RavensDagger

  Chapter Eighty-he Mushroanymede station approached. Or rather, they approached it.

  The station was carved into the side are of a small moon, and that had led Ivil to imagine a certain... shape to the station.

  Stations and habitations stuck to the side of asteroids and lost ds wereirely unheard of nor unon. Stone was a det radiation shield, it was tough and could serve as a good anchor, and it was heavy and stable. Some brag and reinfort, and an asteroid the size of ahly ti could make for the perfee for a detly rge station.

  Ganymede was a little different. The station wore the moon it art of like a mushroom wore its hat. The moon was carved into, turning it into a rather fat hemispherical shield around a station that was built like a long stem. The stem ointing tanymede itself, and was rger at the 'top' where it met the rocky top of the station. It narrowed down as it went until it ended in a narrow point.

  The station was quite pretty, Ivil decided as she spied upon it from afar. There were several smaller habitation domes on the rocky side, likely ected via tuhrough the surface to the maihe stem itself was rather rge.

  At a gnce, she estimated it to be about as rge around as an Imperial Star Dreadnought, only with twice the length. The stem housed several dozen smaller dog facilities for ships the size of the Sappho and smaller, and the narrowed tip had skeletal protrusions fer cargo vessels.

  At the moment, two rather a looking cruisers were statio the tip of the station, and three more were h nearby with a small plement of destroyers and frigates and corvettes.

  The Jovia, in all of its underwhelming glory.

  "Twenty-Six," Ivil said as she tapped the s on. " you help me identify a few ships?"

  "One sec," came the reply before Twenty-Six appeared on one of the monitors on the captain's seat. "What sort of ship?" she asked.

  "One moment, I'll figure out how to tie you into the Sappho's cameras," Ivil said.

  "Ah, nevermind, I do it!" Twenty-Six replied. Ivil saw a number of warnings popup and disappear on the sole stuck to her seat, then the ship's camera was turned on. It adjusted a little, log onto the station, theiny forms o it.

  The camera zoomed in, and what they saw looked like... a grain of ri a pte across the room.

  "Uh," Twenty-Six said. "That's a little far for an ID," she said.

  "Hmm," Ivil replied.

  "How did you evehem?" Twenty-Six asked.

  "My eyesight is superior to the ship's sensors," Ivil replied. "One moment... I'll carve out a facsimile of what I see."

  It wasn't too difficult to create some raw iron in the shape of the vessels she was seeing out in the distance. She made sure that she captured as many small details as she could as faithfully as she was seeing them. Some of her senses, of course, weren't limited to the visual, but they still gave her an impression of armoured panels and locations with bumps and ridges that made up the surface of the vessels.

  Twenty-Six squeaked as a small armada appeared around her head.

  She filed for a bit on camera, then calmed down and blinked up at the floating models. "Oh," she said before carefully plug the rgest out of the air. "Did you make these?"

  "Obviously," Ivil said with some slight amount of pride.

  "They're almost as detailed as a model kit," Twenty-Six said.

  "Almost?" Ivil muttered.

  "Uh, anyway, yeah, let's see... These four cruisers are the same, I think I've seen them mentioned somewhere. They're Jovian pattern Hurrie light cruisers. Though I don't think the Jovians call them 'light' but that's what they are."

  " you tell us more?" the question came from Aurora, who was leaning ba the unications station. She had been reading something for a while now, not truly paying attention, but it seemed like her curiosity iqued.

  "Sure! So, they were built he start of the third inter-system war. I think there were supposed to be like, fifty built, but only thirty made it out of produ before the war ended. One was lost in this big fight with some pirates a few years ago. The rest, I guess, are around still," Twenty-Six said. "They were pretty advanced when they were built, but they're also some of the first warships built outside of Mars ah, at least capital-size ships."

  Ivil here were several pahat built cargo vessels that were rger, of course, and those were located across the system. anizations able to build rger warships, however, those were unon. It was ohing to sp together a destroyer-sized vessel like the Sappho. It was ao build aire cruiser or aire fleet of them.

  "Are they hy in any way?" she asked.

  Twenty-Six sidered it for a moment before shaking her head. "They haven't had much testing? I mean, I kinda vaguely recall people making fun of them on some forums, and they're supposed to be very hard to maintain. Jupiter isn't known for having great engineers, but it does have plenty of resources moving through, and a lot of people moved here during the third intersystem war."

  "That could mean that they had access to some good engineers, but it might also just... not," Aurora said. "A lot of resources were being used up during the flict."

  "Yeah," Twenty-Six said. "They're retively lightly armed, but heavily armoured. Not very fast, I don't think. Um, the rest of these ships... the destroyers are a mix. Some of these are old Earth-Alliance ships, some of these corvettes are Martian-made ercial transports with some heavy modifications, it looks like."

  "You know," Pixie said. "You could just ask the local girl."

  "That's a fair point," Ivil said with a grin. "So, Pixie, what's the story here?"

  The tiny pilot shrugged. "It's a mix of whatever the local moons could grab for cheap. The League of Free Moons barely has any money, but they need a guard fleet to scare pirates off. It's not all bad, but it's nothing too special. Your shiny Martian navy would ugh at the sight of the entire Jovia, but there are enough warships here to scare off even the biggest pirates. You'd he entire Ceres pirate fleets w together to really push hard into the Jovian system, and they all hate each other too much to ever try."

  "So, ships mostly designed for anti-piracy?" Ivil asked.

  "Yeah. Those lighter ons Twenty-Six mentiohey track faster, shoot more rounds. That's important whehing you're fighting are mostly modified civilian-grade ships," Pixie said.

  So, the kinds of things that Ivil expected the average space pirate to field. It made some sehe Jovia is the rgest one in the League of Free Moons," Aurora said. "Most of the other moons have their own defensive fleets, but Jupiter has so many moons that it o i in a rger overall fleet. And it was closer to the inner systems during the st war. Some of the fighting reached this part of space."

  "All good to know," Ivil said. "Seeing so many ships right o su important station isn't too surprising, then."

  "Obviously now," Aurora said. "That station is in geosynous orbit right above the seat of the League of Free Moons. The unofficial seat, that is."

  "Unofficial?" Ivil asked.

  The noblewoman sniffed. "Do you think it is so easy to have so many small govers agree to a single location to call our 'seat' of power? It's like herding zero-g adapted cats. The thing is, Ganymede spent a fortune building a rge... pace of sorts on the ground. Supposedly for the Emperor of Jupiter, but he never used it. And it's now the location of many of the anizations that make up the League."

  "Lots of really pretty, really expensive architecture," Pixie said. "I've flown over a few times. Did some escort work for some political sorts too. The city's nice, but it's also kind of empty? Really weird space."

  And it had a rge station h above it, needle stem pointing down at all times, a station which held one of the three Emperors. Ivil imagihat the people below wouldn't soon fet that.

  In a way, it might be a sign of security. Mars often wanted her to have a fixed location like that, but other than a few stations she enjoyed and some quieter paces on the surface, she never cared for one grandiose pce to park herself.

  Aurora jumped as the station's traffitrol piheir ship and started asking for information. Soon they'd be pulling in, and she'd have to... to be polite.

  She wasn't looking forward to it.

  ***

  RavensDagger