M.J. Markgraf
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BSE Chapter 5-56
🕑 Added 2025-08-11 12:00:15 +0000 UTCThe remains of the BSE fleet jumped into Unokane, a little over a month after they sprung the trap on the Shican’s human forces to devastating effect.
Vitor should be relieved that they were home, but he couldn’t quite dismiss the niggling doubt in the back of his mind that the Shican were up to something.
After the group of five Shican ships jumped in to try and destroy his ship at Drakvold, there hadn’t been a single sighting of any Shican vessels. The enemy destroyed Jotunheim Station before leaving the system, but from all accounts, they hadn’t pushed into Union space.
Maybe they truly did head back to lick their wounds, but if they had, there was no evidence of that either.
Given the accounts of the previous war, Vitor expected the Shican to push aggressively despite their losses. This new approach was far more concerning. Once he landed, he was going to discuss his concerns with Alex.
As they approached Eden’s End, he was surprised to see just how much more orbital production was going on. Alex had easily outstripped the amount of orbital production that most border planets were capable of with a full planetary population, and he doubted Alex would stop there.
Given the rate of growth, Vitor suspected it wouldn’t be long until Unokane became the leading manufacturing hub for not only Union space but all of human space.
Vitor got his second shock as the construction of the battleship orbited into view. A few people inside the impromptu bridge aboard the Leviathan whistled as they noticed the construction.
The ship was much further along than it should have been. Alex had given Vitor a six-month estimate after they had discussed the plans a few days prior to the attack in Drakvold.
“What’s all that stuff around it?” Vitor asked the sensor operator.
The man zoomed in, but the objects were still too small to see.
“Um, I think those are bots, sir,” the weapons officer replied while squinting at the holo image.
Sure enough, as they closed with the planet, the small forms became clear. A literal cloud of bots was flying around the ship, with near-constant flashes of light emanating as they worked. He expected to see bots moving parts into position. Alex used them pretty heavily, but the numbers around the battleship seemed excessive. They also looked nothing like the manufacturing bots aboard the damaged Leviathan, despite the fact that they were obviously working on the ship. Vitor didn’t know what they were, but he had a suspicion that Alex had come up with something absurd once again because the new battleship had to be nearly half complete.
An update pinged through the comm system, and the automated systems aboard his temporary command ship went into action. He assumed the ship was upgrading its bots to the newer ones.
Vitor felt the vein in his temple pulse in annoyance. Alex had done that on purpose. He could have easily sent those instructions the minute his new bots had been created. They had remained in contact after separating from the Union fleet, but Alex waited until they returned to surprise them after the sensors aboard his ship could clearly see the bots in action.
“Nice try,” Vitor muttered under his breath as he suppressed his shock. He had managed to grow used to Alex’s unexpected technological advancements, and he wasn’t going to give the robot the satisfaction of seeing him surprised by this development.
He cleared his throat and addressed the crew. “I honestly expected more.”
The holo suddenly came to life, displaying Alex. “Bah, you’re no fun.”
“Oh, Alex, I wasn’t aware you were connected,” Vitor replied flatly.
Vitor may not enjoy needling people as much as Lucas Laront did, but he did enjoy watching the eight-foot-tall robot roll its avatar’s holographic eyes when he got called out.
“As you’ve probably noticed, we’ve made a few developments since you last left. We can talk about that after you arrive, as I see the Leviathan could use some love. Park it in a trailing orbit behind the battleship, and I’ll send a shuttle over to get you and your crew. I assume we have a lot to discuss.”
***
Seeing Krieger’s response wasn’t the only reason Alex had sneakily connected with the comm update. He wanted to know how the admiral and his crew were holding up.
Having the admiral use himself as bait was a risky move, especially on a ship that was never designed to see direct battle. The fact that the armor had held up and nobody had been seriously injured aboard the mobile construction yard was a miracle.
Alexander would have used one of the two empty Leviathans as bait. They might not have been quite as effective at fighting off the Xin ships without their human crew, especially when the Shican arrived and started jamming everything with ECM and trying to hack through the control systems for the laser pods, but it would have been safer.
He couldn’t condemn the man’s actions, however, because ultimately, they did work. They just didn’t catch what they had been expecting to.
Alexander sent Branston a message, asking him to pick up the admiral and his crew.
Before the damaged Leviathan was finished establishing its orbit, Branston’s shuttle was already docking with the much larger ship.
As the shuttle departed, the new multi-purpose bots swarmed out of the mobile construction yard and began tearing things apart. The bots couldn’t produce the alien armor, but the Leviathan’s onboard printers were deploying to create the necessary machine to fix that issue.
The reason why Alexander wanted it parked in a trailing orbit of the battleship’s construction zone was so that the bots over there could quickly fly over and retrieve the armor instead of having to fly it up from the surface. Shuttle loads would still be heading up, and the materials staged on the Leviathan, but adding the additional capacity should prevent any downtime.
To Krieger, the battleship probably looked farther along than it was, but it was still a few months from being completed. The choice of armor was the main bottleneck. They had enough of the carbon composite plates completed to create the first layer of armor, but he knew they would need more to keep up with the new bots.
Thankfully, the armor process was a lot more streamlined now that the plates didn’t need to be glued to a metal frame backing. They were now secured to the ship via the defensive field emitters and the layer underneath. It only took a small change to the shape of the emitters’ thin cylindrical forms to give them the grip they needed for the special adhesive to secure the plates in place. It was a much better solution than the previous one. The plates could now be fit tightly together, eliminating the weak joints that plagued the prior iterations of the armor.
The even spacing of the emitters also made modifying the armor plates much easier in weirdly shaped spots. With the exact dimensions, those plates could be prepared ahead of time to fit in tightly without tertiary processes to prepare custom-shaped framing. There were a few headache spots where too much armor material needed to be removed to fit over emitters set at a sharp angle to one another, but Alexander had already come up with a solution to that problem. Those areas required emitters to be embedded into all four layers of armor, and the entire assembly moved into place instead of layer by layer. Thankfully, those trouble spots were few and far between.
Everything was moving along as well as it could, but they needed to know what the Shican were up to. Alexander kept an eye on things, so he knew there hadn’t been any sightings of the aliens. Or any he was aware of. Hopefully, Krieger would have new information to shed some light on that subject.
***
“The human command ship is in the system,” Grand Commander.
“Send me the data feed,” Thesska ordered his subordinate before closing his eyes and pressing his head against the back of his chair.
There was a momentary spike of pain as the data probe stuck into his skull, but it quickly washed away as the data began filling his mind.
Thesska rarely went over the data because it was inefficient to look through the data himself, especially when he had subordinates to do it for him. He did it now because he wanted to see the unedited trust of the human system for himself.
The data expanded, and a picture formed inside his mind. It showed a planet heavy in orbital industry, but a surface practically barren. Why anyone would choose to live in such an inhospitable place was beyond him. Humans may be more adaptable than the Shican first thought.
Thesska made a mental note to have a judicar back home double-check the records from the datalogues to see if it was a simple oversight on their behalf or deliberate incompetence.
Most species that the Shican had encountered had very little tolerance to environmental deviation from their birth worlds. The Shican were no different in that respect. What they had learned, however, was that most intelligent species evolved on very similar worlds to the Shican’s home world. It was a benefit to the Shican, but a detriment to those who inhabited those worlds before they arrived. There could only be one dominant lifeform on a planet, and the Shican’s instincts wouldn’t allow for that to be anything other than themselves.
Things had changed since those early centuries. With cloning and cybernetics, they could now tolerate a much wider range of environments, but the Shican still preferred worlds similar to their ancestral one.
The data highlighted a massive structure on the surface. “Maybe the humans are not so different,” he growled mentally.
Thesska had hoped these humans were somehow modified by the true target of his hunt to live in adverse conditions, but instead, they cowered in shelters. His hope of hunting down the humans on the surface while trying to survive the adverse conditions was shattered.
He turned away from the surface image and studied the orbital defenses. He could see the thousands of pods orbiting the planet, helpfully identified by the computer. The same ones that had been used in the human’s ambush. There were more around the first and second moons as well, making it impossible to use those as staging grounds to clear the pods from around the planet. Interspersed amongst those were larger structures, most likely to fire the human missiles.
Hidden amongst those defensive installations were a large station, a smaller one, and some other orbital structures.
The image also showed a ship being built, but he couldn’t see much about it because the computer was having a hard time filtering the visual input from this range. He growled in annoyance at that, but did not order his fleet closer.
One ship didn’t matter, so he moved on to a series of satellites that orbited the planet in two distinct layers.
Thesska had no idea what those satellites were for, but he could guess based on past experiences. “Some form of deflection array, likely for asteroids.”
He knew the humans had deflector fields. Most spacefaring races developed something similar before venturing too far from their birth systems. He also knew they would be meaningless against energy weapons.
He pulled his view back to get a measure of the entire system. It lit up with ship contacts being tracked by the fleet’s sensors. Most of the warships that they had been chasing, along with the command ship, were around the planet, but he saw a small patrol making its way around the system. There was a group of vessels farther in the system as well, tucked within the safety of the star’s gravity well and an asteroid belt. The computer couldn’t classify them, but he recognized non-combat ships when he saw them.
Thesska had already taken measure of the human ships and found them wanting. They would provide some challenge, but inevitably fall, like every race before. He cataloged their locations before disconnecting from the stream of data. He had seen enough; now it was time to plan. His fleet could punch through the human defenses, of that he was sure, but that’s not why he was here. He was here to see if he could flush out his true quarry. Thanks to a recent advancement of an old Shican technology, he had an idea of how he might pull that off. Most adult animals came running or fled when they heard their young ones in distress.
Thesska smiled widely enough to show his fangs. The hunt was about to begin.
Comments
Merlin's Fan
Idk, wasn't mentioned the time they just arrived. The only commonality to reference from would be the battleship they couldn't see. If I remember correctly the shican had to wait initially for the sensor ships, and then wait to follow. My guess is the battleship is near completion when they show up
Vlast
So, Shican fleet arrived at the same time as Krieger even with them being two weeks behind?
Avdrdr
He’s about to get burned
