Rescue - Edited 11-9-2018

Marques joined me not too long later.

“Thought I’d find you in here, Ma’am.” Was his comment.

“Hey there. Working on an FTL prototype. Want to give me a hand?”

It was out of courtesy more than need. With the gravity on this rock as low as it was, I was quite capable of moving almost a ton by myself, and that was using only my real arm.

“What did you want to talk about?” I asked him after we had moved a containment cylinder from the fabricator to a suspension field, helping to create an “exploded” model before we started to secure the engine.

“Well, Ma’am, I feel a little uncomfortable with the orders. I mean, destroy the Arks if t we can’t free them? What sort of madness is that?”

“I am thinking of it as a mercy. No, I am CHOOSING to think of it as a mercy. Would you like your fellow humans to become science experiments or slaves? I wouldn’t, so if I can’t free them, I feel that it is a mercy to stop the external influences. As for 9 and 11, they may not be under influence or duress, so I am hopeful we can speak with them and get it resolved, and then get us all back together.”

We moved a few of the last pieces into place as he thought about what I had said.

“I suppose that is a much better thing. I thought that the orders were to just destroy them if they didn’t want to return.”

Although that is how I read the orders as well, I didn’t give any hints to that. As far as I was concerned, once they were all patched up, they could do what they wanted. I sent out the command to have the “exploded” device scanned to create the final blueprints; then I gave the order for the constructor drones to start assembling everything.

“We have a few hours before we can test this, how’s the craft coming?”

“I wanted to run a few things by you. You know how we have it all figured out how to detect craft using gravity waves, now?”

“Yeah, I help with those sensors.” I walked over to a table and sat down bringing up the plans.

“Well, what if the rest of humanity has the secret to that now, as well?”

“Simple, we build a better stealth drive,” I said. I had my visor opened, now that I was away from anything that *might* explode. I then ran a data line up to my data jack.

Observer, Neith, can you bring up on screen the schematics for our energy output with the current stealth fields?

“As you can see, the stealth fields have an output that closely resembles the gravity sensors detection field. How about we change the power profile on it?” We started going over ways to mask the output from the new engines as well as every other bit of EM leakage we could conceive of. The most difficult was going to be light. Fortunately, a matt black paint job would do most of the work for in space. Folding light around us for atmospheric insertions would be more difficult, but that was something to work on later. We wouldn’t need that quite yet. We were in the middle of configuring the adjustments to the various power curves when the construction drones completed the construction of the skip drove and alerted that it had been implanted into a mining drone.

The test was mostly successful. We jumped it five light minutes out and it appeared exactly where we asked it to. The “mostly” came from our own predictions as to a nearby asteroid that ended up where the drone appeared. The explosion was magnificent. On the launch of our second prototype, we made sure to calculate the movement of rocks for the jumps. It was entirely successful for five, ten, twenty and thirty light minutes out. From there we created a manned pod, filled it with all sorts of sensors, scanners, and so on, then we figured out how to get the jumps all timed out. We set the drone to wait one hour and scan when it reached its destination, then to jump back.

A side effect was that there were two drones for a half second as the light coming and going hit us at the same time. Weird. With that, our testing was a success, and we were able to build out a larger version for the assault craft. We would store this one in the assault craft and use it as a back-up if it ever came down to it.

Two more weeks passed as we built out the assault craft. My Weapons Engineers had further modified the EMP grenades and Gauss pistols for efficacy against armored targets. We made sure the armories on the assault craft were loaded up for both lethal and non-lethal combat. With that, we were “out the door” to try and track down the Arks.

***

“Ma’am, Sidhe and Aos Si are in sync with Borrum and the flight leader. We should be good to do a one-light hour jump, just to validate the calculations for our formation. On your orders.” The pilot was, of course, referring to their AI.

They had been the first to take to the idea as they were used to having a second with them in flights. This would be not too different. Not surprisingly, they had gone the Celtic route for their naming.

“Good call, Walsh. Make sure Lynch and Quinn have verified the data then count us down from ‘10’.”

It probably wouldn’t be necessary, but having the pilots validate their data was always a good thing. The pilots had all done micro jumps like this in the past, just never in a formation. The sensation of a jump, according to them, was like being dunked in ice water, immediately followed by being dried off by a fire, and then having all the air knocked out of you. The pilots went through their numbers and then, we learned the truth for ourselves. It sucked. The first jump at one light hour was unpleasant. At least the sensation was over almost before it began.

“Ma’am, no change in light. If you would like to see, we can still the light from Ark-5 finishing the modifications on the Wormhole Generator.” The giant ring was large enough to fit the Ark in with room to spare. All the Arks were equipped with several of them as they would have been used to link up the new home we should have been creating with Sol. Now we were going to use them to shortcut the trip for any recovered Arks.

We made several more jumps, getting progressively longer. At the two “light month” mark, we had to recalibrate and verify the math for the jumps. We noticed enough drift to cause concern, not a problem at these lower skips, but at a light year or more it would easily cause an issue that could lead to a collision. After each jump, we also took a reading on light to determine the path of the Arks. Soon we found what we were looking for. Two Arks, another four light months out. We did a three-month skip; then we very carefully validated the data. We didn’t want to accidentally land on them.

Calculating out where they would be, we jumped. Too Far. It looked as if something had happened. The light that we were seeing was showing only one Ark, running off in another direction. That’s also when we noticed the two Escort craft. We jumped again.

The remains of Ark-11 were clear as day. The ship was massive, but now it was being cannibalized by the bug-like creatures I had seen inside Escort-001.

Observer, are any of your people on either of those two ships?

Yes, several are. Please assist. You must.

I understand.

“Okay, I hate doing this but let’s split the teams. Two and Three, land on Ark-11 and purge the aliens there. Search and Rescue when available. Torres is with you, right Two?”

“Negative, Ma’am I’m on Three.”

“Okay, good. I wanted to make sure there was backup and good help. You have the updates package? All of you?”

A chorus of “yes ma’am” came through.

“Good. Save who we can, patch everyone. Take out the aliens and save our people. We’re heading towards the Escorts. See if we can’t get rid of their command. I have intel that states there are captives aboard. Let’s GO!”

My orders were simple but should do the job. My assault craft had a fire team of Marines decked out as heavies, in the assault armor I had designed. We only had enough time to build the four suits. I was in my standard MK-II (beta) suit, but I had the added bonus of a small energy shield made from one of Observers designs.

“Team, let’s load up, full heavy, full lethal.” I grabbed a new battle rifle design I had made with help from the Weapons Engineers. As I picked it up, there was a flicker that appeared before my eyes briefly.

Ya No Ame Battle Rifle

Type

Kinetic

Rounds

50/50

Sight

Enhanced Link

Fire Mode Options

Pulse (5)/ Pulse (10) /Full

Weight

4.3 kg

Modifications

Custom Built

Range

500 m

Maximum

5000 m

It was there and gone so quickly had it not been for my memory I wouldn’t be sure I had seen it. I set the fire selector to a five-shot pulse, then swapped out most of my kit. I decided to keep several of my EMP grenades, but I used the attachment points on my armor to secure the extra magazines instead of adding a Thompson pistol. I also grabbed my Engineering Kit, securing it to the small of my back, and I verified that my arms ballistic shield was deploying correctly. This was a much lighter version than what I had used during the Reboot.

“Hey, Jax. You sure you know what you’re doing?” Janssens asked.

I had my old fire team, Janssens, Lebowski, Wilhelm, and Goldstein had all come through and ended up on my rock. They had muttered something about loyalty, friends, and not letting me have all the fun. Flawed logic if you ask me. Instead of answering him, I started an in-flight briefing.

“Listen up. Our target has changed. There are currently “bugs” on the hull of Ark-11. They appear to be trying to cut the hull apart and recycle her. They are fast, and they launch quills from their backs at speeds fast enough to crack open the MK-II duty uniforms. They are not the biggest enemy we will face. We also have a creature I call the behemoth. They are giant tripodal creatures with four arms. They are slow and strong, with great throwing accuracy. The will literally throw the bugs at you.”

I took a deep breath

Observer, can you send a copy of the ship schematic over to them, through Neith?

I didn’t wait for him to respond.

“I am sending you a basic schematic of the Escort ships. This is based on Observers data. Our goal is to rescue any of his races captives and disable the ship. If possible, we want to kill all the aliens except for Observers people and save the ship. Have you received the package?”

“Yeah, but I can’t read it, Danni.” Lebowski was nervous. He hadn’t called me by my first name since Janssens handed him his ass once in hand to hand “training.” I was a Lieutenant Junior Grade at the time, fresh out of OCS and had just been paired up with them. Lebowski didn’t think I deserved any respect being fresh out of school, but Janssens reminded him that it wasn’t personal.

“Think of it as a picture book; you can see the pictures, right?” Wilhelm laughed at him.

“Well, yeah…” it was nice being back with the guys.

“Take at least one mag of DU or AP ammo. Some of those bastards are big.” I took a deep breath and checked in with the pilot.

“See any place left open for us to dock?”

“Yes, ma’am. There’s a dock near the aft we should be able to drop you off in. It looks like there is plenty of room. We’re about two minutes out.”

“Go weapons free and be sure to use the following scanning profile as you approach.” I sent over the data on detecting the mobile turrets that Escort-001 had. Hopefully, It will work here in the Real as well.” We settled in for some basic conversation. Janssens and Wilhelm pulled a few extra armor plates over and sitting on them.

“What are you doing there?” Lebowski asked.

“It’s in case there’s an explosion, so shrapnel doesn’t shred their brains.”

I answered before either of them could. That caused a round of laughter. Ice successfully broke.

“Seal up!” The pilot called out. As we did so, I took one last quick review of everything.

“Everyone! Grab two more canisters of air. Walsh, weapons free. Keep our LZ clear. Trust the sensor readings, and if we come back, we’ll send an ID pulse before entering the chamber.” The deployment ramp opened at the tail of our craft. I looked at our LZ, took a few steps back, then ran and jumped.

I cleared our ramp easily. There was no question on that. The problem would be if the dock had an EM seal to keep it pressurized or not. The answer was “not.” I sailed through the zero-G compartment and caught myself on a wall. I readied my battle rifle then verified it was charged. Time to see if I still had any skills.

Rescue - Original

Marques joined me not too long later.

“Thought I’d find you in here, Ma’am.” Was his comment.

“Hey there. Working on an FTL prototype. Want to give me a hand?”

It was out of courtesy more than need. With the gravity on this rock as low as it was, I was quite capable of moving almost a ton by myself, and that was using only my real arm.

“What did you want to talk about?” I asked him after we had moved a containment cylinder from the fabricator to a suspension field, helping to create an “exploded” model before we started to secure the engine.

“Well, Ma’am, I feel a little uncomfortable with the orders. I mean, destroy the Arks if t we can’t free them? What sort of madness is that?”

“I am thinking of it as a mercy. No, I am CHOOSING to think of it as a mercy. Would you like your fellow humans to become science experiments or slaves? I wouldn’t, so if I can’t free them I feel that it is a mercy to stop the external influences. As for 9 and 11, they may not be under influence, so I am hopeful we can speak with them and get it resolved, and then get us all back together.”

We moved a few of the last pieces into place as he thought about what I had said.

“I suppose that is a much better thing. I was thinking that the orders were to just destroy them if they didn’t want to return.”

Although that is how I read the orders as well, I didn’t give any hints to that. As far as I was concerned, once they were all patched up, they could do what they wanted. I sent out the command to have the “exploded” device scanned to create the final blueprints, then I gave the command for the constructor drones to start assembling everything.

“We have a few hours before we can test this, how’s the craft coming?”

“I wanted to run a few things by you. You know how we have it all figured out how to detect craft using gravity waves, now?”

“Yeah, I help with those sensors.” I walked over to a table and sat down bringing up the plans.

“Well, what if the rest of humanity has the secret to that now, as well?”

“Simple, we build a better stealth drive.” I said. I had my visor opened, now that I was away from anything that *might* explode. I then ran a data line up to my data jack.

Observer, Neith, can you bring up on screen the schematics for our energy output with the current stealth fields?

“As you can see, the stealth fields have an output that closely resembles the gravity sensors detection field. How about we change the power profile on it?” We started going over ways to mask the output from the new engines as well as every other bit of EM leakage we could conceive of. The most difficult was going to be light. Fortunately, a matt black pain job would do most of the work for in space. Folding light around us for atmospheric insertions would be more difficult, but that was something to work on later. We wouldn’t need that quite yet. We were in the middle of configuring the adjustments to the various power curves when the construction drones completed the construction of the skip drove and alerted that it had been implanted into a mining drone.

The test was mostly successful. I say mostly as we jumped it five light minutes out, and it appeared exactly where we asked it to. The failure came from our own predictions as to a nearby asteroid that ended up where the drone appeared. The explosion was magnificent. On the launch of our second prototype, we made sure to calculate the movement of rocks for the jumps. It was entirely successful for five, ten, twenty and thirty light minutes out. From there we created a manned pod, filled it with all sorts of sensors, scanners and so on, then we figured out how to get the jumps all timed out. We set the drone to wait one hour and scan when it reached its destination, then to jump back.

A side effect was that there were two drones for a half second as the light coming and going hit us at the same time. Weird. With that, our testing was a success and we were able to build out a larger version for the assault craft. We would store this one in the assault craft and use it as a back-up, if it ever came down to it.

Two more weeks passed as we built out the assault craft. My Weapons Engineers had further modified the EMP grenades and Gauss pistols for efficacy against armored targets. We made sure the armories on the assault craft were loaded up for both lethal and non-lethal combat. With that we were “out the door” to try and track down the Arks.

“Ma’am, Sidhe and Aos Si are in sync with Borrum and the flight leader. We should be good to do a one light hour just to validate formation. On your orders.” The pilot was of course referring to their AI.

They had been the first to take to the idea as they were used to having a second with them in flights. This would be not too different. Not surprisingly, they had gone the Celtic route for their naming.

“Good call, Walsh. Make sure Lynch and Quinn have verified the data then count us down from ‘10’.”

It probably wouldn’t be necessary but making sure that the pilots validated their data was always a good thing. The pilots had all done micro jumps like this in the past, just never in formation. The sensation of a jump, according to them, was like being dunked in ice water, immediately followed by being dried off by a fire, and then having all the air knocked out of you. The pilots went through their numbers and then. Yeah, they were right, it sucked. The first jump at one light hour was bad, but the sensation was over almost before it began.

“Ma’am, no change in light. If you would like to see, we can still the light from Ark-5 finishing the modifications on the Wormhole Generator.” The giant ring was large enough to fit the Ark in with room to spare. All the Arks were equipped with several of them as they would have been used to link up the new home we should have been creating with Sol. Now we were going to use them to shortcut the trip for any recovered Arks.

We made several more jumps, getting progressively longer. At the two “light month” mark, we had to recalibrate the math for the jumps. We noticed enough drift to cause a concern, not a problem at these lower skips, but at a light year or more it would easily cause an issue that could lead to a collision. After each jump we also took a reading on light to determine the path of the Arks. Soon we found what we were looking for. Two Arks, another four light months out. We did a three-month skip, then we very carefully validated the data. We didn’t want to accidently land on them.

Calculating out where they would be, we jumped. Too Far. It looked as if something had happened. The light that we were seeing was showing only one Ark, running off in another direction. That’s also when we noticed the two Escort craft. We jumped again.

The remains of Ark-11 were clear as day. The ship was massive but now it was being cannibalized by the bug-like creatures I had seen inside Escort-001.

Observer, are any of your people on either of those two ships?

Yes, several are. Please assist. You must.

I understand.

“Okay, I hate doing this but let’s split the teams. Two and Three, land on Ark-11 and purge the aliens there. Search and Rescue when available. Torres is with you, right Two?”

“Negative, Ma’am I’m on Three.”

“Okay, good. I wanted to make sure they had good help. You have the updates package? All of you?”

A chorus of “yes ma’am” came through.

“Good. Save who we can, patch everyone. Take out the aliens and save our people. We’re heading towards the Escorts. See if we can’t get rid of their command. I have intel that states there are captives aboard. Let’s GO!”

My orders were simple but should do the job. My assault craft had a fire team of Marines decked out as heavies, in the assault armor I had designed. We only had enough time to build the four suits. I was in my standard MK-II (beta) suit, but I had the added bonus of a small energy shield made from one of Observers designs.

“Team, let’s load up, full heavy, full lethal.” I grabbed a new battle rifle design I had made with help from the Weapons Engineers. As I grabbed it there was a flicker that appeared before my eyes briefly.

Ya No Ame Battle Rifle

Type

Kinetic

Rounds

50/50

Sight

Enhanced Link

Fire Mode Options

Pulse (5)/ Pulse (10) /Full

Weight

4.3 kg

Modifications

Custom Built

Range

500 m

Maximum

5000 m

It was there and gone so quickly had it not been for my memory I wouldn’t be sure I had seen it. I set the fire selector to a five-shot pulse, then swapped out most of my kit. I decided to keep several of my EMP grenades, but I used the attachment points on my armor to secure the extra magazines instead of adding a Thompson pistol. I also grabbed my Engineering Kit, securing it to the small of my back, and I verified that my arms ballistic shield was deploying properly. This was a much lighter version than what I had used during the Reboot.

“Hey, Jax. You sure you know what you’re doing?” Janssens asked.

I had my old fire team, Janssens, Lebowski, Wilhelm and Goldstein had all come through and ended up on my rock. They had muttered something about loyalty, friends, and not letting me have all the fun. Flawed logic if you ask me. Instead of answering him, I started an in-flight briefing.

“Listen up. Our target has changed. There are currently “bugs” on the hull of Ark-11. They appear to be trying to cut the hull apart and recycle her. They are fast, and they launch quills from their backs at speeds fast enough to crack open the MK-II duty uniforms. They are not the biggest enemy we will face. We also have a creature I call the behemoth. They are giant tripodal creatures with four arms. The are slow and strong, with great throwing accuracy. The will literally throw the bugs at you.”

I took a deep breath

Observer, can you send a copy of the ship schematic over to them, through Neith?

I didn’t wait for him to respond.

“I am sending you a basic schematic of the Escort ships. This is based off of Observers data. Our goal is to rescue any of his races captives and disable the ship. If possible, we want to kill all the aliens except for Observers people and save the ship. Have you received the package?”

“Yeah, but I can’t read it, Danni.” Lebowski was nervous. He hadn’t called me by my first name since Janssens handed him his ass once in hand to hand “training”. I was a Lieutenant Junior Grade at the time, fresh out of OCS and had just been paired up with them. Lebowski didn’t think I deserved any respect being fresh out of school, but Janssens reminded him that it wasn’t personal.

“Think of it like a picture book, you can see the pictures, right?” Wilhelm laughed at him.

“Well, yeah…” it was nice being back with the guys.

“Take at least one mag of DU or AP ammo. Some of those bastards are big.” I took a deep breath and checked in with the pilot.

“See any place left open for us to dock?”

“Yes ma’am. There’s a dock near the aft we should be able to drop you off in. It looks like there is plenty of room. We’re about two minutes out.”

“Go weapons free and be sure to use the following scanning profile as you approach.” I sent over the data on detecting the mobile turrets that Escort-001 had. Hopefully It will work here in the Real as well.” We settled in for some basic conversation. Janssens and Wilhelm pulling a few spare armor plates over and sitting on them.

“What are you doing there?” Lebowski asked.

“It’s in case there’s an explosion, so shrapnel doesn’t shred their brains.”

I answered before either of them could. That caused a round of laughter. Ice successfully broken.

“Seal up!” The pilot called out. As we did so, I took one last quick review of everything.

“Everyone! Grab two more canisters of air. Walsh, weapons free. Keep our LZ clear. Trust the sensor readings, and if we come back we’ll send an ID pulse before entering the chamber.” The deployment ramp opened at the tail of our craft. I looked at our LZ, took a few steps back, then ran and jumped.

I cleared our ramp easily. There was no question on that. The big question is if the dock had an EM seal to keep it pressurized or not. The answer was “not”. I sailed through the zero-G compartment and caught myself on a wall. I readied my battle rifle then verified it was charged. Time to see if I still had any skills.