Chapter 41

Hyperspace.

En route to the Narval system.

Silence descended upon the room.

"That is..." Began Seria.

"Illegal. We know." Said Elteria.

"Illegal? ILLEGAL? It's a freaking nanoweapon! It's banned by the Gold-Silver Concordat! The Federation has burned entire worlds to ashes for deploying those things!"

Sarah nodded. The Gold-Silver Concordat was a treaty so old it predated the Infinite Systems Federation itself. It banned the deployment of biological, nanotechnological and psionic weaponry, and created an organization of the same name in charge of enforcing the treaty on everyone, signatories or not. The Concordat was mostly funded by the Federation, and drew personnel and ships from it as well, but most Near Verge powers tried to pitch in as well. And while the organization did a lot more than just enforce the ban on weapons, like deploying legions of scientists and inspection teams to help secure research into those fields, providing assistance and general oversight, it was most famous for it's military interventions. The treaty was ruthlessly enforced to a level that makes even the Imperial Frontier Fleet's protocols for dealing for slavery look like a joke.

Because at least the Frontier Fleet tried to keep the planets more or less intact when they could. Sterilized, yes, but functionally intact.

Not the forces deployed by the Concordat.

"Indeed. Although if it is any reassurance, those nanomachines cannot self replicate. But yes, it is forbidden by the Gold-Silver Concordat. Hence why you will be taking that secret to your grave."

Seria closed her mouth as the double entendre finally percolated through to her. Sarah would hate herself for it...but she wouldn't hesitate.

Fortunately, she picked her crew well, and Seria slowly nodded.

"Alright. But aren't you...worried?"

"We'll blow up the ship once we're done. Nothing will be left but atoms. We'll just save the Divinium cargo if they have any, and the astrogation database. Since the nanoswarm only attacks biological targets, atmospheric seals and space suits, we should be fine. It will also self destruct before we fully board. We trust the IFFs, but...well, it is a nano weapon after all."

Seria wordlessly nodded.

"I would want to be in the same room as it honestly."

"No one does." There was a reason it was in a locked compartment in the armory...one whose only other occupant was a plasma grenade, which was about the only the thing short of a full on nuke that could take out a nanoswarm.

"Right. Will it...work? I mean, ships are made to prevent atmospheric contaminations and such. Besides, we have to get it in them, and I doubt we can slap it on a missile."

"Oh, it will work. We'll have to insert it in their ship manually, the nanites can't reliably survive a missile's acceleration." And those that did survive would be as dangerous to them as to the enemy. "If we get them onboard however...game over."

"Why?"

"It's a nanoswarm. A virus or a neurotoxin could be stopped by atmospheric seals, and emergency lock downs. This? It will eat through the damn bulkheads to get at them if it has to. The only thing that can stop it are energy shields and plasma." And other nanite swarms, but if they had a neutralization swarm they were screwed. Defence against nano weapons was at the bottom of any ship's priorities, and anything short of a Near Verge system would fail miserably at stopping Nic-3. If they had it, they were probably heavily armed enough that they would swat the Eternal Seeker out of the proverbial sky before it ever came close. And Old Joe's scan data was fairly clear the ships were only using low verge tech, although how he'd managed to get so much without active scans was an interesting question.

Seria shivered.

"That's...terrifying."

"Yes. There's a reason this stuff is banned." Sarah looked at the hologram. Technically the Gold Silver Concordat wasn't worried about those kind of weapons, that was why the Alterian Directorate had even dared to deploy them in the first place. It was the self replicating variant the Concordant was scared shitless of. And with good reason. She'd seen with her own eyes the cleansed ruins of the Alarus Star Empire in Weiter Stern, where a good quarter of the entire damned galaxy was still interdicted while the Concordat cleaned up the grey goo planet devourer swarms unleashed there. Even the...energetic purification methods deployed by the Concordat's forces, the damage was hard to overstate. An entire Near Verge level nation, just...gone in a matter of weeks. And that was if you counted the terrified ships trying to survive in deep space.

"Alright, well, we have a plan." Said Elteria. The AI clearly wasn't exactly enthused about it, but it was their best shot, and she'd come around in the end during their private discussion before bringing in the other officers. "The main question that remains will be which ship we chose to hit."

"Preferably a small one." Sarah nodded towards the table, and the hologram updated, showing a trio of spacecrafts. "They use three types of ships to make their regular cargo runs. They seem to be based on Dominion freighter classes, at least in their outwards appearance, so we'll call them Q- variations of those classes. They're armed, but not nearly as heavily as a true Q-ship, more like fleet auxiliaries. This is the Q-Caravan class." The rightmost ship grew bigger, looking nothing more like a long needle, dotted with ports and cargo systems. "6 kilometers long, 600 meters wide, 2.16 gigatons, about the size of the Flowers, but packing a lot of heat. It's not a warship, they still need a lot of cargo space, but according to Old Joe it has eighteen thousand weapon ports. 2/3rd of those are lasers, both dedicated point defence clusters and offensive systems, about half each. The rest are missiles. They follow standard ship of the wall philosophy, with the weapons split off equally in two broadside, which makes it three thousand offensive lasers, point defence clusters and missile launchers each per broadside. I don't need to tell you that ideally, we don't want to fight a ship that can throw a good tenth of our total tonnage in missiles at us per broadside."

Everyone in the room nodded, that much was obvious. The ship probably didn't have the shields or ECM to match, and it certainly wasn't armored, as that would have been obvious to even cursory scans, but it had the broadsides of the Dominion Navy's older heavy cruisers. They could take it, but they'd get hurt doing so. Possibly quite badly, although if they started in battle laser range it would probably be a one sided slaughter. Their shield could probably attenuate it, but there was no way in hell could fully intercept the Eternal Seeker's battle laser at full power, and with no armor to hope to stop it before it reached the core of the ship...But Sarah didn't like planning on having optimal conditions when the shit hit the fan.

"Next up, this one, the Q-Longway. 1 kilometer long, 100 wide." The standard for anything but the largest bulk carriers in the Protectorate was a 1/10th ratio, mainly to facilitate large scale cargo transfers with cargo shuttles. Only in the Core did you truly start seeing the giant spheres that depended on complex orbital cargo handling stations to unload in a timely fashion. "That's 10 megatons. Much lighter on weapons, 25 all told, all polyvalent lasers for offense and point defense. There's a catch however." She pointed at the hologram, which obediently highlighted several ports. "Those are disguised internal docking ports."

Elteria whistled.

"That's not a Q-ship..."

"It's a covert battle carrier. 3 onboard gunships, 250 kilotons, each with 5 missile launchers and a point defense laser."

"That's...problematical." Said Turral. "Disabling a single ship is one thing. Taking out parasite crafts is another."

"Indeed." Most ships used very few power cores and drives, because the former became much more effective and efficient the larger they were, and the latter because synchronizing drives, grav or dimensional interference, was a royal pain in the ass. Only large warships bothered...and that meant it was right out for someone trying to pass as a merchant ship. "Which is why I want to target these."

The hologram focused on the last ship. Contrary to the other ones it was far wider compared to it's length, although not nearly as much as the Eternal Seeker, looking more like a stick than a needle.

"This is the Q-Wayfarer. Not a bulk hauler, but a priority cargo freighter. 500 meters long, 100 wide, 5 megatons. 30 weapons, 20 missile launchers and 10 point defense lasers."

"That sounds doable." Said Seria, with some relief clear in her voice. "We can take that on, right?"

Sarah laughed.

"Seria, my dear, we can take all of them on. I just don't like the ass kicking we'd take with the Q-Caravan, or the risk if one of the parasite crafts bolts out and gets a message out with the Q-Longways. This one just generates less failure points if we attack it."

That reduced the armorer to stunned silence. Which was fair, the Q-caravan was something most Protectorate shipyards simply shouldn't be able to produce, period. Which posed some very interesting questions as where the damned ships came from to begin with.

"Besides, 'priority cargo' sounds...nice given who we're fighting." Said Elteria.

"Yes. If they're transporting Divinium, chances are it'll be through those. But that's not our primary concern. If we have to risk their cargo to get their astrogation database, we'll do it."

Everyone nodded.

"Alright. We'll go over it again and make a final decision once we're in system an actually have gotten a look at them ourselves." She trusted Old Joe, but she'd had bad intelligence too many times to completely trust the data provided by those outside of her crew. "Dismissed!"

*****

Eterna Deepstar sighed as she looked at the display.

She was an intergalactic smuggler, the government of entire planets danced to her tune...and yet even after bribing admirals she couldn't get information about a measly little ship and it's crew. Not full information anyway.

At least she'd gotten some more background data. It wasn't useless, but...

Well, the official design files for the Seeker-class gunship of the Alterian Directorate Navy stated that it was equipped with 4 missiles launchers, a battle laser, and 2 point defence guns. That was obviously very, very wrong given what she'd seen of the Eternal Seeker so far, but it was something.

Enquiries into their personnel files had at least yielded some results, mainly by delving into promotion boards and decoration awards, which were easier to access. A lot of the Alterians that still accompanied Sarah were decorated veterans in their field, and those that weren't had files so heavily redacted they read like freaking barcode. Particularly her marine sergeant and one of her engineering techs, these guys basically had 'recruited, assigned to special purposes', and a good few decades of nothing in their service records. This stuff stank, badly.

As for Sarah herself...

Enlisted at the age of 16, Alterian Directorate Navy officer's academy. Graduated at 21, assigned as an ensign to the Justice-class battleship Shattering Justice. Then a series of promotions and transfers to various ships, almost as fast as it was permitted. All cited exceptional performance, but given what she'd found out of the woman's family, it reeked of nepotism. Still, even the Alterian Directorate wasn't that corrupt, and its constant fights with the Atlantean Republic meant their naval forces were actually very competent, and regularly pruned for political animals whose sole qualification was their friends or relatives. Which meant that she had to be at least passable, or the navy would have stopped it.

Elevated to captain of her own ship at 30, a piddly gunship that was nothing more than a glorified patrol cutter, at least by their standards. Then a series of slower, but steady promotions. Commanding her own capital ship by 60, a battlecruiser, and eventually commodore of an entire battleship squadron at 100, then reassigned to a senior position in fleet logistics, special operations. That didn't sound like much, but when in a Navy where people didn't die of old age, just retired, that was fast. Then...Then nothing, until 120, where 'Discharged for familial reasons' was the only entry. Any attempt to dig deeper also had her contacts politely tell her to stuff it, or brutally go dark and reappear a few days later telling her that it wasn't a good idea to pry.

A polite knock on the door brought her out of her thoughts, and she looked up sharply.

"Yes?"

"Ma'am. There is someone who wants to see you. One of your, ah, business liaisons in the Silver Syndicate."

"Oh?"

"Yes. He says he has received some...interesting orders, and that you and the syndicate might have common cause concerning the Eternal Seeker. Should I show him in?"

Eterna leaned back into her ever so sinfully comfortable seat, and thought for a second. She didn't really trust the silver syndicate as far as she could throw a tank, but they were relatively reliable...for a bunch of barbarian upstarts with delusions of grandeur, that was. Besides they had a slice of the TRF's action, just like her, although those involved were desperate to keep it a secret. The old guard of the syndicate still held sway over the high council...and they were loyal to the Dominion to a man.

But...they had contacts she might not have access to. After all they did have a legal side to them, and didn't have all the baggage of being intergalactic smugglers. Besides, if it came down to dealing with the Eternal Seeker, she'd rather not rely on the TRF itself. Especially if they had scooped up the divinium container, as she feared.

"Alright, show him in. We might have common cause....Might."

"Right away ma'am."