>>CONFEDMIL

OK, I tallied them up. The winner is:

Incident-2394276a127a-raw-file.hol

Since we're in a secure chat room, we can run the file.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

>>MANTID FREE WORLDS

How many votes did whatever that was get?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

>>CONFEDMIL

Three. Beating P'Thok & the Malevolent Festive Holiday Gourd.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

>>TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Aw. I wanted to watch the Scoopie Crew face off with P'Thok against the Gourd Headed Equine Rider.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

>>RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

OK, now I'm curious.

What's the file?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

>>TELKAN FORGE WORLD

It's... scary. Really scary.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

>>DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

OK, I'm in. Let's see it.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

>>CONFEDMIL

It's full sensory.

And it's scary.

Here...

...we

...go!

-----

The small squadron was different than most Space Force squadrons. Rather than a core battalion of cruisers or better it was instead six frigates and a single destroyer, the hulls modified heavily enough they fit in no standard classes for their hullsize. Rather than bristling with weapons and groaning under the weight of armor they were built along the lines of fish, agile and sleek, moving through space and not-space smoothly without causing ripples or cavitation or eddies. Arriving in the system they dropped from an esoteric not-space and into what most people thought of as space and went still.

Under max stealth, the destroyer deployed massive arrays of scanners, sent scanning drones off in a complicated web, the drones moving with their own stealthed drives. The frigates launched their own web of drones along carefully planned routes. Once the drones were in position, they deployed their own scanning arrays that were sensitive enough to detect even the most exhausted photon's passage years after the fact. Every available scanner known to the Terran Confederacy was deployed, from simple visual and audio scanners (the latter not as laughable as it would have once been thought, with the return of the Black Fleet) to gravity sensors to sensors that could detect Deadspace emissions as well as track the progress of chronotrons and phasic energy emissions. Still others now tracked life signs that could exist in deep space despite any sustenance.

The frigates, only bare kilometers from the destroyer in a rough circle, launched systems that connected the entire squadron with hard-line communications.

The ships turned into holes in space and then covered up the holes.

The system was in the middle of an area of normal space that was twisted and warped, allowing the stellar mass and the planetary bodies to sink deep into the fabric of space. The stellar mass, formerly a high energy yellow star, was now a sullen burning purplish red mass at the center of the system.

The bridge of all the vessels was totally silent. People moved in thick slippers, if they moved at all. Most of the crew knew that now that they were 'on mission' they would not be leaving their cradles, the lids closed and the interior filled with biogel. Their eyes were closed even though they watched their instrumentation on their retinal and optic nerve linkages.

The ships had no atmosphere, no lights inside. Every power cable was triple shielded, every computer was Ferry-Day'd, every holo-emitter was air-gapped as was every screen.

The ships would register as lifeless to anyone who managed to dig up the hole and find them.

But they watched, silently, unmoving, as the data came in. Some slow, some fast, some superluminal, but all of it flowed in.

The ship's computer was a simple thing, barely qualifying as a dull Virtual Intelligence, and it had no curiosity, no wonder, it just performed the tasks as they had been laboriously encoded into it. It had no personality, no weighted bias tables. It was only responsible for certain tasks within a certain sphere. The rest of the ship was all local control, each station such as engineering or damage control or shields run by a dull VI that was cut off from anything not directly related to its duties.

Each ship contained three Digital Sentiences, each in heavily shielded disaster frames and locked into charging stations that, again, were heavily shielded to the point that not even a stray tachyon was able to escape. Two were 'asleep', waiting in Thrint Stasis in case the 'awake' one was damaged or had to take over duties in the case of an emergency. There was no V-Space, no VR, no computer system 'thick' enough for them to exist in. It was meatspace or nothing for them.

The hardware was there, in case of a major emergency, but it was airgapped and powered down completely, degaussed and without a single stray particle along the molecular circuitry and other esoteric systems.

The Captain, Jane Thomas Choi, was linked to the ship itself, in a V-Space provided by the heavy duty cybernetic linkages in her head. She often joked to friends that she had enough space to smuggle a Digital Sentience.

She wasn't lying.

Currently, most of her hardware was on standby, she was strapped into her command couch, surrounded by thick biogel that was closely related to synthetic embryonic fluid mixed with kinetic absorption gel, her body cybernetically disconnected from her motor control cortexes even as it received minor electric shocks to maintain muscle integrity as well as each organ having an implant designed to keep it functioning without input from her brain.

As it stood, she was hovering on the edge of a medically induced coma, cryosleep, and wakefullness.

As was the entire crew.

None of them minded, they all knew that, once again, this was one of those missions. The ones you might read about centuries after the fact, that nobody knew ever happened, but was vitally important enough for ships to be custom built or retrofitted and the crew hand selected. Unlike most Space Force tours, this didn't last five to ten years.

This one was a signup of "To Be Determined" on the paperwork, all of which, on paper, put the crew 'On the Beach' for semi-retirement on Luna.

The Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems had learned long ago that intelligence won more battles than blind luck and running seat of your pants.

Through the heavily shielded linkages Captain Choi watched the system through every scanner the ship possessed while still in maximum stealth mode. Data flowed in, anything below light speed days old. From how particles caressed the hull to how the engine hummed and pinged, to how the crew reacted, to how the chronotrons sparkled and twinkled in almost a haze around each of the three planets in the Green and Amber Zones.

She checked the status of the planets two months ago.

Lanaktallan occupied. All three planets together were almost fifty billion Lanaktallan and six billion neo-sapients. No Terran forces. No Confederate forces. The system was largely just a habitation system, it produced almost nothing beyond sheer bodies and souls for the Unified Council.

Space Force had blown through, accepted the surrender of the System Most High, and moved on.

Data was streaming back.

The system was different now.

The two gas giants, one hypermassive, one a dwarf, teamed with life signs that that the categorization VI listed as Dwellerspawn of various classes, including the massive "Hive Ships" that could spawn enough ancillary craft to destroy and strip an entire system.

Great crystals were being grown on the closest planet, being raised up from the lava and magma of the hellish planet.

The one planet in the Red Zone further out had huge factories in orbit and on the surface, and Choi could see over a dozen space elevators surrounded by factories and strip mines. The VI estimated it was an autonomous war machine manufacturing site.

The three habitable planets, though, that was where Choi slowly focused her attention.

It required discipline. She had to focus on the two lights, one red, one blue, and keep the planet in between, or the planet would vanish. It prevented her from bringing her entire focus on the planet and risking raising a phasic alarm.

The planets were altered heavily. Cool, sandy, the satellites that had orbited the planet vanished and moved to the planet in the Red Zone. Tideless oceans and seas. Numerous crystal cities that looked like they belonged in children's book or a spice-head's nightmares.

"Priority target system," Choi said over the hardwire linkage to her Scanning Officer, a Captain Hooker, formerly of the Confederate Army and a tanker. He'd proven his skill over multiple missions the last two years.

"Estimated six to seven hundred million Atrekna ruling caste," Hooker replied.

Choi went silent. Nothing more to say.

The crew sat, their minds hovering on the edge of wakefullness as the data streamed in.

Days, weeks, months went by inside the sunken stellar system, while only seconds, minutes, and hours went by outside.

Choi opened her mouth to order the flotilla out when Hooker triggered a silent alert, throwing the image up to the gunnery officer, Captain Choi herself, and every other ship captain.

A burning light appeared in-system, between the dwarf gas giant and the Red Zone planet.

It suddenly unfolded in a geometric pattern that made the sole aware Digital Sentience wince with pain and several of the VI's throw heavy errors.

The pattern remained crinkly, like space had suddenly unfolded into one of the old origami flowers. It glimmered and sparkled even as shattered fragments of another stellar system could be seen.

"Deathblossom!" Captain Hooker called out over the link. "Confirmed Deathblossom! Type Alpha-Two!

Captain Choi moved everyone's wakefulness up a notch even as she swallowed involuntarily, her spike of anxiety somehow stimulating a nerve that should have been disconnected.

"Doublecheck all silent running systems," Choi ordered, keeping her voice calm.

A hull slowly slid from the folded and warped space.

Dull gray, the color of unpolished iron. The ship was blocky, heavy looking. The forward section on a 'neck', a long body, a connected after section. Four side sections connected by heavy angled sections.

"IFF detected. Multiple signals. Mantid. Treana'ad. Rigellian. Confederate. Republic. Imperium. Lanaktallan. Twenty. Thirty. Sixty ID signals," Captain Hooker said.

"Don't target it, not even passive targeting," Choi sent out to the Master Guns and all gunnery crews. "What's the ID?"

"Working," Hooker replied. There was silence as the ship slowly drifted from the crinkled space.

"Get me an ID," Choi pushed.

"The Theseus. It's the Ship of Theseus," Hooker said, sounding like he was choking. "It's the fucking Ship of Theseus."

Choi felt her stomach clench and she suddenly felt like vomiting even though she knew the sensation was entirely psychosomatic.

"All stealth officers, double-check silent running systems," she ordered.

Lights blinked off to the side of her vision, beyond her peripheral vision. Seven lights went red, then amber, then green, one at a time as each stealth officer checked his systems.

Another ship slid from the crumpled space. Same design, just two-thirds the size of the first.

"The Let There Be Wrath," Hooker said.

Choi could hear the sweat.

Another ship, same as the second.

"The Omnicide's Little Sister," Hooker said.

"Decrypt the files. What kind of capabilities do they have?" Choi asked.

"They might have different capabilities than the last time they spotted," Commander Tilkak'Nok suggested.

"Doubtful. We'll just watch," Choi said, whispering despite the fact she was speaking over heavily shielded fiber optic cable.

More ships came out, each with names that dripped with malice. We Don't Want to Talk Either and Roomy Grave and Cold Grasp all filled Choi with dread.

Quack Quack Motherfucker was the last and the largest, bigger than Theseus by half again.

To Choi it felt as if they should all be covered in space dust, derelict looking.

Instead, their running lights burned brightly, their hulls fully illuminated, portholes and windows lit up brightly.

Despite Choi's expectations, the ships did not make for the gas giants. Instead Quack launched two torpedoes even as the ships moved steadily in-system. The two torpedoes sunk into subspace, far enough that they were not exposed to realspace attacks, but close enough to realspace that they 'sprayed' a 'wake' behind them.

"Ready sensor switches, it's about to get ugly," Choi ordered.

Half of the sensors went down as the torpedoes suddenly 'sprinted' at the gas giants, exiting subspace and hitting the gas giants at nearly .8C before detonating.

The sensors rotated out and most caught what happened.

Heavy graviton compressors went off, like an artificially generated black hole had suddenly erupted in the middle of the gas giants.

Then the final effect of the torpedo caused them to ignite.

The compressor went off and the gas giants, now burning, seemed to wobble.

Choi was watching the ships as they swept in closer. She noticed the ships didn't deploy torchships, didn't deploy parasite craft or fighter craft, did not even bother deploying decoys.

They just moved steadily in-system.

"Theseus is firing. Looks like an nCv cannon," Hooker said. "Shells are already at .9C."

"Target?" Choi asked.

"Fifth planet. Three shots. Polar, Anti-Polar, Equatorial," Commander Tilkak'Nok said.

Choi watched as all three shots hit at the same time. She saw literal gigatons of material spewed off the top and bottom of the planet as the nCv shells hit, fluorescing the thin atmosphere in a needle that touched the crust of the planet. The shells obviously drove deep enough to be a kinetic kill.

But that obviously wasn't enough.

No. Not for this group.

Choi winced as the shells exploded. She could almost taste the white-blue snap of antimatter.

The poles blew off the planet at the same time as hundred of miles of surface leapt from the bedrock as the nCv round that had driven miles into the crust detonated. Over half of it was moving faster than escape velocity as the bluish-white hellfire detonated at the border of crust and magma.

"That's a kill," Commander Tilkak'Nok said softly.

The ships kept moving inward.

"Theseus is firing," Hooker said, his voice sounding sick.

"Target?" Choi asked, wishing she could wipe her mouth.

"First planet. Same shot pattern," Commander Tilkak'Nok said. "It will be four point six two hours till we get standard visual."

"Activate one of the paired quark drones, bounce the signal in the Oort cloud, laze it to us," Choi said. "We need to see it."

"Shells are at .985C already and are making evasive maneuvers," Hooker said. "Signal lost. They're running dead and stealthed."

"Smart weapons on that," Choi said. She shook her head. "Have they noticed us?"

Commodore Tunlu'uk shook his head. "No, Ma'am, doesn't look like it. If they have, they're ignoring us."

"Got a trace," Hooker said. "Profile says it's a scanning drone web. Two traces. Three. Looks like they're scanning the planets."

"The Atrekna better hope there's people that these guys want to keep alive," Tunlu'uk said.

"They might not care," Choi said softly. "You don't recognize them?"

Tunlu'uk shook his head. "One of the LARP worlds?"

Choi shook her head. "No. We wish."

"Signal coming in," Hooker said.

Choi watched the closest planet to the sun get slaughtered the same way.

Violation of the Orion Compact, the Revised Geneva Convention, and the Rigellian Rules of Space Warfare.

Not that they are signatories, she thought to herself.

"They're scanning," Hooker said. "Omnicide's Little Sister is making for low orbit on the fourth planet."

"So they're going to go to ground assault," Choi said. "Get every detail you can."

"Who are they?" Tunlu'uk asked.

Choi swallowed twice before she could get the word out.

"Earthlings."