Book 2 - Chapter 1 - New Horizons

Book 2

Chapter 1

Thaumor Galaxy

Deep Space

Hermes Divinium Mine

Year 984 746, New Imperial Era

Sarah sighed as she sat back in her command seat. The last week had been...eventful.

Not in the same way the previous ones had been of course. The arrival of the detachment from the Arrival Home Fleet had rendered the TRF's threat null and void. A handful more transports arrived at the hyperspace beacon, probably having been out of communication for long enough to not have received the recall order the TRF's leadership was sure to have issued at this point. One of them had even be another Q-caravan.

Except that this time they hadn't encountered a handful of battle damaged Dominion ships, but had emerged in front of an entire fleet, with a battleship at the helm.

Amazingly enough, one of the ships had actually tried to surrender, before one of the fanatic onboard flew the vessel to kingdom come anyway. That seemed to be a running theme in the psychotic terrorist organization that called itself the 'Thaumor Revolutionary Front'. Most of their people seemed to genuinely believe in the goal of overthrowing the Dominion, but they weren't monsters. In every critical ship or installation however their superiors appeared to have placed a handful of fanatics ready to sacrifice themselves and all of their friends just to spite the Dominion.

Overall, it made her feel much better about siding with the Dominion over this mess. Granted, they paid her a lot, but at least she could be proud of who she took as a client, at least compared to the alternative.

"Captain, we have crossed the hyperspace limit." Said Normensk, her navigator.

"Excellent. Prepare for jump to the Calver system, full hyperspace speed."

"Aye aye ma'am. Preparing for jump. Lowering shield." Everyone on the bridge winced as alarms started blaring. Given the environment they were in, having their shields lowered for too long was not a good idea. One of the reasons the Dominion had never found the TRF's divinium mine during their initial survey was that it was near a blue hypergiant, and effectively in the heart of a radioactive, superheated nascent nebula. "Hyperspace field up. All systems green. Hyperspace coordinates locked in. Hyperspace jump in 5...4...3...2...1...Jump."

Sarah looked as the sensor display went crazy, before relaxing. They were out of that hellhole, finally. And considerably richer than when they'd come in to boot, albeit less than they'd hoped.

"Alright. Elteria? Stand us down to hyperspace watch cycle, then meet me in my office with Turral and Hector. You have the bridge."

"Aye aye ma'am. I have the bridge."

Sarah stood up, and made her way to her office.

It looks less than five minutes for her officers to assemble, with Turral having Seria in tow, as always. She gave them a critical once over.

Elteria looked as well as usual, at least on a surface level, but she'd known the AI for over a century at this point. Her avatar was a bit too rigid. AIs didn't have the same concept of exhaustion as humans did, but they could still be overworked and go insane from lack of rest, and Sarah made a mental note to keep an eye on her AI's sleep schedule.

Turral....Turral looked like a cross between a vampire and a zombie. She definitely hadn't been having enough sleep, although unfortunately in her case that was having to fill in for one of her best engineer, who hadn't survived their last battle, and trying to repair the ship's main weapon. Such was the burden of a chief engineer, and Sarah made another note to get her and the rest of engineering extra shore leave as soon as they arrived in Calver.

Hector looked haunted, but otherwise fine. The marine sergeant had seen a lot, but having to wade into the wasted hellscape that had been Hermes' industrial hubs, helping the Dominion marines to try and find survivors had taken a toll on him. Still, he'd recover. He'd seen worse, and more importantly he was making regular visit to the medbay for therapy sessions. Their psychological assistance programs weren't the best the Near Verge had to offer anymore, but they were more than adequate for this.

As for Seria....she looked like a combination of the three, in all the wrong ways. Sarah made a note to order her to take some rest. Then took another look at the engineer, and changed the note to also have her visit the medbay. The poor girl was going to need it. She was just some poor kid they'd picked up during their contract on Sepia, not a hardened and battle tested merc like the rest of her crew.

Granted, a 'poor kid' who'd used a fusion gun to kill at least fifty people, possibly as much as a hundred, by her own count, but still.

"Alright, so, we've finally gotten our payment in full." Sarah gestured at the air, and a hologram popped up above her desk, showing bank accounts, various documents, and even a scanned piece of parchment. "A hundred Dominion gigacredits, full Dominion amnesty for every member of our company, including retired and administrative staff, and a Dominion mercenary license, without any restrictions, effectively a letter of marque. We also have the formal authorization to invest in the divinium industry, but that's something for our financial placement division to hash out in detail. As for the last one...we will get 1% of all divinium extracted." Sarah shrugged. "Unfortunately, what with all the mining equipment and the refining systems having been vaporized, there isn't going to be much extraction going on for a while."

Everyone nodded. Divinium was notoriously hard to extract and refine after all, what with its anomalous properties, and the appropriate equipment was not only expensive, but it was exceedingly time consuming to manufacture and extremely bulky. Hermes wasn't going to be operable for months, at least, maybe even a year before the first refined ingot made it out.

"In exchange for that we, of course, fought by the Dominion's side, gave them all of our data, and we even handed over the battlecruiser phased arrays." Technically the latter wasn't truly part of the agreement, but it could be argued either way, and it wasn't like she'd have been able to sell them to anybody, not without great difficulty. Besides, better to stay on the Dominion's good side. "And we suffered considerable damage upholding our part of the contract. We lost one of our own, and our ship is severely damaged. We're currently going to Calver because it is the only system with halfway decent shipyards in half a thousand Astras, and the Dominion has practically taken over system security, as it is on the way from Sidernis to Sepia, which has recently become fleetbase Sepia. The real question is, where do we go next?"

Turral shrugged.

"Somewhere we won't get shot at too hard would be nice. But a full, as high tech as possible shipyard would be great. Calver is nice and all, but its unlikely to have all of the facilities we need." That was a considerable understatement if nothing else, as the only shipyards that would have everything the Eternal Seeker needed were in the Near Verge or the Infinite Systems Federation. "Stuggart is swamped, at least it was the last time we were there and I doubt it changed. Alientia is an obvious choice but..."

"It's probably one of the TRF's most loyal supporters." Completed Sarah, before wincing. They'd worked in Alientia a while, and quite frankly she couldn't blame the locals. The Dominion had blockaded the entire sector before the Civil War, to put a stop to the shipyards there servicing pirates, and ended up creating a famine and economic crisis that had devastated the entire sector. They'd hated the Dominion's guts ever since.

"Right."

"We could try to get back to Stuggart, or contact Runan for a remote deal at one of his outposts. We still have that divinium container, and this would be the best time to spend it, while we're still trying to fix and fin replacement parts for everything."

Sarah nodded.

"That's a good point, but Stuggart's shipyards are swamped, as Turral said, so we'd have to transport and install whatever we buy somewhere else."

Seria blinked, and raised her hand.

"This isn't a stars damned school, just speak up." Said Sarah, chuckling.

"Well, we need a place to spend the Divinium, a place to do repairs and installations, preferably somewhere safe from TRF retribution, and thus under Dominion protection, and we already agreed to get out of the Fringe before it blows up. So it's obvious!" Everyone looked at her confused, and she beamed. "We need to go to the Core!"

Sarah froze, an automatic rebuttal dying on her lips. The Core had the most industrialized worlds in the Dominion, true, but the Dominion Navy was a notorious pain in the ass there, and most of the shipyards there wouldn't service mere mercenaries.

But they were Dominion Navy heroes at this point, and their new license might open a lot of doors that would otherwise have remained closed.

"That's...not a bad idea actually. And thanks to our hyperdrive it should be decently quick to get there." She looked around. "Anyone has any objections?"

Everyone shook their head.

"Very well then, our destination after Calver shall be the Protectorate Core!"

*****

"Enter." Said Sarah as someone knocked on her office door. Well, 'knock', the door was capable of withstanding nuclear warheads, so no sound would carry through it, but a special sensor would faithfully create the sound if someone did knock.

The door slid open, and Seria walked in. Sarah rose an eyebrow as she looked at the armorer. She looked a bit better than during the meeting the day before, at least she looked well rested, although the haunted look in her gaze was still there.

"Seria! What can I do for you?" Said the captain as she swung her chair to face her desk, carefully balancing her mug to avoid spilling her hot chocolate.

"Captain, I...I wanted to talk."

"Sure, my door is always open for my crew." Sarah looked at the closing door. "Er, metaphorically I mean."

Seria chuckled.

"Thank you, can I...can I take a seat?"

Sarah nodded.

"Be my guest!"

The armorer seated herself, and Sarah looked her over again. She looked terrible, albeit not remotely as terrible as during their first meeting, but her tools and ship suit were still perfectly arranged and secure. Something was seriously eating her up, but not enough for her to start to slip. She was also as attractive as ever, although Sarah firmly filed that thought for later. Much later. She was in her 'friendly listening captain' mode, and entertaining such thoughts would only distract her, not to mention be inappropriate.

"So, what did you want to talk about?" Continue Sarah.

"I...I don't know if I'm cut out of for this. The mercenary life, the death, the..." Seria gestured at everything around her. "Everything."

Sarah nodded slowly.

"Ah. Honestly, I'm surprised it took you this long to wonder about that." After all most rookies went to talk to her about it after their first combat action. Only a handful hadn't, and all had either become serious badasses or complete sociopaths. Sometimes both. "Do you want to leave the company?"

"What? No, I just...I..."

"Don't know if you're going to fail, and cause the death of your comrades?"

Seria looked down, and nodded. Sarah sighed.

"Alright Seria, my answer is: I don't know. I truly can't tell the future, and to be honest with you if I did I would shoot myself. But, what I do know is that you already saved the lives of some of my men. Hell, you saved my life." Seria lifted her head, and Sarah met her gaze. "So yes, you might not be cut out for this. Some day you might crack under the pressure and get one of us killed. But guess what? If that happens, you'd have already saved fifty of us. So, do you believe that risk is worth it? To risk that maybe someday you'll let your teammates and comrades down?" Sarah shrugged. "I learned long ago that everyone makes mistakes, and in the end what counts is the good we've done regardless of them, and that we make sure we learn from them. Ultimately though? It's up to you. No one else can decide for you."

Seria looked at her for a few, endless seconds, before firmly nodding.

"Alright, I'm with you all the way captain."

Sarah chuckled.

"Attagirl! Alright, so, I wanted to ask you, have you been in the medbay since the battle?"

Seria suddenly looked away, and Sarah sighed. This was going to be a long day...