While the ship was engaged with the Cylovan Cruiser, Selia was down in one of the lounges. It was quite comfortable here in the lounge and she could almost forget about the battle going on outside the ship. If it wasn’t for the whine of the ship’s energy weapons and the occasional jolt she would be able to forget that her hosts were fighting a battle. She wasn’t the only one in the room, but no one else seemed even slightly worried about the outcome. As for herself, she couldn’t help, but feel nervous. This ship while impressive in her own right was far inferior to those fielded by her own people. With it, she was left with a fair amount of uncertainty about how things would go. 

At a neighboring table, she could hear a few engineers debating over a blueprint. It was a group of three girls in lab coats. One of them had blue hair that fell to her shoulders and had a rather cute face. Across from her was another girl who was a head shorter with long pink hair that she had in a ponytail. The last girl had short brown hair and a stern face. Honestly, she could barely follow what they were discussing, and it looked like it had to do with a small shuttle that was being projected above the table. Finally, her curiosity got the better of her and she walked over to the table. Sitting down in an open chair, she asked them, “What are you working on?”

“It's not much of a secret, it's the 1205-B project,” said a girl with blue hair to her left. 

“The 1205-B project? What is it for?” asked Selia.

“Well, the 1205 is our mainstay combat shuttle design. However, it has been in service of the fleet for over seventy years. The B project was commissioned about five years ago to update the 1205 to the new era,” said the blue-haired girl.

“Well, uh, oh. We forgot to introduce ourselves. I’m Selia and you are?” asked Selia.

“I’m Kerin, and the girl with pink hair is Yui and this is Anna, nice to meet you, Selia,” said the blue-haired girl Kerin.

“Well Kerin, five years sounds like you have had enough time to figure an upgrade out,” said Selia.

“As you can see from the blueprint here we are nearly finished. We’re just trying to iron out a glitch in the micro warp drive that prevents the shuttle from exceeding warp two,” said Yui while pointing at the holographic blueprint.

“So, in other words, the only problem your current design has is in the warp engine?” asked Selia.

“That is exactly what I am saying. Command wants the shuttle, and aren’t willing to wait much longer for it. We have three months to find what is causing the glitch and fix it,” said Yui.

“Out of curiosity how fast is the shuttle supposed to be if warp two is a limit caused by a glitch?” asked Selia.

“She has a design speed of warp four, and like every other warp-capable ship in the fleet was designed with a stealth drive configuration which means she should be able to reach warp six if we are willing to forgo stealth. But as Yui said, the damn glitch prevents us from exceeding warp two,” said Anna.

“I’m not an engineer or all that familiar with warp drive, but what exactly is a stealth drive configuration?” asked Selia.

“Well, warp drives generate a massive amount of heat as a byproduct of the spatial folding process. Most races use radiators to radiate this energy into space. We have only recently started incorporating radiators into our own designs. Normally we don’t use them since the radiated energy makes a ship extremely visible to FTL sensor arrays. Stealth drives like ours don’t radiate that heat into space, instead, the cooling system shunts the heat into a series of energy recyclers that convert the waste heat into usable energy that is then used to power other systems like life support. This setup comes with the added bonus of being more fuel-efficient than a radiator drive, if slower since radiators can eliminate more heat per second than a recycler can. Which is why we have started hybridizing our drive design. This allows us to reach higher speeds when we need to while keeping fuel costs lower,” said Kerin.

“I guess that answers the question,” said Selia as the whine of the ship’s beam cannons suddenly ceased.

“Looks like the fleet disabled the cruiser,” said Kerin.

“Well good luck finding the solution to your little problem. You know maybe you should talk to someone else who knows a thing or two about warp drive. Maybe a fresh perspective could solve the problem,” said Selia.

“Well we already talked to everyone on the engineering staff,” said Yui.

“Wait, did we talk to the captain? I heard somewhere that he was part of the staff that invented warp drive,” said Anna.

“No, we didn’t. We should ask him to have a look,” said Kerin as Selia got up and left the lounge. Talking with them helped her take her mind off her nervousness, but she still wanted to know what was going on. So she headed for the lift, hoping that she might be able to get onto the bridge.

Elsewhere on the ship, chief science officer Ruri was working on her own little pet project. Unlike the 1205-B which had been started around the same time as hers, she wasn’t as close to completion. Hers had the same glitch in its micro warp drive, but it had a number of other problems that still had to be worked out before it could be put into general production. Her project was a patrol corvette, a type of light craft. One that they sorely needed, while fighters and shuttles could be used to police a system while they were conducting mining and ship construction activities their range and short deployment times made them less than ideal. Her LPC project was commissioned to fill this role, but they wanted the craft to be flexible enough that it could be used in other roles if need be.

The project was quite the challenge, especially considering they were trying to mount working beam arrays onto a corvette frame. They wanted to place beam weapons on the little corvette that were strong enough to punch through ship armor. Getting them small enough to fit, hadn’t been much of a problem, but they were having problems maintaining beam integrity and intensity. She stared at the results of the latest simulation, the beams had shown an output variation of thirteen percent. While the beam containment had a fluctuation of thirty-one percent. These values were huge and way outside an acceptable margin of fluctuation. A one percent variation was normally considered high. She needs to get them down to about half a percent for the variations to be acceptable. Although she would prefer to get it down further, the ship’s beam cannons had a flux range of point zero zero five, which was virtually ideal. That was the flux range she was trying to create as a cutting beam needed the more controlled values that range allowed.

Looking at the values, she went back into the design. She had a few ideas on what to change in order to get the beam array to function with more acceptable values. By the time she had made the changes, the whine of the ship’s cutting beams had ceased. Not paying it any real attention she ran another simulation. She almost wanted to shout for joy, when the simulation showed a drop in both flux values by over half. She was finally on the right route, still, need a bit more work but she had the feeling they would reach their goal soon. Still, she had more issues to work out before they could start work on the prototype.

The first of the assault shuttles landed in a broken hangar at the ship’s equator. The bay doors had been smashed making a landing in the bay easy. Debris was scattered all over the bay and the doors leading into the interior had been melted open from a beam punching through the bay. The bay was empty of Cylovan personnel so the marines on board were able to disembark unopposed.  Most of the marines disembarking were combat androids designed specifically for shipboard combat. Like most of the androids built by the refuge, they were designed to look female. Designated as the MR-40 robotic marine, these machines were highly effective foot soldiers. They weren’t given the hardware of a command unit, but they still employed an adaptive ai capable of learning from past experiences. Each MR-40 was outfitted with Mark IV personal armor, a rifle, and pistol. Along with a combat belt full of grenades, breaching charges and a plasma cutter. They were also quite durable allowing them to take multiple hits and still be combat-capable.

The machines rapidly secured the hanger, allowing the command units to land in a secure location. The command units were designated as TCR-29s and were virtually identical, but they only carried a pistol. The real difference was that they had a more powerful brain allowing for more rapid calculations. Which also allowed them to support a more complex AI. Instantly they began giving orders and pushed into the ship. It didn’t take long before they started encountering resistance. The Cylovan combat drones resembled large metal spiders with a cannon mounted on their backs. Dozens of the flooded the corridors firing at the marines as the pushed forward. Personal shielding keeping the drones fighting after each hit.

From her position in the corridor one of the ground commanders, a TR-239 observed the shields in action. Their rifles were of limited effect against them, but they were slowly draining the shields with each hit. She ordered her troops to hold their ground. The alien disrupters weren’t all that effective against their armor, and she had some heavy units carrying a weapon that could get rid of those shields moving up from the landing bays to reinforce her position. The weapon she was waiting for was called an Electro Pulsar. It was a wrist mount cannon that was standard to the heavy ground units. The weapon itself was a miniaturized version of the Electro Cannon intended for ground combat. It had proven to be quite deadly during lab testing, causing rather severe burns to organic tissue, and outright frying the unfortunate equipment it was tested on. It was a rather short-range weapon, with an effective range of half a kilometer, but it did have a decent fire rate. It fires a short .4 second pulse and has a recharge of .8 seconds. Along with a power pack capacity of 340 shots. The important part was that it was a miniature version of the same weapon the ships used to knock out energy shields, which meant it was exactly what she needed.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait long for the heavy infantry to arrive. All of the carrying a heavy particle rifle and outfitted with a Pulsar. She had a coupe grenades thrown down the corridor to distract the mecha spiders as the infantry moved into position. The heavy infantry instantly opened fire. Blue lightning bolts slammed into the mecha spiders and the corridor was flooded with light as their personal shields failed in a brilliant burst of light. Blinding both sides for a couple of seconds, but once the light faded the Cylovans were torn apart. With the drones out of way, she and her troops moved forward. The corridors were massive with many nooks and crannies for troops to hide in, so she and the others had to check every single one as they moved forward.

They passed dozens of damaged chambers and rooms where beams had ripped through the hull, all signs of the heavy damage inflicted during the recent space battle if you could call it. They managed to secure three additional sections before they encountered additional resistance. Fortunately, the resistance was sporadic and they were able to penetrate quite deeply into the ship and reach their objective. A chamber that had been identified to be one of the ship’s primary control nodes. She turned to the tech they had escorted the entire way and ordered the girl to begin hacking into the ship’s control systems while her marines started setting up defensive positions.

It was a good thing she had ordered them to set up defensive positions as the Cylovans responded instantly. Just two minutes after the tech interfaced her equipment with the control node, Cylovan combat drones began swarming their position. She took up a position near the tech and fired her pistol at any drone that got a line of sight on the tech. TR-239 knew they couldn’t hold the position indefinitely, but they wouldn’t need to. While her marines were holding off the incoming drones she got on the radio.

“TR-239 to command. We have secured our objective, and are under attack. Request immediate reinforcements. I repeat we have secured our objective and need immediate reinforcements,” said TR-239 over the radio, while firing a burst into a drone that had gotten past the line of marines. The shots ripping through its internals, and the damaged machine collapsed to the ground dead.

“Command to TR-239, request acknowledged. Diverting reinforcements your way. Eta three minutes,” came the immediate response. She turned to the tech while keeping an eye on the door and said to the girl, “Work fast, we will have reinforcements in three minutes.”

The girl nodded and moved back to her work. She might have smiled as well, but with her helmet on it was impossible to know for sure. TR-239 moved her full attention back to the door, where her marines were firing their rifles full auto at the incoming swarm of drones. The same was going on with the other door as well. The occasional bolt of blue lightning-like bolts could be seen being fired as well. Even to her those three minutes of waiting seemed like an eternity.

The waves of drones seemed unending but eventually, she heard the distinctive whine of particle weapons. Then blue bolts and lightning shots came from the side. Blasting into the drones that were flooding the corridor. The drones shields flared briefly before particle bolts slammed into their metal sides and shredding their internals as if they were made of tissue paper. Then the distinctive forms of armored marines entered her view and one made their way into the room. She was another command unit like her. 

“I’ll keep them off this exit, have your marines cover the other,” said the new command unit.

“I agree,” replied TR-239 before giving orders to her troops. The Marines instantly and fluidly moved to take up the new positions and the pressure on their position dropped instantly. A couple of minutes later the tech excitedly proclaimed, “I’m in, just cover me for another minute or two! I’ll have complete control of the system by then.”

Sure enough, she managed to achieve control by then and with it, she was able to shut down the drones protecting the ship.

Around the same time Countryman was watching one of his frigates, drive off the unwanted guest. He didn’t know the Mydori enough to trust them so close to a cityship so he had dispatched a Firebird to get rid of them. Fortunately, it seems to have gone down peacefully. A simple warning hail and they were now making a hyperspace jump out of the system. When he received the report.

“Good, start deploying science teams to our prize. Let’s see what we can learn from it,” said Countryman.