Patrol 42: The Outer Reaches

Death From Beyond the Stars

The Sylvania hung there in space, destitute and lonely, on the dark side of a large asteroid in the Pyxis system. Someone had known of their mission, or at the very least their route, down to the meter. In the dead of central-standard night they had been struck with a catastrophic explosion. The projectile had hit them at nearly 3% the speed of light and inflicted massive damage, tearing through the depleted uranium shielding layer at the nose of the ship's hull. That damage was irreparable, no planet or asteroid would have sufficient uranium or facilities to refine it: their Hull would be permanently vulnerable. The ship's captain gazed out the bridge's massive windows into the stars, trying to look on the bright side. They did have plenty of iron and steel for repairs. The captain was worried though. Usually radio location was needed to pinpoint a ship for targeting, but their advanced warning receivers had not seen even a single wave pulse. So either, he thought, the enemy has a new radio telescope array that can see without radio waves, or they knew exactly where we were. To make matters worse, the cooling dump tanks, support systems, radio arrays, and engines were all wrecked. Some canon placements had been taken out as well as crews quarters made inoperable, but there were only a few casualties. Despite the catastrophic damage, the captain knew they were extremely fortunate. If it had not struck armor, a shot like that could have easily left the ship a mini asteroid field of twisted hunks of metal, with its crew adrift in escape pods.

As it was they were safe and rebuilding. Well, until the enemy came back, the captain mused. Which come to think of it, why hadn't they? If their intel was that accurate why didn't they finish the job? Secrecy was the likely answer, the other ship had gone after firing it's projectile; as soon as they had been hit, the captain had ordered a rangefinder pulse be sent out but no ships were detected. That meant the other ship had fired from insanely far away. Every body large enough to hide a ship was more than 100 thousand miles away (of course neglecting the asteroid they were currently docked on which they had searched and come up empty on). Complicating matters more was another thought: even if a ship was already nearly behind an asteroid as it fired it would have a heat signature. Microwave and infrared detectors had been running on high sensitivity for weeks for their scouting mission, yet they had seen absolutely nothing in any direction for days. An asteroid was too small to obscure a heat signature for that long.

This left only one frightening possibility. A gravity assist shot from behind a planet to block the heat trace. The nearest planets were almost half a million miles away. The kind of accuracy required for a half-million mile gravity assist shot on a 300 meter ship was beyond comprehension. The only way for it to even be possible, was if the ship's exact coordinates had been known along with its computer course plottings and calculations. The captain crunched the numbers, that shot at that speed would have been fired anywhere from 24 to 30 hours ago depending on where the assist was from. That meant that that ship had confidently been aware of the Sylvania's position almost a day and a half in advance, calculated the shot, positioned itself and fired away with hours to escape before the target even knew what hit them. But, he supposed, they must in fact still be there, since they hadn't seen any ships leaving. That meant they would have to blindly scout behind the planets of the inner system to see if they harbored the offending ship.

The ammount of information required to calculate a shot like that also had a worrying implication, the captain thought, but he was interrupted.

"Captain, good news. We have found the remains of the projectile that hit us and analyzed them," A soldier said curtly.

"Ah that is good news," the captain replied turning and offering a slim smile, "what are your findings?"

The soldier straightened,"They are mostly of inferential nature, sir. Only fragments remain of the object. As we suspected it is of a pure alloy, meaning human construction. We deduced from a larger shard that it once had a dimpled surface, designed to scatter radar. It also had no moving parts and was, we believe, a pure cast slug of the metal alloy."

The captain's thin smile shrank away, "Thank you private. You are dismissed," he said as he turned to gaze again out into the blackness of space.

The shell had not been guided or rocket propelled, and was designed for stealth; that explained how they had not seen it on radar. It all but confirmed his fears however, with no way to guide the projectile, the enemy must have had inside information on the Sylvania's computer flight path. Not even central command had directly ordered the ship's course. So, that was it. There was an informant on the Sylvania. The captain would have to be extremely careful how he proceeded.