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"Sir, you'll want to see this." Olric stirred from his half sleep, dreaming he was standing atop a spire precariously. Threatening to fall into a great battle below. He blinks to focus his eyes, to see what was in front of him. Not the dream, reality. "Put it on my terminal adjutant." The terminal hue shifted and several readouts were pushed aside where a new image dominated one of the panels. Nitrogen 75%, Oxygen 23%, Argon 0.40%... The readouts spread down to a paragraph. Down the side of a dusty planet with a few small oceans ringed by bright green terrain. Small radiological signals were pinged in a cluster on the slowly rotating image, though at this range it was hard to guess exactly where that was. Olric blinked again "they crashed." His adjutant nodded "now look at this." The panel aside the planetary data was shifted to make room for a video feed. It first looked as if there were debris, then a shadow passed over them. Olric frowned at his adjutant who then sent an image at higher resolution. It was not a shadow. "A mine." Olric sighed. Wells's kidnappers stumbled into a stealth minefield attempting planetfall. "The sensors team wouldn't have caught it without the debris bouncing our scan" explained his adjutant. Olric dismissed the data before keying the interface to transmit fleet wide orders. "Attention, this is your Captain. We are traversing a minefield in a few hours. Go slow and go dark, maintain spatial vigilance. Ulis out."
At least they weren't being followed. Olric had stationed the fleet in an asteroid belt, surrounded by lost children of the first AI war. Their Conglomerate shadow did not follow them into that system. It took a week simply to manoeuvre back into hyperspace. Sorely depleting their supplies. Another reason to land the crew past this ordinance belt, there would be ancient cities upon the surface. Settlements at least. If they only found this damnable core then perhaps that is the best he could ask for. All might be wishful thinking. The viewport terminal at the front of the bridge showed an approximation of this new world inching closer at their painfully slow speed. A minefield might have killed an entire salvage fleet, but they were usually more careful. Ulis exercised his own caution; it would be a terrible place to fight in an ambush. He keyed another command, orbital telemetry. Searching for transmissions from or around the planet. It wouldn't work if there was a fleet in hiding, but if there was defensive infrastructure in operation. Some automated thing maybe, the fleet would be forewarned. Olric watched the radio probes determine a possible signal medium. No SOS from the surface, no signals strong enough to pierce background radiation at least. Nothing yet. Olric simply watched, his tired mind trying to find investigative links and failing. All he could do was try and stay alert again as the fleet passed the envelope thought to be where the minefield began.
There was an alarm at several terminals. Olric saw it too, one of the lashers bumped into a mine. Out of the four wiped out, two were possibly salvageable. "Sir, there's-" Olric dismissed her with a wave, "I know, nav". He didn't have enough crew to save any of it. A few more quiet moments as orders were relayed to exercise more caution until another, more urgent message appeared. Three enforcers gone, two damaged. "We have to mothball them, but transferring the surviving crew right here is asking to get us all killed." Cautioned the adjutant, losing his usual ease. "We can't even see the blasted things." Hissed Olric, he clearly underestimated the coverage. He glanced at the bridge crew who happened to be glancing back. Nerves. "They'll just have to operate in low power mode, let a bigger ship tug them." Another alarm, this one however, came only from Olric's terminal. It was the telemetry scanner, a lot of signals just opened up on the surface. It contained location data, the location of Ulis's fleet. Relayed to a number of locations around the fleet. "We're target locked, get us moving now!" Yelled Olric. Olric opened the feed to the fleet as emergency commands zigzagged around the surviving vessels. Olric could feel the ship surge as emergency fuel was dumped into the afterburners, yet the telemetric relays were closing in fast. Too fast.
What kind of stealth mine had tracking capabilities? That was Olric's thought upon learning the Kinsey was hit. The blast swept across and made contact with the fleet Prometheus, unbalancing it enough that it did not avoid the next mine. He was sure the explosion was terrific, even in vacuum. "Sir we're getting clustered." Called a nav terminal. "Torpedo launch." Called back Olric, watching the dragonfire tubes launch their rockets into the cluster of signals with small satisfaction. Another mine flew right through the obscuring explosion, only 'visible' outside of that radiation fire. "Brace for-" The whole bridge shook violently. Olric was thrown from his station headfirst into the comm bay.
"Captain? Captain are you with me?" He was not sure he was. "I'm alive." Grunted Ulis, he couldn't open his eyes. "The vice-captain is dead, are you able to command?" He tried to raise his head, he couldn't. "I don't think I can move. What's your name?" Olric was becoming aware that he couldn't feel anything. "I'm the chief medic, Joffis, Sir." Joffis was not the chief medic yesterday, or whatever day that was. "Joffis, get my adjutant." He could hear the medic Joffis scuffing the floor as he stood "Yes sir, right away sir." and then running down the hall. Olric must be away from the bridge. The footsteps returned some undetermined moments later. More purpose in those ones. "By Ludd" he heard. "Do I look pretty?" Olric chuckled. "No, I mean, it's nothing Captain. You requested me?" Olric sighed, something he felt he was used to now. "Clearly, I cannot do anything right now." He said somewhat dully. "I suppose not Captain" was the stiff reply. "So I need you to do it, I am sure you figured that out." droned Ulis. "Are you giving me command Captain?" A cautious voice intoned.
"I am paralyzed Elek. You're in charge until medical gets me up. Find that core." There was a moment, like some destiny had altered. "I'll do it Olric, but that core is profane manifest. I'll not seek it to save it." And with that his feet scuffed the tiles as they spun to face the door, his footfalls following him out. Luddics, thought Olric derisively. Allowing dreams to replace the darkness. In them the spire was behind him, and he was already falling.
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? so it's very hard to even understand what the hullmod and commander unique skill can do
