Dark Deeds and Black Flights - Prologue
30 Jul 2017Jellicoe
The great battlecruisers hung silent and almost motionless against the black of space spewing gouts of fire and smoke from various rents in their hulls as they gently spun in the void. It was not just the two Farragut's that drifted lifelessly in the deep, their attendant battlegroups had also met the same sudden and violent ends, Corvette's, Dropship's, even tiny Condor fighters all reduced to burning, lifeless hulks. A naval force sufficient to cow entire systems reduced to blazing slag. There was however one vessel on the scene that was not destroyed, a Core Dynamics Corvette, like several of the wrecks but this ships bright blue paintwork and non navy standard hull augmentations marked it out as a civilian owned craft. On the bridge of the ship were three men and one woman, looking out on the scene of destruction in stunned, horrified silence. They had followed the trail laid by the mysterious Commander Edward Lewis, a trail that seemingly ended here.
"Have you ever seen a damage pattern like that before?" The commander asked taking his ship as close as he dared to one of the still blazing rents in one of the battlecruiser's hulls, a rent edged with a strange, luminescent green tinge.
"Never." The tactical officer replied. "Looks more like corrosion than weapon damage but..." His voice tailed off.
"Not a single casualty on the other side." The woman put in.
"Maybe they took their losses away with them?" The tactical officer replied in a voice that convinced nobody.
"Who's got the kind of firepower to take a fleet like that out? The Empire?" The woman asked.
"I think I'd feel better about this if it is just the Imps." The commander said half to himself.
"What do you mean skipper?" The tactical officer asked.
"Nothing." The commander replied. "But I suspect that the answers are out in the Pleiades. Did you manage to decode that beacon Claude?" He asked his first officer on scanners and coms.
"Yes." Said a small, slender man in a strange voice as though he were fighting to keep it calm and level. "The first reports an attack by unknown ships and says they are purging the data." He paused and the silence stretched long moments.
"And the second?" The commander prompted.
"Just three words on repeat - Thargoids have returned."