They Answered The Call

Command Unit 6-8-3, Experimental Spectre-Class Nullship

Orbital Space of Insectoid Builder World, 2174 A.D.

Command Unit 6-8-3 was pleased with the results of the recent upgrades it had undergone. It and two additional experimental nullships were engaged in combat against a damaged Hive ship. They had yet to suffer any damage during the exchange, a result not previously possible without the integration of the Ma’lit technology that was recently installed in it.

Another volley of enemy missiles and particle beam strikes splashed harmlessly against the force field surrounding the three nullships, and they returned fire with their powerful war beams, penetrating deep into the Hive ship through the massive hull breaches that were the result of prior penetrator missile attacks from the Peregrine-class starfighters.

Another twelve particle beams speared at its ship from nearby enemy cruisers, and the force field blocked them, turning bright red on the impact points as the field repelled the tremendous energy of the particle beams. It saw that the sections of the force field that were absorbing the beams were now down to 23%, and it pivoted the ship to remove those sections from the line of fire and present a fresh field quadrant that had just been recharged. It followed its orders precisely, absorbing as much punishment as possible for its creators to analyze the results of the experimental technology.

Elsewhere in orbital space, other triads of upgraded nullships were doing the same thing, and the results were just as promising. The manned ships crewed by the biologicals of different races were also engaging in combat, though they were suffering damage and ships were being lost due to the absence of the force fields. There were still three orbiting Hive ships at various levels of functionality and over a hundred surviving enemy cruisers still fighting, though their numbers were rapidly diminishing.

Over a dozen Hive ships in various stages of completion were still on the surface and had activated their engines in preparation to lift off and join the fray, while hundreds of cruisers that had been on the surface were currently on their way to orbital space. There were an additional two thousand cruisers on the surface that had been activated, and they too will soon lift off. It ran trillions of calculations and analyzed the results, forwarding them to the task force commander as it continued to fire its war beams and execute evasive maneuvers.

It received orders to move to another section of the battle with its triad of nullships to give cover fire for the imminent orbital drop of the human soldiers that would invade the primary Hive to rescue the prisoners within. It suddenly detected the priming of the null drive of a Hive ship near the primary Hive that was the target of the assault, and the scanning results indicated that activation of the null space capacitors was imminent. Alarmed, it broadcasted the scanning results and an emergency flash-out warning to all the bridge AIs on the ships of the rescue task force, the first time this emergency protocol had ever been used by a Republic Navy AI.

The bridge AIs received the signal and initiated the emergency protocol almost instantaneously, interrupting ongoing combat operations and activating the emergency flash-out program without priming the drives first or giving any warning to the biologicals in the command centers of the ships. Nearly every manned task force ship flashed out into null space, except for those too heavily damaged and the eighteen surviving allied ships that did not have Republic protocols in place.

Command Unit 6-8-3 had foreseen this issue and sent a separate command to the upgraded nullships when broadcasting the emergency flash-out message. While the manned task force ships flashed out, the thirty-five nullships flashed into null space and then flashed back out directly behind the eighteen allied ships and pre-selected heavily damaged Republic vessels that they had deemed most likely to survive the potential catastrophe.

They activated the rear grapplers, capturing their assigned ships and accelerating at 140% of their maximum engine output as they dragged the vessels away from the planet to gain distance and increase their chances of survival. They also changed their force field parameters, and all the field emitter power was channeled to the rear of the ships, placing a protective barrier between the unshielded vessels and the planet. This all happened within five seconds of the emergency broadcast, and the explosion happened eight seconds after the Hive ship's null drive priming was detected.

The massive Hive ship entered null space from the surface of the planet, and the interaction between the null drive and the planet’s atmosphere was nothing short of cataclysmic. The void left by the departure of the Hive ship and the sudden flux of null particles in the atmosphere initiated a violent chain reaction that released the energy equivalent to a two-gigaton thermonuclear bomb.

The small moon, a mere 1,500 kilometers in diameter and with an unusually thin planetary crust, simply broke apart under the tremendous onslaught of the destructive energy and fragmented. The massive planet-wide subterranean oceans of hydrocarbons that comprised most of the mantle ignited, and the outer layer of the planet disintegrated, blowing away the thin, tenuous atmosphere and ejecting crust and mantle debris outwards.

The nullships continued to tow the vessels behind them, pulling further away from the final death throes of the stricken planet as it started flinging the molten liquid of its now exposed outer core into orbital space, and the force fields flared bright red as they intercepted the ejecta of the dying moon. Some of the force fields failed as they overloaded and the emitters burned out, and three allied and seven Republic ships were destroyed.

The nullships towing them executed emergency flash-outs as soon as their AIs saw that their charges were just about destroyed, while the rest of them were successful in rescuing the remaining twenty-eight ships they had protected as they exited the danger zone, their still-functioning force fields flaring brightly. All the remaining Insectoid ships that were in orbit were destroyed, as were eight derelict Republic vessels and over one hundred starfighters.

Command Unit 6-8-3 surveyed the results of the recent events, constantly sending updates to the task force ships that had flashed into null space as it continued to tow the damaged Xenxin battlecruiser behind it. It tallied the results of the losses incurred by both sides.

18 Hive Ships: Destroyed

2,894 Insectoid Cruisers: Destroyed

7 Allied Ships: Destroyed

13 Allied Ships: Damaged

14 Republic Ships: Destroyed

42 Republic Ships: Damaged

138 Starfighters: Destroyed

Prisoners rescued: 0

It sent the final estimate to the task force commander and continued to tow the ship behind it to the rendezvous point it had previously selected one million kilometers away, where automated repair ships that had flashed out of null space were waiting to service the surviving damaged vessels.

Insectoid Hive Ship, anchored in a nebula 987 light-years from Earth.

Bandit finally breached the last firewall that prevented him from autonomously operating the suit. His friend still had not recovered from the cranial trauma when he was captured, and Bandit had accessed his databanks numerous times for any knowledge or medical procedure that might have allowed him to help his friend, to no avail.

As Bandit penetrated the last firewall and activated the suit systems, he recalled the strange actions of the queen that had removed them from the Hive on the Builder World and absconded with the humans on its Hive ship. He could not discern the queen’s intentions, but it did not matter now. Bandit had control of the suit, and he made the suit get up from the floor where it had been dumped by the drones.

He tested all the suit functions, getting used to controlling the suit without his friends input for the first time. He programmed a series of parameters that limited the threshold at which he could operate the suit to prevent damage to his friend’s body. He activated the shrouding system and walked over to the door of the chamber they were in. He placed the suit’s hands on the door and applied pressure, pushing it upwards and lifting the door, hearing the locking mechanism snap as it broke.

He slipped under it when it was halfway up and quietly slid it back down to avoid making unnecessary noise. The corridor he was now in was dim, and there were no enemy drones in it. He activated his scanning suite and started building a map as the sensor data made sense of his local environs and highlighted the nearby lifeforms.

The command center was one hundred and fifty meters from his current location, and he headed towards it stealthily. He avoided encountering any drones as his sensors allowed him to bypass or sneak past them without knowing he was there, and five minutes later, he was pressed up against the wall just outside of the entry to the bridge. The queen was seated in her chair on the raised dais, and there were currently only eight worker drones with her, working on their assigned tasks.

He entered the chamber through the open doorway and silently slipped along the walls until he was in the center of the chamber, his shroud hiding his presence. He activated the suit blades on both arms and launched his attack, targeting the eight worker drones in the front part of the chamber that were working the panels in front of them.

He dropped the shroud just before contact with the first drone, and he beheaded it before the shroud had fully dropped, appearing to emerge out of thin air as he reached the second one and sliced it cleanly in half from top to bottom, already heading towards the third one that still had no idea he was there. He was a blur of motion, and within two seconds of launching the attack, all eight drones were dead. He turned towards the queen, who was still sitting in her chair, staring at him intently.

His suit registered a spike in the pain receptors of his friend, and he knew that she was trying to stop him like the other queen did, erroneously thinking that the suit was being operated by a conscious human. He closed the gap between them and was just about to behead the queen when he noticed that she was making strange movements with her tarsal claws as she held them up in front of him. He stopped the blades less than 5 centimeters from her neck joint as he analyzed them and found information in his databanks that correlated the hand movements with Eleani sign language.

Intrigued, he withdrew the blades and remained standing half a meter in front of the queen as she continued with her claws, the incorrect grammar and syntax poorly translating as if she didn’t understand most of what she was signing. The most common signs that she repeated were no, stop, friend, and please. Bandit felt his artificial neural pathways vibrating as he considered what to do, and the potential ramifications of being able to communicate with the queen. After trillions of calculations, his decision tree offered two solutions, and he decided on one.

He lifted the suit hands and signed to the queen.

Hello. My name is Bandit. You are now my prisoner.

The queen, after taking a few moments to understand what he had signaled, responded with her claws.

Yes. I am a friend-prisoner.