BSBxKc Chpt 4

==Blue Squadron (Battletech x KanColle(ish) crossover) - Chapter 4 -==
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===Chapter Summary===
The group of three fleetmaidens was on the move again.They were heading at Swift Justice's best speed towards a waypoint far enough away from Jan Mayen's gravitational influence to jump safely. The cruiser's expression was stony, jaw set in determination and exertion. She was once more frustrated with her limited acceleration, and all, but willed her transit drives to push her through space faster.Time was of the essence.
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===Urgent Call for Deployment===
Jan Mayen System, Deep Periphery - Waystation 135
After the three of them had eaten their fill, copious amounts in the Case of Swift, they had returned to their parking positions near the Waystation, and raised their solar sails to recharge their K-F drives. Not long after they were done, and had lowered the sails, Zheng called them to an urgent meeting. 
 
Having gathered at the same airlock as previously, the three warships in human form did not need to wait long. Their liaison rounded the corner and came floating down the corridor with quick and measured moves. When he reached the airlock's observation window he did not waste any time, his expression serious. 
 
With a curt nod as a greeting he spoke. "I am afraid we urgently need your skills again, ladies." He opened the airlock's inner door and placed the noteputer he seemed to always carry around into it. "I just received an HPG message addressed to me directly. Data Analysis have forwarded, with the highest priority, a distress call that was received by an automated monitoring post. It came from a station by the name of Vespucci, located in system 2457."
 
Zheng returned to the airlock's control panel and engaged the depressurization cycle. "It is within range of a single jump from here at 28 lightyears away. It is run by Interstellar Expeditions, and apparently under attack." He paused for a moment, which made the grave look he was wearing that much more foreboding. "The message from Vespucci was garbled, mostly gibberish and discontinued halfway through. The pattern fits our new 'friends'." The airlock's outer door slid open then, and the noteputer came floating out of it slowly.
 
The three fleetwomen were tense with apprehension, yet they knew what needed to be done. Sharing glances with Amber Lotus, Brest, and Swift Justice could see the determination and urgency in each girl's eyes. They, and the cruiser herself, would do what came naturally to their kind. They would give their all to protect people from the horror of their mysterious adversaries. At once preparations to launch began aboard the three warships.
 
"Are you two clear to go?" Swift caught the noteputer as it came within her range, and stuffed it into one of her uniform's pockets. 
 
"Lets get going." Her expression gave away the urgency she was feeling, but Brest's voice was enthusiastic.
 
"Ready to depart." Amber was more measured in her response, yet also clearly raring to go.
 
Not wasting any time, Swift was already turning when she looked over her shoulder at Zheng. "We will launch right away." True to her word the cruiser was in the process of igniting her transit drives and setting a waypoint for their formation.
 
"There is jump-data on the noteputer if you need it, as well as everything the Intelligence Command knows about the station." The man's dark eyes followed the three warships in human form as they maneuvered to a safe distance, turned their sterns away from the station and went to full burn. He whispered after them. "Good luck. Be careful." 
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===All silence in System 2457===
The ash-haired woman glanced at each of the two corvettes, who were flanking her on either side. Hardly a word had been spoken since they had gotten under way, yet none were necessary. She knew what they were thinking. Her own mind was filled with the same sense of worried urgency she could read in the two girls' expressions. It was only when the group of three were almost to their destination that the flagship spoke up again.
 
"We are coming up on the waypoint. Make ready to jump and prepare for battle. This may well be an ambush, so expect to face enemies immediately after we translate to the destination."
 
Terse affirmatives came back, yet the Aegis did not even need to hear them. She could feel the electromagnetic whisper on her hull as her companions' sensor suites came to full power, and she could see their turrets traversing in search for targets.
 
The cruiser's own crew had just completed coming to battlestations when the waypoint was reached. Still at full burn, Swift Justice gave the order. "Hyperjump in 30 seconds." At just 10 seconds remaining she did a countdown for the sake of synchronizing their arrival at the destination. "...5, 4, 3, 2, 1, jump!"
 
Time seemed to stop for an indescribably short moment, and then they were at their destination. Looking around themselves quickly the fleetmaidens relaxed slightly.
 
"No enemy contacts in sight. That is good, nanodesu." Amber Lotus said what they were all thinking. The corvette had already detached her dropships and was turning to burn for their destination, which was another nameless gas giant the station they were heading for orbited.
 
Swift reached out to grasp the girl's shoulder while casting her searching gaze about. "Hold on. If our foe expected someone to respond to a possible distress call they might have gone to the trouble of laying mines at the jump points."
 
That got both corvettes to freeze in their movements and join the Comstar cruiser in a thorough sweep of the jump point's vicinity. When after a short while of intense searching by sensors and small craft nothing suspicious turned up, Swift spoke up again.
 
"Looks like there are no booby traps here. We can proceed." With that the three of them made, with best speed, for the giant planet in question, and the space station which was on its other side at that moment.
 
As the fleetwomen traveled as fast as Swift's drives could carry her, each of them had their very acute senses, sharpened to a knife's edge, searching for the unknown attackers.
 
After a while Amber Lotus broke the tense silence. The girl was wearing a deep frown. "I don't like this. It's too quiet. There's no radio chatter at all." She made a sweeping motion. "If this system is permanently inhabited, shouldn't there be satellites around for navigation and communications?"
 
"Yeah, i thought that too." Brest nodded and turned a questioning gaze at Swift.
 
"Not necessarily. I have seen many systems without satellites, and we are far away from the Inner Sphere after all." The cruiser kept her eyes on their destination as she continued. "I know what you mean though. Running headlong into the unknown is not advisable, yet we have no choice. All we can do is keep our eyes open for nasty surprises, since this time we may actually be walking into a trap."
 
The woman's words were not reassuring, and the two corvettes' dropships tightened their defensive formation around the three warships as a subconscious response. Any further pondering of the situation was cut short though, as a radio signal reached them the next moment.
 
"Heads up. The station is coming around."
 
The fleetmaidens listened raptly for a few moments, then their expressions fell, yet the tension about them remained.
 
"Rats. Just an automatic distress message." Brest did not say what all of them knew. It did not bode well.
 
Swift placed two fingers to her ear and radioed towards the station. "Interstellar Expeditions Station Vespucci, this is CSV Swift Justice responding to your distress call. What is your situation?" She waited two minutes and repeated the message, then did the same again. She broadcast it five times in total. At this distance the delay was still significant.
 
While the fleet-women waited, in a best-case scenario, for a response the tension among them remained palpable.
 
 "Stay on course and see if you can make out what is happening with the station." The cruiser did not take her eyes off of the distant gas giant's artificial satellite. Even to her incredibly fine senses it appeared as a mere pinprick of light in the planet's low orbit. One among many, since the giant had a lot of cosmic rubble in its general surroundings, which that type of planet tended to vacuum up. Aside from those small bodies was, much more noticeable, the single large icy moon that orbited the blue-tinted gas planet in a wide elliptical orbit.
 
 "Haaah."Brest sighed in dismay when Vespucci disappeared behind the planet without a response to the radio calls.
 
Blue Squadron's flagship was beset by the familiar, pessimistic feeling that her two young charges were about to experience loss for the first time. It was bound to happen eventually, yet she also wished it would have taken longer. She still hoped that things with the station were not as they appeared, yet did not expect them to at the same time. She kept her expression carefully neutral and led their formation onwards.
 
When the station came around the planet again, Swift repeated the calls over radio. They went unanswered again.
 
Just before Vespucci went behind the giant again Amber questioned with a squint. "Am I imagining it or does the station have a tail, nanodesu?"
 
Brest just shrugged and the ash-haired woman shook her head when Amber's questioning gaze fell onto her.
 
"We are still too far away for me to tell. We will know on the next pass."
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===Signs are not good===
And know they did. When Vespucci came into sight again the giant planet loomed large ahead, and they were able to see details.
 
"Oh no..." Brest trailed off in a small, dismayed voice.
 
The station indeed had a tail. It was a cloud of debris that trailed it on its orbit. There was visible damage to several parts of the outer hull, aside from the obvious decompression it had suffered.
 
"Are we too late?" The brunette girl asked with apprehension, her blue gaze fixated on the damaged Vespucci, and a hand clutched to her chest.
 
"We will come alongside it and send boarding parties over to rescue any survivors there might be." Swift Justice reached over and placed a hand on Brest's back as a gesture of comfort. The woman also could not help the small voice at the back of her mind that asked if this could have been avoided if only she were not so slow. With a mental shake she returned her attention to the task at hand.
 
"'Amber Lotus."
 
The dark-haired corvette, in contrast to Brest, was all business. She perked up expectantly when the cruiser made eye-contact with her.
 
"Send one of your dropships to check the dark side of the large moon." She pointed at the celestial body in the distance, then continued. "As well as the other side of the giant. You too Brest." She turned to the girl at her side and gave her an expectant look. "We do not want to get bushwacked while we search for survivors and clues."
 
The FedSuns corvette took a deep breath and straightened, gaze sharpening again as she went about the given task.
 
Swift nodded. There would be time for grief and what-ifs later. For now they had the urgent task of finding and rescuing survivors. Part and parcel of that was not getting killed in a surprise attack themselves.
 
Carefully the three approached the damaged station and took stock of its condition. The trail of debris in its wake hinted at a serious hull breach. Coming from "below" Vespucci's plane of orbit, the ash-haired woman glanced at the cloud of debris as she passed it. It was made up of everything one would expect to be on the inside of a space station.
 
She could see several chairs or stools with most of their legs broken off, pieces of a table, as well as shattered plates. There were also sporadic glints of cutlery and a torn up blanket. Belatedly the cruiser realized that one of the grav-decks had to have suffered a breach. When the cloud got thicker as they passed along it, there was noticeably a lot of paper there, as well as torn up clothes and...
 
With a wince the Aegis realized that she was looking at someone's mortal remains. The poor soul's limbs and torso were bent at disturbing angles, and the cruiser wished that she could not see as well as she did over large distances. It was a small mercy that the poor soul had probably not felt anything. The explosive decompression, as well as the traumatic impacts as a result of being sucked towards - and through - the breach, had most likely killed the crewman in moments.
 
"Coming up to the station. It looks pretty banged up, nanodesu." 'Amber Lotus did not exaggerate.
 
Most evident for Vespucci being in a state of distress was the fact that there was no light in any of its portholes. There was also visible damage to its outer skin in several places, and the reason for the half-sent distress message also became apparent, when a heap of wreckage that barely clung to the rest of the structure turned out to be the former communications array. It was badly damaged and had apparently gotten hit multiple times. No less of a horrific wound was a large gash to one of its grav decks, the origin of the debris.
 
"Bastards tried to keep their attack under wraps." The Aegis muttered with a scowl. "They did not succeed, yet it has made no difference."
 
She paused for a moment, then turned to her companions. "Prepare your boarders. We will remain at a distance until we have confirmed there is no trap ready to spring shut on us."
 
The corvettes did so wordlessly, and there was a tense silence, until the two pairs of dropships had rounded their respective celestial bodies, and ascertained that there was no enemy there any more.
 
"Alright, it looks like we are clear." Although it was necessary to wait for confirmation that they were safe, Swift admitted to herself that it had taken too long. On the inside she had been impatient, and gladly gave the order to commence the next step of their operation. "I will send my boarders through the hull breach on the main grav deck. You two go for a main airlock each. Or failing that, have your infantrists force their entry through one of the landing bays."
 
Two affirmatives came back, and all three warships deployed drop shuttles to take their marine infantry to their destination.
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===Aboard the Vespucci===
The lighting in the crowded compartment was muted. Aside from the red emergency lights there was only one fixture in the middle of the metal ceiling, which cast the room into something approaching twilight. A dozen figures in sealed environmental suits and polarized faceplates sat, shoulder to shoulder, fastened in seats that lined the walls. They bore the insignia of the ComGuards on their breast, and they were all equally, eerily quiet. All of them looked straight ahead at their comrades in the seats facing them, and none did so much as move a muscle.
 
There was a low, distant rumble that lasted for a minute. When it faded it was followed up by a metallic clang, and moments later acceleration was felt by the compartment's occupants. Their shuttle had launched from Swift Justice.
 
It took the shuttle only a short while to reach its destination, and before long red warning lights started flashing in the transport bay. The occupants could feel deceleration, as well as the craft maneuvering. At an unspoken command the figures unfastened their harnesses, rose as one, picked up their rifles which were fastened to each of their seats, and turned towards the closed ramp. It took only moments until it started lowering to steadily reveal the outside. The shuttle was positioned very close to a space station. The figures in their suits, from their vantage point, could see nothing but the large structure, which had a conspicuous hole in its grav deck. The ramp had not reached its fully open position yet when the first pair of the boarders took a running start, and leapt to float across to their destination. They were followed by the rest of the unit.
 
Clamping onto the station's outer skin with magnetic gloves and boots, they made their way towards the hole in the grav deck. It would be their way in. While they clambered along the structure's outer skin towards the breach, they could see several more drop-shuttles approaching the station for other points of entry.
 
When the unit was gathered on the opening's outside they made ready to go in, prepared for contact with the enemy.
 
After a short exchange via hand signs, the leading quartet of boarders switched on their their shoulder-lamps as well as the torches on their rifles. Carefully the first of the four figures squeezed its way through the breach, while the rest were ready to give cover. The single boarder's cones of light quickly swerved through the dark interior, illuminating surfaces of walls and floors/ceilings in a searching pattern.
 
It was a large room with a high sealing for a space station. The tear through which the soldier had crawled was on one end, while the room stretched towards the station's axis, as usual for a grav deck.
 
There was no enemy there. All the figure saw was the result of sudden decompression. Anything that was not bolted or welded down had been sucked out into space. The event left the large room mostly empty, except for what was either a set of lockers or cupboards in the far corner. The single figure turned and motioned that the room was clear, which made the other three members of the fireteam crawl through the breach. They were gradually followed by the rest of the squad.
 
While the other eight were climbing into the station one by one, the first quartet advanced. One of them had spotted a pictogram on the ceiling with its shoulder lamp's cone of light. It was the universally recognized one for No Smoking. Next to it was a directional arrow for the path to take in case of emergency.
 
The one who had first entered, apparently the leader of the team and probably an officer, turned back towards the breach and motioned for the rest of the unit to take positions to their left and right, once they were through. Meanwhile the first four gradually, carefully, crept towards the room's single door. It was closed, automatically slid shut the moment the station's systems had detected the hull-breach. The infantrists' light beams, focused on it as they took positions in pairs on either side, illuminated writing next to it that read Recreation Room.
 
The leader crept up to the door and held a small device against the metal. It was developed for just such situations. After a few moments it showed that the other side was still pressurized. The officer placed his rifle on the ground, drew a sidearm and tapped its butt against the door's metal repeatedly in a universal question. "Is there anyone on the other side?"
 
For a tense minute none of the dozen moved while they waited if the device would sense any vibration at all. Again the leader tapped, again they waited.
 
When there was no response another member of the group went to the control panel next to the door, with a device in hand. After a short struggle with the attached cables, the vaguely book-shaped device was connected to the console. The figure looked up to the leader in a silent question. At the latter's nod a command was fed to the console. and the door slid open. A burst of air exploded outwards from it as it did so, which calmed to a slow stream of dust that had been kicked up by the loss of pressure.
 
Carefully the dozen went or floated into the equally dark corridor. The one with the Portable Engineering Console connected it again, and closed the door to seal the breach in the hull behind it. They were there, first and foremost, to search for survivors. As a consequence they had to avoid venting the entire station's atmosphere as they progressed.
 
Disconnecting the PEC the engineer among them gave a nod. As one the unit advanced down the corridor, towards where the grav deck connected to the rest of the station. They gathered behind the closed hatch and repeated the process of checking for pressure and survivors, before again overriding the controls to gain access to one of the main corridors. Said corridor stretched to the left and right of their entry point.
 
The air in it was not clean. Particles finer than usual dust floated on it, as well as specks of paint and tiny pieces of metal. Telltale signs of gunfire. That realization made all of them even more aware and alert.
 
With hand-motions the group's leader gave orders for half of them to go one way, which would take them further down the station, towards engineering. The other half would advance towards command and control. Standard procedure was to secure key objectives like that, to gain control of the station and ideally find any survivors quicker that way. Or discover what happened from the obtained telemetry, in case nobody could be found alive to give an account.
 
Having separated into two groups, the officer led one half of the unit onwards towards C&C. The half-dozen infantrists had taken to bounding past, and covering each other, in pairs. Their beams of light swerved about in the darkness, searching for threats that may lurk in the shadows.
 
They reached a turn in the corridor, behind which another partitioning hatch should be. When the six of them rounded the corner they halted as one.
 
The sliding door was closed, as it should be. What gave the half dozen armed soldiers pause was the marks it bore. There were deep parallel gauges in the metal. It brought to mind a large beast trying to tear its way through it. While there were animals that could score metal like that, none of which could do so in weightlessness. And on top of that there was no reason for anyone to have brought dangerous living cargo this far away from civilization. The soldiers remained as quiet as ever, though none of them could deny the uneasiness those gauges on the hatch caused.
 
Tension filled the air as the opening procedures for the hatch were performed, this time with two soldiers aiming their weapons at the hatch and the remaining two covering their rear.
 
When it slid open it revealed a mess on the other side. The marines' searching beams of light panned over floating debris that had once been furniture and strips of cloth.
 
Advancing slowly, and expecting enemy contact, they carefully cleared the rooms that connected to the corridor they were in. All of which were habitation units - cabins. The first one was nothing out of the ordinary.
 
The second one's interior had items and clothes floating about it, as though it had been left in a hurry.
 
It was the third room that gave the soldiers pause. When the technician opened the door, there was movement behind it. The soldiers snapped their aim onto the figure that came into view, yet their trigger-discipline held.
 
The streams of light from their lamps revealed a gruesome sight. It was someone's mortal remains that floated into view, nudged into motion by disturbed air, as a result of the door opening. The corpse was in a terrible state, its jumpsuit, or what was left of it, soaked with blood. Carefully a pointman stepped forward and pushed the body aside, to free up the doorway and sweep the room properly.
 
There were pieces of broken furniture and ripped clothing floating about, along with many drops of a dark liquid that was obviously blood. The walls showed more claw-marks like the one they had seen on the corridor's hatch. When the room was declared clear of enemies the officer stepped up and took a closer look at the unfortunate crewman's corpse. Something had torn into the poor soul in a savage manner. The victim's torso seemed to be one large wound, and the face, either from impact or something else, was in such bad shape that it was impossible to tell if the crewmember was a man or a woman.
 
With grim resolve the officer straightened and, after ordering their technician to close the door again, lead the fireteam onwards. The next two rooms' doors were open.
 
The first one was empty, while in the second one there was another dead crewmember. It was a middle-aged man in his sleeping bag, which sported a large red stain at chest-level. He had apparently been shot in his sleep at close range. It was beyond Swift's soldiers how someone could be asleep while the installation he was on was being attacked, but each of them carried a recording device. Maybe, with the perspectives of all other teams, what had happened here would make sense, once they were done and had returned to their ship.
 
Moving on, the team passed another open door. This room was apparently the source of the debris that floated in the corridor. It had been thoroughly trashed. The cupboards had been smashed, the clothes in them torn up, and there were the same claw marks on the walls again. Just past the door there were clear signs of a confrontation. There were small dents in the metal wall, paint missing in pockmark patterns that must have come from a kind of shotgun, as well as more claw marks.
 
Having closed that door, the team of six advanced again. They carefully rounded a bend and reached another hatch, behind which the station's C&C should be. This one bore even more, and deeper, claw marks than the ones they had seen before. After a brief check for atmosphere behind the door, the order was given to open it. If enemies were still present then they were likely to be here, so they gave no warning of an impending override to the room's only access hatch.
 
With a low hum the hatch slid open to reveal the station's nerve center. Aside from a few dots of light from consoles that still had power, it was dark. The darkness was pushed back by a dozen cones of light that swept across the room. They revealed several more bodies, all of them still.
 
One by one the space infantrists carefully stepped into the room, keeping their weapons aimed and ready to shoot. They methodically searched, walked between rows of monitors, some of which had been broken, and looked behind and under consoles. After a tense minute of sweeping the room it became apparent that it was clear of enemies.
 
Only then did the six of them lower their weapons, and turn their attention to other things. The technician among them went towards the main computer terminal and connected a noteputer, to copy all relevant data from it, while the squad's leader took stock of the situation.
 
Three more dead crewmembers. One woman in her harness, slumped over at a console, with a red stain on the rear of her jumpsuit. Apparently shot in the back when the enemy forced their entry.
 
Another woman's remains floated in a corner, even in death still clutching a pistol in her hand. She had seemingly resisted the enemy boarding party, and gotten shot several times for her trouble.
 
The third was a young man who was tethered to a comms console by headphones that were way too small for him. He, too, bore several gunshot wounds.
 
The squad-leader was overall surprised the control room was not in worse shape. Aside from the broken monitors and consoles, a result of the firefight, it was undamaged. Apparently whatever was responsible for leaving claw marks in metal, and mauling at least one crewmember beyond recognition, was prevented from getting into the room.
 
The figure visibly shook itself and returned to the task at hand. There was a lot of coordinating that needed to be done.
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===The mystery Deepens===
With a deep breath Swift Justice shifted her attention, from observing through her boarders, to the outside again. The other two warships sported a far-away look, which told her they were still watching through their teams' eyes, as she had been doing. She drew their attention after a moment.
 
"Girls. What is the status of operations?"
 
Both of them blinked a few times and looked at the ash-haired woman.
 
"My teams are finishing up clearing their assigned areas. No enemy contact, but they have found clear signs of weapons usage, as well as several dead crewmen, nanodesu." After a moment Amber continued hesitantly, with an uncertain expression. "Some of them were in bad shape though, like a large predator had torn them up. There are also scratch marks on the walls, and some pretty sturdy objects have been smashed by something that was not weapons fire."
 
"Can confirm. I see the same pattern." Brest spoke up, then added with a frown. "Looks like it really was our friends. One of the airlocks was blown open, and has a few dark spots on it's surfaces, like we saw on the dropships we destroyed. There's also black shards of some kind of material embedded in the surfaces. Looks like they blew themselves up with a breaching charge."
 
The Aegis grunted. The knowledge that the enemy had taken at least some losses in exchange for what they had wrought mattered to her inexplicably. "So it is the same on the entire station." An absent expression appeared on the cruiser's face. "Preliminary readouts of sensor telemetry matches with what 135 experienced. An emergence signature, followed by sensor ghosts, then nothing out of the ordinary. We can presume whatever they use to jam electronics got close enough to take full effect." Awareness returned to her expression, and she looked back at her two companions. "I am certain our new enemy is responsible for this...slaughter."
 
Both corvettes grimaced. It did feel like a failure on their part to save the people, who had been killed without rhyme or reason.
 
The older woman was quick to return her charges' attention to the matter at hand. "Have your teams finished their sweeps?"
 
The draconian nodded, while the brunette shook her head in the negative, wearing an expression of concentration. "Almost done. I want to make sure we cover the entire station, and don't leave anyone behind, on the off-chance that someone is still alive."
 
"Expedite. What we have seen here makes me want to return to 135 as quickly as possible." While she spoke the woman was already in the process of retreating her squads of infantry, back to their shuttles.
 
After a short stretch of silence, that saw all three direct their teams back as quickly as they could, Brest spoke up again. "Something just occurred to me. How many crew did we find? I counted a dozen."
 
"Fifteen here, nanodesu."
 
"I did discover 9." Swift gave Brest a scrutinizing look before she continued. "I had assumed most of the crew had fled to other parts of the station." She paused for a moment. "And i agree with what you are thinking. That is way too few for a station of this size."
 
"How many people were supposed to be on it?" Amber had her head tilted to the side.
 
"The intelligence report does not mention any solid number. It merely says that it 'depends on circumstances'".
 
"Wow. Did you believe it yourself when you said those guys knew their stuff, nanodesu?"
 
Swift shot a disapproving glance at her sharp-tongued charge, and instead turned towards the other corvette, who had that look in her eyes again. "Judging by your expression you think there is more to this, Brest?"
 
The corvette nodded vigorously. "It truly clicked when my infantry teams, just now, confirmed that all lifeboats and escape pods are missing."
 
That got the ash-haired woman's attention. "All of them?" She looked at Amber with eyebrows raised high.
 
"Hai. There are none left in the bays i saw." The girl cast a searching gaze about. "Where are they then? Those things broadcast a distress signal, don't they? We wouldn't have missed those though, nanodesu." After a moment she looked at the roiling masses of gas below them. "Do you think they..." Amber trailed off with a dismayed expression.
 
"No. Those things are smart. They are programmed to steer away from danger when launched." The oldest of the three tried to calm her young charge's worries.
 
After a moment she continued "It does mean, though, that the unknown attackers took them and their contents, along with the people they might have taken from the station directly."
 
"Why would they abduct people? They don't seem like they are into the ransoming business." The dark-haired girl questioned with a frown.
 
"I don't even want to think about why they would take prisoners. Considering what effect the enemy's mere proximity has on human minds... being inside the ships that cause such a powerful fear effect, for any stretch of time, has to be bad." Brest grimaced. "Really bad."
 
"Yes. Which is why i want to return to 135, ideally now." The Comstar cruiser already had her boarding parties back aboard, and watched as the last of 'Brests shuttles took on its personnel. "I have sent the two of you coordinates for the nearest viable jump point. We will use our L-F batteries to jump back. Once we are there we can recharge with a calmer mind."
 
Two affirmatives sounded, and a short while after, they were ready to move. Leading the formation towards their waypoint, Swift Justice was driven by a sense of urgency she was sure her two charges also felt.
 
After a while of silence Amber spoke up. "I'm conflicted. We met our objectives, but still failed. Nobody recovered alive, no enemy defeated. I feel hollow, nanodesu."
 
It was a feeling Swift Justice knew too well. The bitter taste of defeat and loss was one of war's inevitable consequences. Despite her wisdom, and long years of experience, she struggled to come up with something to say in response that did not sound like an empty platitude. And there were things that could not be soothed with words. "I know what you mean, and i despise that feeling as well. Realistically though, there was nothing we could do. This was a well executed, quick raid. When the people on the station managed to start broadcasting their distress call, the enemy was probably already upon them."
 
The draconian gave a stiff nod. "I know that's how it is logically, but it still feels like a blemish to my honor."
 
"They will pay for this." Brest vowed in a concerningly flat tone, her fists clenched, and a look in her eyes that was hard as steel. The fate of Vespucci's crew affected her visibly.
 
"If we can, we will return here at a later point, to give these people a proper burial." It was not much, but Swift hoped that prospect would calm the girl somewhat.
 
The FedSuns corvette sighed and looked forwards again.
 
The short rest of the journey was quiet, as the fleetmaidens were lost in their own thoughts. Only when the three approached their jump point did they break the silence, to cut their thrust and pick up their dropships. The fleetmaidens glide along on their trajectory and jumped while in motion, back to Jan Mayen.
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