Hostile Stars (Constellation Book 2) by T. E. Butcher

Author:T. E. Butcher [Butcher, T. E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

Constellelation ship time 3 month, 1 week, day 3, ten hours

As soon as both shuttles were abaord and accounted for, Constellation jumped into the next system. An early K sequence star held two rocky planets, a gas giant, and a pair of ice giants in stable orbits, and for a time, it offered refuge.

Jim met the others in the confrence room he briefed the rescue team in. Minerva materialized in her librian out fit, and Jim took a moment for everyone to settle in.

“Alright,” he began. “What happened?”

“Due to the mix up with the transaltion program, we didn’t relaize the Lavies were trying to warn us off of a Quad ambush,” Yang began. “Once we got on the ground, The Quads held us at gunpoint before taking our weapons and trying to figure out what we were. We weren’t Lavies, and they had the sense to leave our suits intact in case of sickness. At least, that’s our theory. From there, they segregated us by sex, as best they could, and tried to figure out who was in charge.” She looked at the floor. “They didn’t believe me, and my clumsy attempt at first contact sould have wiped out both species.”

“Not quite,” Minerva said. “From their own sattlite networks and whatever dtata I could scrape off their networks, the orbital strikes likeley killed ten percent of the Lavvies population, and around four percent of the Quads. George and Oliver’s quick actions destroying the killsats prevented any further retalitory actions. In one move, they took away the Quads ability to own the orbitals and hammer the Lavvies from where they couldn’t hurt them.” She adjusted her glasses. Futhermore, I discovered in my contact with the Lavvie version of the internet that the Quads originated from another world.”

“Minnie, you said the united systems fought the Quads before,” Oliver said. “What can you tell us about that?”

Minerva pulled up more images of asteroid ships in various configurations. Some were more asteroid than ship, while others only used the asteroids as core structural commponets, with other less important sections connecting them.

“Like I said previously, the United Systems encountered ships machting the designs the quads used in the year 2166. The exploration vessel USS Charles Darwin detected them in the newly named Clarke system, known to your charts as Pi 3 Orionis.”

She smiled at Yang. “Their attempt to initate First contact protocals didn’t go any better than yours, the Quads responded to their radio messages by firing missles that ultimately destroyed the Charles Darwin, but not before she was able to send a message back to the explorer corps.”

The image shifted again. “So the United Systems sent a retalitory fleet, a cruiser task force comprised of seventeen ships that would root out the Quad incursion.” She displayed a small slice of starmap. “The task force eneded up wiping them out, we didn’t understand at the time that the asteroid bases they lived in, were liekly their homes.” She paused.

“The system we just left wasn’t Clarke, it was Verne, AKA BD-21.

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