Chapter 50

Deep space

Rendezvous point

Sarah looked around the bridge, before forcing herself to relax in her seat.

"Fleet will jump to hyperspace in...thirty seconds." Said Normensk, and Sarah smiled.

It had been forever since she'd gotten to do a coordinated hyperspace jump with a proper fleet. The fact that they were using her sensor data to do so also meant they were going to be a in much tighter formation than the Dominion would usually manage, even in relatively calm space, which where they were going definitely was not.

The captain's smile died as the thought of what was coming caught up with her. As a rule, after the fiasco at Sarvakh-9, where they'd been forced to surrender without even scoring a single hit on their enemies, she didn't take contracts that entailed fleet actions. The Eternal Seekers' main advantages was that everyone underestimated the ship, and sent too little force after them. That was something that could easily be compensated in a large scale battle. They could take out a squadron of escorts without breaking a sweat, but if a squadron of ships of the walls noticed how much ass they were kicking, they were pretty much fucked.

The Eternal Seeker was very, very, very good. They could take on and survive a Dominion heavy cruiser. They could, most probably, shoot Soliensky's flagship out of the proverbial sky. But even they wouldn't survive the missile volleys of an entire damned fleet.

She was also surprisingly nervous at having to hand over control of their jump to the Dominion. Usually she'd have acknowledge the instructions, promptly ignored them and made their own jump solutions, but this time they had supplied the jump solutions to the Dominion, and the place was enough of a mess she really didn't want to court an accidental collision. They were, after all, emerging decently tightly in the middle of a radioactive hell even Dominion Navy ships would have trouble seeing through.

"Fifteen seconds. Preparing for jump. Lowering shield. Hyperspace field up. All systems green. Hyperspace coordinates locked in. Hyperspace jump in 5...4...3...2...1...Jump."

Sarah relaxed as the sensors glitched out, before being replaced by the familiar hash of hyperspace.

"Alright. Elteria, switch us to a hyperspace watch schedule, then join me in my office."

"Aye aye ma'am!" Said the AI as her hologram materialized on the bridge.

*****

"So, we didn't really have much time after our little dinner party with the admiral." Said Sarah as soon as the AI's hologram appeared in her office. "What do you think of his intelligence officer's little brainstorm?"

"I'd say all of it is logical. Except for one thing: we know that the TRF has some Mid-Verge tech. There's no way the shipyards in Arion would have functioned with so few workers otherwise. Granted, it wouldn't necessarily take much to enable that -some drone control hubs and specialized software-, but still."

"And if they had enough to spare for these shipyards they almost certainly have some for their divinium mines. Frankly I'm surprised we didn't find any onboard their freighters."

"That's probably because the freighters have to be at the bottom of their list. They seem like a critical component to us, but they relied heavily on secrecy and self destructs rather than raw brute strength to keep their secrets. Hell, without Old Joe's intel we'd have probably never found them!"

"Fair enough. Still, they'll have some Mid-Verge tech to defend such an installation. Some sensors, at the very least."

"Which would enable them to be far more effective in there than the Dominion would be. Well, without our assistance at least."

"Yeah. Although that's not going to return their missiles to full effectiveness, far from that. Speaking of which, I'd like you to prepare our Freelancers and Azimuts for launch. If there's any time we're going to need them, this is it. Same for our...last resort package."

Elteria nodded. There was no need for a verbal response. Their 'last resort package' would almost certainly kill everyone in the area, including them after all.

"Once you're done with that, we'll need to draw up some scenarios. Notably, I'm wondering if their sensors will be good enough to detect a missile launch from our emergence site...and even if they do, would they be able to intercept a salvo before it hit their ship exit hatches?"

The AI suddenly looked very thoughtful.

"Maybe...Maybe, but it's a trick we'll only be able to pull once. Once they see what we've done, they'll just put drones above the damned hatch and fire at anything that approaches. Our missiles are good, but if they are willing to throw enough drones at it..."

"Right." Individually drones sucked, even as point defence platforms. That didn't mean they were useless, just that most navies preferred escort ships to fill the same role. But quantity had a quality all of its own past a certain point. Which was certainly something to keep in mind, because if those drones ever got into knife fighting range...A single one of their small lasers would be laughably useless against starship armor. Hundreds, less so. Thousands? They'd give even cruisers a run for their money.

There was a reason why even the Infinite Systems Federation Navy had drone carriers. Few, yes, but they did have them.

"Plan for a single volley then." Said Sarah. "Take as much time as necessary to target them. Our coms are good, but there's no way we'll be able to tightbeam detailed updates without doing more harm than good due to the interference. So the missiles will have to pull it off with launch data only."

"Aye aye ma'am. What about when their ships sortie? They'll probably have more than half a dozen hangars, or exit points."

Sarah chuckled.

"You know as well as I do that six missiles won't do anything against ships with those kind of defenses, especially if they know they're coming. And even if we reserved their first volley for that...well, they are the obvious target, I don't expect them to be incompetent to the point of not watching for long range fire, if only to avoid ballistic projectiles."

"Fair enough. Plus they'll probably start distributing the drones to guard ships as soon as they're clear, and form a screen between us and them for missile defence."

"That too. Alright, we-" Sarah blinked as she received a communication request, and raised her hand to her temple in the universal 'implant communication' gesture. "Sarah here. What's up Turral?"

"Ma'am, since I had finished battle preparations, I decided to run some tests on the battlecruiser phased arrays. I think you'll find the result interesting."

Sarah blinked once more, and nodded.

"Alright, drop by my office then, Elteria is already there." Sarah dropped her hand and the communication link, and looked up at the AI. "Turral found something interesting about the phased crystals we stole."

"Don't you mean 'confiscated for the good of the Dominion'?"

Sarah chuckled.

"Yeah, that."

It only took a couple of minutes for the chief engineer to make her way to Sarah's office, which the AI and the captain filled with inconsequential small talk and broad plans for the future.

"So, what's so important?" Asked Sarah as Turral came through the door.

"Not really important, more just...interesting." The chief engineer sat down on one of the chairs facing the desk, and sighed. "I didn't have much time to analyze the phased arrays, what with trying to get point defence gun 3 back online. No luck on that front unfortunately."

"Given the damage, that's hardly surprising. So, what did you find out?"

Turral gestured at the desk, and a hologram appeared above it. It depicted the odd, crystal like shape of a hyperdrive phased array.

"I decided to do some scans and analysis to verify they were actually meant for battlecruisers. They most definitely are, but...there are some oddities. First and foremost, their structure is just subtly...wrong in a lot of places. Those aren't Dominion Navy phased arrays, in any way shape or form."

Sarah frowned.

"That's...phased arrays take a lot of time and effort to develop, right?"

"Yes. And a lot of qualified people. Even the Directorate Navy uses standardized phased arrays for most ships classes. While our hyperdrive was special operations the arrays are the same any regular Seeker class would have. Hell, any gunship of our weight class would use the same arrays. And the special operations bureau..."

"Had enough resources they barely noticed me siphoning them off for our revenge, I know." And that hadn't been a small amount. The Eternal Seeker itself had been a very small item in all of the things she'd 'misplaced' during her vengeance. "So they have scientists?"

"More than that. They must have an entire R&D infrastructure on an interstellar scale. They aren't just using stolen Dominion tech like in Arion, or hell, like the rebels during the Civil War. They have their own technology, and they're actively developing it. That's not something a couple of hidden habitats could pull off either. We're talking entire planets' worth of institutes, laboratories, and even universities."

"So...we're not fighting an insurgency. We're fighting a nation."

"Or something close to it anyway. Most insurgencies are either supplied by the nation they're rebelling against or abroad with all of their tech, but that's not the case here. They might not have much of it but they have the resources to develop their own."

"Fuck." Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose. Things just kept getting better and better. There was only a few places that kind of support could come from without the Dominion knowing about it. And that meant that the Alientia, Condor and Sortor sector weren't just lending a helping hand behind the scenes. They were already moving towards rebellion and independence. "Alright, the die is already cast, but it is something to keep in mind. But you said first, what's the rest?"

"Like I said, the arrays are...odd. A lot of choices that seemingly didn't make any sense, until I ran some calculations. For example, those arrays would only support a maximum speed of 40 astras per day. And that's the absolute maximum, I sure as hell wouldn't push them past 30 for long."

"That's less than a third of a Dominion Navy hyperdrive's top speed." Said Sarah as she leaned back in her seat. The Dominion might be a Low Verge power, but it had very good hyperdrives for its tech level, a consequence of being so spread out. Most of their naval units had a hyperspace speed of a hundred astras per day, although there were rumors they had stealth ships with a hundred and twenty astra top speed.

"Yes. And they can't stay in hyperspace as long either, although that would depend a lot on the rest of the hyperdrive as well. I didn't realize why until I ran the numbers. Simply put, those arrays, while the manufacturing cost would be barely ten percent less than a Dominion Navy one, it could be made in less than half the time by a similar fabricator."

"Ah." Sarah blinked. "That is...reassuring and terrifying. The ships aren't the bottleneck..."

"The hyperdrives are."

They all fell silent, processing the implications for a few seconds.

"Do you think there might be a battlecruiser at the mine?" Said Sarah to her AI.

Elteria shook her head.

"If they had active battlecruisers they would already be moving on the Dominion Navy. I mean, hell, Soliensky covered that, remember? They could rip the entirety of the Fringe fleets to shreds with a handful of squadrons, and in the current chaos they might even be able to do it before reinforcements from the Periphery or the Core make it." The AI turned towards Turral. "Plus, phased arrays take a while to be installed in hyperdrives, correct?"

"Yeah." Answered the chief engineer. "At this tech level the hyperdrives practically have to be built around the arrays. Then the hyperdrives have to be installed on the ships, and they are far from the last part in, if you follow traditional ship building techniques that is. Even if you instal them as soon as you have them it's a delicate process."

"So they're probably still in construction."

"Most probably, yes. But I wouldn't want to be in the Fringe, or hell, the outer edge of the Periphery in a year or so."

"We'd already planned to get away from the Fringe. If we succeed at taking out their Divinium mines they'll probably start having trouble with supplying the shipyards building their frigate fleets, but I'm not going to bet our safety on that."

"Right."

Sarah sighed.

"Well, thank you for the information. At least we have a better idea of what we're up against."

And provided some considerable food for thought for the future.