[Starhawk]

2420.8 The Cortina 9 Incident

The 3rd fleet was preparing to take yet another world for the Imperium, Ross and Yu watched intently as the battle line approached the enemy world, Cortina 9 had several weapon platforms on it, fortunately for the ships of the 3rd fleet their I-Laser cannons easily outranged the old style depleted uranium cannons, the task of eliminating the platforms fell to the HMS Behemoth, since it was her first combat action Ross wanted her crew to get some weapons practice in before they met a real enemy some day.

“Admiral the Behemoth reports her gunnery crews are locked on target and….’
“Hold on.” The Chief tactical officer cut off the com officer and suddenly leaned in closer to her screen.
“Admiral something’s wrong I’m getting a shadowing effect down there, I’ve lost sight of the enemy colony’s dome, as well as everything else within the target area.” that news made everyone nervous, nothing should cause an entire section of a planet to suddenly shadow out on sensors.

“Sir, it’s not just us I’m getting this message from the entire fleet, um sir Captain Smith reports Behemoth‘s gunnery crews had lock, she’s firing.” the communications officer turned to face the Admiral and Yu, a look of disbelief on his face, the com channel had just filled with static, no one could order the Behemoth to stand down, and within seconds it was too late anyway as the massive warship fired her cannons towards the planet’s surface.
The screen showed a massive cloud rising from the surface, where the warship’s beams had just impacted: a cloud that could only be caused by two atmospheres mixing which could only mean one thing.
Suddenly the com frequencies cleared, and the shadowing disappeared revealing the true horror of what had just happened. The view screen showed a massive crater where there had once been a colony dome with millions of Phong.
“Son of a *****! What just happened?” Yu shouted angrily, she looked away from the view screen and turned pale faced towards Admiral Ross “I’m sorry sir.” was all she managed to croak out.

“Don’t worry about it Lin, I understand perfectly.” Ross said sourly as he unhooked his shock frame.
“Captain Smith is hailing sir.” The communications officer said numbly.

“Put him on now.” Ross said bitterly, the view screen switched from an image of the devastated colony to that of a stunned Navy captain.

“My God sir I wasn’t targeting the dome I swear on my honor, I don’t know how it happened my crew wouldn‘t make that mistake.” Smith was obviously trying to cover his own *** but Ross at least gave him the credit for defending his crew as well.

“I know it wasn’t on purpose Smith, it would only take one hit from an I-laser on an unprotected dome to make it blow apart and the Behemoth had only fired three of her cannons before Smith ordered his gunners to cease fire and it was just an unlucky shot that happened to breach the dome after a the other two had brought down the shields of the two underpowered weapon platforms that killed millions of Phong.

“I want you to pull Behemoth off the firing line, I’m going to send down investigation teams as soon as possible but I don’t want you here, understood?”
“Aye Admiral, understood.”
“Good, Ross out.” Ross turned to Yu, she had stepped out of site while he talked to Captain Smith so that she wouldn’t let her own feelings on the matter spill into the conversation.

“Lin, I want you to ready a unit of marines and techs and send them planet side as soon as they can get down there, find out what was causing that shadowing effect, and see if it really was that shot from Behemoth that destroyed the colony.” He kept his voice low enough so that only Lin could hear.
She quirked her head and opened her mouth to speak until she noticed the expression on Ross' face grew sharper, her mouth closed audibly and she turned around to carry out her orders.
But why would her oldest friend and now senior officer not tell her what he thought was going on?

It took the investigation teams 12 hours to comb over every inch of the wrecked site of a once thriving enemy world, and what they found was truly disturbing, a massive machine the size of a fighter craft with a single human female hooked up to it by thousands of wires and sensors, when the teams tried to remove her the machine killed her, quickly severing her spinal cord.
The investigation on the machine it’s self proved equally as disturbing as it’s discovery, it was of completely unknown technology though the techs did believe that it was somehow using the woman as some sort of power source or focusing lens, Ross immediately had the thing labeled “Ukjent” shipped off towards the Sparta Institute of military science.

On the other front of the Icaran expansion three more Munumb worlds fell o the 1st fleet, and even more mysterious artifacts were discovered and shipped off to Sparta for immediate quarantine and investigation, as to who they might belong to and what they did, the odd thing was they all showed signs that they were Psi Tech but the on scene techs couldn’t prove it no matter what investigations they ran.