Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

August 14th 001 SDE, EFS Enterprise, Dalmine Sector Neutral Space:

Sali shifted her stance as she maneuvered the large grav-sled down the corridor. It was comically large, and if it weren’t for the combination of antigrav engines, and auto stabilizers there would be no way for her to move it alone. Yet that was what she was doing. In fact she had been doing this a lot lately.

By this point in time, she had no idea where the ship was. She did know they were currently at warp. High warp by the feel of it. It was different, but she had been on ships long enough to recognize an active warp drive. Unfortunately, that knowledge didn’t do her a lot of good.

She sighed, the job on the other hand did do her some good. It had given her a chance to interact with a few of the aliens. More importantly, it had allowed her to explore. To a certain degree. Her movements were, unfortunately, being monitored, and there was always a guard around. Still she was starting to get an idea of where things were. She even knew where to find a hangar it wasn’t one of the main bays, but she had been there a few times moving cargo now. With that knowledge, she was starting to put together a plan that might stand a chance of success. Now she just needed an opportunity. At this point she felt getting off the ship might be the easy part, it was avoiding recapture that might be the problem. Figuring that out wasn’t so easy. It didn’t help that she had zero access to any system that might conceivably be used to send a message. If she had someone waiting for her that would make things much easier. That was the real trick, but there was precious little she could do on that front.

Making a turn, she noted the large door up ahead, her destination. It was actually a part of the ship, she had not yet visited. So she was paying attention. Honestly she didn’t even know what she was transporting. She had picked it up from the factory level as instructed and was bringing it here to deck 97. She wasn’t entirely sure where on the deck she was, but she knew she was located aft.

Reaching the door, she let go of the grav-sled, and made for the door. Pressing her palm against a scanner, she waited. After a moment, there was a chime, followed by a computerized voice, “Temporary access, granted. This pass will expire in three minutes.”

She sighed, grabbed the sled, and started moving it through the freshly opened security door. It was not the first time she had made a delivery to a secure area, and this was the norm. For scheduled things like this, the computer would grant her a temporary pass. Staying past its expiration, however, wasn’t a good idea. As the computer would immediately notify security. Leading to nothing but trouble. Unfortunately, she had the misfortune of knowing that firsthand. As she had made the mistake of letting that pass expire once. Security had arrived very quickly, after that, and she was escorted back to her cell. There were even consequences after that as well. It was why it was an experience she didn’t care to repeat.

Assuming the damn door cooperated with her, but after a moment she got the container through and made her way into the room proper. Where she noticed a piece of alien technology she hadn’t seen before. It was massive dominating the room. Only reason she hadn’t noticed earlier was that she wasn’t looking. Two domes faced each other, one on the floor the other on the ceiling. A tapered cone extended from the centers of these two domes. Floating between the ends of the two cones was a massive glowing sphere around which a large horizontally orientated ring seemed to be floating. The glowing sphere rippled and roiled like living fire. She recognized it instantly as a ball of superheated plasma.

A lump formed in her throat a moment later, as she realized there didn’t seem to be a containment field around that plasma. None at all. The sphere rippled, and a prominence suddenly shot off it towards the ceiling. What followed wasn’t what she expected. Instead the prominence arced, curving into the ring. Where it rippled across its surface and dissipated harmlessly. She realized a moment later that her heart was beating rapidly.

Forcing her eyes from the giant death trap, she noted the few people, and an obvious place to set down her container. Most of the people here were simply monitoring equipment, but there was someone working near an open panel as well. Sali didn’t pay them much mind. Instead, she did what she needed and got out of there faster than she normally would.

She practically rushed out of the room, and made her way down the corridors. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that she stopped. Those aliens were crazy. That thing was a fucking plasma reactor. She had never even heard of one being placed on a starship. In many respects they were more dangerous than an antimatter reactor. As it was far more difficult to keep burning plasma contained. She had no idea how that plasma reactor was contained, but frankly she did not want to be anywhere near that thing. Sali wasn’t going to trust in alien technology she knew nothing about.

Putting that aside, she looked around, and quickly realized she didn’t recognize her surroundings. She wasn’t in one of the main corridors, and there was no one in sight. Not even a gaurd. She must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, and somehow she had also lost her watcher. The corridor she was in right now was a smaller narrower passage, but it didn’t look all that different from any other. With regularly spaced doors, armored walls, dim lighting, and steady blue lights running the length of the corridor. They were always, a steady blue, and then suddenly they weren’t. They turned red as she was looking around, the hum of the warp drive ceased, alarms rang, and a computerized voice made an announcement. She didn’t understand every word, as she had only picked up a small handful of alien words so far. Something about this felt very ominous.

Neutral Trading Outpost, Jewel of Dalmini, Dalmine sector 1457 hours:

“Shields Critical!”

“Hull breach, level fourteen!”

“Sir! New contacts!”

The outpost commander bit back a curse. Today was not a good day, not by a long shot. It didn’t help that she was woken early to this. It wasn’t unheard of for raiders to attack transports, and freight conveys near the outpost. An attack on the outpost itself was something they didn’t normally do. This wasn’t a raider attack, she was sure of it. Something told her it was only meant to look like one.

She certainly didn’t need more raiders. Focusing on her terrible tactical situation, she shouted back, “Divert additional power to the shields! Take it from life-support if you have to, but don’t let those shields fail!”

Turning she ignored the hull breach, and trusting in automated measures to deal with it, said, “Can you identify those contacts.”

“Negative, sir. No match in the database.”

She immediately requested they be placed on screen while glancing at the tactical plot. Several raiders had changed course. They were now moving towards the new contacts. That could mean one of two things. She had her preference on which.

Her main screen crackled, fizzed and soon displayed a somewhat grainy image. Three alien vessels could be seen, in a loose formation, along with two raiders approaching. The big one appeared to be launching fighters. A carrier perhaps? No, the lines were more suggestive of a heavy combat vessel, and it was huge. Perhaps a Battlecarrier? Not that she had time to speculate. All that mattered was determining if these were new foes or potential friends. Obviously, she hoped for the latter. Maybe they had come in response to her distress call sent hours earlier. Something she deeply hoped was the case, but she wasn’t going to hold out for it. With her luck, they might have been behind the whole attack.

A thought that immediately proved suspect. One of the raiders, a destroyer-sized ship was closing on the port side of the big one, when suddenly a blue energy beam lanced out from the alien capital ship. It raked across the hull of the raider from stem to stern. Shields flared, and buckled. The beam tore through deck plating, hull, and superstructure like tissue paper. Fires broke out, and several internal explosions ripped through entire sections of the ship, as she was effectively bisected by the alien beam weapon.

In an instant, she was nothing more than floating wreckage, as lifepods were being launched. Pods the aliens promptly ignored, instead turning their terrible weapon on a second target, another destroyer, with equally deadly results. Something that garnered the attention of several of the larger raider ships firing on her outpost. A fact the commander was quite grateful for given how strained her shields were.

Something reflected in her next order to tactical, “Let them go, focus your fire on the remaining ships.”

At that moment she noticed, the raider flag open fire on the alien flag. Both ships were of similar tonnage. The raider flag was outfitted with high-yield plasma mortars, a potent weapon that they shouldn’t have even had access to. The plasma mortar was a short range plasma weapon intended for use against heavy capital ships, outposts and starbases. It fired ‘heavy plasma shells’ which were dense plasma rounds contained by an energy envelope. The resulting heavy plasma bolt or shell as it was often referred to had a destructive power comparable to the inelegant concussion plasma cannons the Cathamari liked to use. With much better range as well, unfortunately, it was also somewhat inaccurate, especially at range.

Potent orange-green bolts of deadly plasma ripple fired from the raider’s menacing hull. Yet the aliens seemed to take no evasive action, and to her surprise, she was informed that they hadn’t raised shields either. Perhaps they could not? Some ships, especially those with older technology were vulnerable just after completing a jump. Yet what followed was shocking.

The bolts slammed into her hull, splashing the armored alien hull with deadly plasma. Fire roiled across the surface of her dark hull, in an impressive display. The fire soon dimmed and vanished, leaving behind a pristine, unblemished hull. The alien hull plating had held.

She returned fire, and began a maneuver where the commander noted that the alien’s hangar bays were closed now. Bolts of blue energy rippled from weapon ports that she hadn’t noticed before. Shields flared in response and held against the alien weapons. Not much surprise there, both ships were of similar size

Moving away from the two titans duking it out, she glanced at her ops center. “Shield status?”

Ship Unknown, Location Dalmine Sector, en route to the Jewel of Dalmini, 1515hours:

She leaned over the tactical display. They were still a good three hours out, but they were close enough now that long-range sensors could give them data on the battle unfolding at the Jewel of Dalmini.

The outpost was a Neutral outpost of Valorian make and origin. Manned by Valorians, but open to races of all sorts. It often served as both a center of local trade and a neutral meeting place for local powers. Why anyone would be attacking the outpost, she didn’t know. Raiders typically waylaid ships leaving or approaching the outpost. Occasionally they might skirmish with the local fleet but never had they directly attacked the outpost before.

What she could see on the display had her worried. There was no sign of the two hundred ship fleet assigned to protect the outpost and patrol local space. Instead she saw about eighty ships of raider configurations, and very fuzzy images indicating the presence of alien ships. At least one appeared to be of battleship tonnage. She wasn’t sure of the exact numbers since they only appeared on sensors when they fired. From this range it was hard to tell exactly what was going on. However that didn’t prevent her from noticing that the outpost’s shields were strained, readings indicated they were close to failing.

She turned, “Increase speed!”

“Sir! I must protest. Our drive is already at maximum, any more could burn out the drives!”

She glared, “I said increase speed. Burn them out, but we need to be there now! INCREASE SPEED!”

“...Aye, sir. Increasing speed.”

She heard the hum of the warp drive increase, and the deck began to vibrate a bit. That hum quickly transitioned to a slightly ominous sound, but she knew the ship could take it. Her ship had a maximum safe cruising velocity of warp 4.2, or 280 times the speed of light. She watched the speed indicator as the engines were pushed. Warp 4.3, 4.4, 4.5. It crept up there quickly before leveling off at 4.56. That was about at hard as the engines could be pushed. Unfortunately even at over six hundred times the speed of light, it was still going to take over an hour to reach the outpost. She just hoped they could hold out until she got there. A sentiment not shared by her chief engineer who was giving her some rather angry looks.