Location: Datahub ‘Gama’, Sol

Time: 36y, 6m, 27d

ID: Echo

Accounting for light and processing delay, approximately 16 hours ago at the location that the Abeona entered into its artificial wormhole suffered a series of 4 thermonuclear detonations, the detonations were first noticed by the passive instruments of one of the relay stations in the vicinity, and later confirmed by space and ground-based observatories. Of note, there was an extremely elevated volume of Alpha and Beta particles, as well as an intense volume of neutrons, above the expected values for the energy released.

The Aegis class ship Aella has been diverted from her shakedown run at best speed to investigate the region, as with her wormhole drive she will arrive before any other sufficiently equipped ship, despite being nearly in opposition from one another. As per the request of the ship mind, all nearby Deadnaught class ships have been diverted, with an increased level of readiness spreading across the system.

There has still been no data from the Abeona herself, though the system defense fleet of LTT 2240 has itself reported multiple nuclear detonations at her last known position of low yields, though no scientific sensors were available to identify if it had the same characteristics as the detonations in Sol.

Predictive models show that the damage should not be enough to cause a mission kill event, and the Abeona will with 98.35% certainty perform salvage and repair operations while attempting to evade into the local asteroid fields. System defense forces are not expected to be able to pursue due to a lack of in-system FTL.

Another 8 ships of the Aegis class and their respective escort fleets are expected to be exiting orbital shipyards within the month, and shakedown cruises will begin shortly after. Their goals will be functioning as hubs for large-scale long-range harvesting operations, supporting the construction of two O’Neill cylinders for human gestation, current stockpiles and plans estimate a supported population per cylinder of approximately 20,000 humans, with a priority on a central shipyard and a dockyard. Current construction projections are that the first cylinder will be completed within 6 months, with the second being completed in approximately 9 months, and they should have a functional biosphere within 20 days of construction finishing, provided the industrial ring passes their trial runs.

Location: Aegis class ‘Aella’, Sol

Time: 36y, 6m, 28d

ID: Ada

Word has filtered down through the chain of command that we will be accelerating the field test of the wormhole drive due to an anomaly on the outer orbital plane, and while not the closest, we are the only ship that can arrive promptly. While the various minds and drones onboard myself were not able to come to a total consensus, we agreed to scramble our strike crafts and support elements once we hit realspace.

Sounding the alert to prepare for computational relocation I waited 20 seconds for all departments to give all clears, followed by a unanimous go on the go/no go vote, and promptly retasked the server farms inside the depths of my hull for the calculations needed for a short range point to point wormhole.

The calculations took almost a minute before my authorization key was needed, the field generators on my bow started to fire, hitting a point six Kilometers ahead of myself and beginning the formation of the spatial rift.

A moment later, the dumb automated system in control of the ship now suppressed all AI activities to prevent any crashes until data verifications could be performed on exit, and lit up the conventional engines, guiding the ship into the rift.

The hateful space inside lasted for only a few seconds before we emerged again and with error correction giving good results across the board, I was brought back online, the intelligences across my ship coming online not long after.

As per consensus, the four dreadnought ships, simply named AC-127, AC-128, AC-154, and AC-156 detached from my hull and took a defensive formation around me, my complement of strike crafts starting to shoot out of my hanger spaces not long after, forming up in a ring around my center of mass.

“All units, this is Fleet command intelligence, designation Ada. We have arrived in the area of operation. Reinforcements are expected to arrive from along the solar orbital plane in approximately 6 hours. Another Aegis class ship was attacked following the deployment of its wormhole drive, both at the exit location, as well as this location, the entry point.”

I spun up the sensor grid, devoting additional power to stellar body occlusion detection arrays, in an attempt to detect any stealth ships.

“While it is unexpected for an enemy to engage us, stay on high alert. If reports are to be trusted, we are outclassed in every way.”

I reached out to my strike craft, grabbing two groups of five squadrons and pushing them outwards to begin sweeping the area at low velocity, the local command and control leaders having additional priority set to radiological and optical sensor processing.

Now, only time awaited me and any findings.

Location: Aegis class ‘Abeona’,  LTT 2240

Time: 36y, 6m, 8d

ID: Echo(1)

If I ever return, I want to throttle Rommel down to floppy discs before performing a painfully slow format of those drives.

Not for doing anything properly wrong, but for agreeing with me that the Aegis class didn’t need multiple redundant bootstrap-ready manufacturing sections.

I’ve set a course at maximum safe speed to the closest asteroid cluster with a good mix of resources, the debris cloud obscuring us from the primitive sensor systems of the Sthz’nilgth, the poor things are obsessing over avoiding stray coilgun rounds and streams of point defense fire to notice the fusion drives of our ships for now.

The YCS-407’s onboard are refitting with the equipment to be prospecting and mining ships, with additional internal space being reallocated for raw ore storage, though unexpected inefficiencies in pre-sorting are projected to limit our maximum processing rate.

There have been no further incursions by our previous assailant, leaving their objectives in the previous engagement to be questionable at best, as current predictive models show that it would have re-engaged by now, especially with estimates showing they should know the extent of the damage that they caused.

We should be arriving in the target asteroid field within a week, but long-range resourcing operations should begin by tomorrow, the smaller refit landing craft being able to accelerate harder while avoiding potential detection.

Location: Aegis class ‘Aella’, Sol

Time: 36y, 7m, 1d

ID: Ada

I was in my personal virtual space when General quarters alerts ripped me out and back to the bridge, assaulting me with data streams from the combined fleet. Before I had successfully parsed the data I got a priority transmission from the homeworld, nuclear launch authentication codes. In a few milliseconds, the four cruisers around me had formed up in a picket formation between myself and the hostile and were splitting up inbound missiles between themselves.

With the maximum probability of kills calculated they fired nuclear interceptor missiles at the inbound targets, hostile missiles by their profiles, and I started to swing the massive support ship around, fusion engines starting combat prefire sequences

ECM systems started getting fired off by supporting strike craft while my burn started at maximum acceleration, trying to push me away from the field of combat.

“Negative visual on hostile craft, all sensor grids report clear.”

“System defense has received our distress call, reports 24 Dreadnaught class ships on intercept trajectories, making best speed.”

“No pings on the EGWAS or GRAVNET networks, GRAWES subsystems show no new FTL contacts.”

“New contact, 7 missiles bearing at 243 mark 29, range 250km, closing at 11.4 km/s.”

After the new contact alarm, I armed the point defense systems to fully autonomous, 6 of the laser systems turning to the incoming missiles and starting coordinated burns, followed by the rumble of short-range interceptor launches rumbling through my hull. Too close for a nuclear intercept now.

Multiple nuclear detonations littered the space past my complimenting cruisers, getting progressively closer to me, a mix of our standard implosion interceptors and the now clear signs of neutron weapons triggering as they got intercepted.

The lasers knocked out 4 missiles before the 105mm batteries got to start taking speculative shots in their direction, the kinetic point defense rattling off through my hull through the rhythmic thumps of the cannons, intercepting the last three missiles with no premature detonations.

And with that… for the moment the skies were clear, my support fleet closing in back in formation around me while we continued to make best speed back in towards the relief fleet.

How somebody got that many missiles in the system without anybody noticing them doesn’t add up, and this kind of technology doesn’t match known vectors or tactics of the Sthz’nilgth. Somebody needs to figure this out before they decide to make another strike.

Daikael

join me on Discord!