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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Muzolf on 2025-06-26 19:27:57+00:00.

• Could they have spotted us?

Most of the officers were fixated on the main display screen, and the little dot that showed an approaching ship. Some were squinting at the chief engineer. Correl himself was throwing it right back, annoyed at the others for the insinuation, not just against the implications about his competence, but against the ship itself.

• For the hundredth time, there is no way anyone could see the Prowler. Not without a large sophisticated detection array. The heat distribution system works, we triple checked, the upper armor has the temperature of near zero, at this angle it will not show up in infra-red. The hyperdrive shielding works fine, the thrusters are well insulated, only way our drive system could have lower emissions is if we turned it off. The angular hull and our black-body paintjob would make radiolocation or some other active sensor completely useless, even if we were not already way too far away for THAT to be effective in the first place!

• Correct me if i am wrong, but we are not exactly invisible, anyone looking could see a black patch of space with something blocking the stars.

• Sure, if they had a telescope the size of a small moon at this range! The boarding shuttle is more noticable as us right now. - Realizing his mistake, he added. - And that one has no hyperdrive, no active bluespace components that any long range hyperspace detection system could pick up.

• What about its heat signature?

• I mean, technically possible? Not very likely that anyone would pick it up, especially not with it docked on the dark side of the wreck right now. The chances of anyone having noticed in during the launch, are astronomical.

• Astronomical but not impossible, as with many other variables where we just need a bit of bad luck.

Commander Kaba chimed in, with a long sigh. Raising a hand to demand attention and an end to the back-and forth quarreling.

• For all we know, they might just now gotten to the point of collecting the remaining trash. How, why, really does not matter anymore. Even if we sneak off unnoticed now, they will realize someone has been here. We need to act before they arrive, has the away team reported back?

-x-

-x-

One would think that a ship with vented atmosphere would have no sounds, but Koz could have sworn that he heard the walls creaking. The floating corpses were certainly not helping with the general ambience, nor was the flickering light of the blowtorch.

• How much more? I think the lizards are getting restless, they pinged us again, had to signal back with nothing yet.

• No idea, if we are lucky, this one opens to the array. If not, maybe another room. Tell them to come over themselves if they are in such a hurry.

• Oh sure, can you imagine them trying to squeeze trough these halls?

Koz giggled to himself. There was a reason why they used chirrik for these jobs, a bunch of rodents about one quarter of a size of the average sauromantian. And getting into small spaces easily was just one of the reasons, the others their masters would hardly admit to themselves.

• What was that?

The away team leader turned back to the shadows of the corridor they entered in. It was not his first salvage operation, nor would it be first time that someone left behind some nasty surprise for any would-be boarders. Explosives, makeshift traps and infectious biohazards were all part of the course, and so were the occasional crazed and armed survivor or killbot. But for now, all he could see was another corpse from the ships crew floating trough a corridor.

• Dangit, i better report back about what we are trying to do. You sure you can access the sensor firmware without turning anything noticable on?

• I make no promises.

After cutting open a hole and a few minutes of banging on the metal, while Koz reported back, they had broken trough to the next room.

• Jackpot! - The first one to stick his head trough called out. - This must be the sensor suite, looks intact, certainly more intact as the main computer was.

• Thats great, and i got some good news and... news.

Koz chittered while holding a light to the corridor again. He almost wished something came crawling trough it so he had a more immediate problem to shoot at. When he realized the others were waiting on him, he continued.

• So I told them that there was no black box to retrieve and our plan to maybe still get the sensor logs from the memory cache of the hardware itself.

• Aand?

• Good news is you can turn the whole thing on if you feel the need to, no point in being sneaky anymore. Bad news is the sensor data might soon become redundant if we suffer the same fate as this hunk of junk did.

-x-

-x-

• Silhuette and drive signature seems to match with human cargo ship, if your database is anything to go by Commander.

A wave of relief seems to have washed over the bridge crew, but Kaba was still staring at her monitor.

• One of the bigger ones i see. I would like to remind everyone that my database is incomplete, this is mostly publicly available information, and intelligence from the Riboan Consortia, which were the latest victims of the alliance.

• Still, unless they decided to build their later warships to resemble earlier cargo haulers, this should be one.

• They very well might have, or have you forgotten what Q-ships are?

Commander Kaba was starting at her weapons officer with a hard to read expression, amused or annoyed, something in between. Ralga for his part was definitely annoyed now, on the verge of open defiance.

• Oh for... This has to be a salvage ship, coming at us to collect the wreck, with no idea that we are here. Or did the alliance task force just happen to have an armed transport laying around more suited for anti-piracy operations, to throw us off the scent? I know in higher circles paranoia is seen as a desirable trait for war leaders, but are we not taking it too far?

• Maybe, but the timing is still suspect, and we have nothing but time until their arrival, why not use it? Bring up the database matches, what is this... Ardennes class transport? Lets see if there are any known variants based on this hull.

With a few button presses the main monitor started listing names, technical data. The transport was apparently one of the earliest designs, dating back before even the alliance itself, when earth was still in its infancy as the center of a growing interstellar civilization. It was as big as modern cruiser, modular, made of stock parts that kept it easily maintainable, all of them traits which made it desirable and used long past its original intended run time. The multitude of variants and updates did not fit on the screen, there was everything from mining barges to fuel tankers, mobile factory ships and even research vessels based on this thing.

• Oh my, lets cut down the search to armed variants, war merchantman, whatever the human designation is for Q-ships.

A bit of fiddling with the controls, and she was able to narrow it down to three matches. She decided to go trough them one by one.

• Here we go. Lets see, first one is generation one Q-ship variant, used to surprise commercial raiders. Armed, somewhat uparmored but still just a transport, supposedly not in use anymore, a pity, this we could still have beaten without a problem, despite its size. Lets see the other two. - She scrolled to the next one, and put its layout on the screen.

• Makeshift carrier, according to this, it has decent point defense and some missile launchers, but otherwise it relies on whatever strike craft it carries, or other ships, if they extend the hangar space which apparently they did to bring a quad of corvettes into a fight at least once. Wanna do the last one Ralga?

The weapons officer seemed less the pleased. He suspected this was part of a little payback for his outburst right now, but he preferred it to making a scene.

• As you wish. What is this, Percheron variant? Lets see the stats, the armament.

As he was scrolling trough the data he was getting paler and paler.

• Okay, this thing is straight up just a warship masquerading as a transport. Military grade drive system and reactors, a spinal mounted main gun that would not be out of place on a battleship, not that it needs it with those secondary guns and missile pods hidden behind what just looks like cargo containers. Was this just the humans way of saying. Oh you thought this was going to be a sword fight? Here is an artillery piece! To pirates?

• I suspect its less for pirates and more for surprise attacks. Remember, somehow they took out the rabble in this system, supposedly with nobody seeing any significant force moving in.

She raised a claw, and looked at the weapons officer.

• But you are correct in your assessment.

Ralga squinted and his crest was flopping sideways, a sign of confusion after getting this lecture from her, and then the sudden shift as she continued.

• It is more likely that our visitor is merely a transport ship coming to collect the remaining wreckage from their battle. I considered other alternatives, even them using that wreck as bait - She motioned at the darkened hulk outside. - to see if anyone would try to approach it, but it all hinges on a set of unlikely circumstances that make no sense or the humans would have to possess outright precognition.

Amused rumbles were the response to that last statement.

• And its not like i plan to sit around waiting to find out if that thing is a cruiser cosplaying as a ...

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