Chapter 10

Sepia star system, inner system.

Capital city of Landing, Governor's Palace.

"Welcome, delegate."

Helena Martak nodded and smiled as the security guard greeted her as he returned her identification card, before waving her in. Maintaining her composure during these moments was always hard....but now it was harder than ever. Tonight....tonight Sepia would be free.

Or the SLF would be ashes.

She firmly stomped on the twinge of doubt that last thought gave her, and walked up the steps into the palace proper. Everywhere she looked, there were soldiers in the heavy ballistic armor favored by Sepia's gubernatorial guard, as well as several soldiers in the lighter, but still highly capable combat gear representing the army. Usually she only regarded them with contempt, but today...today she saw them with a new eye. These people would be the one and only line of defense between the governor and Sepia's liberators after all. She hadn't been fully briefed, but she rather doubted Razor would have launched this operation without means to keep the governor's pet mercenaries out of the mess, and she knew other agents would disable the automated defenses dotting the compound.

Those thoughts carried her through the entrance hall, smiling and exchanging platitudes with fellow delegates and members of the staff. She was so used to this kind of rote affair she could probably do it in her sleep. Which was good, because she didn't have that much attention to spare them either way. She had a precise timeline to adhere to after all.

*****

"Captain Ciel- Sarah." Said the governor as she shook her head with a rueful smile. "As much as I appreciate your dedication to finishing your mission, I think this is going a tad bit too far." Although the governor was probably aware Sarah just wanted to get paid and leave the system behind. "The SLF's supply chain is broken. The intelligence and prisoners your exemplary work has yielded has already lead to arrests throughout the planet. This party is being held in your honor as much as anything else you know. The least you could do is attend."

Sarah sighed.

"Governor, I appreciate the thought, I really do, but until further notice, the SLF is still out there, and if what we found is any indication, they still have their contacts available. In fact...In fact, some of the intelligence we have recovered suggests they may be still able to reinforce and receive offworld support."

That got the governor's attention nicely.

"How so?"

"We're not sure yet. It is mere speculation, but until I have confirmed or debunked this concern I cannot-"

The transmission cut out, and Sarah jumped slightly. That had not been the work of someone hanging up on her, as the device on the other end would have still carried the electronic checks and handshakes to make sure everything was going smoothly. The signal had just...stopped.

"What the....Elteria?"

The AI's avatar materialized next to Sarah's command chair, frowning.

"That's....odd. I'm not getting any signals. The transmission just died. I'm trying to raise the palace, but no one is answering. Everything else is fine though, the customs ships are still answering, and so is-" The AI's hologram flickered. "VAMPIRE! Missile launch, 50, no, 55 missiles inbound! Planetary launch!"

Sarah might not be a navy officer anymore, but if anything her 6 decades of mercenary work had made her reflexes for those situation even sharper.

"Maximum combat acceleration, begin evasive manoeuvers, raise the shields and charge all weapons, launchers and point defence guns first." Said Sarah. She didn't even remember flipping off the plastic cap protecting the big red button on the arm of her chair. It was the only truly physical button there in fact, one which would only exist on her desk and on her command chair. She slammed her hand on it.

"BATTLE STATIONS! BATTLE STATIONS! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! BATTLE STATIONS! BATTLE STATIONS! ALL PERSONNEL TO BATTLE STATIONS!"

Fortunately, Sarah had decided to take the governor's impromptu call on her bridge, behind the privacy field that could be lowered around her command chair. Since her 'office' background was generated by Elteria anyway, she could have actually take the call anywhere, but she'd decided to give the governor at the least the respect of talking to her directly, and not just using her implants. And quite frankly she'd been in the middle of a review of their potential destinations after this was over with Normensk, her navigation officer, and had been too lazy and annoyed to bother going back to her office.

She took down the privacy field and looked at Elteria.

"Okay what the hell is going on?"

"We have 55 missiles incoming. They were definitely launched from the planet, but they're still climbing through the atmosphere. Probably planetary defence missiles not ICBMs, my guess is they'll break through and fire off their main drives within 10 seconds."

Sarah nodded as her bridge officers went to their consoles. Thanks to the Seeker's highly automated systems, and Elteria, there were only 5 consoles and seats besides her own, and only 3 of them were occupied: navigation, engineering and communications. The tactical console was more or less useless, as Elteria could run that department with a bit of help, and so was the executive officer's console, as the AI stacked that on top of all of her other hats. It was also a question of necessity, since the gunship was small, and her crew was never that large anyway, let alone the people qualified to hold down a bridge chair.

"Acceleration?"

"100 gs for now, and- main drive ignition, 16 000 gs acceleration, impact in 60 seconds!"

Sarah grimaced. Her definition of 'high orbit' for a planet was to get at around the distance Luna had been from Old Earth, about 300 thousand kilometers away from the planet. It wasn't a perfect metric but...well, she'd encountered too many scenarios like this.

That bought her some time, but that was 55 missiles, over 9 times her own salvos...and 16 000 gs for missiles was way, way above what the Dominion could do. Those had to be Mid Verge missiles, similar to the ones she kept most of her own magazines filled with.

"Weapons?"

"Missile launchers are online, but they're loaded with standard missiles. Gauss turrets powering up. Battle laser will take 3 minutes to fully charge...."

Sarah winced. She kept her ship's capacitors charged at all times, just in case, but that was only enough to fully bring up the shield and their engines while the reactor went to full power. Right now, with the shield at full power and the engines throwing them through the star system at a thousand gravities, there wasn't enough to bring their most powerful weapons online in any reasonably time frame.

"Won't matter. Fire the missiles in anti missile mode, then load counter missiles."

Elteria nodded, after all it was faster to fire the missiles in the launchers and reload rather than to extract them the normal way. The AI's hologram turned towards the communication station. It had become more or less tradition to have the communications officer run missiles and electronics warfare on the ship, since they didn't usually do a lot of talking when killing people.

"Aye aye. Connie, you got the birds, make them count."

"Yes ma'am. Firing..."

The ship shook slightly as the launchers fired the missiles at what would have been an appreciable fraction of lightspeed in humanity's home dimension. Fortunately the launchers were made to be able to fire backward as well as forward, the advantage of more or less using railgun turrets as missile launchers.

"Missiles away. Enemy missiles are evading and powering up their ECM, and- hostile missile down!"

"What?"

Elteria gestured at the main display as a myriad of white lines appeared on it.

"Detecting laser fire from Sepia's ships. They're trying to take them out." The AI shook her head as more and more lines kept appearing. "It's not going to be enough."

The locals were indeed outmatched, but...the missiles were driving through them, and were trying their best to evade the Eternal Seeker's anti missile defenses, as well as directing all of their ECM and jamming towards the gunship, which made the areas around them a mess of electronic madness. Not enough to completely confuse her ship's sensors, but still. That focus however gave the customs cutters, which in and of themselves were basically heavy shuttles with guns, barely 2/3rd of Eternal Seeker's size, a chance. And the 3 ships in range had a lot of antimissile lasers, if nothing else.

In 10 seconds, over a hundred laser beams stabbed through space, and half a dozen missiles died, then-

"Interception!"

On the surface of Sepia, people screamed and dove for the ground as the flash of nuclear detonations filled the skies. Six thermonuclear warheads, each sixty megatons in yield, detonated, and for a brief second there was a new sun in the sky.

"Result?"

"5 direct kills. Launchers are cycling...."

The missile launchers could only fire every 30 seconds. They'd been built for a 15 seconds cycle time, but....age had taken it's toll on them, despite all Sarah's people could do.

"Hold the next salvo until they're in point defence range." Sarah smiled. "We won't get a third volley anyway."

Connie nodded, and Sarah sighed, and focused on the small timer Elteria had thrown on the corner of her vision. Although they could use the battle laser as a point defence weapon, and fire counter missiles out of the missile launchers, the gauss turrets were the ship's true antimissile defence. But they only had an effective range of a hundred thousand kilometers, as even the most basic of defensive patterns would make hits...unlikely on a target as small as a missile beyond that range. That meant that the turrets would only get about 10 seconds before the missiles connected.

"Stand by point defence!" Yelled out Elteria. It was unnecessary, but tradition was tradition.

The timer reached zero.

"Point defence, engaging."

"Firing counter missiles!"

The missiles, now only 43 of them -one more had been nailed by Sepia's ships before they had exited their laser's range-, began their final suicidal dive on Eternal Seeker.

The gunship's 4 gauss turrets adjusted slightly, and fired. Their projectiles were little more that slivers of tungsten really, only weighing 60 grams all told, but they were spat out at a good 0.15 c, which gave them, oh, around 15 kilotons of TNT worth of kinetic energy.

If they hit a missile, that missile was gone.

And they did hit. Missiles died in a cascade of debris and flashes as their fusion reactors failed and died in explosions of plasma. Then the counter missiles reached their targets, and for a split second the ship's sensors went blank as each antimissile separated into ten warheads, and 60 one megaton warheads went off.

But as the sensors came online again, they showed 15 missiles driving through the holocaust created by the death of their fellows. And finally, those missiles reached their optimum range, and went into final acquisition. The missiles overloaded their own sensors as they tried to cut through Eternal Seeker's ECM to get a clear shot, cutting their own drives to align themselves as well as painting a target on their metaphorical backs for the gauss turrets hunting them, and in that split second 6 more missiles died.

And then the ship lurched.

Sarah waited for a second, and sighed as she released her iron clad grip on her seat's arms.

"Alright, status report?"

"3 direct hits, 1 near hit, 5 misses." Elteria shook her head. "They were using shaped warheads ma'am, 30 megatons. But their sensors weren't quite good enough."

Sarah nodded. Shaped warheads were the standard of anti ship missiles, nuclear bombs with a mix of mirrors, gravitational lenses and shield generators used to shape the detonation into a vague cone, essentially turning the bomb into a one use plasma and radiation shotgun, like a makeshift fusion gun. It wasn't as good as a fusion gun, if only because it was relatively inaccurate and low powered, but it was an excellent way of killing starships without having to resort to the more fiddly and expensive bomb pumped laser warheads. It was also generally more effective against shields, due to losing less energy to the laser conversion.

"Right, shields?"

"60% and recharging." Answered the AI, before blinking. "I'm getting a communication request from the planetary defence command center ma'am."

"I suppose someone firing a few dozen missiles capable of wiping out a city each from their planet would make them a bit nervous." Not even mentioning that there had been enough missiles to wipe out every city on the planet, and thus a good 80% of the population.

"That's...not it." The AI met Sarah's gaze. "They're saying the governor's palace is under attack. They're asking for help."

Sarah sighed as she pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Well shit." She looked back up at the system display, and shook her head. "Take us back in, and tell Hector to prep his men. It's not in the contract, but I don't think our dear governor's successor will be inclined to pay us if we let their predecessor die without at least some effort to pull her ass out of the fire. What's the status of their response teams?"

"They...don't have any."

Sarah deadpanned at her executive officer.

"I'm sorry, what? What kind of incompetent moron doesn't have a response team for those kind of situations? It's the governor! Hell, their entire government is supposed to be there for that party!"

"Precisely. They pulled all the stops, all of their tactical response teams, special forces, hell, even some SWAT detachments, they just put them in the palace to reinforce the gubernatorial guard."

"Oh...That is....less stupid. So what do they have left, call in the army?"

"Pretty much. I've been told they're mobilizing their airborne divisions and every military base in range. They'll have reinforcements on route within the hour, but..."

"They'll all take too long to get there in time."

"Probably, yes. With none of the specialized intervention teams in place, no one saw the point in keeping their shuttles fueled and ready to go. Not that there would have been anyone to go aboard them, but they could have picked up some platoons at least, maybe a few heavy vehicles. Right now they only have grav vehicles, some helicopters, and -note that I am not exaggerating- wheeled APCs and tanks on threads."

Sarah shook her head. This world was so primitive it sometimes hurt. Even the Dominion usually gave their ground divisions shuttles to have a fast reaction force, or some embedded flexible logistical elements. And Sepia's customs cutters weren't made for atmospheric re-entry, part of what made them so affordable.

"Alright, well it looks like it's on us. Take us in."

"Combat acceleration?"

Sarah winced. The Eternal Seeker was technically rated for 600gs of cruise acceleration, and 1 000 gs of combat acceleration. In theory, the ship could maintain the latter for at least a day, but...their drive, and especially their inertial compensator, weren't fresh off the assembly line anymore, and hadn't seen a true Near Verge shipyard in decades. She really, really wouldn't want to push them if she didn't have to...but this was an emergency, and the travel time should be relatively low.

"Yes. We should be able to hold that much. ETA?"

"20 minutes ma'am."

"Well, let's hope our dear governor is still alive when we get there."

*****

A businessman, who many people would have by his codename, Papyrus, sat back in his seat. The SLF didn't have much in the term of space sensors, but what they had had been enough to feed target data to the one shot missile launchers, and let them loose.

And let him know that they'd failed. Somehow, they'd failed. And his sensors confirmed that 9 of the missiles had made it, that the measly gunship had taken over 270 megatons of nuclear hellfire to the face and kept moving. Enough to flatten every city on Sepia several times over, and it just...shrugged it off. It's shields weren't even down!

Just who the hell were these people?!?