Space Odyssey: Spectre

Chapter 600: Pirates and Ghost Signals

Jace maneuvered around an asteroid as he chased down one of the hobbled together pirate fighter crafts. Honestly he was cringing just from looking at it. It was clearly just a bunch of pieces of metal that were welded together.

As he followed the trail of smoke and fire through the asteroid field he wondered for a moment if he could use anything from the fighter craft. Then he saw a piece of the wing bounce off his shielding and he sighed before shooting a single laser bolt.

It tore through the pirate scout he found and the ship essentially disintegrated as pieces of metal flew off in all directions while small pieces of debris bounced off his shielding. He pulled up the radar he had open on his screen.

The three dimensional map showed the pirate base in the distance. Which was actually just an ancient ship design of some type. He was not too familiar with the ship designs in this system but he guessed it was a generational ship that had been heavily modified.

He would disable the larger ship that operated as their base and destroy the other few ships that are flying in the area. But now that he was looking at the radar he was seeing a number of ships flying out of the larger ship as well. Although it was slowly trickling out.

Jace came up behind the second scout ship, this time he was able to just hit it once and disable it. But the front part of the ship flew off into space, still intact but just stuck drifting. It had no thrust or anything else, but he was still picking up an indicator so it had a way to contact others if need be and ask for help.

After taking out this second scout he flew around an asteroid staying out of their assumed radar range as he watched the ships split between going to the first scout ship he destroyed and the second one he disabled. While the third scout ship had made a clear turn toward the central ship.

Jace adjusted his course and took a look at the generational ship’s design. He only had a few seconds to figure out where he could hit it to only disable the ship without destroying it. At the last moment he just decided to hit the engines. While he would also hit the scout ship once he passed the larger ship by.

He fired a short volley at the engines that were slowly pushing it through the open area of the asteroid field. He picked up a slight spike in radiation before it dropped completely and his sensors indicated that power in the generational ship went out.

Fortunately there was not a larger explosion. There was an opportunity to steal food from these people. Not to mention that they needed to figure out where they were setting down shop to sell the things they stole.

Once he was past the larger ship he spotted the scout ship veer off. Jace sent a laser in the direction of its course and it tried to adjust but slammed into an asteroid instead. As Jace turned to the five other ships that were flying in his direction he turned up the speed and flew under them before spinning on an axis and firing up at them as he flew underneath them with his fighter orientated perpendicular to the enemy ships.

With his engines cut off he flew underneath them and shot upwards. Tearing through most of the ships. Except for a scant few that pulled away. As he readjusted and sped up again he received a signal from the pirates. It was a message of surrender coming from the larger generational ship. Jace forwarded the message to Cain before he reorientated and flew towards the next pirate base. This one was actually moving toward the mining colony.

It was only a few minutes before he was flying past the colony and around the large asteroid that the pirates were using to hide their arrival. Unexpectedly the pirates were orientated in a battle column while their main ship was a far more recent military vessel. So they were far more prepared for him.

But after the first few lasers dinged off his shielding he slipped past the front line and fired a number of shots at the larger ship. The first few disabled the ship completely and he stopped firing as he flew over the top of the ship and started turning to do a run on the accompanying ships. Immediately having to adjust his course as a few bolts barely missed him.

Jace flipped his ship around and fired at the enemy fighter. A few of them were disabled and a few were destroyed while the larger ship took a volley and a larger explosion spread across the midsection of the ship. He flew right by as the ship started splitting in half and even as a few bodies smacked against his ship as people were vented out into space.

On an open channel he received a transmission. "Gladiator, did you just fly past the colony?"

"I did," Jace responded. "I am just hunting some pirates that are nearby. I just sent you the coordinates of their disabled main ship." He told them as he adjusted his heading to chase down the stragglers but they split so he adjusted his course. "I will leave them and the stragglers to you."

He maneuvered out of the asteroid belt before flying on a fast course toward the origin of the emergency transmission. While he did it was a relatively straight course for the first leg so he could focus on something else. Which is what he did, he pulled up the original message.

It was so garbled that it was unrecognizable with only the tag being a literal ’SOS’ signal. But the date attached to it was old. UEE old. Back when the humans had a firm control on this galaxy and were venturing to other ones.

As he slowed down he scanned the area with both his eyes and the suite of sensors he installed earlier. Finding no ship, but he did find the emergency broadcast signal. He frowned under his helmet as he slowed and floated forward.

"Well this isn’t right." He remarked aloud before sending a communication request to Cain.

"What is it? I am working on the printer you requested." Cain asked, sounding a bit annoyed. Probably for a good reason.

"I just need the list of minerals that can bounce or repeat signals." Jace told him as he looked for possible objects invisible in space. Looking for any gravity anomalies or warped space. He had a set of programs saved in his armor to do the scans for him because he had encountered so many invisible enemies in the past.

"Is the signal not at the origin? Have you looked for warping in space?" Cain asked.

"Cain, I wrote the rules on looking for invisible enemies. I am currently going through all possible variations and then some. But the signal seems to be coming from a grouping of small asteroids." Jace explained as he floated around the asteroids.

"I just sent you the list. But most of those metals are man made. I think there are only about three possible types found naturally." Cain reminded him. "If you find any of them, mark them down and save them to your ship’s stores. We will find them later, they should be useful for some ship components we have not built yet."

"I will do that." Jace told him as he started marking the composition of asteroids as he started scanning them. It only took him a few minutes to find the asteroid the signal was repeatedly bouncing off of. Or rather the group of asteroids.

Just as he suspected the signal was bouncing between a group of them continuously. Mostly trapping the signal in an array of asteroids. But there was a part that the signal probably came from and is being sent from. Using the calculation the origin of the signal was... not that far away.

He slowly floated toward the possible origin. He figured to call it only a possible origin because there was a good chance it was just a ghost signal. A signal left behind after everything was said and done.

As Jace slowly flew down he could already see some debris. Forgotten and probably discarded as rocks to most. But he could pick up on the sparse amount of electronics hidden in some chunks. "Okay, I think I found it, Cain. I will get back to you in a few minutes." Jace told his robotic companion before ending the connection.

He floated toward a larger asteroid and moved underneath. But as he got close, both his armor and his ship showed a complete drop in communications from almost all types aside from basic light based transmissions. It was an inefficient method but seems like he would have to use it in case he took too long.

Once he was underneath at an opening he blinked in surprise at finding the entire asteroid was hollowed out and turned into some type of station. But unlike the listening post, it was much larger, large enough that it probably had its own natural gravity.