Doctor Emilio Franco was terribly bored. Galicia Research Station was near empty, utterly devoid of life. The vast majority of his Reaper family masters were far from home, in the Omegas, in some sort of mission against Coalition operatives or something. Even the defence wing had been called up for this hit, rumour had it that a very high priority target was going to go the way of the dodo tonight, perhaps enough to cripple their pinko enemies.
He had no more work to do, their nuclear warhead supply had reached the point where they were storing as much as possible for the next great push, so sat around, lounging in the observation deck alone, reading the occasional report that filtered through from Malta to keep himself occupied, whilst sipping at a small glass of hard liquor. It tasted like H-Fuel, but he hardly cared, he had had worse before.
There were some odd sightings in Omicron Alpha's nebulae by one of the roving destroyer patrols occasionally sent there to discourage Corsair and Bounty Hunter infiltrators. Apparently some unknown snubfighters had passed through their defensive net. Nothing unusual, really. That sort of crap happened more than the guards would like to admit, the rival families of competing Dons often engaging in cloak-and-dagger operations amongst themselves.
He sat back, and began to fall asleep, the occasional beep from the monitors providing a soothing lullaby for the young physicist. That was until they turned from the repetitive electronic rhythm that they held to the bass-filled proximity siren.
"?Ay, caramba!"
The boys were back already, dammit! He shook his head, slightly under the influence of the so-called liquor he'd been sipping. He better look busy, he thought, so set about doing so.
"Uh... Reapers Alpha One Dash One, please give a, uh, situation update, if you, er, don't mind?"
He got no response. It was probably due to his poor radio skills. He wasn't a bloody deck officer, why did he have to do this?! Did he have to do this, actually, surely this was somebody else's job, right?
He panicked and went to visuals, he had no idea of what else to do...
Strange. The automated defence turrets were locking on to the patrol... Probably a security measure, but best to check them out on scans anyway.
"Uh, Reapers Alpha One Dash One, we're scanning for abnormalities..."
Weird, they weren't requesting permission to dock, and... wait, why was this ship not reading as the Reaper-pattern Falcata? It was apparently of Hessian design, according to his databases, which automatically identified the vessel for him.
Not good.
"Activating defences!"
Too late, he could hear the alarms from down the corridors that were made when turrets were disabled. Damn! Damn!
He went back to the visuals, to get a better look, trying to see if he could manually aim the last of the turrets.
The hostile vessels buzzed across his screen insultingly. One flew Coalition colours, no surprise there. The other, strangely enough, was painted with a Red Hessian Army flag. Emilio pushed a series of buttons in blind panic, accidentally broadcasting the images to his lords and masters.
"Damn, I'm in trouble now..."
He frantically looked around, looking for any hint from the ambivalent, empty room, about what he should do next. He looked left, right, down, up... up, through the viewport, where he could see a Hessian ship slowly pull away as time slowed down...
Then only light.
Reports of casualty figures reached Reaper Command shortly thereafter, accompanied by Doctor Franco's broadcast images. Now, it was personal.