Xeno Core

Unfortunately, the ship Yosip had crippled with his missile attacks managed to destroy itself while we were connected to her sistership. With no away craft available to us we simply couldn't respond fast enough to make a difference.

Operative Peal has been leading the efforts to capture personnel and materiel, and his teams have been busy. Already large stacks of plating and unidentified circuitry pile up in our hold. Mar Lummer has been taken off light duty in order to ensure that everything is catalogued properly.

Other crew members are hard at work as well, replacing the escape pods used to reinforce Gelly's position and tracing burnt circuits. Missile count is low, but enough remain for another pair of volleys if it becomes necessary. Power cells are above half full and rising steadily.

After half a day spent scurrying back and forth the teams finish scouring the captured vessel, whose name translates roughly to Learned Stalker.

Seven of the alien crew were able to be rescued. The greater majority were already dead and the last few chose to fight until their bodies finally gave out. I can respect that kind of attitude in a warrior. We'll need to interrogate them to find out more about their capabilities and objectives. Try to learn the reasons behind their presence in the system.

Some sleeping quarters will have to be reassigned to make room, but a makeshift brig is being set up. Unable to spare any crew to watch the prisoners, that burden has shifted to me. The rooms assigned to them are already sprinkled with cameras and other monitoring equipment, so the task should be simple.

With low supplies and fresh tales of victory to tell, we dutifully await contact from the agrarian planet visible far beneath us. We could be waiting for several more days. The more visible effects of the storm may have faded away, but there is still static and echoing feedback on all sensors.

"Good job, crew," Yosip commends his tired crewmates, a gleam in the lens of his cybernetic eye. "We still need to wait for orders, but I think command will want to refit this hulk into something that's been lacking in this system. A good forward defense."

"Like a picket, sir? We beat them wrecks two to one," one of the tired spacers boasts. "Don't see as they'd get much defense out of it."

Comments of agreement circle around the weary group and Yosip just nods sagely.

"That's right, our little scout class was enough to take them out. But we wouldn't have needed to fire a shot if there was a defensive installment keeping watch over this system. Mos Denn, I want you to start gathering up the larger debris. If I'm right that junker'll need more mass and we should grab it before the work gets any harder."

An order that will require some serious thinking before it can be carried out. We lack small craft to send out, Gelly Drop still not having returned. I've yet to see any hard vacuum suits so sending out teams on a spacewalk is also not possible. Nor do I possess any form of appendage with which to grab the debris.

The self-destruction of the unnamed vessel has spread the debris out over a large volume of space. It will continue to further expand if left alone, which the order I've been given does not to allow.

Operative Peal continues with his lecture, "Don't think for a second every engagement will be that easy, either. We spooked them, let's be honest. That would have been a much tougher fight if the big boy had gotten in on the action. And we didn't come out unscathed, you've done the patchwork yourselves."

His words are met with reluctant nods. "I'm not trying to downplay anyone's role in our victory. Everything we do now is prep work for our next win, don't forget. We also have two things no other ship in the Imperium has, so of course us winning is expected, right?"

"What things is them, sir?" The crewman who has been acting as foreman wipes thick engine oil off his hands with a coarse rag while they talk.

Yosip laughs theatrically and strikes a dramatic pose, "The best crew ever assembled in one place, and the captive soul of an alien warlord giving the ship a little more oomph!"

He gets a grease covered rag thrown at his face for his performance.

Ignoring the crew for now, I focus once more on my options. The communication equipment installed on my hull has several output functions, normally unused in favor of the sublight transmission. Light waves, radio, even simple magnetic field bursts are available.

The great majority of the debris is largely ferrous alloy. I flicker a burst of magnetism at the slowly drifting wreckage. It twitches a minute amount under the brief influence of the emitters.

It might be possible to maintain a sustained magnetic field if I use multiple emitters, cycling overheated units off to cool down between uses. A few simple tests prove successful, and a tightness I had hardly been aware of relaxes fractionally.

Lining up a fragment to target, I begin emitting the desired frequencies. By targeting the twisted chunks with a shaped magnetic field and deactivating it once they begin moving, I start to gather them together. A few pieces that aren't metal are even swept in, gaining momentum from colliding with the attracted pieces.

I do lose a few hunks of glass and plastic, as well as scattering clouds of carbon char that drift away at each collision, but some loss must be accepted.

Gathering up the rest of the fragments consumes my attention and time passes in a blur. Before I know it the field of debris has been gathered into a loose knot.

It is pleasant to gaze upon the wreckage gathered before me. I haven't been able to truly fight in many seasons, something that had once filled me with bitter regret, and our brief battle washed most of it away.

As I'm finishing my assignment, we receive a broadcast is from the planet, pulling me from my introspection.

Unfortunately, it is not on standard Imperium frequencies, but we are able to receive it without much issue. It is a voice only file, which Yosip orders played to him privately in the war room. I do what can be done to clean up the message before beginning playback.

Harsh spitting growls play over the speakers set into the ceiling. A translation follows immediately afterwards, courtesy of the latest Imperium linguistic modeling software.

"Know that we have captured your leaders, vermin, and demand you remove yourselves from our system. If you comply, all captives will be released in unarmed vessels and escorted to the limits of our new territory. Failure to comply will result in their deaths in two local days' time from the sending of this recording. Sooner if we suspect any signs of resistance."

That the civilian population was not mentioned gives us little reason to hope for merciful treatment for our friends and officers. Little regard is shown for the lives that must have been lost in this 'conquest' of theirs.

"Do we know where the message was sent from? Mos, there aren't a lot of options left," Operative Peal asks in agitation.

"Yes sir, the storm has cleared up enough that we can pinpoint the transmission source within Centra City with complete confidence."

"Then take us down there, now. I have a plan."

I pull a topographical map up onto the main display. Centra City is situated right next to the mouth of a large lake, where the overflow runs off to become the Silver River. Our potential approaches are displayed as green arcs. Yosip selects the one that takes us closest to Centra while allowing us to bleed off some of the speed gained from reentry.

"Sir, course set. I feel obligated to inform you that this vessel was never intended to withstand atmospheric pressures. The potential for structural damage is very great."

Yosip sighs wearily. "That's a problem for if we survive. Look, I don't need to explain to a rock, but our choices are severely limited. We can retreat, like they say, and hope that a culture that practices ambush fighting will keep their word in regard to hostages. Doubtful, in my opinion."

"Yes, I see that, Yosip," I reply, waiting to hear his reasoning. He's talking for his own benefit, to ease his guilt perhaps for ordering such a dangerous maneuver.

"Right. Or we could wait, for what I don't know, as no other Imperium vessels are anywhere near close enough to get here in two days. It takes too long to get between systems, so we're on our own. It could take days to codge together a usable shuttle. Days we just don't have. We have time to try this, this stupid idea. If it works we'll be heroes and if not, well, we won't really care, then, will we?"

He doesn't want to do this, but his duty is to try. That is enough of a reason to get my full cooperation in this mad venture. Yosip's willingness to leap into danger for his superior reminds me of my brute. I should have treated him more kindly, perhaps, but I didn't want to make him soft. I made that mistake with my first spawn.

"Get your crew into some kind of padded area, I'll turn up the dampeners to max but even a controlled impact will crush the hull," I advise the shaken officer.

He pulls himself together and strides onto the bridge, ready to deliver the grim news to our worthy crew.

"Who said anything about landing. Just get us down there and we'll do the rest," he responds jauntily. False bravado or not, he's smiling when he says it. "Every one of our recruits is required to know how to swim."