Battle Group Epsilon

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

March 29 2184, 23:05 Hours (Standard Solar Time)
Aboard USNI Destroyer "Thermopylae" In Asteroid Belt Sector Kilo Foxtrot

"Commander Verde, secure our flanks. Keep your thermal imagers up. It may be the only way to detect their ships."
"Aye aye, Admiral," Verde said over the COM.
Sheffield watched his screen as the Pegasus' engines flared blue and the frigate turned starboard. Whatever had happened here, it looked as though they had missed it. Or perhaps their enemy merely wanted it to look that way. "Rivera, redirect power away from the engines and charge the capacitors for our main cannon to seventy percent." If there was anyone out here, he didn't want to be caught with his pants down.
"Aye sir," she said. She swiped a lock of red hair that out of her eyes and typed away at her keyboard. If she was nervous, she gave no indication of it. The same wasn't true for the rest of his bridge. He couldn't blame them though. He was nervous too.
As they neared the Hippocrates, they could see how bad of shape it was in. It listed to its side with a slight spin. It was venting atmosphere slowly from one of its upper decks. He could see the gas coming out and quickly dissipating like an aerosol can.
"Ensign Walker," Sheffield said. "If you so much as pick up a flutter on the spectrometer that seems out of the ordinary, engage emergency thrusters at once." It might be the only way to detect them, if their previous encounters could be any indication, they couldn't rely on normal ship detecting procedures. The Fist of Jupiter's ships either didn't use nuclear power to run their ships, or had someway of concealing it if they did.
Sheffield could see the sweat beading on Walker's forehead as she studied the spectrometer readings with complete focus.
"Hail the Hippocrates Lieutenant Baldwin. Tell them Battle Group Epsilon has arrived and that we request a status report of their ship and crew."
Baldwin picked up his mic and sent a secure burst transmission relaying his message. They waited a few moments but there was still nothing. The Hippocrates looked like a fish that was belly up in water, floating and moving at the will of the current.
They moved closer to the wreckage and when they were only a few thousand kilometers away, they made contact.
"I've got them sir," Baldwin said excitedly. "Captain Archer extends his gratitude and is saying his ship is dead in space."
"Why isn't he speaking to us using NAVCOM?" Sheffield asked. He had the unsettling feeling that he was speaking to the Fist of Jupiter and not Captain Archer.
"He says their communications suite was the first thing to be destroyed. All they have left is their short range systems," Baldwin said. Sheffield could tell he was becoming suspicious too. Some of the Junior Officers looked up from their terminals.
"Ask for verification code Foxtrot and have it sent to my terminal," Sheffield said. A few moments passed before the words "November Alpha" appeared. It was the phonetic alphabet equivalent of N/A. Who ever was at the other end had either called his bluff or knew the joke. "Tell the Captain that we're sending in troops to secure his ship and to escort him onto my ship. I wish to speak to him in person."
"Aye sir," Baldwin said.
"Lieutenant Rivera, ready a conference room for myself and the Captain."
"Aye sir."
"And contact Sick Bay, tell them to be ready. We'll likely be taking on injured soldiers."

They sent a mission situation report to the Alamo and also to a nearby military outpost on Ganymede. It would be a few hours before they heard anything from the Alamo but the Captain on Ganymede said they had room on their dry dock for repairs. They were sending a tow ship along with an armed escort as they spoke. Almost as soon as Sheffield had heard this, they told him Captain Archer was ready in Conference Room 3.
The Captain was a young man but in poor physical shape. Sheffield was by no means an Olympic Athlete but he made it a point to go to the gym at least three times a week. Captain Archer's flabby stomach and baby face suggested he wouldn't know a gym if he saw one.
He turned toward Sheffield at the sound of the door opening and gave him a salute. He returned the gesture and offered the man a seat. "Captain, why don't you start at the beginning and tell me what happened."
"Yes sir," he said and paused for a moment. "We arrived on location and found nothing out of the ordinary. We searched for the freighters but found nothing besides trace amounts of ionized metal, which as you know could have been anything. The next thing we know, our COM suite is vaporized." Archer thought a moment and then added, "Spectroscopic flared for a moment but then nothing. Not a goddamn thing sir, excuse my language." The Captain took a deep breath and went on. "There were no radiation signatures or anything that you would normally detect from a nearby ship.
"After that, we try to use Infrared to spot them," Archer said.
Sheffield nodded. "We think that's the only way to detect them."
"We still saw nothing but then we receive a message from them. They wanted us to abandon ship, said we had trespassed on their territory. We waited and then they targeted our reactor. One shot, went clean through our ship and completely disabled us. I've never seen anything like it, sir. They had such precision. After that they engaged our fighters."
"Your fighters?" Sheffield asked. This was a first. "Did you see where the fighters came from? Their mothership?"
"No sir," Archer said regretfully. "We have the entire encounter on video but we didn't see anything. They're fast; our boys were simply out maneuvered. We took out a lot of them but they were just too damned fast. That's when we detected their boarding ships. We didn't see them until they were right on top of us. They seemed to have come out of no where. Not that we were in any condition to detect anything with any degree of accuracy but we should have seen something.
"They blew through our damn Bay Doors into our hangars. They sent in teams. One headed for the Bridge, another to ordnance, and another to the Mainframe. We repelled them from the Bridge and the Supercomputer. My guess is they wanted to access our network. They could have gotten knowledge on anything they wanted."
"It's a good thing they didn't," Sheffield said. "But why would they have gone to ordnance?"
"We have it all on tape so you can see. They simply went there, snooped around, and then hightailed it out." Sheffield thought and knew exactly what they had wanted. They must have been looking for nukes. Fortunately there were none on board of UNSF ships. "They must have gotten scared," Archer said. "Likely got word that you were coming. You just missed them sir."
Sheffield nodded. "We've got a tow ship inbound from Ganymede. They'll dry dock your carrier there."
"Thank you sir," Archer said.
"You and your crew will be going there," Sheffield told him. "But I'll be taking command of your Marine detachment as well as your CPU."
"Aye sir," he said. "It's a good thing you got here when you did."
Sheffield saluted and left. He went back to the bridge and conducted the transfer of men and machine from the Hippocrates to his own vessel. The wounded were sent to him but the rest of the soldiers were sent over to the Cyclops. The frigate had left the Germania short on Marines.
He would have to wait there to guard the downed carrier until the escort came. But then what? He had no leads as to the whereabouts of the freighters or the ship that had disabled the Hippocrates. They had the video footage but he was sure it wouldn't tell them anything they didn't already know.
Sheffield closed his eyes and breathed deep. He took a mental step back from everything that had happened and tried to make sense of it. He decided that they knew three important facts about their enemy.
Their tactics this far had been of guerilla warfare. They were capturing supplies and information when they could but would not engage in open conflict. This implied that they were weaker than the USNI and the UNSF and knew it, only attacking soft targets.
The next thing they knew was that they used some sort of laser or superheated particle accelerator as a weapon. It couldn't be seen with the naked eye but they could see it using thermal imaging. Such technology meant that they were facing a group that was more advanced than the military. Who could have better technology than them? The list was not very long.
Finally, their ships could not be detected with conventional means. They were not nuclear powered also meaning they had some highly advanced ships. They had to stop using conventional means to spot unconventional ships. Sheffield didn't know how or by what means, but they would have to come up with something. He didn't know if he'd have to send his men out there with binoculars and a star chart but they needed to figure something out. And they needed to figure it out fast before this escalated from Guerilla Warfare to all out war.