Chapter 8

Sepia star system, inner system.

Sepia Prime, SLF logistics headquarters.

"Ma'am? We have a problem."

Sarah blinked as she turned around, making a gesture for the engineer she had been talking to to pause. Usually she didn't like being interrupted, but when her marine sergeant said there was a problem, it was usually a big one.

"Yes sergeant?"

"We've managed to breach the armory. As expected, there were no survivors." He didn't need to say more. The SLF terrorists that had gotten trapped in the armory had refused to surrender, and their stockpile of equipment apparently included space suits and oxygen reserves, making knock out gas useless. So she'd simply ordered the armory sealed...and it's environmental systems pumped full of gaseous acid like a hellworld's atmosphere. Usually that wouldn't have been an option for most people, but she did have a Near Verge ship atmospheric plant, which differed from a terraformer only in that it didn't have the DNA printers and gestation chambers to populate a world with terran bioforms. So synthetizing a simple acidic compound wasn't that hard. Pumping it into the armory without destroying the environmental systems had been a bit more challenging however.

Dominion spacesuits were good. But they weren't that good. Even they weren't made for 24 straight hours in such a hostile environment. 72 hours? She'd have been surprised if there had been any survivors, or even identifiable remains for that matter.

That meant some damage to the equipment, but she wasn't here to recover their crap, and she was fairly sure the system government wouldn't pay her for the recovered guns anyway.

"I expected as such. Damage to the equipment?"

"Severe. For the ones that were exposed to the air at least. Which is the problem. We found several rather higher quality crates than we expected, which were unharmed by the acid, and opened them. Those were secure crates ma'am...at least mid-Verge in technology."

Sarah winced. Estimating technology in the Verge, the vast expanses of mostly uninhabited space outside of the Infinite Systems Federation, was always tricky. After all it ranged from primitive worlds barely past first contact for who artificial gravity was supposed to be fiction, to Near Verge powers, with interdimensional jump drives and the capability to build capital ships the size of planets. There were a few technological benchmarks however, that had been used to create a rough scale, with 5 gradients:

Primitive, the lowest of the low, which essentially identified any civilization without the 3 pillars of interstellar civilization: artificial gravity, hyperdrives and fusion reactors. Given that those were part of the first contact package for virtually every newly contacted planet, finding tech this low was usually pretty damned impossible, hence her surprise at finding chemical powered cars on Sepia.

Low Verge. Basically the barebone of an interstellar civilization, with fusion reactors, space stations that didn't need to spin for people to keep their feet on the ground, reactionless grav drives to propel ships, hyperdrives to travel between the stars, ect. The higher levels of the low verge were typically civilizations that had managed to largely move away from the basic Universal schematics from the first contact packages, and used better homemade versions. The Dominion was considered in the upper level of low verge technology.

Mid Verge, which usually translated to the first emergence of homemade slow intergalactic hyperdrives (which sucked, but still worked), the appearance of viable man portable gauss weaponry like her pistol, the ability to build directed momentum drives for starships as well as interdimensional interference drives for missiles, and the capacity to build super-capital ships like dreadnoughts.

The High Verge was a bit more nebulous. People usually pegged it at the first creation of a fast intergalactic hyperdrive (meaning it wouldn't take forever to jump between galaxies), the manufacture of dimensional interference drives for starships and the creation of personal shield generators. There was also a pile of technology thrown on there, like dispersion shields and a boatload of other systems, but no two civilizations evolved quite the same way and not all of them developed those.

The last one was the Near Verge. That entailed about the highest level of technology you could get before the Infinite Systems Federation accepted membership applications, and since you couldn't exactly leave the Federation (and it was fabulously rich and advanced), every Near Verge nation that got to that point ended up joining. Interdimensional portals and jump drives were a hallmark of that point, alongside massive long range intergalactic commerce and super-capital ships like the moon to planet sized destroyers.

Mid Verge essentially meant that it was, what? At least few decades beyond the Dominion's best at the very least? Closer to a century really, although it could be argued either way.

"That's...Not good." That implied either ridiculously deep pockets...Or contact with the intergalactic tech smugglers that ran the black market of technological artifacts between the different nations of the universe, despite the interstellar tech embargos. "What was inside?"

"Weapons. Heavy ones. We make it 6 gauss cannons, at least a hundred gauss rifles...And a fusion gun. A big one, crew served and tripod mounted, but still...a fusion gun."

Sarah's eyes went wide. Gauss cannons? Sure, she could name a dozen nations within 16 intergalactic jumps that could make them. Hell, the Dominion could build them, if they were ready to make them big enough. Gauss rifles were more....Complicated, but still possible, if you were willing to put the right price on them. Fusion guns though? Those were freaking ship to ship weapons. It was possible to miniaturize them, but it was a royal pain in the ass and made the gun as much a danger to it's crew as the enemy, hence why most were remote controlled or manned by soldiers in power armor. The Alterian Directorate had power armor carried versions that looked like a giant brick covered in heat radiators and cooling systems, and that was considered top of the line for a Near Verge power.

"That's...Very concerning. Tear down that armory sergeant. I want every damned thing in there cataloged down to the fucking serial numbers. Requisition whoever you need from the ship. If these guys have that kind of surprises in store I need to know, understood?"

"Yes ma'am!" The sergeant threw a salute, and immediately walked back towards the marine section of the ship.

Sarah went back to the engineer, smiling sadly.

"Sorry Joseph, I'm fairly sure that means you'll get requisitioned as well."

The engineer chuckled.

"It's fine ma'am. Should we involve our, ah, guest?"

Sarah tilted her head, then shrugged. Usually she'd never have let a prisoner in an armory, let alone one from their former allies, but Seria had passed every lie detector test they'd thrown at her. Besides, as good as her crew was, none of them was formally trained in weapons manufacturing or that kind of thing. Long practice and a lot of rolling around the universe as freelance mercenaries had given them a lot of experience dealing with a broad range of weapons and tech, but it didn't necessarily mean they were good at it.

"Sure. If you can get her off of her family first."

The engineer chuckled. Seria had reacted very well to seeing her parents and sister again, and unharmed, and spent the last three days practically glued to them, catching up and making sure this wasn't just a dream she was going to wake up from.

"I'll ask nicely. Besides I'm fairly sure her little sister is going to punch her in the face if we don't find her something else to do."

Sarah winced. Seria did indeed seem to be making her best impression of an overprotective big sister, although given what had almost happened to her family it was fair. Still, probably for the best to indeed give the woman something to focus on for now.

"Very well. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to pull Elteria out of her leisure time to give her the news."

If she hadn't been monitoring the ship's systems in preparation to contact her AI, she would have thought her engineer had teleported. Her crew had learned a long time ago to make themselves scarce when their ship's AI was pulled out of her daily leisure time. Technically Elteria didn't strictly need it, but she was crewmember and Sarah was damned if she wasn't going to get as much available downtime as anyone else on her crew. The fact that Elteria didn't take that much downtime was as her own decision, not anyone pressuring her into doing so. Of course, as an AI she could multitask like crazy, and thus didn't need to stop working to entertain herself, which explained a lot, but she still was rarely completely disconnected from the ship's systems and resting in the computer core, with only the bridge officer of the watch, the captain, or the ship's defensive systems able to reach her.

The problem being that 'grumpy' was a massive understatement for the AI's mood when she was pulled out of the downtime she did take. Officially, Sarah had no idea why that was, unofficially she'd made the mistake of doing a full audit of the ship's communications at the time they thought they had a spy onboard -which turned out to be false, their enemy just had a very good spy network within their client's organization-, and opened the secure packages for her crewmember's entertainment downloads. She didn't even know that any one planet had that many sappy romance novels on hand, and she really didn't want to know they had that much recorded, ahem, hardcore human mating rituals. The kind involving latex and ropes.

She opened the communication channel, cleared her throat.

"Hey Elteria. Can I talk to you for a minute? It's urgent."

*****

"There you go. As promised, 55 ground based, single shot anti ship missile launchers. Sixteen thousand gravities of acceleration, Mid verge ECM and penetration aids, and 30 megatons shaped thermonuclear warheads."

The military man smiled as he patted the box -well, cargo container at this size really- containing the missile launcher, and smiled up at Annalisa.

"Thank you, Moonlight. That...That might just turn the tide of this revolution, and the war that is to come."

"Hopefully it will also reduce the bloodshed." Allira shook her head and sighed. "The shipment for couperet has been delivered as well."

The military man's tone softened.

"No one likes killing people. I have grown...innured to it, but still, deep down I hate myself for what I've done." He sighed. "But couperet will put an end to this bloodbath. With the governor and all of her high ranking officials gone, the government will collapse." He smiled. "And we have received word of the celebration for the destruction of our logistics base. No one will miss the party over their greatest victory yet."

Allira nodded.

"Hopefully it will stop everything. Regardless, our mission here is accomplished for now. We will deliver further support once the system's government is gone. Liberator has promised a squadron of light cruisers to help deal with the hidden logistics space station, and prevent Dominion retaliation."

"Excellent. Then we will contact you when we are victorious. Goodbye Moonlight."

"Good bye Razor." Said Allira as she closed the communication link to the old soldier.

They had the weapons to deal with the gunship, the means to take down the entire planetary government in one fell swoop...

So why was she feeling a rising sense of dread? Why did she feel like her goodbyes to her client, and friend, were the last ones she would ever give him?

*****

"Sarah. I've run some analysis on the stuff Hector pulled out of the armory."

The captain took a bite of her croissant as the AI's holographic avatar appeared out of nowhere in her quarters. Elteria was probably still miffed at the interruption of her downtime. Or too concerned to care. Impossible to tell which, but usually the AI at least requested permission to appear in someone's private spaces bar emergencies. That was about the only time she asked really.

"So?" She said after carefully swallowing to avoid spraying flakes everywhere. The pastries were delicious, warm and buttery, but not exactly the cleanest to eat.

"Well, I have good news and bad news. Good news is, most of their advanced stuff is mid Verge, and there isn't a lot of it. Mostly infantry weapons and some spare parts for what I assume is some surface to orbit shuttles, probably held here to help their smuggler friends. Bad news is they had a few Near Verge systems. Not only was there the fusion gun Hector discovered, but also a personal shield generator and this."

The slowly rotating hologram that appeared on top of Sarah's desk meant nothing to her, until she focused closely. The way it was designed...

"Wait...That's one of ours, right? Well, it's Alterian at least."

"Correct. You never really saw them, but this is a portable, covert and highly secure long range communicator for the army, at least according to my database. It's obsolete, at least 300 years old, but compared to this place..."

"It's so high tech they can't even dream of it. What was it connected to?"

"No idea, but if I had to make a bet? There's a stealth satellite somewhere in the outer system that was getting covert transmissions. That's part of why the locals failed at finding the smugglers, they were trying to find how the terrorists were communicating with them, and kept assuming they were using couriers on freighters or that kind of thing, given the total lockdown they'd put on the long range com station. With this?" She gestured at the communicator. "If they found a way to link into the galactic network with the relay sat they could have direct access to the rest of the galaxy and the locals would never know it."

"Damn it...FUCK!" Sarah slammed her hand against her desk. "I'm a fucking idiot. I assumed that once we destroyed their logistics hub they'd be cut off, but that's no the case, isn't it? If they have a communicator like that here, they have one for their HQ."

"Most likely, yes."

"That means they could divert the deliveries on their way to them. Create a new drop off point." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Alright, get the ship to high orbit, we've gotten what we needed from this place." Although they'd kept the government's forces out of some sensitive areas, there was still the better part of an entire battalion around them now. They should be more than able to handle themselves without a gunship hovering over them. "Then get working on that com, I know it's going to take a while, but I want that satellite."

There was no question that Elteria could do it. She probably couldn't hack into the latest of Near Verge security systems like she could when they still had up to date databases, but a 300 years old communicator? That was a piece of cake. Well, relatively of course.

"Aye aye ma'am!"