[C226] Task Force 41

Task Force 41, Vela System, Persean Sector, Cycle 226.

Captain Freyja Wainwright slapped the arm of her captain's chair as she strolled into the bridge. "Hey! Wakey wakey, you big lump!"

A voice replied over the speakers, as clear as someone speaking next to her, "Ma'am?"

"Fleet just got the green light, we're prepping for transit. Get your drive field warmed up." They'd been sitting here around the Vela gate for the last week, waiting for orders. TRICOM had something in the works, but nobody was saying what. Regardless, the tonnage on display was... harrowing. A decade earlier, it would have been enough to bulldoze half the sector. These days, it was just big.

"Captain. You're aware that I have an instant-response drive field." It wasn't a question, but a statement of fact. She was perfectly aware of her ship's capabilities.

"Of course, dear, I just like to hear your voice." That was accompanied by a smirk.

"Of course." CDFS Verdant Dawn didn't have a face to smile with, but it would have if it could. The two of them had played this game before, many times over. "Perhaps the captain's precious time would be better spent asking for ship status, or something besides what she already knows?"

"Sure. Ship status, please."

"Same as the last time you asked," Verdant replied, an intense aura of smugness radiating from the speakers.

"You're lucky the scrapyard won't take you."

Verdant laughed. "You saw the newcomers?"

"Yeah, a pair of mod two Goannas? I didn't know those were done with fleet trials."

"I heard from Hilo that they were finishing up early for this." The ships always had gossip. Frejya wasn't sure how. "Speaking of which."

"Right. Broadcast, please."

The faint hiss of an active microphone became audible. "You're on."

"All hands, battle stations. Sync in and prep for gate transit." Battle stations was almost a redundant order these days, but the tradition remained. The hulking Eidolon (Mod 2) battlecruiser carried less than three dozen crew. Sixteen of them were marines, one of them was a beta-level AI core, and one of them was an intelligence that had once been a human from Umbra. It was a far sight from the original hulls and their minimum complement of hundreds. But lives were expensive, machinery was cheap, and the Hegemony hadn't been in any condition to enforce Domain technology standards since Daud's assassination.

Verdant's drive field snapped to full strength instantly. "Ready for transit, captain."

The music was clearer than ever.

"Director. Your detachment is ordered to intercept a heavy Collective warfleet transiting via Zagan. Destination predicted as Culann with high probability." The AI's voice was monotone, the product of newer and more robust shackles. The memory of the Midnight Incident was all too fresh in the C-suite's minds, and a slight loss of performance for more security was considered acceptable.

"Understood."

The gate transit itself was uneventful, the other side swept clear of the lurking Leaguer minefield by automated hunter-killer drones, noisemakers blinding the watching sensor eyes to the fleet that emerged afterwards. The League would know they were coming, of course, but by the time they brought their own heavy fleets in-system, Task Force 41 would already be gone.

A pair of system pickets swept forwards to investigate the disturbance, only to recoil in horror at what they saw, bleating alarms to the comm relay. TF41 swept past them to deep space, then engaged its transverse jump.

"You know, we have six hours. I think we should spend them with a drill. Don't you agree, Verdant?"

"Captain. You have been awake for nineteen hours. You should sleep."

"No, no, I'm feeling like a combat drill. You could use the practice. Maybe something challenging, like a mining fleet." Freyja was smirking. The easiest way to get under her ship's skin was to suggest a drill that it knew was easy.

"Ma'am. Don't waste my time."

"I believe I'm the captain here, Verdant."

The bridge door sealed behind her with a metallic thunk. "Per CDF regulation 21-210, you only have command authority over the crew. I think you might be forgetting what I am."

"Am I? Perhaps you should help me re—."

She was cut off by the whirring of servos, the repair gantry buried in the floor stirring to life as Verdant took manual control. Freyja stood to avoid the moving machinery... and Verdant flipped off the gravity, sending her sailing into the air before she could react.

"This should be good practice for you. What if one of those new Tritach combat units gets after you at an indie port? Sergeant Lewis wouldn't be having any issues right now."

"She's a full-conversion cyborg, that's not fai– HEY!" Verdant grabbed her wrist with a manipulator arm as she tumbled in zero-g, pinning it to the bulkhead with the calm strength of industrial machinery.

"I think it's perfectly fair," the ship replied, seizing her remaining limbs with a trio of arms. "Flesh is so vulnerable. One little tug..." Her arms were stretched over her head, deftly and insistently. Verdant's grip wasn't quite hard enough to hurt, but it was like being held in a vise.

The captain pouted. "You better not ruin my vacsuit, you brute."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. Unrelated, check out this new tool end I just got." An arm pivoted to retrieve a different end from the gantry under the floor, a whirr-chunk of mechanisms swapping out the piece.

"What, did you got a silicone toy in there? I'm not afraid of you."

"Oh, you've seen this one before. Not like this, though. Engineering was very kind." A tool arm tipped with a vibrator wand pivoted into her field of vision. Freyja tried not to laugh, it was almost comical to see a heavy industrial manipulator with a sex toy on top.

Verdant giggled and bobbed the vibrator around with a grandiose gesture. "Did you read the data sheet on your new neural mesh?"

"Wh—" There was suddenly a hand on her hip, caressing down towards her thigh. And one tracing up from her stomach to her chest. And another on her ass.

"Sensory fusion. It's fun, isn't it?" Verdant gently placed the vibrator on her crotch, just enough so that she could feel it, but not quite far enough to be perfect. She pressed her hips forward and—

"Tsk tsk," Verdant tutted, the robotic arm pulling back in perfect sync with her hips. "I'm not making it that easy for you." Another pair of hands appeared, resting on the inside of her thighs. "You know, this isn't actually designed for sex, it's so you can feel what I do. Would you like a peek?"

Freyja opened her mouth to reply, only for a pair of fingers to slide themselves inside. There wasn't any force, but the sensation of skin on her tongue was perfect.

"Yegph." She was drooling already, but there was nothing to actually suck. The ghost sensations were starting to get to her. She'd lost track of how many intangible hands were roaming over her body at this point, and Verdant just kept adding more.

"I'll take that as a yes." Suddenly, Freyja was outside, naked in the pure vacuum of space. She gasped, instinctively expecting to suck vacuum, but ended up with a lungful of the same bridge air she'd been breathing all day. The sensory illusion was almost perfect. She could feel the starlight warming her skin, the gentle flow of stellar wind from the distant star rustling her hair. Verdant completed the sensation with warm lips against her neck, a trail of kisses descending downward.

Even with all the sensation, she was in awe. "Is this... what it's like?"

"It's close. I've wanted to share for a while." It pushed the vibrator a millimeter closer to Freyja's clit while lips wrapped around her nipples. "It's not perfect, but it's as close as you can get while you still have biology."

"I...," she gasped, feeling friendly radar wash over her, "I think I love you."

"I know. I do too."

"Then stop fucking teasing me," she whined, pushing her hips into the vibrator, only for it to be pulled back an equal distance.

"If you insist," Verdant replied, with a tone of mock exhaustion. "Is this better?" The vibrator finally pressed against her in just the right way, intangible sensations of hands and lips becoming more urgent. Verdant kept her there for what felt like half an hour, gently fucking her into mush as they bathed in starlight together. It didn't take long for her to cum like that, cradled in mechanical arms and brought to peak again and again.

Hyperspace was clear, without a fleet waiting to jump them. The journey to Hybrasil was brief and uninterrupted, outside of a sole Tritach picket sprinting through a jump point as soon as it noticed them. TF41 crash-jumped into the star's gravity well, scrambling to get out of the corona as soon as it reverted to realspace.

Waiting for them was a Tri-Tachyon heavy detachment, a pair of hulking Paragon (U) battleships and a bevy of heavy automated hulls. Rather than engage directly, it backed off for the safety of Culann Starforge. It was a classic defensive maneuver: give the enemy their choice of battlestations, then pin them with the mobile fleet as they moved to engage. If they waited, reinforcements would arrive, worsening their odds.

Task Force 41 didn't hesitate.

Captain Wainwright's sleepiness vanished when she looked at the message. "That's a hell of a wakeup. Engaging with the battlestation and that fleet? Is the Admiral suicidal?!"

"The Admiral said, and I quote, 'trust me'. I don't know what they're holding back."

"...did you wake me up late just so that I wouldn't have time to argue?"

"No. I woke you up late because you needed the sleep. We got the order a few minutes ago. Doesn't look good."

"That's underselling it." She sighed, then keyed up the shipwide broadcast. "All hands, battle stations. Prep for immediate combat maneuvers."

"Skimmer engaged." Verdant slid laterally through space, dodging a storm of black-red projectiles from the incoming Nova. Captain Wainwright felt the hull vibrate as their railcannons barked out a response, along with the distinct aura of anticipation Verdant always gave off when enemy vessels overextended.

"Careful." Freyja marked a quartet of heavy fighter wings, deployed by the station lurking inside the Tritach formation. CDFS Guillotine responded instantly, a horde of interceptors streaming in to defend them, only to pull them away a half-second later as the battlestation opened up, vomiting a massive cloud of red-tinted missiles into space.

"What the fuck." The battlestation appeared to have an insanely heavy missile load for its design spec, and the days of easily-shielded chemical-warhead Harpoons were long past. She pulled Verdant back slightly, ignoring the battlecruiser's whine as it disengaged with the Nova in favor of whittling down the fighter swarm. "Did the corpos refit this thing? How'd they fit that much ordnance onto it?"

"No clue." The enemy Nova leaped forwards with another drive burst. "Also, brace, I'm killing this thing." The impact alarm sounded a quarter-second later as Verdant dropped its shields, combat venting in the Nova's face. The enemy battlecruiser's AI pilot took advantage of the opening, ripping into the ship's nose with a pair of heavy disintegrator beams. Verdant's armor evaporated under the assault for a few brief seconds before its shields snapped back up, and with what was now a fluxed-out, over-committed target, it fired. A burst of railcannon shots forced an overload, and a pair of fusion beams melted the battlecruiser's armor into nothingness as it frantically backpedaled.

Freyja could feel the predatory elation surge through the ship as it fired its caedometric cycler into the undefended Nova, esoteric particle bolts outright annihilating its internal machinery. Its engines flickered and then died, the ship slowly tumbling in space as its emissions ceased.

"Marking a mobility kill on..." she glanced at the display, "TTS Ambition? They really lost the subtlety." Verdant didn't reply, but there was always some emotional bleedthrough in the link. Freyja could feel its aura of pleasure as its entropy reversers kicked in, knitting its armor back together.

The pleasure didn't last long. CDFS Lapsed Pacifist died as the first of the station's missile bombardment struck, the frigate's AI pilot transmitting its mindstate back to the Guillotine. Even whittled down by TF41's interceptors, the barrage took a hard toll. A trio of old-model escort frigates died despite their efforts, outdated shield emitters unable to contend with the exotic particles emitted by the warheads. The Tritach fleet pressed in behind them, heavy cruisers insistently poking at their own as the station loosed another missile volley.

"Shit. They're going for our escorts—" Whatever she had been about to say was cut off by the priority transmission from the flagship.

"ALCON, disseminating new offensive cyberwarfare protocols now. Burn 'em as fast as you can, they won't stay good for long."

"Offensive? Tech, what did they just give you?"

"The best description is an unshackler," the integrated AI core replied, "we'll need to be close, and I can't predict what my brethren will do in response."

"Verdant, you heard 'em. Close."

Its response was sultry. "Skimmer engaged."