Chapter 84 - Stalking Horses

(BSS Shinokage, Sol System)

“Blast it all, how the hell are we supposed to scout an entire system quickly and quietly when we only have three ships? We’re leaving far too much area unscanned with anything other than what we can see with the glorified telescopes.”

Aurae Inatumal, Captain of the Shinokage, was less than pleased. In fact, she had been nearly pulling her hair out working with the other two captains and their navigators, trying to find a set of courses that would allow three ships to cover as much of the system as possible while maintaining stealth. And since stealth systems, even those on the Shinokage and the two Assassins with her, didn’t work as well at high speeds, and were all but useless in FTL, that meant they had to go slow, which cut their timeline a lot, if they were going to get back out of the system and into FTL in time to make their rendezvous with the fleet.

Oh, sure, they could just sit in one spot and wait for the light to come to them, telling them how everything in the system looked, but the problem with that was that space was huge, and even the best magnification systems didn’t help when you were only relying on passive systems and trying to get details about something half a system away. Added to the fact that Mars, Earth, and Venus were in different parts of their orbits at the moment, with Earth on the other side of the system primary from the other two, to say nothing of the structures in the Asteroid Belt or the outer planets, and there was a LOT of ground to cover.

If the Starlight Raven wasn’t so well known by now, she’d be the perfect ship to send on a job like this, since she could fly openly as a freighter, eliminating the need for ‘quietly’ checking out the system. They might not be able to get away with full active scanners, but they could move faster than a crawl, and get to ranges where the passive scanners would be useful more quickly.

“Well, our ‘Master’ sent the rest of the fleet off to deal with something else.”

Aurae could hear the biting edge on the word ‘Master’ from her sister, and sighed, “Nimue, you know as well as I do that we were damn lucky to get out of Jagloth with our lives. If we hadn’t been up on the station when the Legion overran Jagloth City, we would be dead. But that left us with nothing but debts, and you know it. Or would you rather be some businessman’s docile bedwarmer? Maybe with one of the freaks who love to make a pair of twins call him daddy?”

Nimue shuddered, all too conscious of the fact that that could have been their fate. Probably would have been, if not for their current Master. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it, though. Where the hell are he and the other ships going, anyways? They didn’t bother giving us any of the intel.”

“Because if we get caught, then we won’t be able to spill any secrets. But since it would look really bad if we lost the ship and ended up captured, let’s try not to get caught, ok?”

Nimue looked at her sister, and said, “Why do you stick up for him? He’s not a good man. You see the little harem he goes around with. Hell, he even has a Princess turned into his devoted pet, if you believe the stories. The fact that he gets so much tail already is the only reason he hasn’t raped either of us, and you know it. And what happens if he decides it’d be great to ‘breed’ us? He’s from the Empire originally, and you know how they are!”

They’d had this argument before, but Aurae was too nervous about the mission to indulge her sister, and so she decided to turn the argument on its head. “Well, if you believe the stories, he’s also hung like an Actoran Carglath, and once he’s had you, he basically ruins you for all other men. Maybe you’re worried that if he ever decides to take you, you won’t be able to live without getting some Master Dick every night?”

Nimue’s sputters of righteous indignation were cut off when Kitner at the sensor station said, “Captain, we have some unusual activity out here.”

It was hard to tell whether Aurae or Nimue were more thankful for the interruption, but Aurae was smiling when she said, “Unusual how, Mister Kitner?”

“We have what looks like Imperial freighters or minelayers setting up… something. Not like any minefield I’ve ever seen. I’d swear it was some kind of distributed sensor array, but on a scale I haven’t seen before.”

That got her attention fast. “Put it on the main screen.” A display came up, showing the area of the field they had detected. What they saw was, frankly hard to believe. It was a sensor net, all right. And as they watched, the probes went through what was clearly some kind of test, and then went into low power mode, all but dropping off the scanners. In fact, if they hadn’t already had scanners trained on the probes, they would have missed them entirely.

“Captain, the computer extrapolated the design, based on what we can see, and it looks as though they’re in the process of creating a kind of early warning array, a light hour out from the planet in all directions. They may even be attempting to create a full sphere of detection.”

Aurae shook her head in disbelief. A system on this scale was insane, even by the standards of the Empire. What possible reason would one have to… ah, this was what the Empire came up with to counter the Black Star Fleet. It was a simple solution, and about as elegant as stringing piano wire at neck height to catch intruders. A fighter might be able to sneak through, but nothing larger.

Still… “Hmm, the ships are still laying the field. Did the computer extrapolate the size of the field in the vertical so far?”

“Yes, Captain, they appear to have coverage along the arc of the sphere for almost a light minute above and below the ecliptic. Unclear how much further the sensors would extend.”

Nimue nodded. “Clever bastards. Forcing us to come in at an angle makes our shots harder to hit, and easier to triangulate, since we’re not coming in flat. This just got a helluvalot harder. And if they put those arrays up around Mars or Venus as well…”

Aurae shook her head. “We would have heard from the other crews if that had been the case, because someone would be hauling ass to intercept and destroy them if they got noticed. I’m sure they plan to put the system in place around the other planets, eventually, but if there’s only partial coverage over Earth, then I’m guessing that’s the worst of it. Still, we need to meet up with the others and get this intel back to the fleet.” She turned to Kitner, and said, “Do we have updated ship counts yet?”

“The home fleet is here, and it looks like the Aurum Throni has been repaired. I’m seeing seventeen new ships, mostly smaller vessels, but they appear to be in holding patterns near Luna. They might only have skeleton crews on them at the moment. They don’t match any of the ships we have on file from the Empress’s intel.”

“Mark them as new hulls. And make sure you note that we probably haven’t seen all of them. Assume at least double that number of new hulls, possibly on skeleton crews as they train up new officers, especially. The Master took out their main training center and most of their young officers the last time he was here, so they have to be scrambling.”

Nimue was also looking at the sensor data, but was checking out other areas. “I think I’ve found another formation of ships, out by the Ceres Base. Looks like they’ve fortified the shipyards there as well, but I can’t make anything specific out from this distance.”

“If they’ve called in defense fleets from the borders, we have to assume there are fleets in the outer planets and around Venus and Mars as well. All right, pin down as many enemy ships as you can, but we’re not getting any closer to Earth than this. When the next burst from the stealth probe comes in, have Wisteria come back from her trip to Jupiter, and get Artemis turned around from the Mars to Venus run. We need realtime comms to compare notes, so we meet at the rendezvous point, and then head back to the fleet.”

Kitner was frowning at his screen. “Captain, something’s off about a few of these ships. They’re not holding perfect station, because they know we have ballistics, but their movements are too regular to be evasive. It is loose, but I think they’re flying in formation.”

Aurae frowned as well. “What ships?”

“A trio of superdreadnoughts, four frigates, and seven corvettes. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the superdreadnought in the middle was the Aurum Throni, but we detected a drive flare we matched to the Raven’s scans of her in another part of space, but it was cut off by the moon passing in front of it, and there isn’t anything there that I can see now.”

“Why do you think that ship is the Upstart’s flagship?”

“Well, it is decorated up and painted nicer than the other ships, and it is broadcasting the IFF code for the flagship…”

Nimue looked over at her sister. “Bait?”

Aurae nodded. “Bait. A stalking horse to draw the enemy in, and then allow their fleets to close in and trap them. They’re expecting the main battle to be on Earth, then. Fine, we’ve done what we can here.” She turned to look at the woman at the comms station. “Miss Dunz, have you managed to tap into the planetary newsnets, and get us an update of what is being told to the people?”

“Yes Ma’am. The big story seems to be something about how the Upstart has ‘credible intel’ that the Empress is going to use chemical and biological weapons against the people, to try and hold the people hostage and make Travis give her the throne. Imperial Health Service is supposed to be coming out with a new nanite-based immune pack that will keep the people safe from the weapons. They’re calling it the Immortal Legion package. Supposed to start rolling it out in three days. Should have the planet inoculated in a month, and then they’ll work on the rest of the system.”

Nimue’s face became twisted with horror and disgust. “They call it that, despite what happened on Jagloth with the Legion? And people are actually believing that it will help them? How stupid are these humans?”

“Ma’am, I don’t believe they’ve been told what happened on Jagloth. The most I’ve been able to find on the public nets was a story about a ‘terrorist plot’ forcing an ‘evacuation’ of the planet due to contamination of food stores. I think between the Confederate’s information control and the Empire’s, the people don’t know anything about that.”

“Well, whoever named that thing was probably one of the ones that knew, and I find that shit in seriously poor taste. Fuckers want to see what it is like to lose your whole fucking world?”

“Nimue!” Aurae’s voice cut off Nimue’s tirade before she really got started. “We all know how tasteless it is. Everyone on the ship is either from Jagloth, or had family who was. We’ll blast them to hell when we come back with the fleet.”

Looking over to Dunz, she said, “Include that intel in the pack we’re sending to the fleet intel analysts. They’ll be able to figure out what it actually means.” Looking at the rest of the crew, she said, “For now, the plan stays the same. Regroup with the rest of the detachment, and then head back to the Fleet, because they have an invasion to plan.”

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