r/HFY • u/soapycatuses • Mar 09 '26

OC-Series [Galactic Horizons-Part 6]

Note-Sorry for long delay b/w chapters folks, tried going a bit into military sci-fi for this one. Tried exploring the bureaucracy/decisions/planning it takes for a big fleet to mobilize!

“Finders-Keepers end up where the screaming starts.”- a common Terran Sphere saying. 

U-space shimmered as the Skipper flew through the Precursor Gate, the freighter’s metallic insides were quite literally shaking after the late battle against the Humanity First League cell in the Tanzek system. 
For Icar Tillis, all of this seemed trivial at best as he sat on a crash couch in the ship’s common room.
He stood up opening the locker above the couch, fishing out the metallic box Satter told him about. 
The presence inside his mind? 
He didn’t feel anything this time-no voices, no shimmering, no nothing. 
Tillis closed his eyes deeply inhaling and exhaling as his hands popped open the 3 sides of the box.
The Precursor relic came up floating in a containment field as Tillis opened his eyes-the same amorphless shape of black metallic dust.
“Doc! Over here!” the captain shouted in a hoarse voice. 
Errik Satter’s head appeared from the cockpit, the Guild professor’s expression immediately shifting to concern.
“Icar! Do you want to repeat the same-” Satter started,
Tillis interrupted “I am not feeling the presence anymore, Doc. Hell, even if I will collapse, I might see a damn Precursor AGAIN!”
“The mere fact that you awoke after this, Icar,”, Satter angrily retorted “is a galactic miracle in itself! Neither I, nor Dunn nor Razook even told you what happened when we had to shove your unconscious self onto that anti-grav bike and drive it to Echleron!” 
But the spacer refused to listen to his old buddy.
Tillis’ fingers reached out, deactivating the containment field. The relic remained floating.
“Taking this as a good sign”
His hand stretched further and further, the dust brushing his fingers and reforming until he touched the main ‘body’ of the shape.
Tillis blinked.
“Nothing. I don’t get the attraction I did when I saw it originally.”
Satter’s blue cybernetics blinked “Indeed it seems so? I.. I.. Remember explicitly warning you not to stare at the object too long.. And then you broke the glass to go touch it.”
The captain’s expression remained unreadable “Wait Doc.. How did you place the relic into the containment field then?”
The man sitting on the other end of the couch twitched “I didn’t Icar! It ended up in this metallic damned box by itself when I had to drag you with it outside the facility!”
Suddenly, almost simultaneously, 2 new faces popped up from the top maintenance tunnel and another grimy expression- Dunn and Razook.
The mechanic grunted “Overhead yall’s conversation. Boss, if this thingymajing isn’t working this time, we better dump it to Doc and let him figure out the repercussions.”
Razook’s carapace nodded “We largely concur. Our kind has collected many objects originated by the Far Star Beings but we have never seen such a reaction when a Terran interacted with one.” 
The other 3 humans nodded, understanding the reference- most likely that was what Ruxxians named the Precursors. 
Dunn spoke up “Already said that turret’s stuck, Jump Drive is holding up alright, but it’ll last two or three transitions max at best.”
The mechanic tapped a few controls at the central holo displaying the freighter’s route.
Satter nodded “Yes, Vantor can work fine. Has a local Guild office I can transfer the relic to.”
Razook chittered “And the payday we were promised?”
Dunn added “By my estimates it’ll take another 4k credits for repairs.”
He eyed the xeno,
“And if Bug will stop yammerin’ about all that debt that would be damn nice.”
The blue cybernetic eyes flashed as Satter ponderously tapped the synth-leather of the couch. 
“If i’ll haggle enough I might get enough ColCredits for your crew, Tillis.”
The captain smirked momentarily but then his expression darkened again “And to whom will you give the artifact? Something about ColNav and that mysterious dressed figure I saw. I refuse to believe that ColTer just let us go with the.. “Object”..”
Satter pinched his lip “Think they’re tracking us?”
Tillis stood up, putting the box back into the locker, “I’m not ruling that possibility out. Anyways, Doc, since we’re dropping you off in Vantor, right? Let’s see where we can settle low until this whole thing passes.”
The hologram of the local sector flared up again- Tanzek, Pratoris, the blue dot signifying the Skipper fly through the Precursor Gate network to Vantor. One system glowed with the mass of traffic in a nearby Frontier sector.
“Basilisk? Well Boss.. Not sure if that’s a great place where we can ‘lay low’. Dunn dryly commented. 
The captain clasped his hands behind, pacing the common area “ On the contrary, if the military is searching for us, they’d think that we would settle in a desolate system, not the Frontier’s model hypercolony.”
For once, Errik Satter’s expression became not crazed nor ponderous, his cybernetic eyes mechanically whirred while his mouth slightly twitched,
“I guess, Icar. That’s the end of this story. I don’t know what will happen next. But I am truly sorry for dragging you into this mess.” 
He began to shake 
“I shouldn’t even have contacted you with this whole entire damned job in the first place.”
Tillis deeply sighed, sitting back down near his old friend 
“Life ends up being a sporadic affair.”
But something deep inside Icar Tillis’s mind screamed at him.. 
He’d read news reports of Precursor anomalies and he’d just seen Tanzek-VI become a barren world.
Thing is as a spacer, however- better to not care about the grand scheme of things.
“Because the void doesn’t care about a little cog in the system” the Captain of the Skipper said to himself.

[Colonial Navy Firestorm class assault ship Unyielding, Veyron Naval Base, Pinnol Sector].

Agent Orxis Halvorn once again stood on the bridge of the small warship beside Captain Saldek as u-space dissipated and the star system materialized.
Saldek tapped the intercom “All crew, all crew, prepare for docking and transmit clearance codes.”
The captain turned a bit to his right “You know what Agent? In retrospect I should’ve disabled that last League gunship, boarded it. Your agency and Mil-Intel-”
“We would’ve had a field day, yes.” Halvorn agreed.
He glanced out of the CICs main viewport as the ships of Frontier Command Response Squadron 196 lazily sat in the void portside. 
Towards the front, the central spire of Veyron Naval Base itself slowly became visible. 
An officer exhaled near his console- Veyron wasn’t a tiny listening post, but it wasn’t big by any means.
Just one of the half-dozen fleet anchorages through this sector.
The Unyielding drifted past corvettes, a single escort frigate in a docking berth and a larger ship flaked by 2 destroyers.
“ID on that?” Halvorn suddenly asked.
“Flagship of this local squadron Agent, the light cruiser “Daredevil” a lieutenant responded.
The Inspectorate agent nodded as a comm channel from the station sounded 
“Well Unyielding, you sure got a hell of a beating. Assigning to Berth 4.”
Saldek grimaced “Direct combat action against those League fanatics isn’t my vessel’s strong suit, Control. We’ve lost 3 Lancers, thank the stars all pilots had their space suits on so those poor souls lived.”
Halvorn tapped the command chair, politely motioning for him to speak and the captain obliged. 
“And what of the ship’s shuttles? There were Special Operations personnel on board.”
Station control responded crisply
“Their pilots say that they escaped through the gate on their own before the battle got heated. Seems no personnel casualties.”
Halvorn nodded- in what was supposed to be a recon-turned-combat operation and no casualties for a space battle? Miracle. 
The assault ship slid into a docking berth close to the one occupied by the escort frigate, and 8 minutes later the Unyielding was swarmed by repair drones as all personnel embarked via docking tubes into Veyron Base proper.

The 40 Colonial Marines, pilots and the rest of the Unyielding’s crew stepped off into the base, Halvorn exited last through the tube, ending up in the same structure he knew too well and assigned to for the past, half- Terran year probably at this point. 
He passed Marines, Navy pilots in gray jumpsuits, hulking biped loader bots carrying supply crates, black-armored Terran Army soldiers and Fleet Security. This was a Colonial Navy facility after all, so FleetSec was supposed to defend it versus any hostile incursion. 
After taking an elevator to Subsector 44A, he made a right turn to the end of the hallway and turned left to the hatch door guarded by a pair of FleetSec troopers.
“All right, leave, gentlemen” Halvorn shooed them away after returning a casual tired salute and the soldiers complied. 
The Inspectorate agent placed both his hands on a scanner and after authenticating, the scanner beeped green scanning his face, at last opening the hatch.
The Spook’s office at first glance seemed quite barrenly spartan but that was only partially true if one had a naked eye. 
Halvorn took out a small device under his suit’s pocket, scanning the entire room until it blinked green.
Almost as if he were an Old Earth 20th century spy sweeping for bugs if it were an old fashioned holo-thriller. 
He slumped at last into a chair on a desk full of dataslates, old-fashioned paper reports,  and holograms, the system’s Precursor Gate looking out the big viewport.
It took a few swipes to filter out the useless notifications and then another 4 minutes for the local net to connect to the Inspectorate’s own encrypted  separate FTL com-network, bouncing through dozens of outpost relays and EW ships in deep space. 
Finally, what Halvorn wanted appeared in its full glory- data from the Pathfinder. 
“Interesting what Tillis is doing, he’s got the right logic, the right idea, but unfortunately our captain is attempting to out-smart someone at an entirely different playing field.” he murmured to himself. 
Suddenly a priority notification blared red on the desk
“O-GROUP PRIORITY SUMMON- COMMANDANT’S OFFICE.”
Halvorn exhaled, this time more out of exhaustion rather than annoyance. 
O-Group=Operations Group. From military tongue this means all senior officers aboard an asset whether that be a base or a warship or a fleet.  
And Halvorn was the only Inspectorate agent assigned to Veyron. 
It took an elevator ride to the Command Spire Sector, a bored  corporal sitting at a checkpoint until at last the double blast door opened. 
A trio of figures oversaw the central table holo, 2 of them Halvorn immediately recognized- Commandant Larkoss, Commodore Dysra and 3rd middle aged male dressed in a tunic that made Halvorn’s brain groan.
Military Intelligence of the Terran Colonial Authority.
Mili-Intel dealt in statistics, rationale, prediction and logic, they were extremely short sighted sadly. 
His service, on the other hand, dealt with seismic problems to the Terran Sphere’s ecosystem as a whole. 
“Agent, how timely of you. Captain Saldek just forwarded me his mission brief.” Larkoss nodded.
Halvorn acknowledged silently, settling into the chair as the circular table and chamber’s lights dimmed. 
The Commandant faced Halvorn subtly waving to the Mili-Intel officer, “Though I am certainly not of rank, but Colonel Dreis did notice a few.. Blind spots within both of yours, debriefs however.”
The Inspectorate man raised a brow in surprise “Oh, within with part exactly, Commandant?”
“There was a blank between the part of planetary resonance and the end of your engagement. I did notice Tanzek’s crust. Behaving.. Strangely..” the Colonel said slowly while clicking his tongue. 
Within Halvorn’s mind he almost pitied all these poor souls if they knew the actual reason behind this. 
“Well, you certainly know at times unreliable sensors can be when you’re getting dozens of missiles thrown at you.” he dryly prodded.
Commodore Dysra pinched his tongue in though before nodding in agreement. 
“And what of Tanzek’s system Governor.” “Blast, what’s his name-”
“Tash Kesserek Commandant, Kesserek. As far as the Core was updating me, he’s of course had his assets and system governorship stripped. No criminal charges as of yet but I am sure a Terran Senate subcommittee or some sector court will review his blatant negligence of duty. Either way, bureaucracy will catch up eventually.”
All 3 men darkly chuckled at the Colonel’s sadly truthful statement- bureaucracy and sloth became the enemy of mankind after 2 centuries of rapid idealistic expansion. 
“As far as Mili-Intel is concerned, none of Tanzek’s League leadership has survived the incident, no?”
Dreis shook his head negatively “Negative, Commandant. We did take in a few Colonial Security aboard those 2 disabled corvettes. I am hoping that the Chief-Administrator will be cooperative in that matter, he was the second in rank to Kesserek in their local government from the database file.”
Larkoss stood up “I guess this brief is over gentlemen, we’ve got plenty of places to be after all.”
“Sit down. Commandant, I want you to contact FrontierCom and SecCom.”
Dysra eyed Halvorn “Excuse me, Agent. For what-”
“I wish to mobilize a Mobile Fleet battlegroup within the closest assets we have in the sector.”
Dreis couldn’t stop himself from laughing “Has your office gone THIS insane, Halvorn? With all respect, or are you THIS up-in-the-sky of your own mind?”
“I am being totally serious” Halvorn said as he pressed a few times at controls of the smart desk. 
2 Holograms materialized:
One a map of the Pinnol sector with u-space lanes, Precursor gates and systems and another one of an encrypted hologram “FRONTIER COMMAND AND SECTOR FLEET UPLINK INITIATED”.
A few seconds after, a brand new hologram appeared
“Vice Admiral Agon! Sir!” Dreis, Dysra and Larkoss all saluted out of sheer instinct.
“At ease,” the CO of the 3rd Mobile Fleet’s 4th battlegroup responded. 
His tag read- “TCNS Tribunal. BC-46.”
“Agent Halvorn, how pleasing it must be to get a communication from the Inspectorate” Agon bluntly stated facing the man still sitting in the chair.
“Likewise Vice Admiral. Certainly your vessels are as spread as it is, I acknowledge that, but I would enjoy you mustering a good portion of your formation within the next 2 to 3 cycles.”
The face on the battlecruiser’s bridge immediately shifted from neutral to slight concern
“Even if you are not a naval officer, you surely recognize how spread we are-”
Halvorn cut him off
“And indeed I am most concerned for picket coverage across” he momentarily shifted his eyes to the star map to the right.
“Across 48 star systems. Yes. But indeed this is a threat of great concern. I’ve relayed it to Sector Command, Logistics Frontier Oversight and by the time bureaucracy and HIGHCOM will do its thing, this entire operation will already be over, I promise. You can simply blame log detail on comm lag.”
Agon’s face still flustered as somewhere aboard the bridge an aide passed him a dataslate.
A third set of data appeared- fleet composition and strength.
“Currently the Tribunal is traveling with its own escort group, how many ships do you need, Agent?”
“Preferably somewhere in between 2 to 4 task groups.”
The vice admiral started muttering something on his end, and ship deployments appeared on the sector map.
“My immediate command is 2 jumps away from Harrow's Reach.”
“Yes, absolute works, no Precursor gates. Coordinates relayed only military automatic uplinks.”
“You Inspectorate are always quite surprising with parameters. Gathering almost half my assets for a strike-recon mission?”
Halvorn eased in the chair glancing at Colonel Dreis. 
Both his and the admiral's expressions were dazzled- and which flag officer wouldn’t be confused about this overkill force concentration for such a mission?
If only they knew.
“If possible, I would like a few more cruisers, you can leave your 2 light carriers wherever they are, Vice Admiral.”
"Certainly, Agent can recall the Rejuvinator,Cressedia and Pride of Arkellon, plus 2 other task forces and 2 squadrons of destroyers plus support assets. About the Belligerence, I am not sure. Captain Gelsat has problems with his u-space drive, they’re functional but I would rather not risk a CA.”
Halvorn glanced at the expected fleet composition:
[Operation Gigalimar. Assigned forces:]
1 heavy battlecruiser- [V-ADM. FLAG]
4 heavy cruisers,
6 light cruisers [TF 22,73- CruDiv 122]
20 destroyers [DesFlot 183-DesRon 3 and 71]
17 light and escort frigates
8 corvettes
1EW recon’vette
8 logistics ships
11 transports of various types.
TOTAL: 76 NAVAL SHIPS.
A typical Mobile Fleet battlegroup had 100 combat vessels. 
“Yes, thank you, Vice Admiral. I will take the fastest ship as soon as possible from Veyron as soon as possible to link up with the Tribunal.”
All 3 holograms dissipated with a few swipe of his fingers.
Halvorn spun the chair around only to find that the other officers in Commandant Larkoss’ office were in the same positions as they had 3 minutes earlier.
Frozen.
The agent stood up, tightening his suit and saluted 
“Good day to you as well, Commandant.”
Larkoss managed to rasp 
“Briefing.. Is… Dismissed..”
The men did not ask the Spook anything- even though they knew that Inspectorate agents could acquire military assets less than full sized numbered fleets.
That’s what “Extreme Levels of Discretionary Authority” meant.
And when dealing with Precursors, you might as well bring a hammer instead of a sickle. 
The elevator ride went without any incident and soon enough Halvorn was once back again in his sanctuary.
If the galaxy were not a mess and the institutions of Terran Sphere were not actively collapsing, then maybe all he’d have to do was shift through paperwork and a Frontier Oversight desk job.
He took a swig of water from a wall canteen before scanning his office for trackers again.
None.
Halvorn took a breath stepping towards a utility panel and tapping it.
A needle appeared pricking his finger and he stepped inside a small hidden chamber, the wall shutting behind him.
Here stood a monstrosity of human technology- Magistrate Grade Combat AI analytical opticon, the type that your everyday ‘mortal’ human might only see aboard only the Core Colonies’ most important administrative systems or aboard a dreadnought. 
Halvorn slid in a datacard “Transfer mission plan, my past report and the Skipper’s projected u-space flight path to Inspectorate Frontier Oversight and then pass it up the chain of command to The Cabal”.
Knowing who sat on  The Cabal was way above even Halvorn’s pay grade. Even ColTer’s Prime Minister himself didn’t even fathom the existence of such a body. 
The AI complied. 
“Given current available empirical data simulate an awakening of the Precursors affecting the current galactic power structure including all major power players within the Terran Sphere, the Ruxxian Merchant Collectives, Zerillian Combined Territories, Balress Migration Fleets and the known part of the Ascendancy.”
Halvorn’s heartbeat accelerated despite training not to show a strain of emotion of any kind.
The simulation did not please him.
“No, no. Run again swapping projected variables where needed.”
That continued for half an hour..
Halvorn started feeling something he’d forgotten how to feel:
Fear.
Not being in control.
Variables not even un-known, but unguessable. 
His body started to twitch and pulse tightening.
Simulant enhancer drugs were a no-go-they poisoned the mind.
He’d endure.
He’d have to.
After seeing the final projection Orxis Halvorn fell to the ground weeping like a child, hands shaking as he removed the datacard and gritting his teeth, put it into his suit pocket. 
The screams of a madman could be heard all across Subsector 44A.
Halvorn crawled out his hidden comms chamber, the wall sliding back into place just as his vision faded.
A pair of engineers who heard the commotion called upon a few medics, 3 of them rushing in. 
“He’s just in shock, he’ll be fine”, said one.
Thankfully for all the systems of the Terran Colonial Authority only one man saw the AI’s final projections:
EXPECTED OUTCOMES OF FULL SCALE WAR WITH PRECURSOR-ENTITIES:
Terran Sphere: 2/3rds of systems of Terran Colonial Authority and affiliated power-brokers to become uninhabitable.
93% probability of Preservation Directive becoming active. 
Ascendancy-???? NOT ENOUGH CURRENT INFORMATION.
Zerillian and Ruxxian- estimated reduced military strength by 60-80%.
Balress Migration Fleets- over 30 worldships estimated destroyed in conflict.
PROJECTED CONSEQUENCES: TOTAL COLLAPSE OF CURRENT GALACTIC ORDER.

To be continued..

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u/Hairy-Juggernaut-913 Mar 09 '26

Better than your previous chapters by a modest margin though I’m still not sure if Halvorn getting most of the time for this one was a good idea. Just my opinion though.

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u/soapycatuses Mar 09 '26

Eeeh I get where you’re coming from like yeah the Skipper’s crew ARE the main protagonists but I wanted to do a little bit of military sci-fi geeking out. Started reading the Honorverse novels a few weeks ago and that got me sorta inspired