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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Muzolf on 2025-07-02 11:14:54+00:00.

The general alarm had a distinct annoying ring to it, specifically made to wake up a sleeping sauromantian. He looked at the clock hanging above his bunk, he was way too tired to have slept for any lenght.

"So much for being half ways to home." He shook himself and grabbed the suit he left tossed by the side.

The weapons officer was not surprised, nor too pleased to find everyone else already on their posts.

"What do we have?"

"They scattered their drones to look for us, on a wide path. We ran out of vectors to hide in a few minutes ago." The Commander responded without looking away from her screen.

"I see only one, at extreme range." He studied the tactical display as he was getting back into his chair. He knew he was not going to like the explanation where the others went.

"They disappeared just now."

"Shall i make ready for mine deployment? We have a few more of those makeshift bombs still. Hate to admit it, but if the one worked, they might be our remaining hope." He switched on the weapons console to make the calculations.

"Make ready but don`t start dropping them yet! Nav, i need a course correction! Keep the last one on the screen in the dark, and lets accelerate a bit."

"By your command!"

As the ship was turning, the weapons officer looked up. "I am assuming engineering is not done yet? We cannot go to sublight?"

The Commander flicked a switch on her console, opening the intercom to engineering.

"Whatsiit again?! Little bit busy here, and could do without distractions, or the ship turning for that matter!" Came the high pitched squeaking of a chirrik talking in broken neomanti.

Ralgas eyes went wide, and he was not the only one. "The heck are the rodents doing in there?"

"Helping, Koz is actually a trained engineer and has some understanding of bluespace dynamics."

"We are really scraping the bottom of the batter here, are we?" Ralga sighed.

"We are so dead!" the nav officer was burying her face in her hands.

"Wow, i can still hear you all you know! When i am done saving all your scaly butts, we will have a little chat about respect around here!" The intercom closed abruptly.

-x-

-x-

"Disappeared again."

"No matter, the drones know the general area they are in. Once there, they will engage a basic search pattern, and that will be enough, they will have nowhere to go.

"Good, good." The captain nodded. "And Mark. I appreciate the show, but it is a bit unnecessary. I hope the last drone broadcasting did not came at the cost of their effectiveness?"

You always find the downside in everything, dont you.` he thought to himself. "One of the drones would have to stay back and coordinate anyhow, plus its damaged. No need to risk it blowing itself up if its weapon were to malfunction. So why not also giving us a clear picture?"

"You said it was all green."

"Sure i did, and were it our only option, i would have used it still. But its not."

"Fair enough, and if this goes south, we still got your plan B." Garland sat back in his chair, looking a bit more relaxed.

"Why are they cloaked now? This looks like unnecessary strain on their coils." Miss Blair chimed in.

"I did not exactly have time to rewrite their whole hunter-killer protocol. The assumption was that they would go after prey that is unaware of them, and that we would engage this protocol at a much shorter range. Don`t worry, they will re-emerge before they would overload."

"All of this would not been a problem without Internal Affairs hamstringing us with red tape. If we could have placed AI on them." The captain mused in a sour tone. Mark was not going to remark on that, let the old man redirect his ire at the bureaucrats.

They all watched together, as in the next minutes, the three drones reemerged and started doing their search. What was surprising, is seeing their target now. There was a clear heat signature, not trying to hide. Not just that, but the halfways restored bluespace sensors were picking up something.

"That`s new, we never seen them do this before."

"It looks like, they are booting up engines. Preparing to jump out." The science officer set her display on the main screen.

"Impossible, we knocked out their hyperdrive at the start!" The Captain leaned forward, his hands clenched in fists.

"Another decoy like the last bluespace signature?"

"No, this is bigger! I have no other explanation, their hyperdrive had to survive the interdictor missile."

"Whatever it is, all we need are a few seconds, the drones are nearly there!"

Captain Garland was now gnashing his teeth and cursing silently. He saw what was happening, not just the enemy about to jump away, but how they were intentionally exposing themselves. And he had no way of warning the drones, if there was a crew willing or just suicidal enough, or AI that could think for itself, instead of these stupid soulless machines he was forced to use.

The lead drone lunged forward on an attack vector. Its target right in front of it, not even trying to evade. It knew no need, no satisfaction of a well earned kill, only lines in a code, that told it to decloak and fire at this moment. So it did, unloading its guns into an explosion and field of debris that was not there a second ago, blowing itself into pieces as it hit the makeshift mine placed in its path.

-x-

-x-

"Okay, now can we please go to sublight?" The nav officer was shifting nervously, looking at the screens showing an explosion, no sign of the other two phase corvettes.

"What do you think, we put our faith in the member of a species the rest of the stellar community claims we enslaved!" Ralga spit out while uselessly fiddling with the instruments, they were out of everything, missiles, torpedoes, hastily cobbled together mines or flares to throw out. He doubted he could hit a phase ship with the pulse cannons in the split second it would decloak before attacking, but he would certainly try.

"Oh come on now, certainly we earned a bit of trust around here?" The high pitched voice of Koz came from the intercom. "Sure our relationship is not ideal, but would you really assume i would be petty enough to blow myself and my team up just to spite our oh-so generous masters? Especially one as delicate as you Surfa?" The Nav officer blinked at the mention of her name. "Tell you what, we jump now and you owe me a date." And then she went red at hearing this from a member of a species that were at the best of times, considered something closer to pets.

"I be your lair-mate if you want as long as you get us out of here!" She shrieked.

"Sold! No takesies backsies!" Koz chuckled to himself as he watched the drive field countdown reaching zero. He would probably have to ask Correl to explain later, that he had no say about when the jump would happen after they were finished five minutes ago, to avoid getting skinned alive. But it was well worth it.

"Everyone hold on!"

-x-

-x-

The bridge crew of the Troyan watched in silence, as the instruments were showing a short burts of energy, and then nothing. Only the remaining drones decloaking a few minutes later, their processors taking up a futile search pattern again, to look for something the people on the Troyan knew not to be there anymore.

The awkward silence continued as captain Garland sat back in his chair, and picked up a datapad.

"Inform me the moment we have long range communications back, i have a message to send. Also, have the logs of the last ten minutes saved for the design department, to revise the algorithm for the drones with special attention to possible detection and avoiding countermeasures." He paused. "In fact, i want this entire encounter taken apart and analysed for every detail, about the capabilities of our adversary and finding out who in the region could have sent them, as well as what to do in the future."

A few "Yes sir!" and "affirmative" -s could be heard as everyone went back to work. The weapons officer was still standing and staring at him, with an unspoken question. The captain finally looked up after going trough the short reports about repairs that came in during the chase.

"I will be taking full responsibility once Internal Affairs starts their review. Despite what they or even some of us might think, this is not a defeat. Not entirely, and not yet. The rest of the task force could get lucky." Even if his tone betrayed little hope in that. "We now know someone is out there, someone with advanced stealth capabilities not relying on phase fields, shielded hyperdrives that can survive full on exomatter disruption, missiles that put ours to shame. Even if they get me discharged..." He grinned." this will be a wake-up call to all those pencil pushers in the assembly who were demanding cuts to the Navy and RnD budgets for decades."

-x-

-x-

It still took days for the Prowler to get away from its engagement and the alliance patrols that got stirred up like a pissed off nest of hornets. The still degraded drive field was not helping matters, but they could manage it. One of the outer gas giants was remote and hard to monitor enough to be used to jump out of the system.

It was hardly a surprise to find out that they have been reported missing, having limped back much slower as anyone would expect. But once they could reach one of the empires hidden outposts, a rendezvous could be arranged for the Prowler to be towed to the nearest spacedock for repairs and a replacement of its compromised hyperdrive. Back on the Havarkan, Commander Kabas own flagship, a me...

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