Shackleton - Operation Have Sea

[Shulsky]

Guerrero Asteroid Cloud, Vespucci System
16 DEC 834 AS

---

Good heavens he hated Vespucci.

Charles LeMoor wasn’t all too attached to any of the histories in the system, between the wrecks and planet and all of it, at least not when he'd first arrived in. No, he was a good, honest Denver guy who'd just wanted a little more than trying to get a good enough education for the Ageira or Cryer pukes to let him in as a janitor. Heck, it was either that or One Police Plaza, not much in between on Denver, so he'd joined up with Bristol. Of course, they hadn’t mentioned the long as could be patrol routes.

He sighed to himself. Sometimes LeMoor wished he'd joined in with someone else…sometimes. There wasn't much in Vespucci, not if you didn't could the cursory amount of Gaians, occasional Technocrats, and the Barbados party-goers. The orange swirls of the Guerrero swirled about him, past his screens in that little Kali, while a gloved hand tapped a little discordant rhythm on one of the comms boxes.

A glance at the navmap…five more legs on the patrol, then a shower and chow. They hadn’t liked how Veracruz Munitions was holding together, between some issues here and there with the docks, so it'd been Tijuana instead. LeMoor and the rest of the three pilots hadn't much minded it, though the rooms were pretty small all things considered. Maybe it could be chow then a shower. He liked it every now and again, the curses of a rotating menu really. One hand on the stick, maneuvering lazily through the rocks, and a mind halfway elsewhere.

A tone from the sensors shook him from the thoughts. A long look down, longer than usual, soon followed before he silenced it away. Yeah, the scopes only gleaned a large object, metal, manmade, with some energy signatures, but that was enough to make his heart rate rise just a little. It was big enough to be some sort of smaller station, maybe, a station since it wasn’t moving at all. Of course if it was then it wouldn't be wanting to be found…which meant he could expect fighters soon. Instinctively, LeMoor cut his engines, paused a second to wait and see if anything came while keeping that first on his sensors.

Nothing. Not a peep of comms or a flare of engines. Maybe a wreck, then? He felt incredibly stupid at the first idea considering the second. And yet if it was a wreck it'd have to be something big considering what the scopes said. All the cruisers he'd seen in Vespucci had been practically cut in two and this one…this one was just a single object right there. It had to be just a chunk off one of the larger ships, maybe a section off a station or dreadnought. Charles breathed out, long and deep, putting his thoughts all together in that little cockpit. A glance at the crypto box, certain then that it was all good. A flip of a switch on his comms panel and he was live.

“Control, Fault Two.”

“Go for Control.”

“Control, I have a possible new wreck, major size, coordinates to follow.”

“Control copies, standing by.”

A few taps on the console, linking navmap with the channel, was all it took. LeMoor gave it a few seconds though, letting all the information get over to Veracruz. He breathed deeper now, heart no longer beating so fast. There were just procedures, suddenly, checklists of what to do that calmed him.

“Control, coordinates sent. Have you received?”

“Control receives all. Standing by for your visual sweep.”

“Copy.”

He clicked the comms off, took another breath. A few console presses after and his guncam whirred into operation, feeding video out as LeMoor brought his engines up into a low rumble. Slowly, carefully, he plodded through the orange hues until the curtain gradually began to part. First came the sensor arrays, then the sharp-angled bow, before the long hull. He stared as the rest of it came into view, a clear silhouette of the same ship he'd seen time and time again cracked in two with that aft drum practically disintegrated. A look through at exactly where he was on the navmap said that it couldn't really be possible. And yet…

This one was intact. A great big green cloud surrounded her forward hull like a halo, the gaping hole about her flight decks the probable cause, but the rest of her was just there. The engines looked all there aside from a few destroyed here, there, the drum was still intact…Charles just stared.

“Control, you getting this?”

“Control receives all. Mark off with a nav buoy on crypto and RTB, Fault-2.”

---

Operation Have Sea