Unipsi, lovely entity

chapter 1c: enemy

The sound of the internal communicator starts echoing in the metal room. The commander room wasn’t some fancy stuff, but it was definitely bigger then a normal crew member room. It was fully customizable but the commander didn’t care about useless things such as interior design. The result was a mostly empty room, so empty that sounds could echo in it.

What is it this time? I was suppose do sleep for at least 2 more hours.

The commander was not really happy to be awakened after staying up late helping her crew fixing a “small” issue with the weapons systems.

“I thought I made myself clear yesterday to not wake me up so I could at least sleep 4 hours.”

an apologetic female voice imminently responds, it was the vice commander Morea.

“I’m sorry commander Lis, but the local border patrol unit is contacting us, It’s a high priority request, almost at the level of an SOS signal…”

Morea was promptly interrupted by the commander

“give me 2 minutes and I’m there”. What the hell could be happening now?.

Scilla Lis was the commander of the best scavenger squad of the Hakavor corporation and she was a badass commander. She became a soldier following her gramparents family traditions like most Leans do. Soon after, the Droxi extermination war started and it brought her the chance to elevate her rank. In the 4 years of war she moved from soldier to spaceship captain. Such impressive growth didn’t pass undetected and soon after the war the Hakavor’s heir was asking for her services. Dhalia Hakavor made a proposal that one simply cannot refuse. Dhalia wanted Lis as her new commander for a special spaceship, the L.F. Sheridan. The Sheridan was a special spaceship, closer to a battleship than to a normal explorer ship. With a length of almost 500m, width of 100m and max height of 90m, it was massive. The shape was kinda off as well. A standard tetrahedral shape, usually used only for ship that are not meant to access a planet atmosphere, covered with tons of thrusters to allow planetary descent. The massive ship was everything a commander could ever dream of. The Sheridan was basically a flying self-sufficient city, for a reason. It was built to be the ideal scavenger spacecraft, perfect for all occasion and fully equipped for long journeys necessary for alien artefact searching. The new job put Lis in charge of around 300 leans lives, it gave her honour, prestige and obviously tons of money. However those weren’t the real reasons that brought Lis to accept the position even if she says the opposite.

Once Lis arrived on the main deck, Morea did her usual greeting and pointed at the main screen at the commander position. Lis responded with a small hand gesture and then she sat on her commander chair. The communication immediately started.

“Commander Scilla Lis of the L.F.Sheridan, what’s the emergency?”

on the screen another lean, her reddish skin was visibly wet probably due to recent stress.

“Commander Lis sorry if I have to cut all the formalities but I think we have an emergency. My ship and another have the task to patrol this system, however the other one is no longer responding. Half an hour ago we detected what we thought was a meteorite entering and inhabited planet by non technological advanced creatures. It was not a problem until the object completely changed trajectory, like a 120° change. So following the law the first patrol unit moved toward the theoretical impact point for investigation, now they are not responding to our calls.”

She is shaking like crazy, probably she has a friend or a loved one on the other ship. She looks young, probably never been at war, I can understand why she is so agitated she doesn’t look like a soldier, more like a police officer.

After a brief moment Lis starts to speak back while indicating Morea to prepare, her guts was telling her that problems were coming.

“Captain…??”

“Disa Oxali, commander Lis.”

“ok, first of all calm down. Now, did the object leave some electromagnetic trace?, did you detect the impact on the planet or not?”

“there were no traces so at first we thought it was a meteorite. Then the supposed meteorite turned 120° backward. No impact detected. That’s why we moved to the spaceship theory “

“ok, we will help you out and investigate.”

“thanks commander.”

Best day ever, 2 hours of sleep, an emergency call from a border patrol and a possible unknown alien life form on a damn fucking ship on a planet with native intelligent life. The only missing thing to the party is my mum asking when I will marry.

“Morea sends some probes to the last know position and call everybody, we may have to fight”

Morea immediately started the combat protocol, and launched the probes. She knew that the commander had one of her guts feeling moment but she was hoping it was a false alarm.

After 5 minutes the probes where in position and unfortunately a Lean SOS signal starts beeping on all the comm-stations.

Strange sound and tons of gunshot could be heard through the comm station while an almost crying voice was screaming for help.

“this is…. (Interference)… Oxali, patrol unit 1.22 we are under heavy fire,… (interference)...unknown robots are shooting at us. We have…(interference)..., please!! someone answer this fucking signal!”

Oxali..., sisters or probably wives, their voices are too different. Fuck we have to move fast I don’t think patrol units are equipped with heavy weapons.

Lis was about answer when the signal stopped.

“Morea, situation!”

“Commander, we were able to catch the signal with the probes, but something just shot them down. No more information commander.”

“Everyone! Get in position, we are going down and destroy those fuckers!. Morea thrusters full power toward the last signal location. Lets bring them hell!”

the massive ship started it’s acceleration. All the Leans inside were running to reach their combat position while the non-combatant one were simply rushing to their space suit, just in case.

The Sheridan was armed with the best Lean’s technology, so fusion missiles, heavy rail-guns and standard torpedoes. It also contained a small army, 12 close combat fighters, 24 tanks, 32 armed walkers and a couple of utility vehicles.

About the moment the ship starts it’s deceleration to enter the atmosphere the SOS was finally detected again. Oxali was still alive.

“the robot are going away, they are retreating. Don’t know why...”

“Oxali, commander Lis, we are coming in with the other patrol, hang in there”

A sign of relief from both the Oxali, and then a signal appeared on the radar. It was a spaceship escaping the zone, even if you are sneaky you can’t prevent the atmosphere from burning while entering or exiting it.

“all scanner on that thing now, I want a video feed and weapons analysis”

The video feed soon appeared on Lis’s command terminal. It was a small greyish vessels with no marks on it. Its shape was strange almost like a U with a really thick bottom as connector, probably the cockpit. No one had ever seen such a ship, expect Lis. She was one of the few who ever worked with the Esterian, their commercial ally during the Droxi war. It’s not a commercial nor cargo ship but it’s similar to theirs and it was a huge problem. Fuck, it’s an Esterian ship. But why are those monsters attacking us. We have ongoing massive space trade with them, what the fuck is happening. I don’t think they would attack us just for fun, and with a really small ship. Is it a scout?. Fuck I don’t know, better follow it and see if it lands somewhere else.

“Lets follow the ship and don’t shoot. Disa go rescue the patrol, we take care of them”

then the weapons command officer start speaking.

“commander!, huge problems. That small things has some fusion missiles slot and some unknown weapons that look like a rail-gun on steroids. I don’t think we can engage without some serious damage”

Fuck my life. Why, why does it have to go this way! If we fight we will probably die here, but we can’t just let them escape. Maybe I can speak to them. If their system are connected they should recognize me.

Morea was confused by the commander silence, but the commander was going to confuse her even more.

“that is an Esterian ship. I don’t know what they are trying to do but I think there could have been a misunderstanding” Silence, shock and confusion spread fast on the main deck. Esterian where no joke, if they had become enemy a new war was about to start, a war that they will probably lose.

Esterians were Humans that followed the last Terran tyrant in the outer systems and reappeared after centuries of silence. Nowadays they are extremely secretive, to the point that it’s not known if they are really Humans or just posing as them. Nobody has ever seen an Esterian outside their black power suit, but their story follows correctly the Terran’s one. They appeared during the Droxi war and exchanged their biological weapons, used to exterminate the Droxi, for large quantity of food and harsh environment agricultural machinery. For the next 12 years after the war they didn’t do much, just popping somewhere, scans some planets and disappear in the void. Their strangeness and total disregard of others laws was let slide due to their pure technological superiority. From unknown to trade extremely powerful biological weapon for food is something to be scared of.

If I follow my guts that had never betrayed me up until know, I think I can talk to them and even gain us something. Maybe not much, but it’s way better than risk my life and all my women to destroy a possible scout ship.

The Esterian vessel moved without hesitation, probably knowing that it was being tracked, toward the planet’s biggest moon. It entered its atmosphere with the usual flames. It was time to go down and see those Esterians.