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You watch your ship pick through a field of debris, its forward running lights illuminating clusters of semi-autonomous salvage-drones as they drag material back into the hanger.
>Roll1d20+5, best of three. DC: 6, 10, 14
The final phase of the engagement had been surprisingly risky. You had fought baseline humans often enough to anticipate a range of common reactions when they lost their advantage. Most would negotiate surrender or spool their frame-shift drive to escape. Some would attempt a final, suicidal attack run – hard-coded altruism, taken to an unproductive extreme.
What you witnessed was significantly more concerted. Their last carrier had entered a terminal deorbit burn before dumping a full battery of missiles from its launch cells. One of your bomber groups managed to engage it with only minutes to spare – destroying both the vessel and its ordinance in a massive, actinic burst of hard radiation.
The two strike bombers it launched had come even closer to reaching their goal. Both had felt the outer reaches of planetary atmosphere before they were terminated – one from a barrage of guided missiles launched by a quartet of fighters, the other by the SOLSTICE’s pulse laser, operating at the extreme edge of its lethal range.
It was a familiar contingency, you realize – something that you could have done once, had the situation presented itself. Suppression of industrial and technological output was the ideal outcome, but a more thorough reduction of planetary infrastructure was an acceptable fallback option. You knew the launch pattern. Your hull had carried the necessary warheads.
However, you still failed to understand why the fleet was here in the first place – above a world harboring scattered settlements and a single, ailing orbital station. For a long moment, you wished that you could defer to a human captain. Impulsive and irrational, but also flexible in a way you found difficult to emulate.
But they were long gone. When baseline humans perished, not even their lineage memories remained.
Instead, you process a transmission relayed by an interceptor squadron scouting above the planet’s sand-streaked atmosphere.
The designation syntax is poor and unpracticed, but you recognize it.
A docking…invitation – if your memory was correct. A novelty. You realize you may have never received one before.
>ACCEPT. Dock the SOLSTICE to the orbital station. [This will allow you to access the surface of Theta Ophiuchii-3]
>SIGNAL. See if you can contact your crew on the planet’s surface first.
>DEFER. Look around the system first. Attempt to gather information from salvage before docking.
