Interlude: Mercury Rising

Captain Tagg had always been a suspicious sort. Originally an analyst studying the Galaxy's infinitely varied and wildly different military doctrines in the Anaxes War College, he'd seen real battle a decade before when the Judiciary cruiser he'd been assigned to had responded to a distress signal only to be attacked and later even boarded by the same pirate organization that had assassinated the Trade Federation's leadership. The crew had managed to repel the Nebula Front crazies suffering upwards of sixty percent losses, but their ship had suffered too much damage to risk entering Hyperspace. They'd had to wait for over a week in that wreck for rescue teams to arrive, struggling to survive despite the totaled environmental systems, the main reactor having been scrammed only seconds before it could suffer containment failure, and emergency power barely working.

Tagg had returned from that mission with two things; the realization that real battles were very far from the dry things one read of in books, and a deep and unrelenting hatred for pirates. So he'd pulled as many strings as he could, used up favors owed, and worked hard to cram a three-year officer training course in eighteen months so he could land a position as a lowly lieutenant in the next batch of Judiciary cruisers to be produced in response to the Nebula Front scare. Now, almost half a decade after that fateful encounter with pirates, he had a command of his own; a pair of Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers escorting a convoy of ore freighters through the Braxant Run in the Outer Rim and on a course to the Hydian Way and ultimately the industries of the Core Worlds.

It was both his previous experiences and his suspicious nature that had him running both cruisers with weapon and shield capacitors fully charged through Hyperspace even though it was impossible to have any sort of naval battle in that non-Euclidean, non-physical dimension, or the angry criticism of some desk jockeys that would call it "wasteful shortening of component life". It was at his insistence and due to that same experience that his command had twice the number of quad laser cannons for defense against the lightships, fighters, and missiles pirates and terrorists preferred, raising the total point-defense batteries he had to work with to eighty. It was still a woefully insufficient number in his opinion, but if he pushed any further, he risked being called an "alarmist fear-monger with no sense of scale". Because of course the idiots back in the War College had no idea of the new realities of Galaxy-wide piracy slowly emerging - a thousand years of military doctrines couldn't be wrong, could they? Idiots.

It was due to all those painstaking preparations and fanatic attention to combat-readiness that Captain Tagg could press the Red Alert button immediately upon the convoy's unexpected return to Hyperspace, and have shields up and sensors running mere seconds after the abrupt realspace transition, but it was worth it. A sense of vindication rose in him as red lights cast the ship's corridors in crimson shades, and sirens sent crew members scrambling.

"Red Alert, Red Alert! All hands man your battle stations. The flow of traffic is up and forward on the starboard side, down and aft on the port side. Security and Boarding teams will be fully armed and armored!"

The heavy cruisers' sensors, far superior to those on the half a dozen merchant ships, had already started scanning as soon as the convoy dropped into realspace. By the time the flesh-and-blood troops manning the two powerful warships could react, the room-sized control cores were already finishing their analysis and displaying critical data to the bridge's tactical screens. They might not be A.I.s - in fact, ship control cores had hardware limitations against developing any sort of personality or independence - but they were vastly more capable in simple analysis and coordination than even astromech droids.

"No enemy contacts captain," the ship's tactical officer announced after studying his screen for only a second. "But there is a powerful jamming source just beyond turbolaser range; both against regular sensors and Hypercomms. The scan also picked up eighteen gravity mines and a large but fairly sparse debris field all around us. There's nothing larger than an escape pod out there except for the mines and that distant jammer." Tagg only considered the obvious trap for a moment before replying.

"All merchant vessels; full sublight power. Escort cruisers are to keep defensive positions, maximum power to shields, and point-defense." The convoy would move out of the gravity mines' area of effect, then proceed to Hyperspace. With no immediate target for his warships, it was the best option while remaining close to the freighters. He could have gone after the jamming source, but that would either leave the freighters undefended to potential hiding enemies or take them with him into a potential battle. He could have gone after the dispersed gravity mines, but that would have taken longer and given the enemy time to put their plan into effect. Maybe they had ships running under minimal power and maximum stealth that would need time to prepare for battle. Maybe they had ships waiting close to that jamming source so the sensors couldn't see them. Whatever the case, Tagg wasn't going to fall for -

"Missile separation," the tactical officer called out again. "Multiple contacts, multiple sources!"

"Begin tracking and trajectory analysis," Tagg spat back as the main tactical holomap was suddenly swamped by countless tiny, blinking, red dots. "Stand-by point-defense. Tactical, search for stealth ships or weapons platforms. Helm, evasive maneuvers. Engineering, redline reactors and overcharge particle shields." That last command made half his officers gape at him, and he knew very well why. All ship systems, from sensors to the main reactor, had been designed with certain maximum theoretical outputs. In reality, though, no ship ran its systems higher than eighty percent of that maximum in almost any situation to avoid wear and tear on the components and potential critical failures. And while such failures on a sensor would just need a few hours of repairs or replacement parts, a reactor failure could briefly turn a ship into a miniature star. Only the desperate redlined their systems even in a fight; warships might have higher redundancy than civilian ships, but they also suffered damage, which worsened the chance of component failure. Unfortunately for Tagg's command, the storm of missiles coming their way might only be survivable if they did exactly that.

"Preliminary analysis complete," the Tactical officer said in a voice devoid of emotion. "Eighteen thousand, nine hundred, and fifty-seven separate missile sources located."

Tagg said nothing, for there was nothing he could say. He was now merely a spectator as even his worst expectations did not come close to the nightmare of reality.

xxxx xxxx xxxx

​

VAR-001 was a prototype. He, inasmuch as a machine could have a gender, was proud of being the first of his kind. His core design was based on an old, reliable, and high-performance line of nanny droids. Five arms built around a spherical torso that included a fusion core, a repulsorlift system, and an astromech-level droid brain, he would have been the perfect companion to infant organics. But his purpose had been drastically altered, and an assortment of tools that could be found only on very few nanny droids had been given to him. First, an upgraded sensor suite on par with a probe droid's and a small impulse engine would allow him to fly even in space, land on planets, and perform mid-range scouting missions. Secondly, the plasma welder, shock prod, and mini-tractor extensions on his arms allowed him to perform a broad range of engineering, repair, and demolition jobs. But it was the assassin droid programming that was his favorite. Many of the files might be obsolete, copy-pasted as they'd been from a humanoid form assassin droid, but all the protocols, learning programs, tactical algorithms, and memories of combat were highly useful, vastly expanding his versatility and usefulness to his masters.

It was due to all of the above that VAR-001 found himself floating in space, three humanoid assassin droids, and two somewhat bulkier, cylindrical objects carried along in his five arms. The plan, a collaboration of the Master and the nanny droid whose programming he'd partially inherited, was unusual as it was brilliant. No organic would expect it or prepare against it, except for VAR-001's brilliant Master, which would make the coming ambush all the more effective. VAR-001's only regret was that the task of setting up the gravity mines and spreading up the concealing debris field had been assigned to VAR-1337 instead. Then again, VP-001's present task needed far more skill and attention to detail than that defective copy could ever manage.

Right on schedule, the target convoy was pulled out of Hyperspace; two Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers with twice the number of point-defense batteries that were Judiciary standard, and six Baleen-class heavy freighters. VP-001 used his upgraded scanners and optics coupled with the tactical and target termination programming of an assassin droid to get a target lock on the designated victims. A shell of tight-beam laser comms, impossible to jam or intercept unless someone intercepted the beams themselves, linked him out to his twenty thousand brothers surrounding their targets. With the efficiency and speed of cybernetic brains, sensor data was shared, analyzed, and enhanced, targets were dispersed across the entire droid swarm, overlaps eliminated, and target locks confirmed. Then that data was passed on not to other droids, but to the much simpler cybernetic cores in the pair of MG7-A modified proton torpedoes most of the droids had carried.

Eighteen thousand, nine hundred and fifty-seven Viper Assault-Recon droids fired thirty-seven thousand, nine hundred and fourteen proton torpedoes. Without mass drive launchers and from a cold start the torpedoes were initially slow but still faster than ships, and they swarmed their targets at great enough numbers that an increased number of kills from point-defense was irrelevant. They closed in inexorably despite what losses the defenders could inflict, then detonated against the targets' shields in thousands of overlapping actinic conflagrations. Instead of blowing through the shields via sheer weight of fire, the crackling blue explosions dispersed them, then cascaded over the ships' hulls like a lightning storm. The modifications had turned destructive proton blasts into disabling ion discharges, and in mere seconds every single ship in the convoy fell dark.

The relatively small projectiles couldn't disable ship systems in-depth, of course. Unlike an attack by full ion cannon emplacements or bomber-carried ion charges, the ships' interiors were largely intact. On the other hand that didn't mean much, as weapons and sensors were placed over the ships' armor, and a blind, unarmed vessel couldn't do much of anything. Confirmation of the attack's success was spread through the entire swarm in seconds, followed by the personal ion engines of every single assault/recon droid firing up and propelling them towards their helpless victims.

In less than a minute, more than fifty thousand assassin droids would be assaulting those ships' crews, even as twenty thousand assault/recon droids would cut through the ships' environmental and security systems with five plasma-cutter-armed limbs each. VAR-001's limbs twitched eagerly. If the Master had a good enough haul from this ambush, there would be upgrades. Maybe even that new portable shield generator that had just entered production.

VAR-001 would do his best to eliminate all organics and secure the raw materials before the mothership's arrival; his future upgrades counted on it!