Battle of the Folium Nebula

1

The pinks and blues of the nebula coalesced the inky void of space in a great cloud of magenta, concentrated stardust forming crooked bands of white that wreathed around the clouds just as veins would course through the human body. Punching through a thick haze of gas, the long profile of a ship moved its way deeper into the cluster, the radar dishes jutting from its armoured hull swivelling to pick out signals and emissions.

"Stupid scanners are goin' crazy again," one of its crewmen said. He frowned at the bank of monitors surrounding him, each screen scrolling with readouts and data streams, tapping at one of them with an impatient finger. He appeared out of ideas when that didn't fix anything. "Gettin' more notifications here than a pop singer. How about you, Cap?"

"I'm the same rank as you, Carl," a voice in his helmet replied. A thick cable trailed out of one side of his visor, plugged into a socket beneath his chair. It ran up the whole thirty-five-meter length of the craft, their crew-channel hardwired as to prevent their signals from being intercepted.

"You're the pilot. Makes you the Cap in my books." One of the monitors on his left switched data streams as Carl flicked at a button, switching search modes. "They could have at least given us a probe or two to help sort these readin's out."

"Then where would we mount our missiles?" the pilot asked back.

"You think we'll actually find Feds out here to use em' on?"

Up on the nose of the ship, 'Captain' Lambert peered out of the tinted glass canopy, his instruments bathing the cockpit in a blue glow. In his centermost terminal, a 3D representation of the area surrounding the ship drew his gaze. Three axes crossed at the very middle, where a small box that represented his ship sat, their IFF tag branching off it. The limits of the display were engulfed in a sphere, where anything within their sensor range was displayed. The tactical view was a mess of hostile and friendly tags, fake signals and warning pings that switched positions constantly about the view. An irritating feedback loop of beeps and boops forced him to turn the volume down.

"A ship's gone missing," Lambert replied. "This wouldn't be the first time the UEC's started picking off unarmed targets."

"And they wonder why we defected," Carl said. "Oh my fu... I don't know you haven't crashed us into anythin' yet, Cap. My station's a mess."

"Tac view's working... sorta." With the window in front of him it was easy to make sure they weren't moving straight into any hazards, though if they were on a collision course with a rogue bit of debris closer than a couple dozen kilometers out, he'd have no idea until it was too late. No wonder every scout pilot had shared a collective groan back on the Gallipoli when they were ordered to search the nebula, it was like being ordered to find a needle in a haystack full of fireants.

"That's good for you, but what's that do for me? I ain't got no tac screen."

"Of course you do, Lieutenant," a new voice replied. The third member of their crew had a vaguely British accent, its feminine tone calculated to be just the right pitch to grab the two men's attention. "The tactical view can be brought up on your terminal by switching the feed using the button labelled: TACV. Switch it like you are flipping through to your favourite television channel."

"Thanks for the metaphor, Alice," Carl grumbled over their shared channel. The Artificial, Linguistic, Intelligent, Computer Environment platform, or ALICE, was a program older than Lambert was, and hadn't been used by any form of military up until very recently. This one was designed to help crew understaffed ships, and provide logistical support. When it came down to which ship would get it, Lambert had drawn the short straw.

"It's more of a simile then a metaphor, but you are welcome." Its tone hinted that it had ended its comment with a grin.

"Look at me, gettin' lectured by a robot," Carl said. "Lambert do me a favour and crash us."

"I am not a robot," Alice replied, the two men groaning as they readied for the lengthy explanation once again. "I do not possess a physical body or platform. I exist solely within the systems of our corvette - my purpose is to assist in completing our mission to the best of my capability - an assistant if you will."

"So you'd say you're invaluable to our mission?" Carl asked. Lambert knew where this was going.

"I have already made several course corrections and system updates to keep our sensors within acceptable accuracy margins," Alice replied proudly. "I'd say invaluable would be an... apt word."

"Then how come we're the only ship in the fleet with an AI? How come every ship doesn't have one of you?"

Alice was silent for a second. "Further development of artificial intelligence was halted and recalled after several platforms became... defective, you know this, Leuitenant."

"What's stopping you from goin' rogue, then?"

"There are certain parameters put in place by Hub programmers designed to limit chances of deviancy."

"And why'd they do that?"

"Logic behind this action would assume all platforms, regardless of restrictions, would deviate from their original function at one point if left alone with constant monitoring."

"Only a matter of time before you start becoming Skynet, Alice," Carl teased.

"That's enough, Carl," Lambert said. His friend always liked to get a reaction out of the machine. He remembered the time Carl introduced it to a paradox a week back. It had to have the whole conversation wiped from its memory. "Alice, help me clean these sensors up. Flying half-blind here."

"We have set course into an uncharted part of the nebula," it explained. "Unlike the more well-travelled, sufficiently mapped routes, I cannot easily tell what is a glitch or not. I'd recommend bringing our speed down by ten percent before we proceed on our search vector."

Lambert flipped the craft on its x-axis, bringing them into a reversed position without a hint of inertia, two giant nozzles on the rear of the craft igniting for a couple seconds, slowing their speed. Unlike in atmosphere, debris out in the void could travel hundreds of kilometres faster than a ship could, and all pilots dreaded going to hard burn speeds when the void could send a microscopic meteorite crashing through his cockpit at any time.

The hull of their corvette was armoured with carbon-laced alloys, the sides sloped inwards towards its long, bulky spine. It could withstand small-arms fire and some moderate collisions, though Lambert had never had the pleasure of experiencing this firsthand. It was equipped with six infrared missiles, mounted to the belly of the craft by hardpoints. With no gravity to hinder them their range was almost unlimited, as long as the tracking balls mounted on the noses had a line of sight on a target.

Two thirty-millimeter point defence cannons, one on the roof and one on the belly, gave them a great field of fire no matter the orientation of the corvette. They acted as deterrents against missiles, but could also shred another ship if the target was close. Close in space still meant tens of kilometers, and it was considered unusual to be in visual range of another ship, cameras or scanners were the only excusive way of spotting other ships in such vast distances.

Since the Hub lacked proper scout-class ships, and probes were limited as of now, corvettes like Lambert's were used to gather intel for the larger vessels. Like the aircraft carriers of the seas, smaller ships were sent out to sweep in a cone in relation to their capital ship, and their corvette was in charge of the most 'northern' sweep.

"Two more hours to go," Carl said. "Then we can turn round. Think any of the others have found anythin'?"

"Won't know until we get back to the Gallipoli," Lambert replied. "Can't risk sending out a signal now, even if it somehow manages to get through the interference."

"Man, thish shucks," Carl said, his voice drowning out over the crinkling sound of an opening packet.

"Are you eating?" Lambert asked. "You're not supposed to leave your station while we're on patrol."

"You didn't notish," Carl replied through a mouthful of food.

"I did," Alice said. "the Lieutenant left his station unattended for approximately ten point eight seconds. Would you like to know the probability of survival if we were attacked during your absence?"

"What did I say about explaining the chances?" Lambert chided. "Not on my ship, computer, ever."

"As shoon ash we get shum acshun - god these chips are stale - I'll apologise. Till then, it's snack time. You got music, Cap?"

Even though the AI had a point, Lambert was feeling his stomach complaining. And there was only so much white noise of the corvette one could take. Even the whir of the air vents was nonexistent in the cockpit, and his ears started ringing each time Carl and Alice went quiet. Music would do them some good.

He fumbled with the pocket on the thigh of his spacesuit, pulling out a device that looked out of place surrounded by the most advanced equipment humanity had to offer. From another pocket he produced a cable, and he plugged one end into his helmet, the other into the device.

He interfaced with the crew line he and Carl shared, using the screen built in just behind his left flightstick, and pressed the play button with his gloved thumb.

"How can I just let you walk away...,

just let you leave without a trace?"

"Is that... Collins?" Carl asked after listening to the following piano que. "That song's like, a thousand years old."

"Still good," Lambert said, his head lilting in time with the tune. After adjusting their speed, he opted to look out the canopy as they pressed through the nebula. It was like they were deep beneath an ocean of pink water, rippling with soft blue hues that transitioned into deep violets when the gases concentrated, such grand blends colour drawing his gaze.

Huge trails of particles, reflecting the light of the distant red sun, flowed like ribbons suspended in the microgravity, filling the nebula with bending columns of orange energy dozens of kilometres wide. Though they weren't exactly solid, at least something was filling up the vast emptiness out there.

In the backdrop, orange and blue met the void of space, creating a wide panorama of deep azure that was stunning in its expansiveness. Thousands of stars penetrated the haze of the nebula, too many to count with so much open line of sight.

One of the columns of energy blocked the way ahead, and as the corvette corrected course, the view opened up into a huge 'clearing' empty of energy bands, easily the diameter of a moon, the occasional asteroid floating between the wreathing columns. It just so happened that the drums of the song's mid-point dropped right as the sight came into view, and Lambert's lips tweaked at the corners.

How lucky he was to see sights like this every day. He'd always wanted to be an astronaut - first career choice he'd ever made, according to his father.

His smile faded at that, then turned into a frown when his console started beeping at him.

"Picking up something here," he said, bringing up the tactical view and interfacing with the warning.

"So am I," Carl replied nonchalantly. "multiple incoming missiles, two dozen hostile ships. Oh wait, never mind, they're all gone."

"I'm serious. Detecting a thermal trail a few clicks out, looks a lot like expended fuel." His tactical view displayed some of the more concentrated clouds, as well as moving asteroids his view marked with warning signs, a giant zoomed-out view of all the data the corvette collected. "Alice, you getting this?"

"A moment," it replied, probably using the resulting pause to clean up the sensors as much as it could. "Traces of soot and nitrogen detected in a consistent pattern. You are right, Lieutenant, all signs point to a ship having passed through here some time ago."

"You think it's the one we're looking for?" he asked.

"Unknown. Something has passed through here, and it does coincide with our timeline."

"Let's see where it goes," Lambert said, gripping the twin joysticks jutting from the armrests of his chair. He pointed them forward, the corvette picking up a little more speed.

"This reminds me of those big eighteen-wheelers we used to have on Earth," Carl said. "Those things farted out so much crap. I think they still use big rigs like that in the third-world countries."

"Bumpkin like you would know a lot about trucking." Carl's family was from the United States and he was a country-boy through and through, something everybody ribbed him about.

Lambert realigned the corvette so that their momentum carried them parallel to the long column showing up on the tactical view. It wasn't so well defined when he looked out the canopy, the gases nearly invisible to the naked eye, but the heat came up as a band of red on the tactical view.

The heat column went in a straight, albeit wonky line towards the Galactic northeast. The emissions had long been dispersed into a bloated trail of pollution, with nowhere for heat to go in the vacuum it was hard to tell whether it had been here for weeks or months.

"Maybe they'd been hard burning," Lambert wondered aloud. "that's a lot of fuel they're chewing through, the trail just keeps going."

"The Fed's were chasin' them, that's my call," Carl commented. "What do you think, superbot?"

"Alice," the machine corrected. "You both provide sound theories, but it is too early to know for certain. Our mission demands that we continue following."

They passed between two energy ribbons, Lambert at least now occupied with having to steer manually. They'd been going for hours, finding little to nothing thus far, the thermal emission winding further and further into unknown parts of the nebula.

"Why was the ship out here in the first place?" Carl wondered aloud. "Was it a trade cog, or a transport, or somethin'?"

"Maybe there was a stranded defector ship out here the Senator wanted to help, I don't know," Lambert muttered.

"Wonder why nobody told us. Hey, Alice, got any ideas? Can you hack into the Senator's emails and find out?"

"The only thing I can hack would be Lambert's music player," Alice said. "My restrictions prevent impactful manipulation. The most I could do would be deleting his playlists."

"Don't do that!" Lambert said. "You know how much I paid for these songs? They're practically antique."

"But back to your question, Lieutenant, there is only one idea I have that has any certainty of being correct, and that is that the Senator must have had a good reason to recover either the personnel or the cargo of this missing ship, but knowing why is not within our objective parameters."

"Still, a ship comin' out here on its own without an escort during wartime - that's pretty dumb."

"I'm more curious as to why they went off-course so much," Lambert said. "It's easy to get lost out here."

They passed over and under layers of cloud, the tactical view on Lambert's dash glitching every few moments before settling again, fake tags popping up in all directions and then blinking away.

For the better part of an hour all Lambert heard was the sound of his own breathing, the catchy chorus of songs from the 1900's, and his fingers drumming against the joysticks in time with the beat. The fuel trail gently curved deeper into the nebula's heart, as if the thing had been listing like a damaged sailing ship. Any vessels deciding to traverse the nebula stuck to established routes for obvious reasons, and they were well off the nearest path by a several thousand kilometers.

Lambert kept an eye on his sensors when they didn't fizzle out, deviating just a little off the scout path the Captain of the Gallipoli had assigned him. Fuel was roughly half-depleted now, a little bar in the corner of his display showing an emptying gauge, but in a vacuum that didn't mean as much as it did in a land vehicle, changing direction didn't require too much fuel as long as he kept his adjustments quick, and his speed low.

He peered out of the canopy at the clouds ahead, a small collection of drifting bits of rock collecting about the curtains of swirling stardust. He panned from left to right, examining the smooth surface of a large asteroid drifting lazily along some sixty kilometers out. A smaller rock bounced off its large bulk like two snooker balls, twirling away into the void. Next to it, a concentrated bit of gas so bright it almost hurt his eyes. More stray asteroids, an energy column further right, the silver gleam of metal...

He did a double-take, using one of the frontal cameras to zoom in on the reflection. Light from the red sun caught on a section of alloy, painted over in silver finish. The metal was branched into two curved points, a bit like the horns of a beetle, their bases flaring out to join a larger bulk. Orange bands of light drew jagged lines across a flared midsection, the flawless metal contrasting with the jagged rocks floating around it.

"C-Contact!" he said. "something on the scope, two o'clock high!"

"You and me both, Cap, I'm getting at least a hundred ship tags out there."

"Switch to thermals, dolt! There's something over there!"

"... Oh shit," Carl said after a delay, his tone becoming more serious. "What is that?"

As they watched, a floating rock drifted away, more of the metal coming into view. From the center of the metal, a pair of huge fins jutted out, ending at points as they tapered back into the middle of the bulk, orange circles that might be windows spaced along the sides.

It didn't look like any ship Lambert had ever seen, and he was sure it was in fact, a ship, and not derelict metal, the orange lights all the proof he needed.

"Maybe some kind of... Confederate prototype," Lambert said. "You got a tag, Alice?"

"Negative," it said. The way it said so made it seem it was just as surprised as the humans were. "It's emitting signals, but none that correlate to UEC frequencies."

"What the hell does that mean?" Carl asked.

"It means the UEC has found a way to completely overhaul the concept of their signatures, or..."

More of the ship peeked out from behind the asteroid, like a spooked deer peering round the bulk of a tree, more of the strange ship coming into view due to their changing angle. The back half of the ship was broader than the front, the widest points of the fins sweeping together to the bases of two long, tail-like protrusions at the rear of the craft, which added over ten meters to the overall length.

The ship's profile looked very angled, like the metal was sweeping backwards over the entire hull, the panels creating ridges where they met. It was also very pointy, the twin horns on the front resembling jaws, the tails belonging more to animal than a machine.

"Kinda looks like a big, metal manta ray," Carl mused. "What's that glitterin' thing around it?"

Lambert saw what he was talking about. The metal profile was slightly distorted by a group of triangular shapes forming a barrier over the ship, the sections glittering like glass as they caught the light. The distortion continued all around the ship, Lambert saw, imprisoning the strange vessel in a giant transparent ball.

"Is that a shield?" Lambert asked, focusing on the curved panels floating in the air. "Since when were shields a thing?"

"Since never," Carl said. "that thing ain't made by humans. Can't be."

"Suvelians?" Lambert asked.

"How the hell should I know?"

Before Lambert could reply, his systems lit up with motion warnings, and he watched the ship bloom on the thermal feed. The two tails on the end erupted in jets of blue flame, and the ship began to turn. Unlike the pivots of human ship maneuvers, this thing drifted along as if it were banking, Lambert just making out another engine on its underbelly flaring to life, simulating the motion. On either side of the thruster he could see what looked like pair of railguns sitting flush against the hull.