“I just think it's amazing that she even found this place. There's got to be a story behind that,” Slick added from behind Minh as he looked through sensor data.
“I'm sure she'll be happy to tell you all about it as soon as she wakes up. Until then I'm just glad she found us a cool place to park while Triton makes repairs.”
“How long did they say it would take?”
“At least two days to rebuild the engines, the rest is mostly minor structural stuff so it'll be done before the rebuild.”
“Damn, they really knew where to hit us. I saw the damage they did to the engines, they're a write off. If we didn't have our own manufacturing systems we'd be down to two engines indefinitely.”
“You've got that right. Triton used to be Wheeler's ship so he knew exactly where his shots would count. He manned her with about a hundred people and a ton of automation.”
“I believe it. Sprocket was saying that they're still finding looped circuits and control taps. She couldn't be happier to be out of maintenance.”
“She earned it. Mia's a steady stick.”
“Her name is Mia? I always have trouble getting to know people by their civie names.”
“To know a thing's name is to have power over it,” Minh muttered as he scrolled through his threat assessment interface. The overlay on his vacsuit faceplate found no identifiable threat so he paid more attention to the formation of his fighter squad. Everyone was in place, doing a broad scan and gathering a fantastic amount of data, most of which would be reviewed in the Triton flight control Centre.
“I thought that's what rank was for?”
“When someone's starting to panic they might not answer to a call sign, so it's important to know their real name. They didn't cover this when you trained with the military?”
“Well, they did in basis psyche, but that was a long time ago. That, and I'm an infantry field analyst. I'm still learning to apply that to being a Sensor Intercept Officer.”
“Funny thing, I was in the infantry before I discovered the wonders of being a pilot. How goes the scanning?”
“A few terabytes of data. I'm seeing a lot of heavy metals, there really should be some kind of defence systems down there but there's nothing bleeding power or registering on thermal.”
“Check your silhouette recognition,” Minh advised, bringing a small display up and starting the software up for himself.
“Here? I mean, there's got to be a few thousand objects per square klick.”
“I bet we'll find something before the barrier,” Minh said as he brought up a shape and cross referenced it, manipulating the interface with nothing more than his eye movements and nerve impulse sensors in his vacsuit's headgear. “There, an armed hauler. It's right behind us, got twisted up in the asteroids.”
“Scanning. You're right, and it was badly damaged by energy weapons fire.”
“This is Luckshot, my SIO just found two disabled perimeter cannon emplacements. The blast profile she picked up on one of them matches Eden Fleet. The damage is dead cold though, so it happened at least a week ago.”
“Good work. This is Ronin to Flight Operations.” Minh addressed. “We have evidence of Eden Fleet here. Looks like they've been and gone though.”
“I show you just about to breach the obscuring field. Proceed with caution. I want to know exactly what's in there. Remember, our resident astrophysicists said there could be a class two giant planet in there, so you could run out of space real fast,” Oz replied.
Minh momentarily cleared all the secondary displays from his viewpoint and looked at the field ahead with his naked eye. The vista was blurred severely, but he was certain that there was a lot of empty space ahead. “I'm eyeballing the field and I'll bet my oversized officer's quarters that we'll just find a really thick rock in the middle of this.”
“He says refraction could be to blame for black space. Just be careful,” Oz retorted neutrally. “It'd be pretty embarrassing to nose into a big rock on your first mission.”
“You speak the naked truth, my friend.” Minh checked the weapon systems and powered down the three particle accelerator cannons he'd loaded onto the fighter, leaving two missile pods, a pair of 21mm rail guns for him and another pair on a turret for Slick. “All right everyone, passing through the barrier. Redirect everything you can to your shields. We don't know what's waiting for us.”
He watched the small flight status display at the bottom of his visor as the other six fighter crews followed orders. One of them had loaded themselves with energy based weapons and he shook his head. “You're no longer allowed to determine your own loadout Finger. Looks like you need babysitting.”
“What? What'd I do?”
“You need to load at least two hull piercing weapons that can fire on reserve power alone. You knew it, you ignored it and now you'll be leaving yourself unarmed every time you shunt all power to shields.”
“I can take a few shots on what's left in the-”
“One more word and you're on your way back to Triton,” Minh said firmly.
“Yes sir.”
“Man, meeting you in the sims I'd never think you could be so serious,” Slick mentioned off the squad channel as he ensured the ship's shields and power generation were set as high as possible.
“It's the price of doing it for real.” Minh watched as the space blurred by the obscuring field loomed so largely that he couldn't see around it. His ship punched through, the energy shields around his fighter protected them from any electromagnetic interference. His eyes went wide.
Around a grey, brown and white dwarf planet were arranged a massive latticework of docking platforms, factories, refineries, living sections, defensive systems, solar collectors, factories and other less notable subsections. Spaced evenly out across the dwarf planet's equator were five large installations with pylons extending out like fine silver thorns. They were moving before their eyes, slowly shifting in waves around the top of the station's circular bases.
As Minh looked closer and checked his threat scanner he noticed that there were very few power readings coming from the station. The defence systems were all marked as inoperable. The remnants of hundreds of other ships, most of them long range haulers, were adrift, dead in space.
As two of his squadron moved through the barrier behind him he noticed what was keeping everything within the obscuring barrier that surrounded the dwarf planet. “I have at least nine cruisers, all different profiles. There are other active ships as well,” Minh announced.
“Confirmed. Nine ships varying in mass, all armed. A couple are modified galleons, the others are cruisers. I see one carrier, looks like the command ship. There are about thirty other ships, between twenty five and ninety meters in length. Looks like one of the cruisers is launching fighters. Half of them don't match anything on record. Wait-” Slick worked his comm controls for a moment, fine tuning and trying to filter out a layer of wavering static. “I have an emergency transmission here, looks like it was from a boosted personal comm. It's a digital stream of text that says the miners are holed up in the central complex. They were attacked and disarmed by Eden Fleet and a group of raiders just rushed the station. They don't think the two groups are connected, but they've been fighting a losing battle. The text is recent, seems to back up our intelligence.”
“Eden Fleet and then raiders. That's epic bad luck. Are we getting a ping from Triton?”
“No. No two way comm through the barrier and I can't raise the installation.”