House Arthas A Space Odyssey

It wasn't difficult to guess where all the credits in the universe went. The war industry never ceased to gulp down an unending amount. The crates in the storeroom were filled with weaponry that would have most tremble with greed at their sight.

I was unimpressed, SFC was better equipped.

But what was difficult to guess was where all these credits came from. Since I had been in the industry, I knew. It was logistics and transportation.

In the expanse of the universe and its massive amounts of resources, it was companies like the Helion Syndicate, and of course, my beloved House Arthas, that got rich moving cargo throughout the galaxies.

Most would not understand, and be unable to connect the dots, for why we were fighting today.

If only they knew that the SFC was a merc company owned by House Arthas. We were here to cull the competition.

A frequent occurrence. So frequent that the bulkcarrier had an escort the SFC needed two Dreadnaught class battleships to ambush.

An ambush, like the one inside the ship where two of my miniscout drones had been destroyed and where the mapping indicated several pockets of fighting. I would choose to avoid them while I grabbed the tech I needed.

I hold my blaster ready and pointing downwards. Plasma guns have short range but scale powerfully the closer you are. They are perfect for close-quarter fighting, hence why I’m holding one.

My biosuit can only absorb a few hits close range, yet each would knock me off my feet. And I’m a large target inside these narrow corridors.

So I rely on my tech, my training, and my nerves' abnormal reaction time to keep me alive.

Mainly my tech though. The miniscouts hold Type 3 sensors that would spot any kind of threat. The standard Type 1 image/audio only, or Type 2 spectrum imaging, can’t pierce through cloaking tech. Type 3 sensors do.

So when I upgraded my drones to have cloaking features, I made sure to make them foolproof.

From their scans, I know four lurkers with active phantom cloaks hold a corridor further inside, to the right. They don’t know I’m here but they would suspect it from my messy entrance.

Inside the storeroom, the Artificial Magnetic Atmospheric Field, AMAF, is degrading without the metasphere on, and already the vacuum of space is sucking at the room.

I nudge my two troops forward and seal the door as we exit. We go left.

—-

Sometimes I get lost in thought, it's the silence that holds me captive, the same as when I flew through space to pierce the shields, no alarms are blaring inside this battleship, and for good reason.

There are two Dreadnaughts between us deploying a weak EMP field to block any offensive weaponry that would have pulverized us all before we made it halfway to the enemy battleship.

Only their heat-based laser functioned and a handful of reinforced drones and still, the damage to the Spacediving forces had been too great.

A signal close by pulses and degrades. My optics flash red, and the brainchip in my brain reboots to prevent entry to the AI malware the enemy just sent out. It will take a few seconds for it to be up and running. A small nuisance.

The main assault server carried by a drone somewhere on the battleship is still on, so our mapping hasn’t been compromised. Moving around blind in an enemy battleship could become dangerous fast.

I smirk. I find it mildly sarcastic that whenever technology makes a breakthrough, war will find another way to war. Not that any of this is new; it's just levels on top of levels.

My companions are entirely unaware of what just happened. Lowtechs do have the best defenses against hacking–a standing joke around the universe, but I don’t hold them to it. They are doing me great service today.

We search the corridor and the next in a slow tight formation. Most rooms are a mix of crew cabins and storage spaces like the one we entered from. My little treasure trove is growing as I add item after item, and I’m soon forced to select only the most valuable. Or rare.

It will be a month until we return to the SFC’s main hub. Parts will be in short supply until then. And we can’t just exit the ship trailing bags of loot now can we?

One of my miniscouts beeps me. It's dodging through a group of Syndicate soldiers, who give chase hot on its rotors.

I curse loud enough for my two companions to freeze and look back at me. I imagine the looks of concern they are wearing under their masks.

It's flying towards us. The evasion algorithm found the safest path to disengage. We are of a similar mind, my loyal drone, yet there is no time to evac our asses away from their path without being especially reckless.

My brainchip is still booting, there is a buffering sign on my optics that shows the progression until my apps are back online.

No matter how many times I see that loading circle, I still feel an especially savage urge to destroy the little chip or pull my eyes out. I believe the human race has developed an aversion to it.

The odds of our likely confrontation are not terrible, however. We just have to prepare a few tricks. A party is always better with planned entertainment.

“We’ve got incoming,” I say to my aides and they tense like rusty drones. I give them a brief go-through and we set up in preparation. I can see from their movements their adrenaline running high. Trigger-happy marines won’t be an asset in an ambush but this is the hand I’ve been dealt with, I’ll pull through.

We don’t have to wait long, and my miniscout, with its cloaking down, buzzes through the corridor.

Even with my assurances Igor and Gardenia point their blasters to the passing drone. I exhale in relief when they don’t react.

We are hidden inside a crew cabin, under my phantom cloak, nulling any infrared sensors that would reveal our position.

The enemy soldiers pursue in a line with the vanguard chasing after my drone, and the rest clearing the passages and empty rooms.

I have trapped the end of the corridor with a tripwire, lowtech and thus invisible, that would set off a nice welcoming show.

The first enemy passes us by in a rush. He is wearing a bulwark over his biosuit, so thick it can withstand any close-range blast. We huddle down close together.

Next, come the soldiers. One enters our cabin, his biosuit black and blaster ready to fire, and sees nothing but a vacant room.

KCHIN

The vanguard has reached the trap and trips on the wire. I imagine a blast that would rock the battleship, but I haven’t used any explosives, this isn’t the pre-Astro times. Instead, I used a nasty biogravity mine, the only one I carried, that would pull at anything biological inside the corridor.

THUNK

The bulwark soldier hits the mine with a sound as it activates. I hear other soldiers getting dragged and see them flying sideways past the cabin’s door, the pull too strong for them to resist. Without losing any time I stand silently, letting the phantom cloak fall behind me, and kick the distracted enemy out of our cabin. The artificial gravity of the ship still works inside the room.

He flails as he enters the corridor unable to find purchase as the mine’s effect pulls at him with force and he slides almost vertically to where the rest of his unit is crumpled stuck.

When I reach the cabin door, the biogravity effect disorients me. I can feel 12m/s2 pulling me sideways even through the battleship’s artificial gravity. If I jump out it will feel like a free fall but the corridor will now be the floor.

Hugging the door with my feet and checking the other way for any strugglers, I aim my second weapon at the press of bodies.

The masks muffle their screams. I still shudder when I fire the armor-piercing rifle.

—-

I dislike looting bodies.

The biogravity mine, already spent mere minutes after its activation, was drenched in bodily fluids and for a moment I was indecisive if I wanted it back.

The extra space would help with the looting. With my apps back online I recall the miniscouts to my location. Eight remain operational, but all are running low on power. It's better not to waste them unnecessarily, without their power-hungry cloaking active they are too easy a target.

Igor stays by my side, as Gardenia keeps some distance from the massacre with the pretext of securing the corridor’s other side.

My optics show the fighting has progressed to the ship’s bridge where the enemy is making a last stand. Due to the nature of the work, they understand there won’t be any surrender.

Still, phantom lurkers are a danger and damn difficult to flash out so we are on high alert. I wouldn’t want to share the fate of the bodies lying in front of me.

We tread carefully from then on, picking at things that catch my attention until we are recalled back to the Dreadnaught. The fighting has ceased with all the Helion Syndicate personnel dead and we barely saw action, a clear win for us three if I may add.

Finding an exit isn’t difficult, we follow other marines and exit through a drilled hole in a room with an AMAF still active. It would be too greedy of me to snatch at the metasphere in front of so many eyes but I still think on it a second too long.

The darkness of the universe greets me on the outside, and at the center, our Dreadnaught looms invitingly. SFC marines return from the battle, flying through the distance, swapping places with crews that will repair and operate the enemy battleship until we all return to the hub.

On the other side, a similar sight is taking place near the bulkcarrier.

I jump off trailed by my two followers. We will stick together until our deal is done. My biosuit propels me forward in bursts of speed coming from my boots.

At any different time, I would be enjoying the weightless trip, but the exhaustion and nerves of battle have me wishing for nothing but a bed to lie on.

With both of the ships' shields down, we approach in a controlled manner and enter through one of the numerous open portals.

A scan beams us just as we touch down, and we get the green light to move through. I go straight to a vacant storage room, where I pull out two credits and receive my treasures in exchange.

I’m pocketing 16 metaspheres and a good number of parts that I’ll use to upgrade some of my weapons.

The two privates pause before exiting, “Sir,” Gardenia says hesitating for a moment. “Thank you, for keeping us alive,” She is still shaken from the confrontation. “If we had been on our own…”

I lift my hand to stop her and go through several different conversations in my head. “If I hadn’t been there you would probably be dead, private.” Soft words can only produce soft actions. “Here we are, where 32% aren’t. Congratulations on making it to First Class both of you.”

Their posture looks uncertain. So I push. “Find me later if you wish to get a few bioaddons.” They stiffen at my words, but it’s not an uncommon reaction. An unregistered offering these kinds of services? I would be hunted down.

Yet life as an SFC member was ever so free. Nobody looked too closely at what we did. The death rate would be the last judge for us all. So I looted and cut corners every chance I got. Compared to everyone else here I could make wonders with the tech I found lying about. I was a trained Neoengineer retrained for war.

Now it was only a matter of trust. Trust that I needed to win over, or how would they surrender their bodies to a stranger?

“We don’t have the credits t..to…”

“Ah, but you do now.” They were still holding the credits in hand. “It’s something that might save your lives in the next assault. You will not be the first or last to upgrade during this trip.”

“You mean there are others?” Igor blunders and receives an elbow hit from Gardenia.

I remain silent and they get the meaning. They exit and I give high odds of seeing them again in a few days, especially Gardenia.

I can almost smell the fear.