Initialize: Unknown Ship, Sector 5
Categorize: High Risk
Response: Boarding Action
Nobody moves unknown data through Rosecordi Space. Well, Rosecordi Marines finally got bead on the vessel. After a rift walker put a hole into their servers and severed all their data, and put the power onboard down. There it was, all pretty sitting there. The vessel was kinda just floating there. First time something a Rift Walker did for the Marines. They all awaited for command to break it open.
Meanwhile…
Something was wrong. Very wrong. At the first sign of trouble, the First Officer had tried to blow the ship. It didn’t work. Even with his neural implants removed, he could still feel his crewmates scuttling around the dead ship, like maggots in a corpse.
Clearly, High Lord Araknis was right to want to know more about this “Rosecordi”. Unfortunately, they had underestimated their abilities. The First Officer wasn’t ready to manually kill the crew just yet, but… one could never be too careful. The Captain already lay dead on the bridge; unfortunate, but she was a Vanti, a security risk. She knew the dangers of spying. She had died with honor, a true patriot. As far as he was aware, the captain was the only non-mandi on the ship, potentially only there for “first contact” purposes. Good, it was less bloody that way.
The database was another problem. As expected, there wasn’t any top secret or important data stored onboard, but it was still a Colonian ship. The database was behind a pretty thick wall, normally only accessible with the power online. To many, this would be needlessly risky. To Colonus, it was common sense. Modern Colonian ships losing power was almost unheard of, and never because of xenos.
Still, it was an old spy ship, with no incredibly compromising data on board. Just the intended destination, current intel. The name “Colonus Pact”. Nothing revealing of a location. By now the BrightSpace drive would be nearly disabled. The dark energy shield had been dumped sometime earlier, turning the BrightSpace drive into a deathtrap. Of course, the people of Rosecordi wouldn’t know that…
For the First Officer, this was a job well done. Colonus was safe, their tech was safe, the crew was… somewhat safe, or at least safe from torture.
Marines sat there briefly. And then… Alfa Element, go, Beta, Charlie, Delta, hold. Clear to breach. A missile was fired from a nearby patrol corvette, placing a hole small enough to break through the ship, but not cause significant damage to the ship. And then, they entered. Rosecordi Marines entered through the gap, attempting to use the shock of the explosion to their advantage and gain control.
The First Officer was thrown to the ground by the force of the explosion. He could feel the gaps left in the hive. Already, his forces were dying. There was no sense dwelling on it, since they should have been dead already. He debated going down to check things out, but he wasn’t a soldier, he was a worker. He had his set role on the ship, and he was going to follow it. He could only imagine his soldiers would do the same.
Someone had attacked the hive. The workers didn’t care about the jammed bulkheads or the quickly disappearing air. They were going to die, that was a given. If they were going to die, they were going to do it as a hive. A worker from behind started passing out weapons; simple pistols, tools, and the like. It was nothing fancy, but neither were they. They’d die.
They’d take down as many assailants as they could
Several hostiles! Multiple Angles! Deadly Force Authorized! Shoot To Kill! If we can’t breach the rest, we’ll blow holes and take the air from them, then mop the rest out. Beta, Charlie, Delta, elements, clear to commit. Clear the damn ship!
The mandi were being pushed back, slaughtered. Each time a worker went down, wether they were dead or injured, there was a race to drag them out of the combat zone. However, they weren’t going down alone.
It’s long been said by certain Colonians that the mandi are just sapient ants. In some ways this is true, like how they’re surprisingly strong for their size. Any time a makeshift weapon connected with the assailants, they went down. The armor they seemed to be wearing offered some protection, but it wasn’t always enough. The dead had company.
Even though they were almost done with this ship, they had to keep steady in an attempt to not damage anything. Eventually… All clear.
Casualties:
Alfa - 100% KIA/CASEVAC
Beta - 95% KIA/CASEVAC
Charlie - 35% KIA/CASEVAC
Delta - 5% KIA/CASEVAC
The ship was littered with bodies. But the patrol corvettes began to tow the ship back to Sector 5 Dockyards, for analysis.
“So, every time we fire up the brightspace drive it fails.”
“No, it works. Just we’re missing a key component.”
“Hey that patrol corvette from earlier says they got something. Remember that “Dark matter shielding.” We never apply any, we found scraps nearby…”
“So why do we just cover the damn thing in shielding?”
“Hmm. Not bad, kid.”
“Wow, that worked?”
“Apparently. Gonna have to design a ship with the drive integrated. Bad idea to just attach to a ship without the shielding. Gonna have to talk us a few months.”
“How are we going to first contact?”
“There’s a… Colonus Pact somewhere. We triangulated, based off Galyacti maps, and several attempts of data scans, somewhere… Here. We’re going to have our rift walkers attempt to put a hole in reality and just scoop data out. Figures. Hopefully, we find our targets and can speak to whoever’s over there.”
“So, what are we exactly doing out here?”
“Ripping a hole into reality.”
“Well, we never do that?”
“Attempting to.”
“Sure.”
The Rift laser hums, attempting to protrude into reality
“Blank.”
“Try here?”
“Blank.”
“Strike! Got something!”
Colonus Pact, The Ythri Territories
The Museum of Broken Unity
“What the hell?!”
For the two Ytharan archivist, the day had been quiet, as always. They didn’t mind though, protecting their history was an honorable job. Unfortunately, that history had just vanished. And, of course, some sort of gate had appeared, but they had their priorities.
“Rivers of blood, what is happened?”
“I don’t know! Couldn’t have been human sabotage, we would have ‘disappeared’ them long before they got this deep into our fragment. Could have been the Vanti, but they’re content to just watch us die. And, of course, there’s that thing over there. Obviously it’s not Colonian.”
“Might as well pop in, see where it takes us.”
“Are you insane?”
“Come on, you only die once. The worst that could happen is we lose the data!”
“Go if you want, I’m not going in there.”
“Fine, whatever.” The archivist gingerly reached his hand into the portal.
Yeah no, this was not the data they were looking for, before
—Alert—
Intrusion
Archer Tower firing databolt
Sadie and Laurence turn around to see something they’ve never seen before
“What in the Gates?”
The archivist could barely understand what was going on. It was all so strange. Before him, there appeared to be two figures, notably startled. He wasn’t sure if it was his naturally demon-like appearance, or what. He decided to press the advantage.
“I don’t know who sent you, and I don’t bloody well care. You have our archive data, and I want it back!” He tried to step forward, but found himself stuck. That had never happened before. It felt almost embarrasing. His ancestors had waged hellish combat against their foes. Now he was glued to the floor.
Well, that’s how it goes. He cleared his throat. “And clearly, I’m not leaving without it…”
“Damn it, smells like Sulfur Dioxide.”
“We straight up pulled from the demon dimension didn’t we?”
“Yeah, I guess…”
“. . .”
“Let’s try translating it…”
“Yeah… They’re ticked about the data.”
“You know a Colonus Pact friend?”
Sadie sat down next to the archivist and began to pull data from the air, eventually cultivating the servers of The Museum of Broken Unity, before saying
“Well, if you’d help us, we’d be more than willing to send you back with your history. Seems rather important. But we got priorities.”
The archivist was surprised at how casual the thieves were, but, then again, they did have the advantage.
“Do I know the Colonus Pact? Clearly, you haven’t looked at any of that data you stole. Yes, I am a citizen of the Pact, and yes, I’d really like that data back.” He stopped for a second. This was a rare opportunity to undermine Colonus’s efforts. He shouldn’t go so far as military secrets or anything, but surely Colonus didn’t have to know about what happened here. “So… what do you want to know?”
“Where are we exactly? Well besides being a museum, what planet is this?”
Saide begins to copy the data to a drive
“Shouldn’t we just throw them out and keep drilling?”
“Nono, let’s see where they go with this.”
“Hell if I know, our planet names died with out language. Call it whatever you want, it doesn’t matter in the end. In fact, you’d find that a lot of planets don’t have names, just the important ones.”
“Why not give it a name?”
“FInish up with that… Thing. Before I put a bullet in its head.”
“Well… Could you give us a named planet, and where it is?”
Sadie finishes copying the data to the drive
“Would you want to name your planets with the tongue of another species? No, it’s better this way. Oh, and about a planet…” Okay, what would be a fair amount of treason? “I suppose you could give Scytheros a visit, if you look in that archive data real quick, you should have its location”
“Well thanks! That wasn’t too hard now, was it?”
Sadie hands the archivist a data drive
“Here, for your troubles. It’s everything.”
Sadie disables the databolt around the archivist
“Off you go now!”
“Well, let’s go take a look.”
The archivist walked through the portal, holding the drive.
“Well, how’d it go?”
“I got the data back, so pretty well”
“Oh, come on! I can see the smile in your eyes, you did something good!”
“Well, I may or may not have given them the location of Scytheros, you know, loyal subject stuff.”
“Ha! Those apes won’t know what hit them!”
The two Ytharans settled back into their chairs, waiting for the next crisis.