The young woman stretched a bit, before clambering into her fighter. She had already fixed everything the staff screwed up, but that didn’t stop her from starting the standard pre-flight checks. As she started those, she considered what they had found already. They had entered the Delta Four system an hour ago, and already they had found something. A ship, or what was left of it. Preliminary indications was that salvagers had already beaten them to the wreck. Her sheer size however meant that a fair amount was still here. That ship had a number of other nearby wrecks as well. All were destroyed by the same weapons. Weapons whose signature did not match any known weapons configuration. The only thing they knew for sure so far was that some kind of particle weapon had been used.

That played into her initial mission. She was to do a close sweep of the wrecked mega-freighter and her escorts. See if there were any clues about what happened here. The young woman couldn’t help but think about that cruiser whose distress signal she had picked up. Some part of her told her this wreck, and what happened to that cruiser were related. It certainly seemed likely, since that distress signal came from the same system. Something was happening here. Not to mention things seemed far too quiet in the Delta Four system. She knew from the records that the system was often crawling with pirate ships. It did not help that none of the previous sweeps had been able to clear the bases deeper in the system. They knew where they were, but reaching them was impossible. A simple case of not having the right equipment, and thanks to those corrupt politicians on the council getting it was impossible. Rumor had it, they had slashed the budget again. It was probably true, her sister had told her all about the drama in the upper circles in regards to military budgets. Since there was little she could do about it, however, she chose not to dwell on that issue. Instead, she considered what they knew so far about recent system events, which was admittedly not much.

She did know a bit about the wrecked freighter. Its transponder while not actively transmitting was still powered, and responded to an inquiry request. As such, they knew the wrecked ship had originally been the Majestic Queen. A Merchantman class mega-freighter that was built at the New Valoria Merchant Yards. That was a hundred and twenty-nine years ago, and she served in the Valorian merchant fleet for thirty-seven years before she was captured by the Mishran Pirate lord Yishak in the Dalmine sector. He rechristened her, the Mi’Shar Ni’qal. Roughly translated that meant Mishara’s Bounty. In other words, he had named her after their dead homeworld. Perhaps in honor of its memory or something. She didn’t know and didn’t care to speculate. What the young woman did know was the ship had been retrofitted while in his care into an impressive mobile pirate base. The venerable Merchantman class was still in service today, thanks to their excellent capacity, superior reliability, and highly efficient engines. They were a little slow by modern standards, and their defenses were lacking. They featured rather poor shielding for a ship of that size, lacked armor, and had only a single bank of type I plasma pulse cannons. As a result they required escorts to protect them from pirate attacks.

The Mi’Shar Ni’Qal may be the same class, but she had been outfitted with armored plating. Additional gun batteries and missile ports had been added. Her sensors had been upgraded with modern military-grade high-resolution scanners, and she had been outfitted with a more powerful shield system. The end result was a ship able to actually defend itself against military vessels, although not anything in the same tonnage class. No surprise there, but it was strong enough to take on a cruiser namely the older ones, and with escort it was a tough nut to crack. The vessel and even more so its captain had a very high bounty. Not surprising given its long career, and the fact that both Yishak and more recently his son had given the Valorian navy the slip quite a few times. Facts that led her and everyone else to wonder. Who had managed to do them in? Already the rumor mill was churning, and they had barely been here an hour.

Her pre-flight checks came back. Everything checked out, she was good to go. She signaled. In front of her ship, the hangar doors were opening, while the air shield had engaged. Maintaining the air pressure in here. It was holding, which was good since the local dust cloud was known to interfere with shield systems. The data sent from the ship to her fighter did confirm some interference, but not enough to prevent it from doing its job. She was happy about that, because she could not imagine doing hanger operations without one. It was just too integral to modern hanger ops. Checking the data link, she pulled the modulation info she needed and adjusted her own fighter shields to match. They might be near useless in this soup, but in the bay that won’t be a problem. More importantly, they were critical to allowing her ship to bypass the air shield. In fact they would even allow her to pass through the ship’s main shields as well. A fact that would allow her to land her ship safely, even while her carrier was under fire.

Her shields matched, everything she needed to know fresh in mind, she manipulated the controls of her lancer fighter, and a second later the ship was in the void. Her computer instantly warned her that her shields were being disrupted reducing their effective strength to about forty percent of normal. Their combat efficiency had dropped proportionally. As such she would have to worry about hits penetrating the shields if she came under fire. Something to worry about, and it also meant she would have to keep a closer eye on debris. That was a large reason for why previous sweeps had been unable to clear the pirates. The debris fields in this system were fairly dense, and without appropriate equipment, they could tear capital ships apart. Her fighter was small, and fast, and could navigate those fields. Although she would have to keep a close eye on her limited and hampered sensors. Especially in the debris fields which were prime ambush territory. 

The artificial debris field created by these wrecked hulks was no different. So she kept a close eye on her scanners, her best friend. Nothing else would help her more, not her plasma pulse guns, not her four plasma missiles, and certainly not her shields. Her engines were excellent. They gave her the agility she would need to avoid any threat this system might throw at her, but only if she saw it coming. That was why her scanners were her best friend.

Under her fingers, the agile lancer, slipped around a chunk of the melted battle plate as she proceeded into the expanding debris field. It was time to find some answers. Suddenly her scanners picked up an energy burst near Kiri squadron. Followed by chatter. 

She quietly listened, as the Kiri squadron worked out what in Valoria happened. Just to be safe, she started charging her pulse cannons. Best to be ready. Moments later, she learned what happened. Kiri squadron had triggered a mine and lost three fighters. Pilots included. That was not a good start to a mission. If anything that was a bad omen, a very bad omen. Losing ships before you even saw the enemy was never a good sign. She started scanning for mines and figured she would wait until later to ask the important questions. There were quite a few questions to ask when you encounter a mine. Especially since they are almost useless in space, and she didn’t know anyone who actually used them. Even if they could be fairly powerful, the problem was that they were situational weapons. There was also the question about why someone would mine a debris field. Who even does that?

It wasn’t long before she had her first clue. If she had not been looking she would have missed it. A small disk-shaped object on her short-range scanners. It was sensor shielded, which gave it a blurry profile on her sensors. Not to mention its minimal energy signature. The object’s sensor profile was so small, she almost thought it was a sensor glitch, but a recalibration of the scanners brought it into tighter focus. A few more adjustments to compensate for the sensor shielding, and she knew what she was looking at. A mine. A weird one at that. It had a few systems with no discernible purpose. The warhead was more interesting. It was a fusion-triggered cascade detonation core, which in other terms meant a photon burst warhead. More commonly referred to as a photon warhead. What made this one interesting was that it used a laser-initiated fusion core to achieve detonation. Most photons actually used a small amount of antimatter to trigger the cascade detonation needed to unleash a photon burst. Her fighter computer indicated this unusual little mine had a surprisingly high yield as well. More than enough to overwhelm the shields of her tiny little fighter. It had enough firepower to do serious damage to most cruisers, and even some battleships, and it was uncomfortably close.

This mine was also a major clue, as it significantly narrowed the pool of suspects. Photons were a fairly common weapon, but the use of a fusion core rather than an antimatter solution to trigger the cascade detonation was highly unusual. It was also surprisingly clever, as it solved all of the issues that photons normally had to deal with. The ones that were just inherent to antimatter weapons. By making it a nuclear weapon instead, the designers of this weapon had simply done away with all those issues wholesale. The biggest one was that antimatter weapons were prone to going off if anything disrupted the containment field. A fusion core had no such problem, especially a laser-initiated one. Making it a prime choice for a mine.

Mentally she reviewed everything she knew about photonic, and nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons were remarkably stable. You could drop them from orbit, shoot them up with ballistic rounds, set them on fire, and so on. All without worrying about them going off. Photonic weapons on the other hand made use of a special material. One that when bombarded by the destructive energy of a high energy detonation such as a nuke, catalyzed into a photonic burst. It was that factor about the mines that would complicate her disarming the weapon. If it was just a normal nuclear mine she could just fire her pulse cannons at it, and be done with the weapon. 

The devious thing about a photonic mine was that if you fired a plasma weapon at it was that it would go off. While that would not trigger the fusion core, it would superheat the special casing, causing it to undergo a catalytic reaction, and trigger a massive photonic burst. That would be the case with just about any weapon that generated enough heat to superheat the material. If she wanted to destroy the mine, her best bet would be a disrupter. A disrupter weapon would not superheat the material, but instead, it would disrupt the mine’s molecular integrity. The result would be the mine disintegrating, rather than vaporizing. Thereby preventing it from undergoing a photon detonation. Problem was, she didn’t have one. That left her with precious few options for disarming or safely destroying the weapon That did not mean no options, however.

She was quite glad she paid attention back when her weapons instructor had taught her all about the pulse cannon. More importantly what the older woman had taught her about its less commonly used functions. The Pulse cannons actually gave her a couple of options. They could be configured to fire something other than a plasma pulse, such as an electromagnetic blast, or an ionic shot. With her limited data on the mine, she couldn’t be sure which was better, but if she had to guess an ionic shot would be more likely to succeed. She programmed her fighter’s guns with deft movements to emit an ionic pulse while opening her comm channel. Informing her ship that she had located a mine, and was now attempting to disable it. To be on the safe side, she gently pulsed her thrusters in reverse. It seemed wise to err on the side of caution and keep her fighter outside of the blast radius of that mine. The young pilot was thankful that her pulse cannons had much better range than the plasma weapons used by other races, and because of that she knew she would be able to fire an ionic pulse from outside the blast radius of the mine.

It only took her a few moments to get into position and ready her cannons. Driven by a strong feeling of unease, she had also programmed her cannons to quickly revert to standard shot after the first pulse. In that mode, it would simply fire a contained energy envelope of high-energy plasma. Enough to superheat the mine, and cause it to detonate. It was a backup plan, in case her first plan went terribly wrong. 

She let out a breath and pressed the firing trigger. An instant later an ionic surge lanced out of her fighter. Leaving a wake of ionized dust particles, and making her weakened shields flicker. It also created a brilliant flaring light show as it crossed the short distance to the mine, as the ionized particles in the dust cloud released a vibrant aurora of color. The display was as beautiful as it was dazzling, but she ignored it. Focused instead on her readouts. The pulse hit the mine, and ionized its systems. In theory that should have fried anything sensitive in the mine, unless it was shielded against ionic pulses. If it was, it was also likely shielded against emp as well. The small size of the mine would suggest not, but her readings quickly suggested otherwise. As the mine suddenly began moving, heading right for her. With a nice little energy blip to indicate the sudden acceleration. One that also highlighted four more mines now heading right for her. How she didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to spend her time questioning why a few mines with no discernable method of propulsion were now moving right at her. Instead, she implemented her back up plan with a slight change. Instead of her cannons, she dropped all four of her missiles and kicked her engines into high gear. It was time to get out of here. At the same moment, she kicked on the comms. To warn everyone else about the fact that a few mines were about to explode. Internally she was praying that she would make it out of this alive.

Williams stared at the porthole, as she considered recent events. They had been fighting alien pirates quite a bit over the last few weeks.  Below was a world, that formerly held a pirate stronghold. It had been located right on top of a rich vein of that weird ore Ruri wanted. So naturally, that machine had launched a ground assault. That vien was now exhausted as they had mined it clean, and that wasn’t the only source they were collecting from. The mining shuttle she could see on final approach was just one example of that.  Honestly, she did not have too much of an issue with this, she might have done the same. Even she understood the potential that unassuming mineral possesses. What it could do for ship armor, or even combat troops was well worth the effort to obtain.

If anything she was irked, that Countryman was the one spearheading this little operation. There was one thing she did have a fundamental problem with. Pirate encounters had dropped drastically over the last few days. It was to the point that many believed the majority of the local pirates had either been cleared out or killed over the last few weeks. She wasn’t entirely sure about that since they had only destroyed about three hundred pirate ships in open combat. It went up a little more if you counted ambushes, but not much. They had glassed a few pirate bases as well. Given the size of the system, those numbers felt small to her, very small. That factor played into why she wasn’t happy with that machine’s most recent decision. While it was true maintenance was overdue, she felt now wasn’t the time for an overhaul of the hull plating. She felt vulnerable knowing the armor was currently offline, and even missing in a few places while engineers crawled over the hull conducting maintenance on their primary defense against hostile fire. Worse they were in the middle of a system flooded with thick dust that interfered with sensors. This just didn’t seem like a good idea to her. At least he had the good sense to maintain patrols around the Enterprise to keep an eye out for hostiles. Williams didn’t like to admit it, but it wasn’t like a better option was available. It wasn’t like they had ready access to a starport able to do the work for them in relative safety.

Behind her a door opened, and she looked over to see two engineers in their skintight maintenance suits. While Williams understood why they were made that way, it didn’t help her dislike of the skinsuits. Especially with how they emphasized and highlighted a wearer’s assets. Rather than let what they were wearing distract her, she turned back to the viewport. The view wasn’t all that great thanks to the dust, but at least the dust looked pretty enough. Especially after an energy burst ionizes some of the particles in it. 

“I’m glad we are finally doing this. In fact with what I am seeing, I think we should have stopped for maintenance earlier.”

The other one then commented to the other, “No joke. Have you seen the primary relays for section 52 gamma?”

There was a pause, “Not really, why?”

“They are a hair short of fried. It’s a miracle they didn’t fail.”

Williams blinked. She wasn’t all that familiar with the engineering specs of the Enterprise, but she knew enough to know that a relay failure could be problematic. There were backup systems, of course, which mitigated the problems. Curious as to the extent of what they found, and what exactly this damage meant, she turned back towards the pair, and tried to ignore how little those skinsuits left to the imagination.

Countryman set aside, the latest mining reports, and pulled up the next in a long stack of reports. At the moment he was taking care of important paperwork, but he was also keeping tabs on his force distribution. The Coto was currently taking care of a newly found pirate facility, while the Umikaze was out supervising a salvage operation. He had sent three squadrons with each ship for recon, with the rest maintaining patrols in the local area. It was the best he could do in terms of an early warning system, and he felt this was their best opportunity to conduct some over-due maintenance. It was even more urgent given all the abuse the hull plating had been taking lately. Not to mention how often they had to patch the plating as well. He hoped the Erudite would help reduce the number of patch jobs they were needing on a regular basis. Titan alloy was really good material for modern armor, but its protection against directed energy weapons left something to be desired. The overlord armor scheme compensated for that and did so really well, but it could be overwhelmed, and as they were finding, there were plenty of aliens out here with weapons that could do that.

Suddenly the intercom activated, “Sorry to bother you sir, but long-range scanners are picking up energy bursts in proximity of that capital ship the Coto sank a few weeks ago.”

  He raised an eyebrow a bit surprised they were able to detect anything that far out. Those must have been fairly large energy bursts. The only thing he could think was that their mines were going off. They just might release enough energy to be detectable out here, especially if multiple went off at once. He tapped the comm, “Alert the patrols and light a fire under the maintenance teams. I want the hull buttoned up asap.”

“Aye, sir.”