Chương 205: Nova Wars - Chapter 161

If I could press a button and kill everyone in the galaxy, I would. So why are you surprised that I'm about to pull this trigger on the gun in your mouth? - Unknown, Age of Paranoid, Terra-Sol Lieutenant General of Iron Amanda Arnold "Iron Pants" Breastasteel stared at the data in front of her. Next to her stood Admiral Rippentear, staring at the data on the screen. One blip was a single ship, just sitting ice cold, slowly orbiting the stellar mass, out between the fourth and fifth planets. The system was dead.

The solid planets were atmosphereless rocks, slowly crumbling inward as the hollow where the liquid core once sat pulled in the surrounding rock. The gas giants were leaving streaks of atmosphere behind them as they orbited, their gravity unable to hold the gas that had previously been compressed into a solid. There was junk everywhere. Shattered hulks of ships that tumbled silently through space, all of them on orbits that avoided hitting anything solid or coming too close to the dead and silent ship.

There was another blip representing a single ship beside the first one. A Noocracy battle wagon, 'behind' and 'up' from the massive ship. It looked tiny. The Noocracy ship was 'only' ten kilometers long and a kilometer thick, with heavy guns. Not C+ cannons, for reasons that Breastasteel could never understand, nobody else seemed to be able to get C+ guns to work right. No artificial singularity generators or anything like that. Just standard heavy near C velocity guns. It was surrounded by a cloud of missile pods.

The big ship was what was holding Breastasteel's attention. Two thousand kilometers long, a hundred kilometers thick. Huge crysteel domes studded the entire ship. There were a hundred rings, slowly rotating, attached to the ship by gantries and boarding tubes. The ship slowly rotated around its X axis, the rings slowly rotating in the other direction, as it made its way around the sun in a five and a half Solarian year orbit.

The rotation along the X axis made it so the ship rolled fully every twenty-three point eight hours.

"How long?" Breastasteel said.

"Who knows. Forty-five, fifty thousand years?" an analyst answered.

"Life signs?" Breastasteel asked. The analyst shrugged.

"Long answer: yes with a but, short answer, no with an and." Breastasteel heaved out a sigh.

"That's an ansible link, isn't it?" she asked. The analyst nodded.

"Yes. Old style too."

"How old?"

"Around the Glassing," the analyst said. Breastasteel shook her head. The whole thing was warsteel mark zero. The domes were some kind of crysteel but long distance passive systems weren't saying what. The engines were cold and dead. There wasn't any massive power sources.

"Does its escort know we're here?" Breastasteel asked. The analyst shook his head.

"No. We've gotten a good look at him. He's a Noocracy superheavy, but judging by what we could see, it's old. Probably four or five war fighting material generations ago. Additionally, while there's extensive wear on its station keeping drives, its main drive cores are cold." Rippentear reached out and poked the image.

"So, he's been there for a while too," Rippentear looked at the analyst.

"Any life signs aboard the Noocracy vessel?" The analyst shook his head.

"No. That's the weird part," he pointed out the slowly tumbling debris.

"We've identified all of this wreckage as being about the same time frame as the Noocracy vessel, all of it Noocracy."

"They ran into the Terran equivalent of a PAWM," Breastasteel said.

"That thing has way too many guns for my comfort." The analyst shrugged.

"I think it was on automatic. I looks like that Noocracy fleet found it and it pounded them into junk. Just that last one."

"With all the missile pods." The analyst shook his head.

"No. THose aren't Noocracy missile pods." Breastasteel blinked.

"Those are all aimed at the Noocracy superheavy. It's to keep it down," the analyst said.

"We got close enough with a stealth probe to get a look. It's obviously creation engine produced, old warsteel mark-zero, non-stealth probe. Roughly two hundred missiles a pack with an nCv punch." Breastasteel nodded. The nCv round was to damage the shielding or the armor before the missiles came in. It had been replaced by a C- or C+ shell thousands of years before.

"We've had the computer run analysis. There's enough debris, but it's too long ago to send probes to visually and EM observe the battle. At roughly fifteen thousand years the signals would be too degraded," the analyst said.

"I don't want to leave it behind," Breastasteel said. She heaved a sigh.

"It's more than just a relic, it's a priority to get back." Rippentear nodded.

"Do we have any information on it?" If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. The analyst shook his head.

"No. Not even where its keel was laid down. No name, nothing." Breastasteel nodded.

"OK, let's try a few probes with IFF beacons. Let's start with early Confederacy, then try a few others," she looked around.

"Let's reconvene in twenty hours." 0-0-0-0-0"I'm telling you, I'm fine," Cipdek said for the fiftieth time.

"Still, man, you were fucking dead. I watched them recover your body and haul it off the transport," Vak-tel said.

"I don't know what to tell you. I woke up in a nice warm bed with a nurse and everything telling me everything would be okay," Cipdek answered. He tapped a few more keys.

"Come on, come on. Just because I died doesn't mean you should start observing EMCOM now." Vak-tel shook his head. Cipdek had been back for a week and nobody could figure out how.

"Well, at least you came back and got to hang out with us," Juvretik said, hands behind his head.

"Delta Company's CO came back and spent the next couple of days being yelled out for leading his unit into an ambush."

"He fucking should be fired out of a C++ cannon, the asshole," Nrexla snarled. It was weird, the fur on the left side of his body all somehow looked shinier and glossier than the rest. Of course, the med-techs had completely rebuilt his left side.

"Oldest trick in the book. Send one or two guys forward, have them flee when they see enemy troops, pull them straight into the main force," Nrexla shook his head.

"To quote Yuri, that's stupid boot shit." At the mention of Yuri Vak-tel snickered. The full conversion borg had been floating down a hallway in his weird mega-pinchers, six viewscreen, brain in a bowl iteration when he'd bumped into someone from 7th Marine Division HHC that was taking a shortcut through the Cyborg area. The Marine Colonel had fallen down and jumped back up. He had also decided that he was the owner of big brass balls that had enough rank they could be someone who started yelling at Yuri.

Waving the pincher tipped tentacles and screeching, Yuri had responding by chasing the 7th Marine Colonel through the hallways shooting fireworks and seltzer water at the unlucky Marine, screaming obscenities and claiming that the Colonel was a weakling and a traitor to Mother Telkan. Apparently the med-techs had taken almost five hours to calm down the brain in a jar. The Colonel, of course, was merely warned to stay away from the cyborg area.

Apparently, what had happened to Yuri had gotten around to the other Chernobog, resulting in a full blown war between the Chernobogs and the 7th Marines to the point that it was rumored Breastasteel or Rippentear was worried. Vak-tel wasn't worried. He'd had beers with Impton and listened to Yuri complain about 'stupid boot officers' and everything else. It was funny watching Yuri just pouring some of the beer into his 'brain tank' to drink it.

"GOT IT!" Cipdek said, flipping through the menus.

"He left the social media feed booster unsecured so I'm in." There was silence for a moment.

"Oh fuck," Cipdek said.

"What?" Juvretik asked.

"Him and the Old Man are standing with Breastasteel and Rippentear," Cipdek said.

"Hang on, trying to get the audio."

"OK, what's going on?" Vak-tel asked, sitting up.

"Got the audio!" Cipdek said.

"Shh, shh, I wanna hear."

"That ship is huge," Captain Kemtrelap was asking.

"What is Kilo Company going to do?" The Captain knew that Kilo Company, 17th Rifle Battalion, 3rd Infantry Brigade, 6th Infantry Regiment, 7th Telkan Marine Division was about to get handed an entire shit sandwich and told to take plenty of bites.

"Why shouldn't we use our Raiders?" The Old Man AKA Field Colonel Shrekna, asked, staring.

"The Division has a Battalion of Raiders." Rippentear puffed on his cigar a moment.

"What the Raiders are doing is of no concern to you," he stated. He pointed at the holotank with his cigar.

"Kilo Company has taken part in multiple boarding actions. They're a known factor."

"I want them," Breastasteel said. She looked at the Old Man.

"I know your Division has received several encrypted communications from the Telkan government and the Telkan Board of Military Affairs." Vak-tel looked at Cipdek who shrugged and made a quick note.

"Let me assure you, Colonel, I know what I am doing," Rippentear stated. General Shrewalka cleared his throat, tapping his ring from the Telkan-2 Officer's Academy on the table.

"The Raiders are part of my div..."

"Don't you knock your class ring at me," Breastasteel suddenly snarled. Electricity snapped and popped across her knuckles.

"I'll come across this table and feed you your own fucking fingers."

"Admiral," Rippentear snapped. Breastasteel swallowed visibly and heaved a deep breath to relax.

"You are under our command, General," Rippentear said. He took a drag off of his cigar.

"I have been informed there are serious..." General Shrewalka started.

"Your orders were to undermine command here, figure out a way to return immediately to Telkan-2, or to take the ship over from us and return from Telkan-2," Breastasteel said quietly. Stillness settled across the room. Cipdek, Vak-tel, Nrexla, and Juvretik all looked at each other then back at the hologram.

"That would end badly," Breastasteel said.

"I'm not taking on shape shifting Terrans armed with whatever they can grab," Cipdek whispered.

"We are at war, sir," Breastasteel said softly.

"I would have you hanged in the Telkan Marine Exercise Area if you attempt to follow those illegal orders." The General nodded slowly.

"However, we can keep working together if you feel that those orders were sent to you in error," Breastasteel said.

"I believe they were," the Telkan General said. He shook his head.

"There are conflicts and internal struggles within my government, which is why I put those orders in secure storage, filed them with Division JAG, and have ignored them." Rippentear nodded.

"But why not the Raiders?" General Shrewalka asked.

"I have them tasked on other missions," Breastasteel said. She shook her head.

"That ship, that ship right there, is immensely valuable in a way I'm not sure carries across." The General nodded.

"I'm using units of your Division I feel I can trust, to show that you, General, have the chance to show me you can be trusted," Admiral Breastasteel stated.

"This has to be pinpoint strikes, a scalpel instead of a hammer."

"I'm not sure exactly of what we are doing," the General stated. Breastasteel nodded.

"Indeed. You are only being informed of your part in this operation." Captain Kemtrelap stared at the General and, through his eyes, the four enlisted watching did too.

"Very well," General Shrewalka said.

"Although I would like my official protest to this treatment logged."

"It is so logged," Rippentear said. Shrewalka shot a grin.

"All right, Kemtrelap, get your men up and ready. They can be briefed enroute."

"And my briefing?" the Captain asked.

"Get your company loaded up in the dropship. Light rifle company loadout only," he said.

"Dammit," Vak-tel snapped. Cipdek shut off the feed.

"Great. So we're going into something blind."

"What do you think is so important about that ship?" Vak-tel asked.

"Man, who the fuck knows or cares," Juvretik asked.

"The Admirals and Generals know, which means we should care," Cipdek said. He shook his head slightly.

"Sorry."

"You good to get in the shit?" Vak-tel asked.

"Yeah, yeah, totally good," Cipdek said.

"All right," Vak-tel said. Right then they heard pounding on the door.

"ALERT! GET TO THE ARMORY! ALERT ALERT ALERT!"

"It never fucking fails," Vak-tel grunted as his implant beeped and he saw "ALERT" flash in his vision as the ship's computer let him in on the joke. They gathered up in the armory, quicky getting their armor. From there to the dropship. This time Vak-tel didn't see any humans. He looked at Impton who just shrugged. After a moment, Captain Kemtrelap appeared in his vision.

"All right, listen up. Kilo Company is being tasked with a simple take and hold. NavInt estimates that there will be little, if any, non-automated system resistance." He paused for a moment.

"We'll be taking control of the bridge of a Dandelion Vessel." fuck