Salvation

by voroshilov

The Retaliator

Sanctuary’s Watch was the only finished Dauxite structure in Chronove’s system, originally built as the primary defensive nexus for Chronove and the system as a whole, it evolved in the era of the Empire to be Chronove’s last line of defence: the base of the Chronovus Prime Fleet - an elite thousand ships, designed to die to blunt the offensive of any enemy against Chronove.

Even after the War in Heaven, when the Irenton Empire shattered completely, the shipyards of Sanctuary’s Watch never ceased - they may have slowed, but, so long as one person on the satellite drew breath they would not stop. Even the great orbital shipyards of Chronove paled in comparison to the efficiency of their nearby satellite. When the Dominion needed many ships, it went to Chronove, when they needed one done quickly, they went to Sanctuary’s Watch.

The Sanctuary’s Watch shipyards were remarkable, even to Penumbra, who had seen things far more grandiose and unusual in the past. On their edges was a near pristine forest, complete with thin running creeks, the chirping of wild birds and the rare glance of a hare or other creature, living out its simple life. Then, suddenly, there was a drop of ten thousand feet as the immense five hundred kilometre radius cylinder of the shipyard opened. Tiny vessels buzzed like little fireflies around the vast hulls of warships that dwarfed cities. In orbit, high above, attached by immense skyhooks and tethers, hung the gestating forms of warships so long it would take days to cross them on foot.

Gantries little wider than a metre formed an intricate cobweb around the entirety of the deep cylinder, some terminating in mid air and others forming platforms for workers to stand on before being pulled elsewhere. Penumbra, having never visited the shipyards, naturally didn’t know where the acquisitions office was, though she believed it couldn’t be too hard to find out. She did, however, know that acquisitions was kept within the yards themselves, placing the workers of both arts within close proximity.

Sure enough, the acquisitions office was located down one treacherously thin flight of stairs, buried into the wall of the shipyards, with only a heavy bulkhead door and a metre squared panel of glass the thickness of Penumbra’s head marking it out as any different from the rest of the area. The door was opened slightly, no doubt to save anyone entering the difficulty of opening it, allowing Penumbra only a slightly delayed access into the little office.

There was only one desk, with a chair on either side, a noticeably unaugmented Valkyrie sitting behind it, her small blue two-sided computer screen the only light in the room. She didn’t so much as glance at Penumbra until she had sat down, then spoke with a clearly well-rehearsed tone.

“Welcome to the Sanctuary’s Watch shipyards acquisitions office.”

Penumbra smiled. “I’m Sunless-Halo-of-Penumbra, from the 44th Parallel Observatory. I would like to acquire a ship.”

The Valkyrie nodded, tapping something into her side of the console. “Present identification.” If there was any doubt about her being military initially, it was removed by the cold and curt way she spoke, unable to keep herself from slipping into the Imperial Military Accent - one of the most enduring and pervasive of holdovers from the Irenton Empire - even if she had wanted to.

By virtue of her rank during the War in Heaven, Penumbra had been granted a Dominion military ID, one affording her a number of benefits including, but not limited to, essentially free rein over choice of starship. With a simple flash of a little metal plate, a wealth of vessels opened up to her, all for free.

The Dominion had no currency, none had ever really been necessary. The Irenton Empire had been vast, but it had also been efficient - incredibly so - making resources abundant. Everything from bread to guns to whole starships could be acquired for free - provided you had the correct authorisation.

Unlike the Irenton Empire, however, the Dominion was relatively unsafe. Granted, there was not the typical threat of extra-universal horrors or hordes of disaffected and quick to anger rebels with fusion bombs, but there were pirates, death-cults and who knew how many devolved ex-Imperials among the many unexplored planets. As such, the vast majority of Dominion vessels came equipped with some form of defence, whether it be a single point defence turret to a vast arsenal of capital weaponry.

The Sanctuary’s Watch shipyards specialised in warships, though they did produce a number of small, more civilian oriented craft. One such craft immediately caught Penumbra’s eye: a vaguely triangular form, with more space within than she could likely ever use. It was a civilian craft, for sure, though its class was simply referred to as “multi-purpose,” oddly, however, it was equipped with not only a pair of Rift Generators - similar to a military carrier - but shields comparable to that of a warship nearly fifty times its size and armaments rivalling that of a small cruiser.

“What’s that one?” Penumbra asked the Valkyrie, pointing out the strangely well-equipped vessel.

The Valkyrie tapped a few buttons on her end. “Model-66 Multiple-Purpose Nexus vessel, designated Retaliator. Constructed by Chronovus Fleet Systems Platform-19 approximately seventy standard years ago. Never used, been in drydock on Sanctuary’s Watch Orbital Platform-6 since launch.”

A Nexus vessel, as Penumbra had half-remembered once reading in some digitised magazine, was a vessel designed for both military and civilian purposes, equipped for speed, strength and firepower. They were more than often used to carry important people, such as dignitaries or military leaders, inside Dominion space. However, why one would be constructed then never used - as well as being given such a belligerent name - was curious.

“I’ll take it.” Penumbra, admittedly, didn’t understand how to make an acquisition of a starship official, she just assumed the Valkyrie would press a few buttons and she’d have the ship in her possession.

Sure enough, the Valkyrie tapped her console, and kept tapping. The tapping went on for about five minutes, before eventually the Valkyrie appeared satisfied. “Take elevator twelve up to Platform-6, the Retaliator will be waiting for you.”

Penumbra nodded, thanked the Valkyrie and awkwardly slid out of the door, doing her best to avoid her horn scraping on the ceiling. She stepped out onto the gantries, taking in the light of Chronove’s star and the blinkings and flashes of the shipyard’s many lights. High above the surface of the machine moon, beyond the thin wisps of cloud that marked the average coverage of a summer’s day, hung hundreds of vessels of all sizes, connected to one of three immense tethers, which glinted in the late afternoon light. One of those vessels, invisible or otherwise unidentifiable from hundreds of kilometres below them, was now hers. What remained, before she could travel to Sanctum, was to get to it.

Which she wasn’t sure how to do.

The three orbital tethers were linked together far above by a multitude of thin bridges and cables, forming a complex patterned web of structures allowing every docked vessel to be reached. The platforms, as described by the Valkyrie, were not platforms in the traditional sense, rather a horizontal plane where tethers and connectors were located, the ships docking to them.

Elevator twelve was no doubt attached within one of the tethers, though from where she was standing it was not apparent which. Her apparent only option would be to check each one, hoping that the first she came across - located a few kilometres away from her on the edge of the pit - would hold what she wanted.

She disembarked the gantry and exited the shipyard’s pit. Following the nicely marked out path, she skirted the edge slowly, the tether slowly becoming larger in her view. From her position on the gantry, the tether had looked about the thickness of a house, with Penumbra’s eyes tricked by its sheer height. Coming in close, the tether was some half a kilometre in radius, made of a heavily reinforced black substance, with foundations no doubt extending kilometres below the surface.

There were few openings in the reinforcement, each one being a heavy looking elevator door, with a small glow-in-the-dark sign attached to the segment of armour above to denote its number. The first Penumbra saw was marked ‘Elevator 3’ - which she audibly sighed in relief at - no doubt she was close to number twelve.

After a twenty kilometre walk, she arrived at elevator number twelve, considerably more exasperated than when she first arrived at the shipyard. The sheer size of everything beyond her simple home continued to surprise and astound her, though after thousands of years it shouldn’t have. Mercifully, the elevator contained a number of seats, Penumbra practically throwing herself into one the moment she saw it, savouring the chance to rest her legs.

“Please state your destination,” a robotic, feminine voice appeared through a hidden speaker above her, Penumbra not even bothering to open her eyes to answer it.

“Platform-6,” she said, quickly recalling the directions the Valkyrie had given her. She heard the slow whoosh of the door closing, before it locked shut with a pair of clicks.

Suddenly, Penumbra found herself being crushed.

Startled, she opened her eyes and reached out with her magic, ready to smash the first thing she saw that could even be interpreted as a threat. Quickly, though, she calmed down, pushing herself upwards and backwards as a restraint harness lowered over her. In standard fashion, she allowed it to click in place, giving it a tug as a test before settling back down again. Only to, a second later, again be startled as she felt herself lifting off the seat.

The elevator had, as she quickly found out, launched itself skywards. Apparently, it had not been designed for comfort in mind - or for those prone to heart attacks. She couldn’t deny, however, that it was effective, as she stepped out ten seconds later to find herself in space, a long corridor ahead of her, covered in windows, with various vessels docked to ports marked by thick bulkheads and airlocks.

One of those vessels was the Retaliator. Fortunately for Penumbra, unlike her search for the elevators, she knew exactly what she was looking for. With only three vessels docked, the only one on the left hand side being clearly hers, it was simple to acquire.

She stepped up to the bulkhead, being greeted by a terminal that required her to input a number of credentials and authorisations before it even unlocked. After several minutes of tedious faffing around, the terminal gave her the option to unlock the bulkhead, the half a metre thick metal door clicking and sliding cleanly open at the press of a single button. Stepping past the threshold, she found herself within the airlock, with just enough room to spare from the ceiling.

There was another terminal within, this one thankfully far easier to work. The bulkhead behind her closed, then clicked as it locked, before a button flashed up and the bulkhead ahead of her clicked and swung inwards, allowing her access to her brand new vessel.

The room she entered sported an uncomfortably low ceiling, though a few seconds - and the click of a bulkhead - later it opened out into a spacious atrium, complete with purple carpet running down a grand staircase and through a door to what appeared to be an observation deck, its bulbous window full of blinking lights and pieces of shipyard backdropped by the deep and endless void of space. All in all, it seemed to be more like a cross between a five-star hotel’s foyer and a crystal clean laboratory than a spaceship.

Atop the grand staircase, connected by a pair of wide bulkheads, was the entrance to the command deck: essentially the bridge of the vessel. There was little in it, with only three consoles with corresponding chairs, arranged in a triangular formation, with what Penumbra assumed to be the captain’s chair and console being considerably larger. There was a dock in the centre of the largest console, a stout metal plinth containing a holographic projector on top and a port about two thirds of the way up. When Penumbra neared it, the projector flickered to life, creating a floating, blue holographic rune.

“Welcome, Captain,” the rune said, voice robotically neutral, without so much as an illusion of biological life, “all systems nominal.”

Penumbra took a seat in the captain’s chair, removing her saddlebags and laying them down at its side, surprised it was so comfortable. “And you are?”

“Dominion Luminary class shipboard AI,” the rune said, “awaiting orders.”

She nodded, getting her bearings with the console and command deck as a whole. She removed her datapad from her saddlebag, plugging it into a small port on the terminal. “Can you set a course to these coordinates?” The relevant data flashed up on the viewscreen in front.

“Affirmative.” With a flash, the coordinates were locked into the system, the Luminary making the necessary preparations to undock from the shipyard. “Approximate time to leave Rift Interdiction Zone: two hours and twelve minutes.”

Penumbra, glad she had a competent tool to rely on, was content to rise from the chair, grab her bag and leave the Luminary to its job. The ship may not have been the largest she had seen, but in comparison to her it was enormous, she could more than kill two hours and twelve minutes simply exploring; with her first port of call being her sleeping quarters, where she could dump her bag.

Similar to the design of pre-Dominion military vessels, the Captain’s quarters was located just behind the command deck, only a thin staircase and pair of bulkhead doors separating the two. The quarters were fairly well furnished, containing a comfortably sized bed, large writing desk complete with terminal, armchair and small viewport allowing visibility out of the port side of the ship. On inspection, the desk yielded a small bookcase, complete with three tomes Penumbra hadn’t seen before. Two were undoubtedly related to the command of starships, with one even being rather aptly named ‘The Captain’s Handbook’. The third, meanwhile, was some form of fiction text, named ‘The Princess of Dreams’. She made a mental note to check it out as soon as she had time.

Down the grand staircase lay the observation deck, which she already knew about and had seen enough of the Chronovus system already to bother checking out. Instead, she skirted around the side of the staircase, passing down a corridor towards a bulkhead labelled ‘engineering’.

What little she knew about starships told her that engineering meant the reactors, Rift Generators, engines and shields; all four of which were very interesting to her, even if she was at loath to know how they worked. The pair of Rift Generators were each located in their own rooms, the bulkhead leading to them more than a metre thick. Each room was tiny, with barely enough room for Penumbra to stand, with the Rift Generators surrounded with warnings and other, more practical, defence mechanisms. She resolved to leave them alone, at least for the time being.

The reactors seemed much more forgiving, though they still bore several warnings. Each had a set of terminals and consoles linked up to it, no doubt to perform the manual task of optimising the reactor - a task Penumbra had no idea where to even begin on. Fortunately, each one appeared to be working just fine regardless of her input, no doubt due to the Luminary. Through their casings, thick black metal with a small window made of a transparent reinforced material around a metre thick, bright and violent reactions were occuring, releasing enormous amounts of energy to power to engines through the wall behind them.

Passing through another bulkhead, Penumbra arrived in the engine bay itself. Unlike the rest of the ship, which was near silent, the engine bay was permeated by a constant humming and a dull throb, no doubt a result of the propulsion of the vessel. Each of the twelve engines was only represented as a large, squat cylinder of metal on the wall, various cables the thickness of Penumbra’s horn feeding into them. Each one was about her height, perhaps slightly taller, with Penumbra being kept away from them by a metal fence, apparently designed as a warning for the unwanted to keep away.

The shields were only visible in the form of a number of consoles, controlling various variables that Penumbra didn’t understand. What she did understand, however, was that the particular shields on the Retaliator were incredibly powerful, far larger than anything she had seen on ships of a similar size. She had acquired an important ship, or, at least, something that was once intended to be an important ship.

With her tour of the engineering bay proving to have been a good use of an hour, she turned her attention to the ship as a whole. Maybe, she would simply travel to Sanctum, and have a look around, then return straight home. But, as she knew all too well, nothing ever went that simply. More than likely, knowing her luck, the Retaliator would turn into a mobile home away from home, so to speak. As such, she laid out plans for the space, setting aside most of it for storage, but selecting the observation deck as a perfect place for a telescope - potentially even similar observation devices should she find the time.

Drawing up her plans filled the rest of the time to the minute, Penumbra congratulating herself internally on her splendid time management. After saving the plans on her terminal and stretching her legs slightly, she felt her horn tingle as the Retaliator entered the Rift. She allowed herself the moment of time in the Rift - no more than a few seconds - to close her eyes and simply feel the ecstacy of the soul movements. The Rift was a drug she had not felt for so long.

“We have arrived in the Capris Alpha System,” the Luminary’s voice appeared the instant she left her cabin, “transmitting clearance to Dominion fleetbase authorities.”

To Penumbra’s surprise - though her surprise was typically very mellow - the sky was filled with Dominion warships and stations. There wasn’t a spot more than a few square inches on the viewscreen that didn’t contain either a capital vessel or defensive station the size of a city. Sure enough, a pair of sleek, black fighter craft sped by, no doubt a part of a far larger force that had surrounded her vessel.

Within seconds, they broke off, returning to a ship in her blind spot, which quickly revealed itself overhead: a long and thin kite shaped hull, powered by three dozen orange engines, leaving a thin trail of particles in its wake. Black, as standard for most Dominion military equipment, with fighter squadrons escorting it like cleaner fish to a shark. The cruiser, bristling with guns of a multitude of sizes, passed silently overhead, heading back to its patrol route.

“Set a course,” she said, “take us into Sanctum.”