The Next Day

— Wednesday, November 16, 2129 AD —

“Ah, Colonel Saito. You’re right on time.”

“Commander,” Saito greeted curtly as he stepped up to the railing at the back of the bridge. “How long until we’re there?”

“Just a few minutes now, sir. It won’t be long.”

“I wonder what we’ll find this time…” Danielle mused, placing a finger on her chin in thought.

Saito glanced toward her, and then at the others who accompanied her: Major Hackett, Mote, and Kate. The five of them had left Earth four days ago to investigate a new coordinate from the Aldredian Dreadnought archive, though this time, they weren’t riding aboard Genesis. SERRCom’s most renowned battlecruiser had recently been sent off on a mission to investigate a different coordinate, so CSF-1 and the Eximius Vir had instead boarded the Frigate FG-34 Once In a Blue Moon, a modern Now You See Me-class Frigate outfitted primarily for reconnaissance. As such, she featured one of SERRCom’s fastest Subspace Drives, as well as a third-generation Partial Cloaking System — the most advanced recreation of Genesis’s Absolute Cloaking System to date. Once In a Blue Moon wasn’t able to enter into complete stealth the same way Genesis could, but the Frigate was still able to hide herself from all but optical, gravimetric, and Chaos Energy sensors.

Once In a Blue Moon’s Captain was a woman by the name and rank of Commander Sarita Mishra, a young officer in SERRCom’s Space Navy. During their four day journey aboard the 80-meter long Frigate, Saito had come to determine that Commander Mishra was a little too stiff for his liking — though he couldn’t tell if that was her natural attitude, or some kind of unease about the O-6 Colonel technically outranking her O-3 Commander title, even though she maintained full authority over her own ship.

Thinking about the Commander led Saito to briefly review his team for the mission. Researcher MacTavish had stayed behind on Earth to help with the ongoing research into the Aldredas technology — including the Corvette Raenaros, which had also been left behind. SERRCom Frigates simply weren’t large enough to carry the Corvette, and for the time being, the ships that were large enough were busy with other tasks and missions. Still, even without Raenaros, Mote carried with him his Aldredian Armor, just in case it was needed to access more technology. Everyone else on the team wore their normal sets of Chaos Armor, and Saito and Hackett both carried their standard issue Gauss-P02 and Gauss-AR02, a pistol and assault rifle pairing that both fired bullets with electromagnets instead of chemical propellants.

Saito’s thoughts were soon interrupted as Commander Mishra spoke up. “We’ve arrived,” she announced to the small Frigate bridge, “exiting Subspace now.”

Immediately after her announcement, the fuzzy gray atmosphere outside of the bridge window rapidly dissipated, revealing the deep black of true space, speckled with the white dots of distant stars. Below and a little to the right was a Terra planet, featuring large blue oceans, green-covered landmasses, and streaks of white clouds all around.

“It’s a planet this time,” Hackett remarked. “That’s good.”

“Not a fan of atmosphereless armor, eh, Major?” Saito questioned.

“I’m with her,” Kate declared. “Atmosphereless armor is too fucking bulky, and the helmet is a pain in the ass to deal with. Not to mention the shields are weak as shit, compared to normal armor.”

“Those are trivial trade-offs for being able to operate in a vacuum environment,” Mote pointed out.

“Still—“

“Uh, sir,” Commander Mishra interjected, turning to pass Saito a glance while she sat in her Captain’s chair. “We aren’t alone.”

“What?” Saito responded in disbelief, only to look up at the bridge holograms as a new display appeared, showing off two large spacecraft hovering in low orbit. Both craft were around 500 meters long, categorizing them as Cruisers — and they carried the armaments to match. Visually, they were painted a deep black with some splotches of red, while their silhouettes were distinctly spiked and pointed. Furthermore, they appeared to be slowly circling and firing at each other, their energy shields constantly flaring and covering portions of the ships in reddish-yellow blankets of light.

“…Drakkars,” Mote muttered.

“So it seems,” Mishra commented as she watched the ongoing fight. “…At this distance, Once In a Blue Moon’s PCS should be strong enough to prevent them from spotting us, so we’re safe for now.”

“What are the Drakkars doing here, though?” Danielle questioned. “We’re all the way across the galaxy from their territory!”

“They’re probably here for the same reason that we ran into them a couple months ago,” Saito replied. “They’re after Aldredas technology — just like we are.”

Kate snorted. “And fighting over it, too, apparently.”

“Yes… why would they be doing that?” Mishra asked. “Was one of their ships hijacked…?”

“They’re probably just opposing factions,” Saito answered. “There are six Drakkar factions, after all, each led by a different Faction Leader. As I understand it, they fight amongst themselves all the time, so much so that the CSA can take advantage of those factional divides to help defend their own space.”

“Didn’t the Drakkars team up recently, though?”

“The Exemplar and Sursum Factions teamed up briefly to attack the CSA 20 years ago, but that all fell apart when the Nanocreatures showed up. According to the CSA, the Drakkar alliance quickly fractured, and they’ve been back at each other’s throats ever since.”

“Sounds pretty damn convenient for us,” Kate remarked as she cracked her knuckles. “So when are we going down there?”

“What?!” Mishra turned to stare at Kate incredulously. “There’s an ongoing space battle right now, and you want to go planetside?!”

“Well, yeah. Obviously,” Kate retorted. “Those dumbasses are fighting over something. The way I see it, sneaking in and stealing it while they’re fucking distracted is our best move!”

“We should probably check to see if there even is anything down there, first,” Hackett suggested. “Commander, do you have a scan?”

“Uh… yes. Let’s pull that up…” Mishra leaned over to input a quick command into a keypad attached to her right armrest. A second later, a new hologram appeared on the bridge display, showcasing a portion of the planet’s surface. “…It does look like there is some kind of outpost,” the Commander commented, “and it matches the signatures of your previous Aldredian findings, Colonel.”

“Well, I think that settles it, then,” Saito remarked.

“But… sir…” Mishra spun her chair around to face Saito and the rest. “Surely you know the risks of planetside action during an ongoing space battle, especially one in low orbit! Missed shots can destroy neighborhoods, or even entire cities — and if one of those ships goes down, then that’s even worse!”

“I understand and appreciate your concern, Commander,” Saito replied, “but it looks like the Drakkars have already anticipated this. Look — the surface scan shows that they’ve set up anti-bombardment shields and beam jammers. It would seem that both sides have troops planetside, and they’ve both taken precautions to prevent the other side from bombarding their guys from orbit, or just beaming them away.”

“And we can take advantage of that!” Kate declared.

“I must admit, sir,” Mote said, “it does seem unwise to enter such an active combat zone.”

“I agree,” Mishra quickly added. “Once In a Blue Moon isn’t a combat ship, and even if it was, there’s no way we could take on a Drakkar Cruiser — let alone two! We have to keep a safe distance, or they’ll spot us.”

“We have a way around that,” Saito declared as he turned toward Danielle. “Danielle here can be our transport craft, to and from the planet. If we’re fast, we can be in, check the outpost, and then leave before the Drakkars can do anything to us. And with Mote’s armor, if there is anything of value, we should be able to retrieve it quickly.”

“…I see,” Mishra responded slowly. “…Alright, sir. I suppose it’s as good a plan as any. I’ll give the—“

“Commander! Another ship just arrived!”

“What?!” Mishra exclaimed, spinning her chair back around to address the declaration from her crew. “Scan it and put up the details immediately! And make sure that we’re out of their sensor range!”

“…That might be hard to do, ma’am,” the crew member replied, and then turned to give her an uneasy look. “The ship doesn’t match any known profiles, so we don’t know their sensing capabilities…”

“A completely unidentified ship? Fucking, really?” Kate responded incredulously, “you can’t be serious.”

“You can judge for yourself. Putting the scan results on the main display…”

Everyone soon directed their attention up at the bridge holograms, where another set of sensor readouts soon appeared. Accompanying the readouts was a zoomed-in camera feed of the new ship.  According to the scan, her size and armaments placed her in the Cruiser class, but little else was identifiable about her. The craft featured a rugged aesthetic, with slate blue armor paneling arranged at mostly 45- and 90-degree angles. Displayed on a large panel on the side of the ship was an emblem of a blue ring, with four crossbars — two vertical, two horizontal — interwoven through the ring and each other, though aside from that, there were few distinguishing marks.

“It doesn’t match any known construction profiles…” Mishra muttered as she looked over the scan results. “…It looks somewhat similar to SERRCom ships, but we don’t use blue paint. Not that blue, at least.”

“That emblem looks familiar,” Hackett commented, and then frowned. “But… I can’t quite put my finger on it…”

“…Wait,” Mote spoke up, only to scowl a second later. “…I’ve seen that emblem before. It was on EA’s robots.”

“EA?!” Kate exclaimed in disbelief. “…Aw, fuck, that Cruiser does look a lot like the one that asshole parked over New York, doesn’t it? But what the hell is he doing here?”

“More importantly, if that really is EA, how does he have a second ship?” Saito questioned. “How much time and resources does he have access to? How did he find crew for the damn thing?”

“And why would he put an identifying mark on his ship like that?” Hackett added. “I would think that he’d try to keep a low profile…”

“Sounds like we all have a lot of questions!” Danielle remarked, “well, there’s only one way to find out, right?”

“Capturing a Cruiser is a little out of our league, don’t you think?” Mote countered.

“Mote’s right. We’re a ground team,” Saito added. “And more than that, we don’t know what kinds of technology EA uses on his ships. Without that knowledge, trying to storm one would be a bad idea. That isn’t what we came here for, anyways.”

“It does complicate things, though,” Hackett pointed out.

“As if that wasn’t enough,” Mishra interjected, “the new ship has begun to approach the Drakkar Cruisers — she’s opened fire! And not just on the Cruisers, she’s firing on the planetside bombardment shield, as well!”

“What the hell is this idiot doing?” Kate questioned incredulously.

Saito stared at the bridge displays for a few moments, his brow furrowed in confusion as he watched the EA Cruiser engage the Drakkar Cruisers in battle. A second later, he pounded his hand on the railing in front of him, drawing everyone’s attention to him. “Alright,” he declared, “we’re moving out, immediately!”

“What? Wait, sir!” Mishra spun her chair around once again to face Saito. “Doesn’t this change things? Is it really safe to go down there, now?!”

“You’re right that EA’s arrival changes things, Commander,” Saito replied. “What it changes is how much time we have to check out that outpost. The Drakkars weren’t purposefully firing on the bombardment shield, but EA clearly is, so we don’t have long until it fails.”

“Isn’t that even more reason to not go down there, sir?!”

“On the contrary,” Saito responded with a dangerous smirk. “Whatever that Aldredian outpost contains is important enough for two Drakkar factions to openly fight over, and also for EA to show up and engage two Drakkar Cruisers at once. There are three different groups here, all trying to get their hands on whatever is in that outpost — and all three sides are enemies to SERRCom. We need to figure out what’s down there!”

“Yeah, the Colonel’s right!” Kate exclaimed. “There’s probably some kind of crazy Aldredas tech down there! We can’t let the fucking Drakkars or that loser asshole get their hands on it!”

Mishra glanced at Kate, and then returned her gaze to Saito, with a broad frown upon her face. “…Are you sure, sir?”

“I’m sure that every second we waste here is a second we don’t have planetside. Look, don’t worry about us, Commander,” Saito replied, and then stepped back to throw his arms around the shoulders of Mote and Danielle — both reacted with surprise, though Danielle quickly returned the gesture with a grin, while Mote simply stood there with an annoyed expression. “With the Eximius Vir on our side, I’m sure we’ll be safe.”

“That’s a strong claim, sir…” Mote muttered.

“But it’s not wrong!” Danielle exclaimed cheerfully. “We’ll do our best!”

“…Very well, sir,” Mishra eventually capitulated. “I’ll trust your judgment.”

“Glad to hear it,” Saito remarked, and then whipped around to charge out of the bridge. “Major, Eximius Vir, on me! Let’s get to that planet!”