This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Muzolf on 2025-06-27 08:22:52+00:00.
"Contact! Heat signature from the wreckage, looks like something small ignited its thrusters!"
Captain Garland was squinting at the display, as he was making a bit of a head calculation with their distance. With the information coming from their infra red sensors, and not any of the bluespace equipment, this meant he was looking at something that happened several minutes ago.
"By now they might as well have docked. We are out of time. Mark, do you have a lock on them?"
"I do, but the missile does not, none of what we have is set up to target an optical effect of nothing."
"I have absolute confidence in your ability to program a pre-aim and timing for detonation, the area of effect will have to take care of the rest. Fire as soon as you are ready!"
The weapons officer was rolling his eyes. He hated this about Garland, even after years of service together, the only time you would hear a compliment from him was to set you up for a bigger fall if you failed. Should he include instructions for the missile if it noticed anything that itself could target? Or was he wasting time for an eventuality that would make the whole thing moot anyhow? If that black ship was preparing to run, it was not like this delivery system could do any major course corrections to catch up with something going full sublight, or heck, who knew if this was not an adversary who could not just jump straight to hyperspace? How much did this thing cost again? More as the ship it was getting fired from, and they were likely about to waste it on a chase against a single target the missile itself could not even detect, something it was absolutely not designed for.
"Mailing our Christmas gift! Enjoy being grounded suckers!"
The entire crew cheered as they could feel the floor shaking. This delivery system was originally for long range strikes against planets and stations, rarely for fleet actions, and certainly not for ship to ship actions. But if nothing else, it gave you a sense of power when the entire ship had its internal stabilization challenged by the sheer force of the launch.
The Captain gave a disapproving look to his weapons officer, but Mark did not care, if he was going to play with all their careers, at the least he was going to enjoy it, professionalism be damned.
-x-
-x-
"Commander? You should see this, something broke off from the transport. Its also speeding up. Heavens, whatever it is, its accelerating like nothing i seen before! I repeat, incoming projectile, coming in fast!"
The bridge crew jumped to action, Commander Kaba shouting "Battlestations" was almost redundant. She looked at her comms terminal. "Koz, secure your team and your unauthorized cargo, we talk about it later." She closed the channel without waiting for a reply, switching to the ship wide announcer. "Prepare for evasive action!" Turning to her tech officer. "Hikar, i need an ETA, and remember your question about incoming warheads earlier?"
"A few minutes at best, whatever it is, its still accelerating. And yes? Orders?"
"Talk to me, a big chunk of regular matter between us and an antimatter warhead would come in handy, but depending on the size and nature of the warhead, it might be a death sentence, should we try to run instead?"
Hikar was looking at the instruments, that thing would be a kinetic bomb by now just thanks its speed alone, not even necessarily needing a warhead to be incredibly destructive.
"Something this fast, can't possibly steer well, but would they launch something like this without the ability to track and hit a target? If we attempt to outrun, we will be easy to track. We could try to move away silent running, but we would be too slow to really get away and if they do actually see us, we would have just committed suicide."
"Its settled then, Nav, take us behind the wreck!"
The Prowlers thrusters lit up, it spun around and launched itself at the nearby hulk, stopping just short of hitting it, coming to a rest only once the wrecked ship was between itself and the incoming missile. Luckily for them, while the prowler was the size of a frigate, the ruined vessel was about three times its bulk, plenty enough to cover them.
-x-
-x-
"Lost them! Got nothing on optics anymore but the stars!"
"Hyperspace signature?"
"Nothing, i think they are hiding behind the hulk."
"Or their method of travel just does not show up on our sensors, so far the only signatures we picked up were the instruments of that wreck."
The Captain frowned, he listed all the possibilities in his mind. They only spotted them thanks to blind luck before, if they could just sneak away, either by some untraceable hyperspace method or just being able to remain undetected while they would slink away slowly, he just signed the death warrant of his own career. Worse, he would have let some unknown adversary away with whatever information they gathered on the alliances new toys. No, he had to bank on them being behind that tin can.
"Time to missile detonation?" He looked over to the weapons officer, where Mark was fiddling with that antique watch of his.
"Thirty seconds, i was worried they would try to run and leave the target area. Now? No way they escape if they are still here."
-x-
-x-
Minutes passed like hours on board the Prowler, behind the wreck, it was harder to keep an eye out what was happening. Commander Kaba felt helpless, and she was sure most of the crew shared that feeling.
"I am dangerously close to understanding Koz right now."
"Commander?"
"Nothing, just had an argument with him some time ago. Well, it was more of a monologue, and lets just say, had a sauromatian male said the same thing to me, i would had ripped out their feathers for it."
"It just flew by us!"
"What?"
The bridge stirred to life again, everyone was either looking at the main display, or trying to get the tactical view on their own consoles.
"It missed us! I... " Before Hikar could finish, the lights were flashing up, some from the screens, some from equipment error reports all over the ship. "Radiation alarm, we got a detonation!"
"Damage report! What happened?"
"Commander, it was not an antimatter warhead, it was something else. We got malfunction reports all over the ship, Correl is reporting on channel two!"
She sighed, of course it would be some unorthodox nonsense with humans, not that she was not grateful for still being alive. She flicked a button to open the channel the hear the chief engineer out.
"How bad is it?"
"Commander, whatever this was, it affects bluespace crystals, have to take the engine offline, both hyperdrive and sublight are nearly busted. We need to reset the systems. And i had no time to check yet, but i would bet my life on hyperspace communications and the tracker not looking any better.
Kaba was staring blankly at the main screen showing 'Error, source disconnected', the rest of the words from the chief engineer barely registering. As some semblance of order was restored, she noticed her crew looking at her, waiting.
"Orders Commander?"
"We are sitting ducks." She growled, before standing up. "All hands, run diagnostics on your stations, any request from engineering for assistance has full priority! Restore maneuverability of this vessel by any means necessary or we are dead!"
-x-
-x-
"I still see nothing"
The Troyans bridge was still cloaked in mostly silence, the crew holding their breaths as a rare moment unfolded, with Miss Blair doing the lecturing for once.
"They are behind the hulk, i am sure of it now." the Science officer had the recording of the tracker play again. "As you would know if most of you were actually reading the technical manuals like instructed, the interdictor warhead works by exciting exotic matter, accelerating its decay, leading to drive field degradation and destabilization in the worst case. The explosion blinded our sensors too, but there was just enough trace of the burnout when it came back online. This is from the wrecks remaining equipment flaming out, and these two larger blips are behind it. So no, they were not using magic to fly around, they are..." She coughed." Were using a normal bluespace hyperdrive just like anyone else, merely shielded somehow so we could not pick it up before.
Captain Garland had the universes thinnest smile appear on his face, it was almost uncanny. He turned to his weapons officer.
"Good, time for our second... what did you call it, christmas gift? Ready to launch from hangars one to four, lets find out if our friends can see as well as they can.. sorry, could sneak around before we broke their legs."