Into the Black

(Ceti Alpha 5, Secret Imperial Research Facility, Codename: Botany Bay)

Ceti Alpha was a rather worthless system, all told. The first four of the inner planets were lifeless husks of rock, without even any heavy metals to make them worth mining. There were two gas giants with a bit of stellar debris hanging around them further out, but there wasn’t enough reason to set up gas mining ships around Ceti Alpha 7 and 8 when there were no colonies in this system. Ceti Alpha 6 had blown up during the early years of hyperdrive research, when some damn fool accidentally turned an experimental drive on while on the planet’s surface, and somehow caused chain reaction that tore the planet apart, and caused the spatial rifts that made FTL travel impossible inside the system.

Before that, Ceti Alpha 5 had been a lush planet, easily supporting life. A real Earth type, with a thriving colony. But the explosion of Ceti Alpha 6 had shifted 5’s orbit, and the result was devastating to the climate. What had been a perfect example of an agricultural world had become a desert planet overnight (in geological terms). Where life had flourished, there was now a nearly lifeless ball of sand, the only indigenous lifeform remaining that was worth noting being a type of worm that burrowed into a victim’s brain through the ear as a larvae, leaving them ‘suggestible’ as they were slowly killed by the growing creature.

Mostly lifeless, at any rate.

They had reviewed what information they could about the base while in hyperspace. When they had dropped out of hyperspace on the edge of the system, they had transmitted codes as an imperial freighter on a supply run. Would those codes be accepted? Or had someone changed them between now and whenever the information they’d gathered been collected? So far, there weren’t signs of battle fleets dropping into the system, so I was hoping that we were OK, for now.

“Carissa, do you have the location of their FTL array?”

“Yes, Captain. And I’ve trickle charged the main guns, so they shouldn’t know what’s about to hit them. Active stealth systems might not work completely, but the hull’s composition and the paint still have some effect on their sensors. Their shields are not up.”

“Fire. I don’t want any uninvited guests coming to my party.”

The Raven unleashed her twin cannons, and where before there was a fully functional FTL communications array, there was now molten slag, completely nonfunctional except as a light show on the desert surface. The shields came up, but too late. The assault shuttle was already inside their perimeter, having ghosted in while the Raven was on the other side of the planet from the base. Everyone always looks up when you’re expecting an assault from space. No one ever thinks about someone being foolish enough to attack you from the ground in a space assault.

Blasting our way into the docking bay, the assault shuttle landed, with its guns covering the hangar doors, in case anyone tried to box us in, or we needed to beat a hasty retreat. The Raven was flying as stealthily as one could under the circumstances, with Carissa and Shearah aboard to keep things going. Neither one of them were really ‘combat’ types, so while I made sure they had decent skill levels in weapons, I kept them out of full assault situations like we were doing here.

I led the way out of the shuttle, with Sheila, Cali, Jaynie, and Raven behind me in a diamond formation, with Sheila in the center. She was turning into a good shot, but I was fairly certain her sister would find some creative way to kill me if I got her killed, so she got a bit of protection there. As we moved, Raven worked on hacking her way into the base computers.

Whoever was in charge of base security was smart, at least when it came to IT. There was a ‘public’ net, for announcements (“Intruder Alert” was the hot item on today’s playlist) and other public communications. There was a basic map available, but it didn’t show security emplacements, access nodes, or anything beyond the names of various labs and the project leader for each lab. Anything that was actually useful was on secure local nets.

Fortunately, the scant intel mentioned who we were looking for. Checking the data, Raven soon highlighted the lab where our target, a Dr. K. N. Singh, was stationed, and displayed the shortest route to the lab on our HUDs. This was just at the time we ran into the first hastily thrown together security checkpoint.

It was a simple affair, really. Just a few guards ducked behind the edge of a hatch, aiming their weapons at us. What was new was the type of weapon they were firing. I hadn’t seen a gun shooting those crackling blue bolts of electricity before in game, but I was fairly certain they were hazardous to my health. Fortunately, these guys seemed to be dressed in only basic uniforms with armored vests. Good enough when dealing with pirates or grabby freighters, since the idea was that they just needed to hold out until the fleet got there, but not good enough for us.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Jaynie, you’re up!”

“Got it, boss!” I could tell she was grinning, even though I couldn’t see her face through the helmet of the spec ops armor we were wearing. She always did love playing with her toys, but some toys were best shared with others. So it was in that spirit of sharing that she sent one of her toys down the hallway. A moment later, the grenade went off, and the checkpoint was cleared.

This was a secret research station, on a dead world, in a worthless system. The entire staff was only a couple hundred people, of which only 20 or so were security. When taking that into account, we just wiped out a fifth of their defenses with a grenade. Unfortunately, those deaths took up a bit of time, which allowed the remaining guards to remotely lock down the labs and have more established guard posts put up in front of main control and the engineering spaces. That was fine, though, we didn’t need to get into all the labs, just one.

On a whim, I picked up the gun the opposition was using, and was surprised by its stats.