>Undocking Initiated
>Battleship, Gallente, Dominix class
>Undocking Priority: Unknown
>Outfitting: Within Acceptable Limits
>Pilot Identification: Accessing DED Database… Failed
>Local Identification: Accessing Pilot Data
>Delus Miral
>Clearance Check
>Security Check… Failed
>Security Status: -10.0
>Secondary Clearance Check
>Permissions Check… Permissions Granted
>Sentinel Enterprises, Legion of the Void
>Undock Granted
>Path Cleared
>Undocking… Complete
A hum began, accompanied by an intense warmth and mild vibrations. I could feel behemoth mass of my ship drift out of the station as my systems came to life. My ship slowed as I brought the inertial stabilizers online, gripping at the very space that surrounded me. Eventually it had settled into its speed and kept a gentle 200 meters per second.
I reached my mind deeper into this new body, and then deeper still. My usual frigates were a far cry from this massive beast. A pang of anxiety raced through me, but was quickly overshadowed by a much stronger impulse. Without another moment, I spun up my micro jump drive and jolted my ship forward, covering over 100 kilometers in an instant. The warp of the micro jump drive felt unusual, very unlike a standard warp drive.
I shrugged it off as I quickly reached out into the black void and latched onto a signal, struggling to bring my ship to face it. A deep groan pushed its way from my center as the structure endured the turn. Space itself slowly began to warp, wrapping around me like tangled cloth. My engines died down and cut off, then quickly flared back out as my ship lurched forward, albeit slowly. My speed continued to climb at a parabolic rate, inclining sharply upwards. Even as I raced through space at breakneck speeds, I felt slow and cumbersome. While normally I’d reach eight AU per second, this behemoth was limited to a painful one-point-five.
When I had reached the peak of my speed, I had already completely a third of my journey. It had taken half a minute to reach this point, but the next third was only ten seconds more. The final length would take another thirty, as my ship slowed out of its warp. Again, I was treated to that wrapping feeling, in reverse, as my drive ceased its hold and the warp bubble began its decay. When it finally collapsed, I let a gasp escape me, into my respirator. I always hated warping. The crushing, choking feeling. Like being at the bottom of the ocean and atop the highest mountain all at once.
A small, repetitive flash caught my eye… I brought forward my interface and was greeted by a great wave of information. Various words and symbols, more being the latter, were scattered across my view. I saw a plethora of purple boxes, each with a white star at its center. A glance into the stream of information revealed a list of various ships, names, and astronomic data on each. I shifted my mind once more and was greeted by a simple text box, filled with similar names, stamped with a date and time. I glanced through the fleet chat, but nothing of importance caught my eye save the latest input:
[5.9.7 - 20:45] Firelance > Delus Miral Glad you could make it. Welcome to the big leagues.
I smiled at the informality; a gesture I unfortunate could not convey. I gazed out among the ships before me with great satisfaction. This was it. Within a moment, I tapped into Fleet Communications and joined into the audio channel. The banter of intel and going-ons died down into silence as the fleet acknowledged me.
“Firelance, how are you holding up?”
The voice of my amused Officer quickly filled in the silence. “Oh, I’ve got a whole fleet of Capital ships awaiting my command, and now the Fleet Commander decides to show up before I get any bloody action in!” He says, barely containing his laughter.
“He’s called out a primary at least three times, and not once was it my ship!” a familiar voice called out. “Clearly, he doesn’t know the job very well.”
The hilarity finally caught through the fleet as the comms filled with laughter. For all fairness, a joke at my expense always tended to be a funny one.
“Battletroll, you will always be my primary,” I teased. It was true that early in my career I had nearly ordered my fleet to fire upon the veteran capsuleer. That action had been the source of the running joke, and instead of landing me in patrol duty, I had actually been promoted. It seems that over everything, decisive action in the interest of protecting your fleet was very much a valued trait of a Fleet Commander.
But then, so was having a sense of humor.
“So how is it that you call out three primary targets, and still complain about not getting any action?” I asked. “What are we even paying you for if you can’t kill anything?”
“We wouldn’t have any problems if you taught these plebs how to shoot.”
“Bah! That’s what drones are for!” I joked, indicating the drone-based offensive of my own ship.
Jokes were traded for some time, but I subtly fell out of the volleys. And so the batter resumed as I lost myself in thought. Absently, I accessed my mail. Navigating straight to Alliance mail, I glossed over the various titles. War Ended, Hourly Intel, Hourly Intel, Operation Success, Hourly Intel… Most of it was general information, much of it being mail I had sent myself to the alliance server. I moved on to Corporate… same thing there. I was about to close out the window when I noticed something different: A personal mail, simply titled “Urgent”.
My curiosity was piqued. It wasn’t uncommon for me to receive personal mail, but normally it was clearly titled and tagged. This, however, was vague and lacked any tagging whatsoever.
I opened it, but was immediately surprised to not that it came not from the CEO or an alliance leader, but from my close friend Primealeus. While an accomplished strategist and fleet commander, he had long since transferred to command a personal strike team.
I sent a signal tone into the comms chatter, followed simply by a short callout of “Delus, break.”
The chatter died out once again.
“Go ahead, Delus,” Firelance granted.
I took a moment before speaking. “Fire, has Battle Angel checked in this week?”
“Prime’s task force? Not that I know of.” His confusion was more than evident in his voice, but I disregarded his unspoken question. “Did you need him for something?”
I noted a bit of commotion in the chat channels. Most notably, the security channel began to fill. I did not regard myself as influential among the alliance, but it seemed often that my words would stir up interest in one way or another. Perhaps they were checking the task force’s schedule? Or maybe deciding whether to invite Prime into the channel just to ask?
“It’s nothing important, just a bit of mail I received.” Not entirely a lie, but it felt just as vile to say. Perhaps I did not yet know what information his message held, but Prime didn’t make a habit of calling things “urgent” unless they truly were. I moved the message back to the forefront of my mind, but before I could begin reading it, Firelance interrupted me.
“Should I transfer command back to you, now, Delus?”
It was getting to be about that time, wasn’t it? I answered in the affirmative before refining my overview, the letter forgotten for now. After a moment of checking over the fleet’s status, I was ready to move out. These unknown star systems, connected by natural wormholes were wondrous. Filled with resources, far away from the ruthlessness of low security pirate space and the deadly politics of null security sovereignties. But each of them held a hidden danger…
Sleepers.
The ancient A.I.s would attack just about anything and they infested literally everything. I was simply thankful they didn’t have anything bigger than a battleship. That was our task for today: Form up, find a hive, and grind it to dust. Normally this would take but a few Battleships. This, however, was far from a normal Sleeper site.
“Not every day you pit Carriers, Dreadnaughts, and Titans against Sleepers,” I commented.
Battletroll, keeping to his name, would not let this chance slide by. “And look who they put in charge of it all!”
I tried to laugh… It was a joke after all, but the possibility of losing this fight was far too real. Even for all the Capital ships we had fielded, this would be a difficult fight. The Sleepers were getting more aggressive each month, and more hives appeared every day. My worries were interrupted as Battletroll took the initiative to reinforce the fleet.
“Hey. If I didn’t trust you with my ship, I’d have stopped hauling my ass out here a long time ago.” It seemed he always knew just what to say. Time to show ‘em my war face.
“Damn right, you daft old man. So let’s do this.” With a cheer from the fleet, we fell into silence as we prepared for the coming storm. It would be combat dialog only from here on out. The beacon went out from our scouts and the fleet slowly began to align. The rare sound of capital warp drives flooded the area as the fifty ship fleet moved into position. All at once, the fleet stopped then began the slow acceleration into warp.
I couldn’t help but laugh a little at the horrific slowness as the fleet warped in time with the gigantic Titan ships. I guess we had a couple minutes to burn, so I decided I would take the time to do a little bit of light reading.
I navigated back through my inbox until I found a single message, titled “Urgent.”
Urgent
Delus, this is Prime. Battle Angel has discovered something very disturbing about the latest Sleeper swarms during our Incursions into nearby systems. At first I thought it was just our imagination, but this goes way beyond what any of us knew about these things.
They weren’t abandoned here like everyone thinks. We were hacking into one of their comm nodes when I intercepted a data string. They were sending information on us: our fleet movements, combat logs, the works. I thought it was nothing until I caught the reply… A verbal reply.
Before I could get anymore, I was shut out and we were ambushed. The others… they didn’t make it. Their capsule hatches were purposefully sealed shut by the Sleepers, and they shot out their engines and inertial stabilizers. They’re stranded out there until either they get podded or rescued, and the Sleepers seem to want to prevent both. They can’t even jump clone out.
Whatever is happening, it’s happening fast. They’re making a move and we’re their target. Relay this to fleet for me. I need to stick around and see if I can’t get my team out of here. I hate to ask you this, but whatever you do, do not come for me. I don’t know if this new wave of sleepers have made it to the home system yet. You need to stay with the fleet and get everyone prepared.
If worse comes to worst… inform DED.
Fly Safe
Primealeus
I felt my throat close, as if to choke me. If this mean what I thought it did, then this entire fleet was in more danger than even I realized. Without another moment, I forwarded the message directly to the alliance, sending out an all-alert to fleet as I did.
I realized that we must be close to landing soon. I felt the rush of fear before. I have known the burning of adrenaline through my veins. This time was different…
This was not that exciting fear, as I have known it so many times before.
This was terror.
