Space Odyssey: Spectre

"Admiral Lee, there is no one here." One of his bridge staff stated in a confused voice. It was equally confusing to Lee as well. There was supposed to be at least three Cruiser-class ships orbiting the planet. He figured the war might have taken at least one of them away, but all three?

"The empire soldiers and its ship are hiding, do a scan of the planet to see if we can find their ground soldiers." He ordered. Already pulling up a map of the star system to see if he could find the hiding place.

"Yes sir. We have the information up on the monitor that we got from Central Command. It seems that almost all of the ships were pulled out of this system. There is another cruiser on the outer rim of the system, it was kept here to secure that planet. Did we go to the wrong location?" Another bridge staff asked.

"No, this is the right planet. There are two planets in this system that are a part of the Kitinol Offensive line. That has to be the other one. Keep an eye on it, if they move in our direction it means they plan to attack. They will coordinate it with the other cruiser that is hiding nearby. Planetary scan?" Lee called out.

"No dice, all I found are abandoned bases and remnants of Kitinol. Holy shit, it looks like they almost cleared the planet." Another bridge staff called out.

This time Lee walked over to his station, "you are right. No one else on the Kitinol Offensive line is even close to this level of clearing a planet. If all of their planets are like this it is no wonder they all but abandoned them in favor of the war. But it also tells us something else."

"What sir?"

"They are efficient and well organized. Which is bad news if they can apply that to the war with us." He answered. "Ship Captain, have platoons sent to those abandoned bases, see if we can find any clues that they left behind. Have a fighter aircraft escort for both."

The ship captain saluted before issuing orders. The Admiral looked back at the map. How were they hiding? He may not like getting his intel from information brokers but they were usually efficient. Likely a crew member of their ship was the source of the intel. A traitor, the thought made him mad.

"Contact Central Command, see if we can get intel on the crew and the ship. I doubt it but it is worth a try." He tapped his finger against the war table he was standing at. "How long until their closest ship arrives?"

"Five hours minimum." Someone called out.

"Sir, I have signals coming from the planet that have been disappearing but there are two- scratch that, one left." Another member of the bridge staff called out.

"Trace the signal before they make it disappear." Admiral Lee called out, "someone keep an eye out for the ships. They might attack if we find their base."

""Yes sir!"" Several voices called out in unison.

They could hide but it was only a matter of time before he found them.

—------------

"Damn!" Steel had his comlink open so the Corporal and Bird's Nest Sergeant heard him at the war table. "I almost had only the signals cut. They are tracing the last one. I can't defend it and cut it."

"Steel, you hack them back, attack them. I will try my hand at defense using the table." Tani said over the comm. He almost forgot she was a programmer and hacker as well.

Steel did as she asked and he hacked them back. Then he smirked as he entered the system of the cruiser. This was advanced, a little too advanced. He licked his lips. "Oh, this is going to be fun."

—-------------

"What! No!" A member of the Bridge staff called out, "no no no no… we are being hacked, they are using our attempt at tracking their signal to infiltrate our ship systems."

Admiral Lee did not know the capabilities of this particular cruiser, so he did not know how bad it was. "What is compromised?"

"Everything! This is a top of the line ship. Everything is connected to our systems from weapons to the airlock doors." The captain called out. Just then all the doors on the ship slammed closed.

There was a scream as someone was caught in the door. "Damn then we- did you say weapons? Disconnect it now. Before they fire on our cutters."

"Yes sir." A few moments later he was cursing again. "Shit! I tried to disconnect it but they are forcing the connection now. Someone! Go shut down the ship systems!" Now he was sounding panicked.

"Can you prevent them from firing the weapons?" Lee asked, hopeful of the answer.

"No, it is taking my all to prevent them from bypassing the security airlocks and venting all our oxygen into space. It was the first thing they went for when I started preventing them from hacking our weapons." The tech answered.

"They have done it before. Shit the advance ship. Guess we now know what happened to the entire crew. Someone, contact the other ships, tell them to put their defenses-" The ship suddenly shuddered.

"We shot one of the cutters!" The weapons officer called out.

"Tell them to put up full defenses and that our systems are about to go down. Ship wide alert, ship systems are about to go down." The admiral called out.

"Sir, we are shutting down ship systems now." Then the lights went dark. A moment later the emergency lights went on.

"Work on getting our systems unfucked and do not try to hack their systems or anything digital again. They clearly have superiority in that arena." Admiral Lee called out. He was between angry and impressed, now he really wanted to know who the crew of this mystery ship was.

—----------------

"Woohoo!" To say Steel was ecstatic was an understatement. "I got one shot off before they completely shut down their ship systems." He called over the comlink.

"Good, they tried to disconnect the connection but I forced it. Can you still scrub the final signal?" Tani asked.

"Yes sir. Want me to? Or do you want me to leave it open to try and do this again?" Steel asked.

"No, scrub it. If they come back they will be more prepared. It will be better not to risk it. What took you so long to fire the weapons?"

"Oh, I was noticed almost immediately. How quickly did they stop tracking the signal?" Steel asked to reposition himself to get comfortable.

"They stopped as soon as you started hacking them." She explained

"Ha… yeah they went to stop me from immediately firing the weapons, which for the record had to charge up. But they stopped defending the weapons as hard when I tried to override the security protocols and open their airlocks to vent their oxygen and people. But I did have some time to kill. Soo… Here is the ship and crew manifest for that cruiser." Steel stretched his arms.

"It is official Tani, the Desert Dogs went from the most brutal combat squads to one of the scariest ones." Another voice spoke up. One he did not recognize. There were a few moments of silence as they looked over the information he had just sent. "Damn. Admiral Lee, I have heard of him."

"How far up shit's creek are we?" Tani asked.

"Comlink is still open, everyone can hear you." Steel pointed out.

"Shit-"

"It is fine. He is not brutal, just methodical. But now that you have posed a challenge to him. He will see you as opponents in a game of chess. I guarantee you he will be gathering as much info as he can on you and the entire crew of the Border of Downfall." He explained.

"Understood." Great now he has a stalker. "Should we notify the Border that their main ship is down?"

"What can they still do?"

"Maneuvering, basic life maintaining systems, and probably rudimentary short-range communications." Steel declared thinking about the ship designs he saw while hacking.

"How long until they get the rest of their systems up and running?" Tani asked, jumping back into the conversation.

"Hmm… I would love to say two hours. But I would be generous if I did that. At most it will take them an hour but will take them somewhere between thirty minutes and an hour." Steel answered with a sigh.

"We will stay silent. Having their system down would only be an advantage for a short amount of time. We have bought ourselves roughly thirty minutes. Are there any other trails or clues we need to scrub?" The sarge of Bird's Nest answered.

"We dragged plenty of things over to this location sir. That will give us away." Another voice answered.

"Damn we will need-"

Steel interrupted him though, "we have a sand storm inbound. It will be on us in roughly twenty minutes and will cover us for roughly an hour." He could see it in the distance on one of his monitors.

"Good keep the barracks closed but let the sand get in all the crevices of the base. Steel could we continue to run the vibrational sensor and mining equipment?"

"We can run the mining equipment, just make sure to cover up the control station, it is the only part of it that does not like sand. The sensor is already unnecessary, so I turned it off. It might give away our position if it was on. We will just use its last scan for the mining operation." Steel explained pulling the last scan up for them as well.

"Very well sounds like there is nothing we can do. Let's get some sleep and rest. In an hour we are going to be busy again with our new opponents."