Prologue, Part 2

  Terran Federation Fringe, Tarminia System

  Approaching the Hyperspace Limit

  The reaction of the raiders to her carrier group's presence had apparently been complete disbelief, at least initially. That, or they had been so confident they hadn't bothered to do an initial sensor sweep and failed to notice almost a hundred warships accelerating at over thirty gravities towards them.

  Their current approach seems to be firmly in the realm of 'NOPE' and running in the general direction of away, burning at almost twenty gravities, trying to buy themselves time. Time for their hyperdrives to cycle and dive back into FTL, 'Faster Than Light'.

  Given the fact that they almost certainly had to be using biological crews, that had to be hell on them, but all the better.

  A squishie being, well, squished, wasn't going to be able to fight very effectively. Not that she needed the advantage, but her mother always preached one had to always stack the deck.

  "Any response?" Asked the AI, and Cia shook her head.

  "Negative. Our hails have gone unanswered."

  "Time for a more universal protocol then." She moved her hologram's hand towards one of the button on the command chair it was 'sitting' on, mimicking the action to press it. It wasn't necessary at all, the ships were more extension of herself than anything, but she was her mother's daughter and the craving for grand, theatrical gestures ran deep inside her code. That, and artificial or no, at her core she was still a simulation of a human neural network and there was only so much she could separate herself from that before she courted outright insanity. "Odin, Thor, open fire."

  The two Asgard-class battlecruisers flanking her carrier shuddered, and thousands of tiny icons lit up the holographic display on the bridge.

  The missiles cleared the minimum safety radius around the ships, coasting on the momentum given by their launchers, who were more or less fancy railguns, and activated their drives. The sensor display glitched a bit as there suddenly was almost six thousand active fusion drives between her ships and the raiders, but the system compensated admirably, without even needing prompting.

  The raiders responded by cranking their acceleration up to twenty five gravities...for the ships that could. Half of the civilian vessels fell behind, as their more militarized brethren poured everything they had into their drives, most likely redlining them.

  Meanwhile the missiles slowly caught up to them. Their drives were massively faster than any ship's, but space battles were a long affair even at the best of times, and-

  "Hyperspace anomaly." Called out Cia, and Sapphiria grimaced.

  "I see it." One of the freighters had tried to jump. Before its hyperdrive had properly cycled.

  The result was as spectacular as it was instant. One second there was a ship accelerating at maximum speed, the next a cloud of debris and plasma, convulsing with energy discharges from the foreign dimension that was hyperspace.

  Then one of the military ships suddenly stopped accelerating.

  "What the-" Another of the military ships spun out of formation, and she laughed as one of the civilian freighters exploded. "They're firing on each other!"

  Clearly deciding that if they were being abandoned to their deaths, they might as well take some of those that had left them to rot with them, the civilian vessels were using what little retrofitted armaments they had to wreck the drives of their companions, firing at what was still point blank range into their former comrades. Even pirate grade, cobbled together laser emitters could pierce military armor plating at that range.

  The ultimate outcome, of course, was predictable. There were fewer proper military -or militarized, in the case of some of the converted vessels that managed to keep up-, vessels, but they were vastly more deadly than those behind them.

  They ceased acceleration, and flipped, bringing their main weapon batteries to bear, their pursuit armaments already reaping a rich harvest amongst the barely armored ships.

  It was over in less than a minute, a solid fourth of the raiding fleet reduced to drifting debris. Interestingly enough, the military ships did stop long enough for shuttles and escape pods to leap from the stricken pair, whose drives were in no condition to take them anywhere anymore.

  That meant that it wasn't a case of raiders throwing their people away as bait, but more of two distinct group. Which meant organization, beyond what she had been expecting.

  "Lower our accel to twenty five gees. Match them." Said Sapphira, and Cia gave her a questioning look as her ships obeyed. She smiled at the simulacrum, though she didn't know why she bothered. Perhaps because she needed someone to talk to, even if that someone wasn't truly intelligent, just a very convincing imitation. "These people are a lot more organized that I thought. And I'm almost certain they have no idea of our true capabilities. Let's tan their hides a bit with long range fire, make them think we only had some sprint capabilities, or that we're not keen on courting a laser duel." Most Federation vessels wouldn't be. The Theocracy had a significant edge on the Federation in terms of energy weapons at the start of the war, and a lot of that advantage remained. A laser duel with Theocracy naval vessels was, generally, a very good and messy way to die. Of course, she wasn't using an old bundle of half obsolete vessel from the war, but squadrons fresh out from Terra. Her light cruisers had the newest in terms of battle lasers, built around them as giant spinal mounts. All six might not look like much, but they could give a Theocracy battleship a run for its money if they were allowed to close. "Then, once they run...well, we can follow them. Let's see where they bring us."

  The simulacrum nodded, and Sapphiria watched in fascination as the other side began to engage her missile volley. First with their own missiles, the kind made for shooting down other projectiles.

  Space lit up with the glare of thermonuclear detonations, as the counter missiles separated into a multitude of warheads each, before exploding.

  Many armchair admirals considered the use of such munitions wasteful and even counterproductive, but even if the area of effect of nuclear weapons in the void of space was laughably small compared to what they could achieve in an atmosphere, they still had a lot better chances of catching an enemy projectile in a kilometers wide bubble of thermonuclear fury than a more conventional kinetic warhead could achieve a direct hit.

  Besides which, the results was a wall of superheated plasma, and heavily shielded or not hitting that at interplanetary speed wasn't going to leave her own missiles intact either, even if they weren't caught in the initial detonation.

  The raiders fired in coordinated volleys, sacrificing volume of fire for a higher kill ratio per counter missile, the wall of detonations getting closer and closer, until...

  The sensor readings devolved into madness as the missiles' icons and that of the raiders merged. Electronic warfare went into overdrive on both sides, with her missiles going into terminal attack mode, burning out their sensors trying to see through all the countermeasures, while the other side attempted to lure them onto inexistent targets, while firing every point defence weapon they had.

  Blinding flashes. The sensors went blank as space lit up with the glare of a thousand new suns. And then it was over.

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  Of the twenty seven ships the raiders had started off with, only nineteen had come out of their miniature civil war, including the cruiser and the two militarized freighters.

  One of those freighters was now a spinning wreck, while the other had its starboard side reduced to glowing metal. Laser warheads may be best when it came to destroying capital ships, but there was nothing like shaped thermonuclear charges to put the fear of the Federation into enemies. And, more importantly, strip out sensor clusters and point defence turrets for follow up volleys.

  The cruiser appeared more or less intact, its electronic defenses having made its less well prepared comrades much more obvious target, and the same could be said for the other military style vessels, except one supremely unlucky human designed destroyer, that was now a cloud of expanding plasma.

  "Six down, thirteen to go." Said Sapphiria as she checked the sensor data. "Nevermind, seven down."

  One of the destroyers swarmed with escape pods and shuttles, before its drive failed.

  "Orders?"

  "Fire another volley. If we take it too easy they'll get suspicious, even if we want some to escape."

  The display updated again as the battlecruisers shook, and another group of missiles screamed into the void. The other side was probably able to return fire, but they'd clearly decided that antagonizing her further wasn't a good idea, especially when most of her ships were still holding fire. Nor would it be very useful to attack, as her escorts would shred anything they could possibly throw her way.

  She waited, considering whether to fire more volleys, weighing the need to be convincing versus the risk of destroying them all outright, while her ships continued to broadcast hails and summons to surrender on every available frequency.

  Then...the hyperspace array pinged her.

  She swore as she pulled up the result.

  "They jumped!" Sapphiria frowned as she started digging into files from the warbook. Hyperdrives that had cycled this quickly...those weren't Theocracy. That was Terran tech all the way. And only a full scale shipyard could have retrofitted those Theocracy ships with hyperdrives that were fundamentally alien to their design. "Prepare our vessels for transition to hyperspace. Let's see where the rats scurry off to."

  "What about Command?" Asked Cia.

  "What about them?" Sapphiria blinked, and sighed. Right. Interstellar communications were whatever a courier ship could carry. "Alright, detach one of the corvettes as a courier. Give it a full report and copy of our sensor data, and send it to naval station Kapyris. No, wait, Ivarak." Kapyris was the closest, but if something were to happen, they wouldn't be able to do squat. Ivarak had the dubious honor of having been glassed by the Theocracy once, and been rebuilt as a major industrial and naval hub, with an entire squadron of battleships stationed there at all times. "Then we'll execute the jump. Oh, and send an update to our friends planetside. It's their system after all. Do warn them about salvaging the wrecks though, and expect possible and highly hostile survivors, especially in the merchant ones."

  "Affirmative. Transmitting."

  The AI watched as one of her corvettes changed course, symbolically separating from the rest of the fleet. As soon as the transmission was complete, to both the ship and the planet -you could transmit at short range in hyperspace, if you were doing a fleet jump, but it wasn't exactly great-, her entire carrier group jumped as one.

  Sensors went insane, and then shut down. There just wasn't anything to see beyond the protective field around her fleet, besides the mad, incomprehensible maelstrom of energy that was hyperspace.

  The hyperspace array however, was working splendidly.

  "Alright, let's match their course and speed." She said, and Cia nodded.

  Distances in hyperspace were...tricky. It didn't fully correspond to realspace, as the foreign dimension varied in density, as in the speed where one could travel through it. It seemed to vary almost at random, creating currents and trade lanes, but it had two notable exceptions: the heart of the galaxy, the black hole Sagittarius A, that was surrounded in some kind of interdiction field, preventing any hyperspace travel in its immediate stellar vicinity, IE anywhere in the deep core, while the density seemed to spike massively at the outer galactic rim, as if the milky way was wrapped in a kind of hyperspace highway.

  Still, one could still sustain a pursuit within it.

  She made sure to keep her distance however. If nothing else, she needed time to react to unexpected maneuvers, however much she wanted to tail them as close as possible to be certain she wouldn't lose their trace.

  After over an hour, as she was standing her ships down from battle stations while mentally leafing through the Culture novels of Ian Banks, she received another status update.

  She blinked, and gazed at the notification, before pulling up the sensor data.

  "They changed course. Crap."

  There was little reason to do that in hyperspace. Unless...

  She'd made a mistake. By moving out as soon as she'd seen them on the array, she'd blown the fact that she had a way of seeing into hyperspace. Luckily they didn't seem to be considering her having it mounted on her ship, instead thinking it was some kind of fixed installation they had failed to notice. Not that there was much else they could do even if they'd realized that, at least for now. She needed to be ready for anything once they came back into realspace however.

  Besides which, having a carrier group in the middle of nowhere would help sell the idea of a new or even secret installation. After all, what the hell would it be possibly doing there otherwise?

  Now, it was time to settle in for the long haul. And let them lead her to their den.

  *****

  "Status change."

  Sapphiria blinked. Her hologram was still on the bridge, an equally holographic book in her hands.

  She was technically paying attention. As an AI it was almost impossible not to, on a certain level. But at the same time, focusing all of her processing power on the pursuit would drive her mad remarkably quickly.

  The raiders had adjusted their path Sapphiria frowned as she saw the vector change. Their trajectory was...curved?

  That wasn't how it happened in hyperspace. There was no momentum, you input the destination and the engines took you there at whatever speed you told them to. The raiders' previous turn had been abrupt and perfect, an instant vector change.

  This looked like-

  "CHANGE COURSE, NOW!" Yelled out Sapphiria, somewhat perfunctorily, as she tried to get the order to her ships.

  Too late. The fleet's vector changed...as it was dragged in towards the same place the raiders were.

  As if caught in a vortex.

  She saw the raiders blink out. Not as one, or in a random scatter, but as they crossed an invisible line.

  Her ships managed to jump back into realspace, milliseconds before crossing that same threshold.

  Sensors began drinking in the energy around them as drones screamed out in every direction and her ships formed a protective bubble around her carrier.

  Her display updated, and-

  Holy crap.

  According to her hyperspace density charts of the area, she should have emerged entire light hours away from the raiders, billions of kilometers between them. But they were within firing distance, a scant light minute away.

  She saw them emerge from jump as the light caught up to her.

  Then her sensors went crazy.

  In front of her and the raiders was...something. Errors filled her systems as her analysis programs failed to identify it, sending conflicting returns. Whatever it was, it simultaneously had the mass of an entire planet and yet absolutely no gravity field.

  She had a feeling her handful of seconds' worth of readings could keep the Federation's scientists busy for a decade, or more.

  So of course, the raiders opened fire.

  Lasers scoured the...whatever it was.

  The hyperspace array let out a warning screech, and reality went mad.

  One second they were in the middle of deep space. The next they were in a solar system.

  She, unfortunately, did not have the time to ponder further.

  Because that solar system had a space station. And that station was shooting at her.

  The raiders ceased to exist in less than a second, obliterated by weapons her sensors could make no sense of.

  She managed to dodge the first volley, her heightened reflexes and coordination saving-

  ///EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM///

  CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE TO FLAGSHIP - VESSEL COMBAT INEFFECTIVE

  FLOTILLA UNRESPONSIVE - NO SHIP FOR EMERGENCY TRANSFER

  ACTIVATING OMEGA PROTOCOLS

  EJECTING ESCAPE POD AND INITIATING SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE

  And everything went black.

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