Elinor
The ‘Skreap’, and other starships of Task Force Alpha had jumped from one end of the Furia Sector the other twice over in the Crown Prince's pursuit. The captain kept a hard pace, pushing the limits of the starships of the task force, and their crews. Every time Elinor thought she was getting used to the pressure of the jumps, the Crown Prince would find a new way to pick the pace up again.
Crown Prince Osmund was searching for something. It was all anyone talked about on the ‘Skreap’. How their captain the Crown Prince was seeking something. No one knew what, and that likely made the rumor mill worse. Some ancient treasure. Some new deadly weapon. An outlaw of some sort. Some of the crazier rumors said how the Crown Prince was searching for an alien race like the Skoll, or even the Arcals. The gossip train was fast, and quick, and if someone could think it, it was being spread.
Elinor had no idea what it was the Crown Prince was searching for. She didn’t pretend otherwise, and nothing that she had come across in intelligence gave her any clue either. She had tried to ask Commander Sargent Drake. Crown Prince Osmund, like Commander Drake had served under Elinor’s own father, General Grimmhart on the ‘Ansgar’. The two had a close bond she knew, and Drake had taken to looking out for the daughter of her old mentor, but she only dodged those questions when Elinor tried to learn anything.
It didn’t matter in the end. Elinor and the rest of the crew would follow the Crown Prince into the very depths of hell, and back if that was what he asked of them. The men, and woman of the ‘Skreap’ were fiercely loyal to the Crown Prince, most of those who served in the task force were, but many of them had also escaped the ‘Ansgar’ with the Crown Prince, and her father, and that seemed to have created a bond between the core elements of not just the task force, but more importantly the ‘Skreap’ itself.
Elinor never knew what happened on the ‘Ansgar’, her father never spoke of it, and all files were classified. The ‘Ansgar’ incident had been on all over the news feeds five years past, but most details were vague. The starship was lost, how or why was unknown, and of the five thousand on board, less than five hundred escaped.
The loyalty of the older officers to the Crown Prince was instilled in the newer officer core like Elinor. She had grown up on stories of him in the news feed as he fought raiders with her own father. Battle after battle, he was a champion of the Commonwealth, and poster boy for the Commonwealth Forces. He should have been a Commodore as the commanding officer of the task force, but that was yet one more insult shown to him by the king, and one more bond that tied people like Elinor to him.
Elinor, and the rest of the crew were finally able to catch their breath, and recover from the endless jumps as they waited for the rest of the task force to reunite a single jump from the Rustberry System. Elinor did not know what was going on, but she knew something big was coming. The crew had been warned that much, but she couldn’t figure out what.
Elinor sat at her station on the command deck on the ‘Skreap’ as the task force prepared to jump. She didn’t know what to expect. The fleet was arranged in attack formation, and all of Task Force Alpha had quietly been gathering. Rustberry was one of the major systems of the Furia Sector with a formidable fleet of its own, and raiders rarely reached that far into Commonwealth Space, and so it begged the question what the task force was doing so close to the system.
“Is the task force ready to jump?” Crown Prince Osmund asked from his position at the main command table.
“Yes ser,” Captain Mutton, his XO replied.
Elinor watched as the Crown Prince nodded. It could only be seen as a hostile action for the task force to jump in without warning. She hoped that she was wrong.
“Very well,” Crown Prince Osmund sighed. “Jump,” he commanded, and Elinor felt the familiar sickness as the ‘Skreap’ launched it’s Jump Drives, and the starships moved just over half a light year in a mere moment.
Elinor knew of the Rustberry system. She had studied everything the ship’s databases had on it when she found out the Task Force would be arriving there in force. It was home to almost six, and a quarter billion people, with more than eighteen billion billion swearing loyalty to the System-lord Bella Proudfoot from the system and nearby sub-systems. The world of Rustberry itself had more than four billion, and it was home to one of the few Ring Worlds in Commonwealth Space, home to another two billion. Several more minor worlds were habited, and there was the large shipyard complex of Ravine, but most of all Elinor was thankful that the star system had no Star Fortress.
System-lord Bella Proudfoot commanded a fleet as large as that of Task Force Alpha. In sheer numbers it outnumbered the task force by a small margin. Six four capital starships of the line to fifty nine of the task force, and their support and screen starships were by all accounts the same. What the system fleet of Rustberry lacked though was the tonnage of the task force. With the ‘Skreap’ itself the largest starship in the Commonwealth, it also fielded six dreadnoughts.
The Rustberry system fleet fielded nothing larger than battleships, and carriers, of which the task force outnumbered them two to one. The Task Force had the edge in fleet strength, more than an edge, but if the Crown Prince were leading them into an attack on the system itself, they would have to deal not just with the fleet, but the system, and planetary defenses. Cannons, turrets, missile pods, and other defenses both in space, and on the surface of the worlds of the system. The Highlords would also have their own fleet, although nothing in large numbers.
“Commander Elwin,” The Crown Prince called out. “Open a system wide channel.”
“Aye Captain,” Commander Elwin responded to the Crown Prince. “Channel open.”
“This is Captain Osmund Gisking, Commanding Officer of the Commonwealth Forces Task Force Alpha, and Crown Prince of the Commonwealth of Drala,” the Crown Prince said, his voice calm and steady. Elinor took note of the Crown Prince's words. He was not known to rely on his title. “By my orders, I hereby charge Bishop Benton Redbeard with treason."
Elinor tried not to suck in air through her open mouth as she listened to her commander. She had dropped all pretense of pretending to stay busy at her work station, but instead looked at the Crown Prince. To arrest a Fabian Bishop for treason, that was not what she had expected. It wasn’t something that was done, even in large Furse populated systems like Rustberry.
“Any who interfere in this lawful action will be treated as a traitor, and dealt with,” the Crown Prince continued as he stood firmly at the main command table. Elinor breathed in, and out slowly as she listened to the Crown Prince speak. She prayed to the gods that the System-lord would stand her forces down.
The Task Force was already moving in the system, and local forces began to react to the large force which had just appeared on the outer edge of it’s system. Elinor tried to control her breathing, as she turned to her work station, and began to scan through the rush of information coming through from scans of the hundreds of starships in the system. Separating civilian from military, and picking out possible targets, and threats.
“This is System-lord Bella Proudfoot,” a new voice came through the comm system on the command deck of the ‘Skreap’. “The System, and world of Rustberry will comply with all lawful orders from the Commonwealth. I have already given orders for local forces to stand at the ready to aid the Crown Prince in any way we can.”
“Very well. All ships are to remain in standard parking orbit,” the Crown Prince commanded. “Any ship which does not get clearance will be fired upon,” The Crown Prince said. “This star system is locked down until all suspects can be taken into custody. We will conduct this as quickly, and safely as possible for all citizens.”
Elinor listened, and was grateful for the short distance FTL communication systems, and that they didn’t have to wait the time delay that would accompany most space borne transmissions.
“You have my word Captain Gisking,” System-lord Proudfoot responded. “None of my forces will interfere with your operations in system.”
“Thank you,” The Crown Prince responded.
“Ser,” Commander Zax cut in. “I’ve got four, no five ships attempting to break orbit from Rustberry, and another from Cas.”
Elinor looked at her display to see the starships as they moved at sub-light speeds. She could hear the commands for them to stop from both the ‘Skreap’, and System-lord, and the silence that was returned as they continued their course towards the outer edges of the system where they could jump.
“Have the star-lances intercept, and disable those ships,” Crown Prince Osmund commanded. The starship jump drives were still on cool-down, and the larger the ship the more dangerous an in-system jump was.
Elinor watched as several squadrons of starfighters moved off from the rest of the task force, and then blinked out of existence and reappeared several hundred kilometers from the starships. The starships were civilian, and seemed to lack weapons of any kind as the star-lances opened fire on engine systems, and disabled the ships one by one, all but for the one fleeing Cas which was intercepted by the forces of the System-lord who had it disabled.
The star-lance was another project of the Crown Prince, and the only Commonwealth starfighter capable of FTL Jumps. Elinor smiled as more ships broke from the task force formation to send boarding parties to the disabled starships.
Waiting was the worst. It took the task force twenty minutes to reach the world of Rustberry from the time it had arrived in the star system. Local forces belonging to the System-lord had already surrounded the Bishop in his large temple complex, but none entered on orders of the Crown Prince.
“You shouldn’t have given him that much time to burn the evidence,” Elinor heard Commander Drake say to the Crown Prince.
“It would have been destroyed either way,” The Crown Prince countered. “We had to get the forces of the System-lord on our side, and we have the best data retrieval units in the Commonwealth, and even if we find nothing, we have enough to put him away for the rest of his life ten times over.”
Commander Drake grunted, but said nothing else as she walked back to her station.
Elinor waited like everyone else as the ‘Skreap’ entered orbit of Rustberry, and dozens of shuttles, and drop ships departed the massive warship for the surface where the Bishop held out against the System-lord’s own forces.
Again Elinor waited as comm traffic came in from the teams deployed to arrest the Bishop. She heard the sounds of firefights as video feeds linked the teams to the command deck of the ‘Skreap’, and Commander Branch’s marines moved throughout the Fabian temple complex. Ten minutes of waiting before it was confirmed the last of the bishop's own guards were dead or surrendered, and Bishop Benton Redbeard was in custody.
“Commander Branch,” the Crown Prince said. “Have that traitor transferred to the ‘Skreap’. See to our wounded, and once the temple is secure, begin intelligence gathering operations. No one other than members of the task force are to set foot in that temple.”
“Yes ser,” the Marine Commander replied from his station, and began to make orders to his own officers.
“Alright folks,” Lt Commander Webb called out to the intelligence section of the command deck that she commanded. “Intelligence is going to be coming in hot. I want all incoming items flagged quickly, and then moved on. Let the teams in CIC, and other departments handle decoding, and data retrieval. Flag, and move on, it’s going to be a long night.”
Elinor tried not to sigh. As the most junior officer in the department on the command deck, things were about to get very busy for her, but like everything, she had to wait before those files started to come in, and she was quickly learning how much she hated to wait while everyone else was busy.
