Morlich came back over and began to assist her with the process, turning what would have been an unbearable slog into a merely annoying one. Completing the second to last check, she got a grin and thumbs up from the battleship, which was when things went downhill.

It started off innocently enough, configuring the transponder. "Okay, so we're going to need to spoof this before we reach the Anchorage. Right now anything within range can pick us up as broadcasting a Domain Navy ident and header, which is the exact opposite of staying low."

Rolling the word around her mouth, the auburn-haired warship didn't agree at all. "I'm a Ship of The Line, not some... some smuggler! Only criminals and ner-do-wells spoof ship transponders, because they're of ill-repute and commit crimes!"

Andrea face-palmed. "Morlich, I have no damn clue what a 'ner-do-well' is, but jumping in system identifying yourself as Flagship of 3rd Fleet is not stealthy." Sadly, logic and reason had no effect on an incredibly proud warship.

"I have never changed the transponder during my entire service life and I'm not starting now." Folding her arms, the ship avatar was completely oblivious to how it enhanced her assets. "I'd rather you be sworn in as a Captain in the Domain Navy than spoof... oh yes."

The human officer only had time to think 'Oh no' before she was bodily pulled from her seat and dragged off towards officer country. What followed was, if you believe her recollections, a torture session masquerading as an oath-swearing ceremony. In reality, Morlich spent longer finding her a proper dress uniform for the ceremony than she did on the actual proceedings. To make things worse, Lennuel and Pike thought the whole thing would be a riot and asked to be sworn in at the same time.

Paraded in front of her entire crew (to cheers from said crew), Andrea Quantum was formally sworn into the Domain of Man Navy with the rank of Captain (Flag). Alongside her was Jonathan Pike, sworn in with the rank of Master Chief Petty Officer (Marines). Per his request, Lennuel's oath was amended to include Ludd and read out by Buttercup. As a newly commissioned Navigator First Class, the Luddic popped the cork off a centuries-old bottle of champagne and sprayed the contents all over his boss.

The following party was something for the history books, if only as a warning for future generations.

Nervously rubbing the emblem on her left breast, Captain Andrea Quantum, Domain Navy, accepted the comm request from Druzininik's Anchorage the moment they entered the system. The civilian on the other end of the call clearly wasn't expecting a Tyrant to arrive, especially given its transponder and the crew on the bridge.

Drawing herself up, Andrea did her best to sound like her old patrol commander. "This is Captain Andrea Quantum, Domain Navy, of the Tyrant class fast battleship Loch Morlich. I'd be grateful for a berth for the ship, we've travelled a long way to get here."

While she'd meant it in a general sense, other parties who intercepted the open-band transmission interpreted it otherwise. While the ancient warship burned deeper in system blaring its identity for all to see, a pair of cybernetic eyes followed their course with interest.

"So the Lonely Sentinel rouses from her slumber... Make best speed for home, Lady Vund must be informed posthaste."

I'd intended to write more thicc snek snippets today and wrote half a chapter.

Then I got the urge to write this, so have a 3.5k word chapter I guess.

HarakoniWarhawk · Feb 8, 2021

Here we go again.

Ideas and ideas hit me, thus more chapters.

Music for the Chapter

To be within the sanctum of Lady-Precentor Vund was to be in the presence of House Vund's greatest Artisan. To one such as Captain Hace Novak, a mere Kassadari Merchant, this place was the closest he'd even been to a member of the Great Houses... at least, those who had not fallen from grace. Like all Kassadari architecture, the waiting room he was in had the bare minimum of creature comforts, for excess was anathema to the people of Lethia.

It had been a hard two weeks of travel to return home, the storms unnaturally fierce compared to the predicted conditions. No sooner had he taken a shuttle to the surface did an escort of Oathsworn Bio-Conversions take him away to meet with the Lady. To see a single Oathsworn was cause for concern, having an entire squad escort him had Hace on edge. Cradled on his lap in a death-grip, the armoured courier case with his ship's sensor logs weighed on him both physically and mentally. To think one ship had caused all this fuss, even a Legend like the Lonely Sentinel, it was... disquieting.

To rush was to risk damnation, as had nearly befallen Lethia during the dark years after the Collapse. The four-armed Cyborg Oathsworn standing guard outside the inner sanctum made no sound or movement, sensor clusters scanning everything in the room to the atomic level in search for threats. He was well aware any threatening display on his part would result in a swift and agonizing death, which made the wait all the harder to bear.

His internal chronometer showed only a mere thirty minutes had passed before the doors cracked open, yet it had felt like an eternity. Taking the cue to enter, Hace nervously walked past the guards and trying not to notice how their integrated weapons twitched his way. He stumbled mid-step when he passed through a jamming field, his cybernetics lagging for the micro-second it took to shift to sealed network protocols. The doors shut behind him with a noise more felt than heard, sealing him in a room with one of, if not the most dangerous person on Kassadar.

The room itself was barely larger than his Mule's bridge, priceless artefacts, banners from polities lost and known and many works that defied words were all sealed behind Temporal Stasis Fields. All those sights paled in comparison to the robed figure looking out the window behind the desk against the far wall, for that was Lady-Precentor Vund.

Without looking, she beckoned towards the sole guest seat. "Please, take a seat. You need not fear, Hace Novak, for you have done my House a great service." The voice was soft, melodic and female... yet it put him on edge regardless.

Clamping down on his flight-or-fight response with a chemical suppression mix, Hace took the offered seat and set the Courier case on the desk. Moving to key in the codes to unlock it, he was prevented by a prosthetic hand clamping around his wrist. Lady Vund had stopped him, which was made all the more terrifying because he hadn't seen her move. One moment she had been observing the scene outside only to shift two metres and grab his arm without actually having moved. Flooding his body with emotional suppressants, he released the case and was freed in turn.

Rather than open the case, her masked face turned towards him, the intricate gears that composed half the mask clicking away. "Tell me, Captain, do you believe she noticed your presence?"

Confusion raged before he deciphered the meaning of the question, bafflement warring with fear in his voice. "I-If you mean the ship, My Lady, then no. We were outbound for the Jump-Point when the Sentinel arrived and our transponder was fraudulent to hide our identity."

While the geared-half ground away, the metal-half twisted in a facsimile of a smile. "Perfect, you did well to return when you did, Captain, the information you carried will be vital for House Vund." The praise was surprisingly... yet there was a hint of something darker beneath her positive words.

It took everything Hace had to keep his composure from slipping, lest the Lady sense his growing fear. "Y-You flatter me, M'Lady. I merely did as you asked and returned once the job was done."

A faint orange spark filled the empty sockets of the mask's eyes, vanishing when she inclined her head and stood up. "You may go now, Captain... but your brain stays here."

The last thing Hace Novak saw was Lady-Precentor Vund's hand dart towards his face faster than his optics could compensate. The Merchant Captain caught a faint shimmer surrounding the grasping limb before it reached his head and he knew no more.

Withdrawing her hand, Juliet Vund cast the lump of grey matter and cybernetics in its grasp a disgusted look. "What a waste..." Triggering the Temporal Acceleration Circuits built into the limb, the organic sections rotted before her eyes, the synthetic remains crushed to powder in her fist.

A much larger field sprung up around the man's corpse, the body decomposing as she turned away and entered the elevator hidden in an alcove. Within the accelerated bubble of time, the skeleton began to crumble until only a small pile of bone dust remained to be sucked up by a cleaning robot.

The elevator deposited the head of House Vund on the edge of her Houses' greatest fabrication hall, the din overwhelming to any lacking protection. With her face hidden by the hood of her robes, she slipped between the Artisans, Engineers and Nano Experts that toiled night and day to ensure Vund's power never waned. Vast lifts elevated immense loads of raw material to the concentric rings of workshops, machine rooms and forge-vats that filled the hall, while bubbles of accelerated time came and went when time was of the essence.

The further towards the centre she travelled, the number of people working dropped dramatically. Whilst the outer rings were manned by those whose skills could be found anywhere within the Sector, the inner rings were composed of the Artificers who held the greatest secrets of her House. For all that pride filled her at the sight of those gifted few working away, the melancholy that arose squashed it. Once, this would have been at most a minor manufactory for simple construction, yet the Collapse had sundered the Great Houses like it had the other polities.

Juliet strode quickly through those sections, lest the echos of lost glory drag her down memory lane. It took longer than she'd have liked to reach the precise centre of the hall, where three figures were waiting for her on a raised platform. Taking her place with little fanfare, the others greeted her in their own way.

Clad in Industrial Power Armour that weighed as much as a light fighter, Lord-Precentor Idrick Tallow of House Tallow raised two fingers to his helm. The giant Master of Ships was never one for formalities or flashy displays, unlike some of his peers.

With a hand on her staff, Lady-Precentor Nova Ulov of House Ulov ignored her arrival, her golden eyes never straying from the Ansible topping her staff. There was little anyone could do when the FTL Artificer was in such a state, her armoured form shimmering with the stress of an active Temporal Circuit.

The final member of the group scowled at Julia, the geometric cybernetic tattoos crossing his bald head reflecting the faint light from above. If there was one person she considered a rival, it was the Chief Architect of House Jsril, Lord-Precentor Killian Jsril. Ignoring his gaze, she smiled behind her mask as the man's face darkened.

Together, they represented the four Great Houses that survived the Collapse and the Timeless War... Four of nearly two dozen. Where once they'd been the premier shipbuilders in the entire Domain, now they were but a single planet balancing on a knife-edge.

She refrained from speaking until Nova blinked when they returned back to reality. "Loch Morlich jumped into the Kellick system as predicted, flying the colours for all to see."

"And what of the spy that delivered this information?" Turning her mask towards Idrick and his question, she sparked the empty sockets of her mask with pseudo-plasma.

"Dead, my Oathsworn are liquidating the crew as we speak." The loss of Kassadari lives was a painful one, but traitors deserved only death. "Their handlers will discover the ship adrift in a system after a few months with a Remnant presence, their fuel tanks empty to give the impression they ran out of fuel and starved to death."

Killian Jsril's perpetual scowl translated to his voice, the Architect's eyes boring holes in Julia's mask. "Your House risks our world with these games. Your folly with Graf Schumer and his fleet very nearly dragged us into a war, I will not stand by while you get my people kill..."

His impassioned rant was cut short by the sound of metal striking metal. Cognizant of her surroundings, Nova Ulov slammed the butt of her staff into the floor a second time when it looked like her fellow Lord would continue arguing. Eyes burning with a light that was not entirely natural, she tapped the Ansible once she had everyone's attention.

"Now is not the time to dredge up past mistakes, by either side." Julia bit back the retort she'd prepared for her rival, accepting the admonishment from her peer. "Our concern should rest on the Lonely Sentinel and what her awakening means for Kassadar and our Houses."

With the whine of servos, the Master of Ships joined the conversation. "Our fleets at the Hasperian Gate report increased chatter from the Timeless, though none of the hulks have begun to repair themselves." All heard the silent yet, for Kassadar's greatest foe would do just that if given the motivation to. Fists the size of a human torso clenched in a grip that could crush armour plate, Idrick's voice became strained. "My forces cannot hold them if they attempt a breakout, it's all we can do to damage them enough to stall their self-repair."

That even the Chief Architect went pale upon hearing that spoke volumes of the threat, the Precentor moving to clutch the amulet around his neck. "Spirit of the Stars preserve us... Is there any word from our contacts among the Hegemony? Surely they can spare a fleet to reinforce the Gate if we told them of the threat?"

Julia's answer left a foul taste in her mouth, for it spelt the death-knell of that faint hope. "The Hegemony have their hands full with the League and Tri-Tachyon. When you add on the imminent collapse of Chicomoztoc's biosphere... we will find no aid in that quarter."

Barely had the words left her mouth did the brain-numbing sensation of an active Hyperspace tear wash over the assembled Precentors. Form alight with the quasi-physical light of the Higher-Dimensions, Nova Ulov clutched her staff with both hands, the miniature Ansible crackling with barely restrained energies. The Temporal Acceleration Circuits in her armour struggled to handle the influx of exotic particles, but the field held long enough for the tear to seal with a pop.

It was rumoured that the members of House Ulov went mad from their fascination with Hyperspace, but only those present knew the real truth. Like her predecessors, the head of House Ulov could observe that dimension through the lens of a TAC and catch glimpses of that which may come to pass. In layman's terms, precognition, though to call it that was an exaggeration.

Most such glimpses never occurred, but judging by the grin on her fellow Lady's face, this time was different. "We may just receive aid from the Scions of the 14th, for their deliverance has already been handed to the High Hegemon himself. While the Timeless rise from their graves at the behest of Omega, so too does the Lonely Sentinel grant aid to the Heirs of the Domain.

Whatever energy that infused her faded, leaving behind a woman worn down by centuries of staving off the death of her people. Giving each of her companions a faltering smile, Nova still had some hope left to give. "The time will come when Kassadar will rise once more, it's our job to ensure there's a Sector left to be part of."

Meandering through the packed crowds in Druzininik's Anchorage's market district, Loch Morlich regretted disguising herself for this errand. Around her were people of all shapes and sizes, live, whole people! Yet here she was, squeezed into an unmarked Voidsuit that badly needed Smart-Material coating, yet couldn't thanks to the need to blend in. Even the case she was carrying looked like the dozens of similar variants around her, though its contents were by far more valuable than the entire station and everyone in it.

It grated at her pride to hide what she was, though that itch was mostly negated by the attention her hull was garnering right this moment. Even since she'd docked in the slipway, there'd been a constant procession of shuttles, runabouts and smaller vessels floating nearby to catch a glimpse. While Andrea and Pike were techy about the many spies that were using those crowds to gain intel, the hope she provided by her mere existence was enough to make Morlich happy.

Following the signal her Ansible was tracking inside the Anchorage, she ignored the many vendors offering wares to travel deeper into the bowls of the station. The crowds began to thin out as she entered a section less well-maintained than the market, the mould growing in dark corners hinting at failing environmental systems. The few people here wore fully sealed Voidsuits, heads down and moving as fast as they could to leave or enter. The door she stopped at was identical to the dozen others than lined each side of the hall, a battered keypad set into the frame in lieu of a physical lock.

It was child's play to break the encryption and override the door, the occupant whirling to face her when she stepped through and let it shut behind her. The sallow-faced woman pulled an incredibly illegal and incredibly lethal AM pistol from under the desk she was sitting at, levelling the snub-nosed weapon at Morlich.

Making no sudden movements, the embodied warship let the panicked woman speak first. "Tell me who you are before I turn you into a red mist!" Firing miniaturized fuel pellets as ammunition, a single shot from that would reduce even someone wearing a Uriel to paste.

Triggering the helmet, she let the panicked source of the signal catch a good glimpse of the Navy Standard cybernetics embedded along her jawline and across one eye. It had been a gamble, but Andrea had told her that only one faction in the Persean Sector still produced the hardware in her Avatar. And just like the implants, there was only one faction that could be using Navy Intelligence codes to monitor the FTL Comm network... the Hegemony.

The probable COMSEC Agent's eyes widened, the barrel of her pistol falling to the side thanks to her surprise. Struggling to form words, the innocuous woman finally found her voice. "Y-You're from Loch Morlich. How... how did you find me?"

Drawing on memories from her nicer Captains, she held a hand up while placing the case on the deck. "Your tap on the FTL Commsat uses the same protocols our own Ansible utilizes. It was easy to backtrace the signal here, but I'm not here to punish you. I need something sent to your leaders and this was the easiest way."

Bending down, she unlocked the case and threw it open, exposing the five rows of rectangular chips, ten to a row. At a glance, they appeared to be LPC chips for use with a Nanoforge, but Morlich pushed the case towards the Hegemony Agent. "Grab the chip second row from the top and third from the left, then you'll understand."

To her credit, the woman raised the pistol to cover her while they selected the indicated chip. Rather than scan it with their own cybernetics, the Agent slotted it into a reader on the desk. The hologram that flared to life showed a dense block of text, but reading the header had the human falling off her chair.

Floating in the air above the desk displayed a single line in Domain Standard; 'Universal Production Chip/ Theatre-Grade Atmospheric Purifier.' Her new Human crew had much the same reaction upon her reveal of the UPCs and for good reason, they were all but myths in the Persean Sector.

Morlich crossed the room and plucked the AM pistol from their hands, sliding the lethal weapon back into the holster it came from. Helping the Agent back onto her chair, the battleship began to explain once the human recovered her wits enough to understand.

"That case contains UPCs for everything needed to restore Chicomoztoc's biosphere, though it won't be a quick process. I'd like you to deliver that and a message to the High Hegemon, if you could?"

Gazing at the case like it was the Holy Grail, the woman retained enough will to search Morlich's expression for any sign of falsehood. "What's the message? I... I can't guarantee it will reach him, but I'll try."

The chip Loch Morlich drew from her Voidsuit was a much smaller info-chip, though like its larger brethren the contents were incredibly important. "From Flag Officer of 3rd Fleet to High Hegemon Baikal Daud; Omega is alive and the spectre of Proxima searches for its location. Message ends. It's all on that chip, make sure it gets into the right hands."

Resealing her helmet, the embodied warship pushed the chip into the Agent's hands and took her leave. Not even an hour later, she observed a Red Arrow corvette dock with a Hegemony patrol which caused the ships to burn hard for the Jump Point. If everything went well, the Hegemony should get the package and her warning. Watching the drive flares shrink into the distance, Loch Morlich turned her attention to an important task; finding something proper to wear for receiving a Church of Galactic Redemption delegation.

Pushing the glasses back up his nose, High Hegemon Baikal Daud couldn't believe what the out of breath head of COMSEC had just told him. The man was gasping for air from his rush to get to Baikal's office, which left his words unintelligible.

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

Pulling a Tacpad from his pocket, the Hegemony's Spymaster tossed it onto the desk. "The Flagship of the Domain Navy's 3rd Fleet showed up in the Kellick system and a member of the crew gave my agent on station there a case of Universal Production Chips... and a warning that the Remnants are hunting for Omega... who is alive"

As any sane person would on hearing that the Domain's greatest foe was alive and in the Persean Sector, the High Hegemon promptly fainted.

A bit shorter, I know.

But I felt that it worked well for a reaction chapter. It was this or a Fluffy Skyrim SI snippet, so hope you enjoy this choice.

Kassadari time-fuckery is bullshit, news at ten.

HarakoniWarhawk · Mar 10, 2021

What seems to be becoming a trend with my work has a flashback to the Proxima War because my Muse is laser-focused.

The music for the chapter is from Brothers of Metal.

"All of you are here for one reason; you wish to join Third Fleet and embrace the traditions that stretch back nearly two thousand years as of the current date. I can see that some of you are curious about why veteran Spacers are rubbing shoulders with green recruits; well, that's quite simple, really; The Third Fleet of the Domain of Man's Navy is unlike any other.

You may wonder why that is; surely one of the more modern Fleets like the Ninth or Fourteenth would be more divergent that one that's only predated by the First and Second Fleets?

In that, you would be very much mistaken, though not for the reasons you might expect. Many of the Third's traditions and divergence stems from when it was founded; At the very beginning of what we now call the Omega War. Should you become a Spacer in the Fleet, you'll find they have another name for it; The Proxima Drone Rebellion. I'm rambling here, but give this old salt time; I'll get to the point in a minute.

Third Fleet was laid down on the order of Didact Teshan Quillion, though the exact reason for it has been lost to time and war. The most common, and the one I subscribe to, is that he created a counter to the Autonomous Fleets being trialled during the months before his death. The Flagship, Loch Morlich, was the only one to be operational when Omega began its rebellion against the Domain. Like every ship of Third Fleet, past, present and future, the ship was fitted with experimental for the time Neural Interfaces; 'Jacks in the common parlance.

Those are why you are all in this class; Third is the only Fleet that has ever been fitted with them, and for a good reason. A common saying among Spacers is that 'a ship is the sum of its crew'. With Third, that is more than just a saying; it's quite literal. Instead of several hundred or thousand crew operating individual parts spread across the ship, the Interfaces will bring them together into one cohesive whole. Not everyone can handle the strain of such a bond, which is why eighty per cent of you will wash out after the first test. I can see the disbelief on your faces, and believe me, you'll understand not long from now.

Luckily for you lot, we won't be throwing you into that without a lot of training. In the old days, it was a trial by fire to see who could handle it; those who couldn't handle it tended to die from the strain. To date, there has only been one successful Interface Bond by a completely green crew; the scratch crew of Loch Morlich, who fought their way out of Proxima Centauri during the start of the Omega War.

Now, listen closely because I'll be quizzing you all on the tactics used that day after I've recounted the story. You might pick up a trick or two that'll help you in your time in Third Fleet.

Commodore (Reserve) Megumi Tallow: Terra Nova Nova Third Fleet Academy
Speaking to the newest prospective recruits to the Third Fleet; 1972 P.P.W ( Post Proxima War)

The ringing of her comm unit woke Elita up. It took her a moment to remember where she was, the Officer's quarters in the section of Terra Nova's Ring containing Loch Morlich's slip. Her flailing hand eventually found the device on the bedside table, and she activated it to stop the ringing.

"This is Captain Helios; who is this?" She noted how the automatic lights hadn't come on for whatever reason.

Commander Chekov's voice came over the line, and his words made her blood run cold. "Captain, it's Case Vermillion."

Elita threw the covers off and crossed her quarters towards the armour stand. Of all the things she'd expected to hear, the ultimate worst-case scenario was one she'd dreaded hearing. Admiral Ortega had laid out several Case plans in regards to Omega, ranging all the way from localized subversion by foreign state actors all the way to the Initiative going rogue on its own. Praying the armour stand was working, she was relieved to watch the articulated arms unfold and hold pieces of her power armour at the ready. Vermillion meant Omega had gone rogue and was currently attacking the system, which meant she needed all the protection possible.

The thirty seconds it took for her armour to be secured to her body felt like an eternity, but once the system came online, she linked into the line to Chekov. "I'm moving; how bad is it?"

Grabbing her sidearm and sword, the XO sounded stressed. "It's all over the system, Ma'am. Reports are coming in all the way from Proxima IX about the Drone warships attacking everything in sight. FLEETCOM crashed twenty minutes ago, so the situation in the Ring is unknown... But we're getting reports of fighting across this entire section."

She filed the information away and cranked the emergency pump to force open the door and leave her quarters. The sound of fighting hit her when she exited, the whirr of saws and plasma cutters mingling with the awful shriek of metal striking metal. Pistol raised, she aimed at the noise source to see a pair of Zero-G Construction Spiders locked in a deadly fight. The hallway was barely large enough for the remotely-operated machines, each one over a ton of heavily-armoured robot spider equipped with all the tools needed to perform maintenance on ships in space. One had the familiar green optics of an active neural link showing a human in control, but the other's optics were a bright cyan of an autonomous version.

Aiming, she waited until they split apart in preparation for a charge before opening fire on the autonomous spider. Heavy armour-penetrating rounds designed to penetrate Janissary War-Plate caught the robot under the thorax and blew fist-sized holes in it. The green-eyed machine capitalized on the damage, leapt onto the wounded bot and started tearing it apart. Elita's visor polarized as the plasma-cutters went to work and sliced it apart, leaving her alone in the hall with the possibly-friendly robot.

She levelled her sidearm at the cluster of optics when it turned her way. "Identify yourself, or I'll open fire!"

It never ceased to amaze her how the voice that came from the bots never matched them; in this case, it was a young man. "M-Maintenance Technician S-Second Class David Lister, Ma'am! The... The Ring is going crazy!"

Lowering her pistol, she walked over to the very-dead robot and kicked it. "What happened here, Technician?"

The Spider skittered around for a moment, no doubt transmitting the operator's state of mind. "T-There was an atmospheric alert in this area, s-so, and I was the closest, so I came in from the hull." The machine's jaws came alive as the Arc-Welders flared to life, an involuntary reaction if she'd ever seen one. "I found that... that overriding the environmental controls on the quarters and tried to stop it, which is when you arrived."

Taking her eyes off the robot, she gazed at the rows of doors on each side of the hallway to see the vast majority had a decompression alert flashing above them. Her gut twisted when she realized the only reason she'd survived was thanks to picking quarters at the very end of the hall for the sake of peace the night before. If it hadn't been for that... she'd have died when her quarters depressurized. No doubt the intelligence controlling the Initiative wanted to eliminate anyone who could take command of resistance forces.

That level of coordination was something Chekov needed to know. "Commander, Omega is sending maintenance units to remove the air from Officer berths. I'm seeing a good chunk of local command dead here, be advised."

The XO's voice crackled with interference, no doubt jamming on Omega's part. "Fuck, that explains why I'm not getting any answer from the Admiral. All the Slips are locked down, I've been trying to override it from here, but it's no good."

"Noted, I'll see what I can do on my end. Try and get in contact with Ortega; tell me when you do." She indicated down the corridor towards Lister, momentarily forgetting he wouldn't understand the signal. Rather tha explain, she just walked past them. "Follow me. Do you know how we can override the Slip locks from inside the Ring?"

Sticking close, the Technician was silent for a few moments. "Primary and Secondary Dock Control are locked down, so your best bet would be the emergency backup three decks down."

Surrounded by unknown opponents on a station going haywire, this entire situation made her nostalgic for the battle of Thiphon VII. Drawing her sword, she sliced through the dead robot's leg to check that the edge was still good and turned to her new companion.

"Stick close to me, Lister, and I'll do my best to get us out of here alive." While they couldn't see it, she was grinning from ear to ear. "These bots don't hold a candle to Theocracy Infidel-Hunters."

Andrei was beginning to realize he didn't like being in command. Hardwired through his implants to Loch Morlich, he could feel as the small crew who'd be onboard were bolstered by anyone with the right implants to Jack in. Most of the crew had been caught out like the Captain had and were now stuck on the Ring and having to fight through rogue maintenance units and worker drones. It was sheer luck that he'd been running firing drills with the gunnery crews during the night in preparation for the shakedown cruise that was supposed to be today.

While the Tyrant was trapped in her Slip, her weapons were fully able to engage targets of opportunity and boy, was there far too many of them. There were hundreds of ships in range of the sensors, and most were Drone craft. A lot of Hatchetman conversions, to be fair, but a Legion was hanging back vomiting hordes of Brattice fighters. With command and control shot and the TACNET compromised by Omega, the Navy warships struggling to defend the Ring were slowly being pushed back by the sheer weight of numbers. The situation was only made worse by the civilian vessels trying to flee, being destroyed and spreading debris across the battlespace.

Every two seconds, the Gauss Cannons fired like clockwork, sending nickel-iron slugs with unerring accuracy to smash aside hostile frigates. For every one they killed, another two appeared from further out of the system where the vast bulk of the Omega Initiative's fleet was. Loch Morlich was the heaviest vessel in action, though the largest ship actually able to move was DNV Deimos, a Vindicator class cruiser. She put her main battery to good work, firing frag shells into the swarm of cutters trying to get through the faltering defensive network around the Ring. A half-strength squadron of Enforcer destroyers had been able to escape the lockdown and was screening Deimos from any flankers, the tough little destroyers having more than enough armour to shrug off hits.

The one silver lining to the lockdown was the access to the ammo bunkers intended to resupply ships. Morlich had a deep reserve of ammo for a ship of her class and weight, but they'd have run dry twice over if not for the constant influx of ammunition. Of course, those were a prime target for the rogue bots in the Ring, which was why the bulk of the ship's Marine compliment was defending them. Well, what few Marines they had on board when the shitshow started; the rest were still stuck on the Ring along with the Captain.

Any further thoughts on that subject were shoved aside when a fire plan came in from the Captain of Deimos, targeting a pair of Subducator light cruisers attempting to pressure the artillery cruiser from behind the cutter swarm. Drawing targeting information from Morlich's vast sensor network, Andrei refined the plan and pushed it off to the gunnery teams for the Gauss Cannons. The high-speed Neural Links cut down on communication time, causing the Drone cruisers to be hit by shells with exacting precision fired not five seconds after the plan had been transmitted. One cruiser, already damaged, suffered a catastrophic magazine detonation as the slug punched through from bow to stern. Its partner was luckier, merely fluxing out as the shields overloaded their Flux Banks, trying and failing to stop the projectile.

He felt no elation watching the Drone ship be raked by fire from the destroyers, the light cruisers merely the vanguard of heavier units coming from further out. No amount of precision fire would stop one of the Captial ships before it pounded Loch Morlich into scrap metal and free-floating atoms. Their only hope was that Captain Helios could override the locks and let them manoeuvre freely; the alternative was death.

Augmented reflexes were the only thing preventing Elita from sporting a fist-sized hole in her chest when a burst of fire from around the corner very nearly hit her. Behind her, Technician Lister's Skitter crouched down with its optics centred on the far wall. Before whoever took the shot had the bright idea to follow with a grenade, she cranked up her armour's speakers and shouted.

"Hold fire! Friendlies!"

The man that responded wasted no time in replying. "Hands up and take your helmet off, no funny business!"

Doing as requested, she holstered her weapons and took her helmet off. Slipping it under her arm, Elita walked out to see a squad of armed and armoured Marines in the process of laying charges on the door behind them. Her implants registered a deep-scan that abruptly ended while the soldier aiming their rifle at her lowered it and snapped a salute.

"Apologies, Captain!"

Waving them down, she put her helmet back on and addressed the group. "At ease, Marines; who is in charge here?"

The soldier setting charges on the blast door, finished laying the detcord and stood up. "I am Ma'am; Corporal Jurgen Matis, 37th Assault Corp. An alert went out on the Corp channel about an attack on the Ring and to secure critical areas, but I've not been able to get in contact with anyone higher up." There was a faint tremor in the man's voice, but he kept it under control as he gestured towards the charges. "We arrived here to find it locked down with no response from inside; hence the forcing entry."

Debating on how much to tell them, she decided on the whole truth. "It's an attack on the entire system; Omega has gone rogue." To their credit, the Marines kept the cursing to a minimum. "I've got a Skitter jocky with me; he can crack the lock on that and save the charges."

A few of the soldiers twitched when the Robot came scuttling around the corner, but they all moved out of the way to let Lister access the door. The electromagnetic seal lasted all of five seconds against the De-Gausser took wielded by the Skitter. A pair of Marines grabbed the handholds and slowly forced the blast door open while their comrades kept their weapons aimed through the expanding gap. While Elita couldn't see inside, the Marines could and opened fire at something moving in there. A burst of return fire spanged off their power armour and drew a mag-dump in response that she could hear ricochet around the control room.

"All clear!" Slipping past the soldiers, she entered the room to find an Administrative android slumped over the primary console, riddled with holes and sparking.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the only thing riddled with holes and sparking; the console was in a similar state of non-functionality. Grabbing the subverted android, she shoved it aside and tried to 'Jack into the machine in the hope it was still functioning. Silence greeted her data-query, the system trashed by the hail of bullets that had killed the machine guarding it. A part of her mind railed against the Marines shooting up the room indiscriminately and screwing up the plan; the rest acknowledged that they'd just been following their training and weren't in the best mental state.

Withdrawing her interface cable into the wrist-port, Elita ignored the Marine's curious glances to face Lister. "The console's fucked; there any way we can free the ships without it?" If there was anyone who'd know the answer, it was the Yard-Dog.

The Skitter's optics dimmed while the machine lowered to the ground, only coming to life after a minute passed. "That was... well, it was the only way; officially."

His emphasis on the word got her interest. "And unofficially?"

"It might be possible to blow the physical locks, w-we had to do a theoretical study on it for the final test to operate a Skitter. You'd need one of these to weaken them enough for someone trained to use Naval scuttling charges, though..."

Referred to as Backpack Nukes despite being the size of a man and using Fusion, a scuttling charge required someone in power armour to lift it, and codes only issued to Navy Captains. The rough idea of a plan formed in her mind as she glanced around at the room. Six Marines in Raphael Patten Power Armour, one Maintenance Technician operating a Zero-G Constructor Spider and herself. It wasn't much in the grand scheme of things, but it might just be enough to do the job.

Rapping her knuckles against the wall, she got everyone's attention. "Alright, new plan. Corporal Matis, I'll need you to lead me to the nearest armoury to secure several Backpack Nukes." Leaving the Marines to perk up as they realized the plan, Elita addressed the Yard-Dog. "Technician Lister, how do you feel about making that theoretical study a practical one?

We're blowing the Slip Locks with nuclear ordinance, and it's going to be dangerous beyond measure. I won't lie; there's a large chance we'll die performing this... But we're the only people who can do it. The Domain is at stake, and I'll go down fighting if it means we give our comrades a chance to escape the system."

She was asking a lot of them, especially Lister. Any worries about their courage died when a truncated cheer rang out; lead by the Maint-Tech himself. She suspected the Marines were cheering because they would get the chance to nuke Navy property and get away with it; no matter the situation, some things never changed.

This is part one of a multi-part arc, my mind has hyper-focussed on getting this out so here we go after a month hiatus.

Been busy playing a busty Wolf Girl in Fallout 4, which is why this is shorter than the norm. I keep being distracted by thicc fluffy butt.

DNV Loch Morlich: The Lonely Sentinel (A Starsector story)

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