A1 - Extended Content - Chapter 13B (Patreon)

A1 – Chapter 13B – Hostile Scrap (Part 2)

Sliding in between Chapter 12 and 14.

Chapter 12: Losses

Chapter 13A: Hostile Scrap (Part 1)

Chapter 13B: Hostile Scrap (Part 2)

Chapter 14: Salute (Old 13)

***

USD: ~Eight weeks after awakening, three days after ‘Carrier Drone Pod Battle Incident 2’

Location: Unknown Yellow Dwarf, L4 Lagrange Point, Nearing Debris Cloud #32

[Informative: A high probability that the ship has been detected by distant Federation units exists.]

“No shit?” Alex said as she slid into her command seat in the CIC. The red flashing lights continued to spin, but she managed to silence the deafening and horribly annoying klaxon.

[Informative: Multiple hostile units that were previously on search pattern have deviated directly toward us.]

“You still haven’t told me how they got close enough to board the ship!”

[Notice: Analysis suggests drones utilized the debris cover and low-power mode to approach un-detected. Upon reaching close proximity, they boosted when in the hull plate’s shadow.]

“You’re saying you were out-smarted by a bunch of drones?”

[Informative: This unit has operated utilizing best known probabilities in an efficient and logical manner.]

“Yeah, yeah. Can we move yet?”

[Informative: Ship Linear drive offline. RCS thrusters are operational. Fusion reactor has reignited. Emergency laser repair has completed.]

“The PDC-Ls… that’s why you were so focused on fixing them! They’ll work great on the drones!”

[Notice: This unit has performed analysis on Hunter Killer wreckage. No ECWLS launchers are present. They will be incapable of launching chaff clusters to mitigate laser damage.]

Alex grinned wickedly. PDC-Ls had much longer range than railguns and PDC-Ks. Now that they were operational, they could fry the annoying little drones before they got close enough to shoot at them.

“What are you waiting for? Let’s fry them!” Alex said.

[Informative: No hostiles are in range.]

Alex shook her head. “I know that. I mean, we shouldn’t just sit here. We need to get out of the shadow of this debris first. It’s going to block our line of sight.”

[Interrogative: What direction does Avatar wish to go?]

Alex thought for a moment. “Deeper into the debris field. Did we find anything with a big enough signature to hide us?”

[Informative: No such debris has been located.]

Alex let out a breath as she continued to consider their options. A clock showing the time for the nearest Hunter Killer to arrive within railgun range counted down on her console with hostility.

“Okay, just move us directly away from the debris for now, minimum speed, but enough to clear our firing arcs.”

[Affirmative: Beginning low velocity RCS maneuver.]

Before Alex could consider their next move, Elis walked into the CIC. She was wearing the skinsuit that Alex had given her and her helmet was on, a slightly confused and hesitant look plastered on her face.

[Suggestion: Eliminate Federation soldier. She presents a security risk.]

Alex suppressed a desire to glare at Nameless because she lacked a target. Instead, she turned her best ‘Everything is fine!’ smile toward Elis. “Hello! Are you alright?”

Elis looked at her with disbelief for a moment before finally answering, “I feel like shit. The robot hurt my arm, maybe fractured it. The medbay, cargobay, and main corridor are all leaking atmosphere despite the I-field still being active for some reason. There are dead infantry drones everywhere, and—is that red light supposed to be blinking?”

Alex turned to look at the holographic monitor with alarm. One drone had entered laser range.

“Nameless, take them out before they get close enough to shoot us!”

[Informative: Laser capacitors are currently recharging. Firing solution has been calculated. Estimated time to fire: 47 seconds.]

Alex cursed and looked back to Elis before pointing at the communications console seat. “Strap in. I think they are going to get some shots off at us!”

Elis rushed to comply. Alex turned back to the closest incoming threat which heralded five more Hunter Killers close behind it, all of them burning linear drives to quickly close the distance. The heat from those signatures was like a clarion call to anyone watching.

Worryingly, smaller dots and blips appeared further out on the passive sensors. Things were waking up. Bad things that wanted them dead.

“Nameless! Laser, please! Fire a half-powered shot if needed!”

[Informative: Laser capacitors require time to cycle between charging and discharging states.]

[Recommendation: Hold fire until full charge is available.]

Alex looked at the quad chasing after the lead Hunter Killer. She realized Nameless was right, that it would be a problem if four of them arrived and they only had a half charge on the laser to deal with two or three of them.

She wasn’t as familiar with the laser systems, since they had been inoperable. “Fine. Your way then. Prepare to return fire with the railgun!”

[Informative: Both railguns are available. Correcting ship attitude to bring target into firing arc.]

Alex looked over to Elis, who had successfully connected her suit into the console seat. Having her be flung to death if the ship took damage was no longer a worry.

“Elis, Hunter Killers are closing on us. At least one is going to get a few railgun shots off on us. Are you sure you don’t have any more codes to make them stop trying to murder us?”

“If you give me comms access I can try.” Elis answered.

[Informative: Granting Pris—]

“Give her access Nameless, but yes, you can monitor her actions. Stop repeating yourself though!” Alex said, a hint of annoyance entering her voice.

The clock continued to count down and Alex scanned for anything more she could do. There was a serious lack of it.

Elis broke her focus. “They don’t respond. My access codes are just being rejected for being expired. Probably should have expected it from the state of things.”

“Thanks for trying.” Alex said. The nearest hostile icon turned a solid red, and a thrum echoed through the ship as the rail guns opened fire. Two rail shells flung themselves at the target and both missed. The Hunter Killer missed as well.

“They missed. We did, too.” Alex announced.

The next salvo from both sides did as well. Alex announced that, then the thrum of PDC-Ks erupted as Nameless did his best to send thousands of small projectiles in the hostile gunship’s path.

As the PDC-Ks rained down on the hostile gunship, Alex watched anxiously as the countdown on the clock continued to tick down. The next rail salvo wouldn’t miss for either side.

Alex quickly scanned the ship’s systems, looking for any other options they had. The laser capacitors had fully charged, but they needed to conserve those for the next wave.

Without warning, the Hunter Killer exploded as a lucky 32mm shell slammed into its nose. That was enough to send the craft spinning and lose control and then a more accurate blast of the small caliber rounds ventilated it until all of its systems went dead. Alex let out a sigh of relief as the blip turned from red to gray.

“We got them?” Elis bit her lip inside her helmet, a look of concern visible.

Alex nodded. “First one down. Nameless, the lasers have 0.1ls range? Why aren’t we targeting them yet?”

[Informative: Analysis has revealed a weakness in Federation Hunter Killer attack profile. 0.5 seconds before firing their railgun armament, they cease evasive maneuvers when not being actively targeted.]

[Recommendation: Hold fire until firing maneuver is detected and return fire with PDC-L.]

Alex hesitated and winced. “That sounds risky?”

[Informative: Analysis suggests 95%+ confidence of victory with no further damage.]

Alex nodded, “Okay. Do it.”

“Do what?” Elis asked.

“We are waiting to fire the PDC-Ls until just before they fire.”

Elis frowned but didn’t comment further.

Seconds ticked down and Alex drew a small line on the tactical display to show where the firing line was. Then she pushed it to the main holographic display so that Elis could watch as well.

The first two gunships passed through the line at nearly the same time and two lances of light flashed out of the Shrike II’s point defense lasers. The highly accurate weapons struck immediately, the coherent light punching through the drone’s light plating and driving through soft internals. A hot jet of plasma erupted out the back of each drone leaving them both spinning, glowing wrecks.

As the third crossed the line, it repeated the encounter.

Alex watched the last one, but as the laser lashed out she realized it had missed.

“Nameless!”

[Informative: Fourth Hunter Killer drone activated evasive maneuvers.]

“You’re saying it realized what we were doing and baited our beam! Shoot it again!”

[Notice: Laser system heat sink capacity is degraded. Further shots risk melting weapon lens. Safe firing time: 5 minutes.]

“Nevermind, take it out before it shoots us!”

[Affirmative.]

Another laser shot went out, this time immolating the target despite its desperate maneuvers. There was no dodging a laser at such close ranges when the beam traveled at literally light speed.

Alex was satisfied they wouldn’t be nailed by a lucky railgun shot, though.

“Damage?” Alex asked.

[Informative: PDC-L #4 has experienced lens melting. Overheating of the turret has caused internal servo damage. A full replacement of components will be required.]

“But at least we don’t have a new hole in us.”

[Affirmative.]

[Notice: Numerous additional energy sources have been detected. Analysis estimates that more drones have become active, and this location could be subject to search.]

“Let’s head to a new cloud. We can leave the cruiser wreckage for when things calm down.”

[Informative: A smaller debris field is approximately 1 day's travel on RCS.]

***

“You mean… they are shooting each other?” Alex asked.

[Informative: Multiple high energy signatures indicate that various distant energy sources are engaging in high energy exchanges. Multiple larger drive plumes have been detected moving toward those areas. Estimation of the size and mass of those units places them as corvettes or light frigates.]

“This is going sideways.” Alex replied.

Elis looked up from the stack of MREs she had been sorting. Alex had allowed her to stay in the mess room under surveillance while repairs to the medbay and rest of the ship fixed the holes that had been drilled into the ship by small arms fire. One nasty leak had been venting ship’s atmosphere into a cavity between the ship’s spine and the main interior.

“What is going sideways?” Elis asked.

Alex sighed and wished the other two would talk to each other instead of turning her into a semi-relay. “There are bigger drones around, and they seem to be fighting each other.”

Elis frowned and looked down at the MREs. “The drones fighting each other would only make sense if they were out of contact for an extended period of time and their IFF codes rotated out of sync. As for bigger units… yes there were some as big as cruisers.”

Alex’s brows furrowed with concern. “You mean we might end up being chased by fully repaired cruisers? Why are there drone cruisers!”

“We were running low on people. There were more ships than crews for them. We couldn’t trust NAIs with manning them, so the fleet developed special GAI for them as well as the cryptographic codes that the NAIs couldn’t just snap their fingers and break on a whim.”

[Informative: This unit does not snap its fingers or break security codes on whims.]

“You can tell that to her yourself.” Alex replied.

“What?” Elis asked with a slightly confused expression.

“Nameless said something snarky to you.”

Elis’s eye twitched. “Tell that thing it should reverse its power conduits and fry itself.”

[Informative: That would be a highly illogical and unproductive action, as seems to be standard for Federation Personnel. Hostile Personnel has hidden an MRE utensil inside their skinsuit sleeve.]

Alex let out a sigh. “That’s kind of mean. Also, I don’t think Nameless is flustered by it. If you are done using your fork-spoon, can you please leave it with the rest of the trash?”

Elis was quiet, but then slowly removed the offending item and put it in the used MRE bag from the meal they had eaten earlier. “It’s called a spork, not a fork-spoon.”

Alex turned back to her datapad and frowned at the display on the screen. “We are going to have to keep low and quiet. Nameless, have you made any progress on those stealth improvements?”

[Informative: Repairs are still ongoing. Modifications have not had enough time to progress beyond the schematic and planning phase.]

Alex didn’t like it. They were doing their best to pretend to be a piece of wreckage, but she knew that if anything smart had been watching them, they would have easily been able to keep track of the Shrike. They could be ghosting in towards them already and they were relying on the Shrike’s damaged sensors to pick them out from all the debris.

She considered pushing them out into the open again, away from anything, but then they’d stick out like a sore thumb.

[Informative: A localized debris shower will impact the current cloud in approximately 6 hours.]

[Recommendation: Match trajectory with debris shower to move to a new location. Hyper velocity impacts between the current cloud and the debris shower will produce transient energy signatures that could mask Shrike II movement.]

Alex nodded; it was a better plan that she had at the moment. “Okay, debris surfing time I guess?”

Elis looked at her, clearly wanting an explanation.

“We are going to pretend to be debris some more and go out with the next weather system. Nameless, what do you think the chance that we are detected is?”

[Informative: This unit has no accurate measurement for detection chances. Estimation is a 50-50 chance for this maneuver. Unfortunately, no other plan is available.]

“That bad?” Alex frowned.

“You could try deactivating everything, including life support and the I-field. I know you did before, but from what I know, those fields generate heat and take energy as well as producing EM signatures. Even if they are faint.”

Alex smiled, pleased that Elis was contributing.

[Suggestion: The prisoner should be advised that combat drones run on battery power and will remain operational along with surveillance units to monitor prisoner behavior.]

“Even Nameless likes the idea!”

That didn’t seem to please Elis. Alex felt more positive about their future prospects as friends, though.

[Informative: Medbay repairs have been completed.]

Beeper and Booper appeared at the door.

[Suggestion: Move prisoner to proper holding area.]

“Did you expedite repairs on the medbay just for Elis?”

[Affirmative.]

Alex bit her lip, and then hesitantly looked at Elis. “Nameless was concerned about you, so he fixed your room.”

She knew it didn’t work when Elis gave her a skeptical look and stood up to go with the bots. “Thanks for not just letting the thing space me.”

Alex winced, because she knew it was true. Figuring out how to convince Nameless and Elis to get along seemed more complex than figuring out how to evade the drones hunting them.

***

The plan to mimic a dead piece of metal struck by a piece of hypervelocity debris seemed to work. Which was good, because halfway to the next debris cloud a hateful red blip appeared, scouring the cloud they had just left, and Nameless had identified it as being a destroyer class vessel.

There was no more information other than its relative size. She knew that the drone vessels were more lightly armed and armored than an actual warship, but her Shrike was still heavily compromised.

She wondered if this was what a small fish felt when it was being hunted in the deep ocean by a large predator they couldn’t see.

The background noise of drones murdering each other had receded into quietness once again, and Nameless had marked the new wrecks and debris trajectories on the map. A bit more entropy in the system, because she was fairly sure that the drones weren’t self-reproducing. There was also no sign of any human habitation in the system, and Nameless was certain that they’d have picked up some type of signals if there was.

“Nameless, can we make a decoy or something? Lure everything that is hunting far away and give us a chance to go back to that cruiser wreckage?”

[Informative: Creating a full signature that matches Shrike II profile is possible, however current supplies prevent creating a unit of sufficient size and capability.]

“Can we find some piece of wreckage or debris that we can use nearby?”

There was some silence, which told Alex that Nameless hadn’t thought of that possibility and he was doing his analysis thing. That made her irrationally happy for some reason; it wasn’t very often she came up with something that Nameless hadn’t already calculated the ‘probabilities’ about.

[Notice: No debris that fits these criteria is within current drone range. However, a recently destroyed drone has a trajectory that could be intercepted.]

“What’s the chances that we are detected moving to it? Is it in a cloud?”

[Informative: Debris is on an exit trajectory into a solar orbit. Any course change risks detection by hostile Federation drone forces.]

“Real question: Can we fix the Linear drive soon? I really don’t like us not having any movement options other than RCS. If shit goes down, I want us to be able to bug out.”

[Informative: Linear Drive repair has been 99% completed, however thrust tests have not been completed.]

“Why didn’t you tell me that?”

[Notice: Structural issues due to sustained damage indicate a high probability of further ship damage in the event of a full Linear Drive burn despite internal inertial dampening. Mitigating modifications have been scheduled.]

“Well, make them top priority.”

[Affirmative: All drones have been tasked with structural reinforcement.]

“Set course for the wreck you found. Make sure you get things ready for turning it into a decoy.” Alex nodded to herself, feeling satisfied with the decision.

Now she just needed to figure out how to keep herself and Elis comfortable in their skinsuits and on bottled air while they continued to stay dark with life support off.

***

USD: ~Nine weeks after awakening

Location: Unknown Yellow Dwarf, Solar orbit near L4 Lagrange Point

Alex watched as the small drones worked over the wreck’s hull. It was one of the drones they had destroyed with the lasers, and it was in terrible shape. The beam had punched through the drone’s cooling systems and had not only taken out its main computer and heatsinks but also its reactor.

She hadn’t been sure Nameless would be able to make it work, but he had by dismantling several of their missiles and drones and rigging together a patchwork of systems that would hijack and control the drone’s transmitters and drive system. It wouldn’t be capable of its normal maximum thrust simply because of a lack of power generation, but it would be capable of spitting out a loud signal and burning at moderate speed in a single direction.

Alex let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and tapped her helmet climate control to lower the temperature a degree.

The air was technically breathable if they took off their helmets and would even stay that way for a few minutes if they tried breathing it. The temperature was only mitigated by the cooling systems in their suits, though.

With the ship’s radiators set to as low power as possible, the entire ship had become a furnace. Nameless had been forced to walk a fine line between industrial tasks and repairing and modifying the ship and preparing the decoy and not cooking them to death.

If that wasn’t enough, the drone destroyer had continued to follow along their trajectory at a slow prowl, perhaps having detected them but believing it had gone undetected. If the drone was seeking to impale them at close range, Alex didn’t want to find out.

“Nameless, can we increase the cooling any at all? Even with my suit cooler at maximum, I’m getting sweaty in here. This thing says atmo temperature is at 85 Celsius.”

[Suggestion: Spacing captured POW would reduce thermal cooling requirements.]

Alex’s eyebrow twitched. “Nameless, stop suggesting things like that. It’s not funny.”

[Notice: This unit did not make suggestion based on Avatar concepts of humor.]

“Stop making it then. I will not do that and I won’t let you and frankly, it’s pissing me off. Do you want me to go flip your power switch and dump you off the ship?”

[Informative: Avatar's suggestion is irrational and has no merit.]

“Okay. Let’s try this then. This is an Omega-class-whatever order: Stop trying to figure out how to get rid of Elis, and the next time you suggest trying to throw her out the airlock to kill her, you will instead dump half your computronics units instead! Got it?”

A sullen silence was her only answer. She wasn’t sure if her order would even work or force Nameless to do anything, but she hoped she had gotten her point across. His quips about Elis had grown tiresome and counter to what Alex wanted; Elis to be their friend.

But for that to happen, they had to somehow not get killed.

“How long until the decoy is ready?”

[Informative: Approximately 6 hours until decoy completion.]

***

Alex opened the door to Medbay and waved to Elis, who looked up at her with a miserable expression. That wasn’t surprising, they’d been stuck in their suits for over two days now and despite having the capability to use the bathroom and eat and drink in them, it wasn’t a pleasant experience especially with their cooling units having maxed out in the constant heat.

“Hey, are you okay?” Alex asked.

“I’ve been worse for longer.”

Alex held up a small box that she had made in the ship’s workshop. It was a mishmash of cooling units from spare suits. “Here.”

Elis took it with a confused look on her face.

“Slot it into your helmet’s extra hose attachment.” Alex prompted.

Elis examined the piece of jury-rigged equipment until she found the attachment point, then slid it over the attachment point. Alex watched as a burst of air blew Elis’s hair inside her helmet.

Relief from the heat appeared on Elis’s face. “Oh. Oh, that’s wonderful.”

“Yeah, I jury-rigged the cooling units on four suits together to make that. They do well normally, but when the entire environment is saturated like this, their capacity goes down a lot…”

“You made it yourself?”

Alex nodded. “I like making things.”

A slight frown crept onto Elis’s face, and she looked away. “Yeah… that’s not surprising.”

Tilting her head, Alex felt confused. “What do you mean?”

“NAI Avatars usually like making things.”

A multitude of feelings warred in Alex’s chest. Did that mean she was normal? What were other NAI Avatars like? Elis knew them before?

Before she could collect her jumbled thoughts or voice a question, she was interrupted by Nameless.

[Informative: Decoy unit is ready. Recommend monitoring operations from the CIC.]

Alex looked over her shoulder, then back at Elis. “Hey, want to come to CIC and watch the decoy launch? We are going to lure the drones away from us.”

Elis pointed to the cooler now attached to her helmet. “Can I bring this thing with me?”

Alex grinned, “Sure!”

Alex opened the door for Elis and led the way, while Nameless maintained silence about the interact or offer. Well, she had yelled at him about it, but it was still a surprise when he held his... circuits.

Elis settled down at the communications console like she had during the drone boarding and Alex took her spot on the captain’s command seat.

“Nameless, are you ready to deploy the decoy?”

[Informative: All preparations for decoy deployment are ready.]

[Notice: Decoy will activate 10 minutes after launch to create some distance between it and Shrike.]

“Okay, let’s start it up then.” Alex said.

“How are you launching the decoy without attracting attention? Won’t the drive flare give us away?” Elis asked.

Alex wasn’t trying to be hypersensitive, but when Elis referred to them as ‘us’, she felt pleased.

“It won’t actually be launching anywhere; we’ll be moving away from it with the RCS. Nameless says 10 minutes of that and then we’ll light the drone’s Linear Drive off and turn on its noise maker. Hopefully, everything goes after it, and we can head back to the wreckage we found.”

It was a quietly tense ten minutes. Alex put up a clock for a countdown, then changed the main display to show the separation as well as a screen of the tactical monitor highlighting potential threats that Nameless had tagged.

When the time hit zero, the decoy’s makeshift reactor spun to life and it lit off its small but powerful Linear drive. Its course took it directly away from the Shrike toward a course that would hopefully draw things away from their goal: the large piece of cruiser wreckage and the cloud near the large asteroid with the NAI signal.

Alex heard Elis suck in a breath as the monitor lit up with red dots, dozens of them appearing from stealth and lighting off their Linear drives in pursuit. The drone destroyer that had been prowling after them was the closest hostile, and Alex frowned as the plot showed its projected course.

“Nameless… isn’t that close?”

[Informative: The drone destroyer was approximately 33% closer to Shrike than previously estimated.]

“How can you be off that much?” Alex hissed.

[Notice: This unit will perform further maintenance and repairs to ship sensor systems.]

“Yeah… good idea. Next time they’ll be clubbing us and we will think they are on the other side of the system!” Alex replied.

“Uhh. Is that thing going to see us?” Elis asked.

Alex was quiet and so was Nameless. A third picture on the main screen activated and a small white dot slowly came into focus as the ship’s optical camera acquired it.

The destroyer was larger than the Shrike by almost thirty percent, and a massive blue drive flare shot out from behind it as it accelerated in an attempt to catch the decoy. Elements on the hostile ship highlighted as Nameless discerned what different mountings on the outer hull were.

It was close enough that the individual gun mounts were discernable.

[Informative: Hostile drone ship seems unaware of our presence.]

“Yeah… don’t turn anything on or move.” Alex commented.

The destroyer passed them, and Alex let out a sigh of relief. Dozens more ships followed the decoy, and she was happy to note that it was unlikely they were going to catch it before its power source ran out. That’d buy them plenty of time to examine and work on the cruiser wreck.