CIS Outer Border Patrol
Along the "southern" border of the CSIS, its just another "day" on patrol in the vast nothingness of space.
CSS Richelieu. 0830 Hours, shipboard time.
CSS Richelieu is an aging Halcyon class, relagated to border patrol and supplementing law enforcement with Intel.
Everything is currently quiet. Shift change is underway, with the Overnighters getting relieved by the morning shift.
Captain Julia Swarovska enters the bridge. She is plad in her red double-breasted uniform jacket and black pants. She strides to the captain's chair, dead center of the cramped bridge. Directly behind her is a wall. In front of her is a transparent view screen.
The first officer, currently seated in the Captains chair looks over and stands.
"Morning Ma'am."
"Morning Melvin. How was your night?"
"Quiet.. Well, we did intercept a few subspace transmissions."
"Oh?" She replies curiously.
Melvin smiles.
"Take a look at this."
Melvin produces a tablet and hands it to her.
She studies it.
"Cargo Ship Narvik sends out a general subspace transmission." She reads.
"The inventor of sex has just dropped sex two. Gary what the fuck are you doing on the comms panel, I told you to stay off of there." She recites.
She chuckles.
"Nothing like a nice bit of randomness to keep the night going." She says.
"The bridge collectively lost it when James suddenly announced the transmission to everyone." Says Melvin.
"I would have been in stitches." She chuckles.
"Alright Number 1, you're relieved, go get some sleep."
"Aye ma'am" he replies,
Melvin takes leave of the bridge as Julia assumes her place in her chair. She takes a thermos she had been holding, and sips from it.
She studies the readouts in the view screen in front of her. Behind the viewscreen is a large panoramic window allowing the view of space. The bridge is on the front keel of the vessel, so the view of the ship is limited. Two men sit at two separate stations right in front of the large window. On either side of the bridge are more consoles.
"Report." She orders.
"Steady course. All engines are nominal, sensors picked up by subspace contacts, all designate merchants."
Replies Alan Rorke, the officer in tactical.
"Aye."
(you can jump in)
Julia sips her thermos she has been holding.
As Alan continues to observe the different sensors he suddenly notices smth on the long-range electromagnetic scopes. Its an energy spike exceeding normal amounts, very much at the edge of the system where there are just rocks and ice. What's even more confusing is that it originates from the side of the system that borders uninhabited space where no merchant vessel or line would even pass by.
The signature itself is quite chaotic, spiking in random intervals and amplitudes before fading away into background noise again.
"Ma'am I'm getting something on long range scopes. Energy spike, highly irregular, towards the outer rim of the system. Uninhabited space."
Based on distance estimated through triangulation using the different sensory suites of the ship it must have happened about 50 minutes to an hour ago.
She turns to face Alan.
"What?"
Alan looks confused. "happened in the last hour or so. Could be a cloaked ship."
"Could be." She says.
"Keep your eyes on it." She orders. "Helm, take us closer to the anomaly. Half impulse."
"Yes Ma'am" replies the helmsman.
As they come closer to the anomaly they receive new signatures. Two consecutive ones following the same pattern as the previous one and then after those a third that seems to slowly build itself up before culminating in a large spike about 6 times the previous intensities before dropping and raising the general background energy readings by about 5 percent.
"Getting 3 readings this time" Says walker.
"On screen." Julia orders.
The view of space where the readings are is displayed.
"Increase sensor sensitivity, switch to active search."
"aye captain."
"Why are they fading out like that?" Alan retorts.
"No idea, cloaked ships normally don't do that ." Says the comms officer.
As they get in range the live camera feed comes up. On it they see something which many would have never dreamed of ever coming across. Its a ruined ship... and even despite its alien design it has clearly been repaired with other parts of materials countless times. Parts are broken and just barely holding onto the large, vaguely teardrop shaped hull with longer pylons to two sides. At several points there are dents and even holes in the now only partially consisting of alien armor covered, flat topside.
Long before any of the crew have even completely taken in the drifting and damaged ship with its extruding features, the computer of the Halcyon has already categorized it and is issuing heavy protests against going anywhere near it, citing things such as "Extremely uneven matchup." and "Total self annihilation in case of engagement".
The computer, despite some troubles with the differences to the database, identifies it... as a Swarmkeeper class.
"Ma'am, computers identifies that as a Trigal Swarmkeeper class."
"A- What? Helm full reverse, back off back off!" Julia orders.
"Aye."
Richelieu backs off from the ship.
As they back of, now realizing what they have come across... nothing happens. The ship just continues drifting along at low speed... probably colliding with an asteroid in some time.
"Scans, any life?"
They start scanning the ship and notice a few things, yet even with the unorderly internal energy readings and the sometimes very briefly igniting engine plumes they find no signs of life or any kind of detectable living organic structure on board.
They additionally find that the ship is missing all its fighter craft except two.
Julia sits for a moment.
"No life, nothing." Says Alan.
"Ops, get our Marines ready. We are boarding."
"Yes Ma'am." Responds the ops officer
"You crazy?" Asks Alan
"We are definitely the first ones to have ever boarded one of these. I'm curious to know what happened to this particular ship."
Suddenly a small explosion occurs on the ship and few parts of added-on plates are blown away. Some kind of gas or liquid begins leaking out, just a bit
"Comms, send a report to Division command, tell them we found a swarmkeeper class and are preparing boarding action-"
"Ma'am, that ship is tearing itself apart." calls Alan.
After some time, Richelieu sends out two pelican dropships full of Marines and a repair team to the derelict ship.
Both pelicans drop off their Marines on the outside of the ship. They're wearing protected pressure suits, and begin looking for a way inside. They take precautions to avoid the gas
As they make their way across on the ship they identify a spot where they find the structure to be wekaer than in the sourunding area. Other than that a the team on the underside of the carrier has identified a few, what are likely airlock doors. If they still work though is uncertain.
They drill through the doors
After just a few minutes they breach through and are able to gain entry to a smaller room with another door on the other end.
The marines breach, and begin clearing out the Trigal ship.
The team advances through the strange hallways. Even though it is strange in design they nonetheless get the sense that it has been a long time since it has been properly maintained.
They work on locating engineering spaces and the bridge
Maneuvering through the hallways is proving to be a challenge, the corridors are only barely wide and tall enough to move through it seems whoever designed it must've been smaller or had little interest in actually using it to walk around on a daily basis. The ground and walls are covered in a layer of fine dust and also rust. In some areas the plates have been stripped of the walls, revealing wires and pipes beneath them.
They come across their first what seems to be an internal door.
They looks for a way to open it.
They don't see any kind of what would be an interface or smth so they start to just cut through the door.
The Halcyon suddenly picks up something strange... it seems like something is warping in on them or at least across their position... an that fast.
The team manages to cut through the door.
They get the order to disengage. Richelieu swings about.
"Captain, something just came out of warp, shes coming in hot."
"Bring us about, shields up, disengage the marines, get them out of there!"
"All hands, battlestations!"
One of the marines kicks down the door.
The team leader gets the order to disengage.
Suddenly lights begin to flicker on in the ship and a strange rumbling is felt resonating throughout, shaking away an apparently only loosely affixed interior plate. Additionally they feel a dull impact as if something heavy just fell down somewhere further down from where they came.
The team starts reading very faint traces of atmospheric gases.
(and lastly, which the roll was for)
A ship comes out of warp on their position, though the only thing that first makes this apparent is the lack of the previous subspace signature as they see nothing. Yet as they look closer they start to make out a deep black, pointed oval shape, covering stars and nebulas in the background.
The shape extends, shrinking in the middle as if two parts had started moving away from each other before its clouded in a shroud of some sort of dark and black gas.
"The hell?" Exclaims Julia
The marines begin exfilling from the ship.
As they quickly make their way back how they came they still have the brief image of the room they kicked in mind... filled with strange skeletons with slowly decaying flesh, dust and strange sut all over the walls and ground.
The Halycon fires a MAC burst as the strange craft unleashes its dark gas. It pierces the cloud with ease but they cannot confirm a hit since their line of sight is immediately closed again.
The dark gas is extremely quickly closing in on the Halcyon and also the Trigal ship with the Pelican, taking the form of clusters and tendrils that shoot out at high speeds with the main cloud staying at some distance to the Halcyon but moving towards the Trigal ship.
Out of the shroud that's making it difficult to get a pin on the ship a single, extreme high speed projectile emerges. It impacts the Halcyon shields and promptly overloads the local shield projectors before it dissipates along the surrounding shield and underlying armor. No prominent penetration is registered but they have taken a considerable hit on their power and shield generation system.
---
Inside the Trigal ship the team of marines rush to the exit... when they notice why their atmospheric readings have started to pick up a bit... some kind of most likely bulky fall gate has jammed itself between the hallway and the airlock.
---
They reroute, and they look for a way to commendeer the Trigal Ship, as their radios are now blaring with comms from the battle that has erupted, and they figure their best bet is to commendeer the trigal ship and defend Richelieu
Richelieu fires two more MAC rounds, and begins to open fire with their main battery.
The rounds enter the cloud but they're unsure of a hit. One thing they seem to have gained however is some additional attention... whereas previously the majority of gas clusters was heading toward the Trigal ship many now... turn... to move towards the Halcyon. They start to fire upon the gas clusters with their weaponry however it is proving difficult to gain considerable hits on them with the clusters just moving out of the way or even splitting to the shots.
Additionally something else has started to happen on the Trigal ship. Out of some parts in the armor, ball shaped extrusions have popped out and are now starting to fire with laser on the smaller clusters.
---
The team starts to make their way through the ship, taking the sometimes visible lines of cables as guides going towards the point where they accumulate as they figure that's their best bet for some kind of control or maybe power center. Strangely the entire interior is pretty barren of any official looking markings but at some point near the few doors they come across they now notice some sort of later on painted or scratched-in symbols.
---
The Richelieu puts a lot of energy into her shields systems.
Suddenly, Richelieu emits a massive burst of energy from her shield projectors, damaging or knocking HAWKs Nanites offline.
However, Richelieus shields are now offline, and are recharging.
Which they immediately find out is not a good idea as just as the command is given another projectile emerges from the large cloud and impacts, striking the exact same area with an almost frightening precision, completely passing through the highly weakened shield it splits and several pieces of shrapnel pierce deep into the ships hull, damaging or even destroying several outer components in the process.
The energy burst however was effective in sending the cluster back and seemingly also irritating them a bit.
By now some clusters have made it to the Trigal ship and begin clouding the active laser point defense turrets while the ones towards the Halycone are starting to somewhat fan out, most likely trying to encircle the ship.
Suddenly all communications and sensors are reporting high interferences with it now being extremely difficult to even get in contact with the team on the Trigal ship.
---
The team inside the ship are hurrying through the now more and more rumbling and shaking vessel and have come upon a door which is partially open with the door mechanism being somewhat jammed.
"Ey, look, our coms are not the only thing jammed currently."
By the looks of the surrounding walls, or rather lack of, this seems to be were a lot of the cables originate.
---
Richelieu swings around and activates her laser point defense system. She blasts to quarter impulse, ripping past the swarm.
The marines decide in haste, that theyre probably not going to be abel to figure out how to fly a Trigal ship in 5 minutes, and instead opt to overload the ships engines and use her escape pods to evac.
Richelieu fires a few nukes at the swarm to try and destroy them
Richelieu deploys her fighter complement to cover the Marines' escape.
The lasers start to shoot at the clusters that are closing in on the ship as it moves closer to them. This change in movement seems to have stirred some further attention as now the clusters that beset the Trigal ship are now also moving towards Richelieu, leaving behind some very much dysfunctional defense turrets.
In addition further movement occurs from the larger cloud with an additional large segment breaking off and hurling towards the ship.
The Richelieu launches a barrage of missiles that are relatively effective as they explode near the clusters, sending them of course and even apparently slowing some down. However most missiles are either intercepted and destroyed by smaller shrapnel's send out by the clusters, or somewhat neutralized in their effect as some of the clusters envelop them, diminishing their effective explosion with some even not exploding at all.
Suddenly three projectiles come out of the large cloud and almost simultaneously impact across the Richelieu. One at the stern, one at its mid-section and one at the bow. They seem to have been a different kind as they violently erupt upon impact, feeding large amounts of energy through the ships shield system and at the mid-point also in the exposed wires, wreaking havoc on the electrical systems as several emergency breakers first pop and then completely fry themselves. The reactors and delicate computing components as a reaction immediately cut themselves from the grid but some still receive some amounts of damage.
As a result of this the ship briefly first lights up, then goes dark before the backup systems kick in.
By now the ships enforcing shield systems have been crippled with only the internal main array providing some protection to selected regions.
---
The team inside split up (cause I mean at that point what's there to loose) and scour the ship for the engine room.
(the two rooms they found so far had the improvised labels "Used bio storage." and "Here is last hope." )
---
The fighters start to engage the clusters with their weapons, doing their best to stay clear of them. However some of them don't manage to avoid the gas completely and as a result start reporting some weird corrosive effects that it had one the fighters hull.
Despite this the fighter and the missiles seem to have not distracted the clusters from their initial goal as they are still honing in on the Richeliue.
What is also not helping is that the fighters are reporting small emp attacks originating from the larger gas cloud, impacting their combat performance.
Richelieu continues evading and weaving. Suddenly, she pulls a risky maneuver and turns to port, completely reversing thrust. She unleashes a barrage of gunfire from all batteries, point defense, main guns, Gatling guns, missiles, everything. The sudden change in momentum throws Richelieu right through the gas cloud. The GA-TL1 Longswords from Richelieu begin diversionary movements in an attempt to draw attention away from Richelieu. At this moment, Richelieu pours through the gas cloud, which probably quickly changes course. Richelieu gets on-line with the Type-2 Craft, and fires another burst from her MAC Cannon. They then initiate a controlled warp Jump, around a hundred kilometers out, to briefly escape danger. The fighter complement also initiates a controlled warp Jump to the same area. During this brief moment of safety, a few dropships are sent out to the Trigals shop to evacuate the Marines.
As the Richelieu changes its course straight into the gas cloud it gets hit with another projectile head-on. As it impacts on the bow the energetic explosion seems to ripple through the entire ship, giving another massive hit to the Richelieu's systems. In retaliation the Richelieu quickly lets of a MAC burst in the direction the shot came from.
The fighters, trying to get the attention of the smaller clusters, quickly discover that the maneuver the Richelieu just engaged in has just become the entire focus point of the battle, with them streaming back and merging with the main gas cloud as elongated tendrils that stretch out.
The ship hits the Gas cloud... and finds out that that possibly wasn't the best move.
As it drifts on through, damage reports begin flooding the bridge as the gas seems to corrode the outer layers of the armor, also pouring in through the previously caused holes and reaching internal systems. Another strange phenomena they now witness is, that the gas seems to almost stick and glue itself to the ship, gathering and latching onto its entire lenght.
Richelieu's sensors go dark.
Simultaneously, as the ship entered the gas cloud, the fighters observe as the strange oval craft emerges on the side, split open with the section inside lined with what they can only guess are some kind of weapon turrets. And guess they need not long as one of the fighters barely evades a shot projectile, only for it to detonate, possibly due to an proximity charge. The resulting explosion shakes the fighter and throws it off-course.
Out of the top and bottom of the craft three more turrets each now emerge and the fighter begin enjoying quite a bumpy ride as some type of flak ammunition starts being hurled their way. As they start to weave and engage they notice that, chaotically orbiting around the craft, are pieces of MAC shots, caught in some kind of force field. They also see from a brief scan that the exterior in two spots seems... slightly impacted.
---
The team inside come across a few different doors, all closed. One is in relatively good shape compared to the surrounding decay. It has multiple symbols near it, "8 Chambers", "Broken" and lastly, scratched on "Used up". Another door is bent and bulged from the inside and is labeled "Never enter". The third door they have found so far is hardly a door and more a hatch of sorts labeled "Dangerous ways".
---
Richelieu does another quick burst from her shield capacitors, damage control works on getting sensors back online. In the meantime, gunners will rely on visuals only. Richelieu recalls her fighters and briefly attempts to disengage to do damage control. She flies out of the area making the best speed. Meanwhile, the Marines find a way out and are picked up by their pelicans.
The fighters, under heavy fire, return to the Richelieu but three are shot down and one gets attacked by the gas that sticks to the Richelieu in the risky hangar entry manouver. (since they have to make sure to keep the gas out)
The Richelieu punches its engines and attempts to flee the battle just to be hit in the rear by projectiles directly down the engine nosels, damaging them. Following this the ship now starts to feel the corrosive effects of gas with more and more damage reports coming in as the gas eats through the armor and spreads into the hull.
The crew now only see one option, to evacuate. The only question that remains is if they should initiate a self-destruct.
---
The team eventually just decide to try and set all their charges on the blastdoor to the airlock.
In a gigantic detonation they blow a hole into the door and exit. The Pelicans with which they arrived are still there and they make a run for it.
However, seeing as they're now also a small flying target they start to receive the same treatment as the fighters, only barely managing dodge the shots for the time being. Because of this they retreat to the relative cover that the Trigal ship provides, staying out of the line of fire of the strange craft.
---
In response to pelicans the HAWK craft deploys 3 missiles that start to head towards them, overshooting the Trigal ship and curving around to make a dash for the troop transports.
The pelicans deploy countermeasures and engage in evasive manouvers.
The pelicans do some expert evasive maneuvering, something only veteran pilots can pull off. Richelieu, at the beginning of the battle, sent out a distress call.
Richelieu begins deploying EMP charges along her hull, and as a last ditch, the captain orders several of the high capacity conduits running below the outer armored belt to be overloaded, which will cause a sympathetic chain reaction. This would theoretically blow off all of the Richelieus armored belt, but she will still have her under layer of hull to protect her. They hope that this will save off the gas cloud latching onto them.
When all hope seems lost, the Behemoth-IV class CSS Warspite, along with two Yetia classes CSS Unyielding Justice and CSS Merciless respond to the distress call. The latte two ships will arrive in a few minutes, with Warspite being about an hour out. CSS Seawolf, a Gladius class stealth Corvette also responds to Richelieus distress signal, however she maintains radio silence, and is cloaked. She enters the battle space and loads all eight of her torpedo tubes, and prepares to fire on the HAWK craft with shield-penetrating quantum torpedoes.
Richelieu kicks on her secondary engines and begin using RCS to add to speed.
Seawolf loads all of her tubes, decloaks, and fires a full spread, along with a MAC round. The torpedoes move very quickly. Seahawks quickly comes about and re-cloaks, moving the ship into full throttle.
Registering the inbound contacts the HAWK craft activates its incineration shields.
The Pelicans dodge out of the way of the missiles... before these suddenly just completely change course back towards the strange craft from where they came.
The Richelieu witnesses a similar strange occurrence as just as the captain gives the order for the EMP charges, the gas detaches and seeps back out into space forming several smaller blobs that now drift towards the now brightly glowing strange craft. As the charges detonate the gas seems to be dispersed and irritated a bit but it does not make any moves to strike back. The blobs then proceed to hasten their speed of return but some divert towards the Trigal ship.
the ships warp in
As the Seawolf engages its listening devices it starts to pick up a bunch of nothing. There seem to be no detectable communications going outwards or towards the strange craft. They guess its probably in some kind of radio silence.
The Richelieu punches the living hell out of her remaining engines and makes run away from the battle, not that its speed now seems to matter as nothing is pursuing her.
One of the clusters of gas now descend onto the Trigal ship and seeps into the hull until its presence could not be discerned from the outside. The rest stay on course to the strange craft.
The Seawolf does her maneuver.
The gas cloud accelerates and is now on an intercept course before it reorients and heads for the strange craft instead. That now in turn turns to face the torpedo's and incoming mac shots with its smaller side (head on) and seems to quickly divert the plasma of its incineration shield to the front, expanding its shield in a sort of umbrella like fashion in front of it.
The MAC shots hit the shield long before the torpedo's but the interferences due to the plasma make it hard to neither confirm nor deny a hit.
(leaving a short window for if the torps have some like special targeting system)
Mericiless and Unyielding Justice exit slipspace near Richelieu, and fill the space between them and the hawk whip with tracers, missiles, and MAC shots.
They Pull alongside Richeliue to assist in damage control.
They extend their shield bubble around Richelieu to protect her from any more punishment
Seawolf reloads her torpedo tubes, also loading her nuclear missile silos.
The MAC crew also reloads.
As the torpedo's come about and change their course... a few just fly right into large explosions and as a result are intercepted. (got a use out of those missiles in the end)
The shields shrink down again and condense, as seen by an increasing heat signature of the ship. The plasma quickly streams back down the shield but not completely to the other side (aft). The reason for this also becomes quickly apparent as the gas cloud connect with the craft and seeps in the room between the hull and the shield, effectively providing an additional layer of protection (and also more fine tuned control for the shield).
The torpedo's strike for impact with the plasma almost reactively shooting out at them even before they would touch the shield, detonating them prematurely to unknown effect.
As the other ships now start unleashing just a massive amount of ammunition the strange craft seem to accelerate away with the shield concentrating into a plasma ball.
The craft starts to pick up quite a pace with it shrinking a bit in size (since the two halves now come together again). It however is not able to outrun the many shots and missiles hurled after it. While it manages to mostly avoid and tank the MAC shots with its shield, the same can not be said for the missiles which arc out to strike it in the side. That is until the concentrated plasma ball suddenly erupts in an explosion which greatly disorients and even neutralizes a lot of the missiles.
The ship, now without incineration shield goes to warp in a matter of milliseconds (so not enough time to get a shot on it unshielded).
It leaves no (by them) detectable warp signature or even a trace as it jumps, leaving them only to guess when and where it will exit again.
The Battle is over.
The CIS Ships gather around Richelieu and the Trigal ship.
The marines are safely evacuated, albiet very shaken up.
