Trial by Fire Snippet 2

 

Chapter 2

 

PG4-186

 

The first of the wave of Necron reinforcements arrived in the star system and found that the Xenos had taken it over and claimed it for their own. The Chester admiral interrogated the hidden message buoy and scanned it as the Xeno shipmaster and lead Technomancer reached out and ordered him to move on.

He ordered the ships to go to the gas giant refinery to refuel. After all, the Xenos had made use of his own people’s facilities, he had the right to do the same. The technomancer was not thrilled but couldn’t deny him.

As he scanned the logs his jaw flexed in irritation at the notation from Scrapper. The Technomancer had apparently found a hidden cache of ships and equipment on the Mars class world of Jakku. He had started to mine it just as the Xenos had come along and chased him out. That was unfortunate.

That find was probably the best treasure of the area to date. Pity it was not in his people’s grasp. He scanned the work going on there. He could see the neutrino spore of multiple fusion drives and reactors.

So be it. Let them mine, his people would find something better in time.

<<(O)>>

In Hyperspace

 

The shipmaster in command of the joint convoy was displeased with what he had seen in Mutsu. They had moved on with the intent of hoping to find better progress for the conquest in the south.

He was aware of additional forces coming on behind him, most likely at least 2 jumps back. It was a freight train of death coming into the sector, one that would hopefully roll over the Federation’s scattered colonies, conquer and absorb them and then use their resources to continue the unending wave south. If luck was with them they would drown the Federation.

<<(O)>>

PR3182DP

 

Admiral Chester V chafed as the technomancers and surviving crew worked diliegently to put his command back to right... or as close as they could. His flagship had been brutalized by the Federation torpedo strike, battered into a wreck. Three of his cruisers had survived the pummeling. If not for the timely arrival of the Xeno admiral Chester VII he would most likely had been beaten and destroyed.

Nay, he had been beaten, yet not destroyed. That last had been because of the arrival.

As the technomancers worked he focused on the tactical recordings. He wanted to glean as much information about the enemy as possible. He had sensor and tactical servitors and Necrons doing their best to process what they had found.

Interestingly the enemy was immune to cyber attacks and had even launched their own. His people were working on adapting to that new wrinkle. They had used decoys and jamming, ECM and other things that his people had not fully anticipated.

It was a steep learning curve, one he hoped to climb quickly before his next rematch.

And there would be a rematch, he just wasn't certain when it would occure.

<<(O)>>

Scrapper was dubious about the ability to rebuild the remaining ships. There were 4 surviving Necron ships under Admiral Chester V's command, the carrier and 3 cruisers. All were damaged to varying degrees. The carrier had been stripped of its wing. That meant it was toothless. Something else needed to be done about that, he wasn't certain what.

The biggest issue was that there were no more fighters and the crews were spread thin. He was concerned about that, as were the various shipmasters. It would drive ship efficiency down to barely acceptable levels.

<<(O)>>

Captain Riff-raff watched the Necrons repair their ships carefully. Every scrap of information was being picked up by his prowler’s passive sensors as well as those of the recon probes had dared to secret around the star system.

Periodically he updated the hidden message buoy satellite with data dumps.

The crew was on edge, tension in such a situation was a good thing, it kept them alert and on their toes. But they were confident after weeks of observation that they were safe… as long as they continued to run silent.

Based on his observations he estimated that the ships would be ready to depart within a fortnight. He was surprised that they had been able to rebuild the battered ships. No doubt they’d used a liberal amount of nanites of course. It bode ill for the future. He did wonder about their crews though. They might have pulled some from the support ship that was with them but there had to be a finite limit… right?

<<(O)>>