The Commodore stared at his displays in disbelief. The Admiral, his Admiral, was dead. He had to be, given the state of utter desolation that the Admiral’s carrier was in.

The escorts were nowhere to be seen at first scan, but as the reclamation teams swept the wreckage for anything of value, bits of them began to turn up. A scrap of hull plate with a serial number, an IFF beacon, a bloodbox data recorder.

The Commodore let the reclamation teams get on with their work. There was no point in attempting to micromanage them, and even less point in asking for reports every time they found something. They knew their work, and he could read the summary reports later.

The Commodore shook his head and shut off his displays. He didn’t need the summary reports to figure out at least some of what had happened here. The Admiral had found another ‘ghost ship’, but one that wasn’t quite dead. Wasn’t quite alone in the void. Who or whatever had been creating those ‘ghost ships’ had chosen to strike instead of fading away.

The Admiral commanded, had commanded the Commodore corrected himself, a Carrier Strike Group: one Carrier, three cruisers, two destroyers, and their replenishment ships. None of them had survived. There was no evidence that they had even fired a shot.

That frightened the Commodore more than anything else. A Carrier Strike Group had, in theory, enough passive sensor coverage to blanket a star system, and more than enough short-ranged active sensors to burn out threat-receptors at three light-minutes. Nothing should have been able to get into range to kill the escorts, much less the carrier itself, without being spotted and engaged.

But the wreckage didn’t lie. Couldn’t lie.

The Commodore commanded his heavy cruiser, and another four light cruisers. He knew that if whatever killed the Admiral wanted to kill his command, he wouldn’t even see it coming.

The Commodore retreated to his sleeping cabin. He would need sleep-inducing medication to rest this night.

The Commodore re-read the reclamation report slowly. He did not want to believe the words on the screen, but…

The Commodore put the data-tablet aside and stared at the bloodbox data recorder on the table of his dining compartment. The regulations stipulated that any sensitive material was to be opened in an officer’s office, with all anti-snooping countermeasure active. The bloodbox was to big to fit on his desk, so he would do the best he could. He dismissed the guard, and instructed the reclamation team commander to wait outside.

Satisfied, he entered the fleet-standard unlock code to open a bloodbox. It chirped confirmation, then asked for the Commodore’s Identification number. He gave it, and the bloodbox opened fully.

The commodore attached a fresh data-tablet to the ports, and called up the bloodbox’s location schematic. Any ship in the fleet carried several bloodboxes for redundancy’s sake. A replenishment ship carried no less than three, a destroyer five, a cruiser seven, and a carrier twelve. The location schematic would indicate which ship the bloodbox belonged to and where on the ship it was located. This one came from the carrier’s flag bridge. It showed the Admiral’s last moments, the data available to him on his displays, the non-standard files loaded into the communications console.

It was these files that had prompted the Commodore to view the contents of the bloodbox first, and alone. He had a hard-copy-only memo from the Admiral in his desk, making note of a ‘custom translation package’ that was to be kept under conditions of maximum security. The Commodore confirmed that the files that the bloodbox showed as being in the flag bridge communications terminal matched the ones that he was supposed to keep secret, and then classified them as tightly as he could using fleet-standard codeword-only security encryption wrapped around his own personal encryption routines.

That done, he summoned the reclamation team commander back in to take the bloodbox for data retrieval.

The Commodore frowned at the message requests on the repeater screen. Currently it was showing the communications console, and he looked up to see the too-rigid back of the rating manning that console. The Commodore looked around the bridge, seeing the same tension-fear in all of his subordinates. They were still in orbit around the ‘moonlet’ of debris that was all that was left of the Admiral’s Carrier Strike Group.

The Commodore clamped down on his fear and pulled open the first message. It was text-only, Empire-standard. There were a few grammatical errors, like a child first learning to write, but the message was clear enough. A translator-program would be needed for the next message, and the Commodore possessed the only copy in the system.

The Commodore frowned. He possessed no special tralstor-program. Did he? He searched his memory, thinking hard. He might have something, he guessed. He pulled out the data-tablet with its copy of the Admiral’s ‘custom translation package’ and loaded the second message into it.

The message was swiftly deciphered, parsed into clear-text, and displayed on the data-tablet.

Language of origin: Human.

Speaker: Human Male (Identity Unknown)

Translation:

“... /

You've been looking for the danger /

And you sense my presence chilling in your bones /

Take your stance, I will give you one fair chance /

So let's make this dance a bloody masquerade /

Understand how this ends, and what I am /

You're against the night itself, so be afraid /

...” [1]

The Commodore slammed his fist down onto the general quarters alarm. Battle-screens snapped into place, weapons-hatches drew open, point defence activated under tight computer-control, thrusters braced for radical maneuvers under war-emergency power. Active sensors came online in full-power sweeps.

Ghosts flickered on the far edges of the sensor scopes. The scan-tech started calling out a contact report. “Ships, Class: unknown. Size: unknown. Mass: unknown. Numbers: thirty-five at minimum, possibility of more hiding under stealth. Relative masses indicate ten capital-class ships, escorted by twenty five smaller escort-class ships. Capital ships launching strike-craft, redesignating them as carriers…”

The Commodore’s heavy cruiser was the only Empire ship to fire more than a single salvo before the mass of missiles and carrier-launched strike-craft swarmed it under.