A Corsican's Gift

[Eppy]

Sarah stepped over to the bed and smelt the unpleasantness. Santiani had not been alone in bed shortly before he died, that was for certain. Not judging by those sheet stains. She made a note to see if anybody had bothered matching the DNA on the sheets against the database, and figure out who it was. If he was murdered, whoever she was would be a prime suspect. The Ammiraglio watched silently as she combed the bed and the room, checking under objects, in drawers, cabinets, closets, in clothing, everything. Eventually she moved to the bed itself and discovered nothing out of the ordinary.

"Damn it."

"Nothing, Senorita?"

"Nothing at all, sir. I suppose I could just be being paranoid."

"Eh, think nothing of it, Senorita. As you said, it is your job, yes?"

"I suppose that's true. I think we can forego our trip to the morgue. Let's get back to work organizing a staff and setting up a few control ships." She headed for the doorway and keyed on the pad.

"Tell me when you see something interesting, Madam Director." Santiago nodded, following.

She first checked the vessels already assigned to Maltese Intelligence. It was...sparse. A Scimitar, four Sabres, a Tridente, an old, decrepit Lane Hacker Gunship once used by Dennis Jameson for his research, and the 'flagship,' an old, old RM-1, which the roster listed as no longer functional.

"Sir, what's with this old Destroyer on here? It's listed as inoperational."

Santiago peered over her shoulder at the pad. "The Carvadena? She was scrapped six months ago. I have no idea why that's on there."

"Joy. Not a single real warship."

She began to scroll through ship lists. She'd need several smaller ships, of course; she scrolled through the list of available ships and selected, first, an Arrow; one of the fastest, most agile ships on the market, she wanted a vessel for reconniasance; she had a project in mind for it. The Corsair systems, the deep ones behind Gamma, were still a mystery; most of the data they'd managed to gather was from agents within the Corsair population on Crete, and that simply wasn't enough. She wanted to know exactly what was back there - whether by invasion or sabotage, there had to be something worth taking down, if it was behind the Corsair curtain, and a hyperagile ship like the Arrow, modified for increased sensor performance by the Hackers, would be ideal for dealing with such a thing.

"I want that Arrow we've got in deep storage, sir..." she absentmindedly let loose as they exited the lift and headed for the conference room.

"Yours, Senorita."

She went back to browsing. A couple of dummy transports would be required for observing things in Corsair space, Miner space - even House Military systems. Of particular interest was that infernal black hole of information Alaska. The Order, the Bounty Hunter Core and the Navy all seemed to have their fingers in there, but amazingly enough - the BHG were involved, after all - relatively little managed to come out of it. She requisitioned two Borderworlds Transports, the S.S. Jameson's Way and the S.S. Casavant~Freres'. They'd need to be refitted, of course, but that could be dealt with later.

She then moved on to the matter of a capable base for herself. Her first thought was one of the eight available Stortas, but she quickly abandoned the idea of a Destroyer. They were modular and fast, she'd give them that, but they didn't really have the frame she needed; there just wasn't enough space for the kind of facilities she'd need for a base. She considered a Battleship; the Sarah Caruso had been pulled from the front lines a week earlier; she was as modular as the Destroyer, large enough, and fast, certainly; one major problem occurred to her. The Battleships were gas hogs of epic proportions, and they were NOT stealthy; in fact, they were basically built to accelerate towards a target, lay down a huge volume of fire on said target, and leave at speed once said target was destroyed. Not good for hiding or sneaking; converting it for intelligence use would be monumental.

She looked at the spare Barge they used for hauling Niobium from 81 to Corsica. It wasn't being used, the fields had run dry recently. She balked. No. Definitely not.

Then her eyes fell on the sole Dreadnought in dock. The MNS Bordighera was a second-generation Dreadnought; she wasn't one of the original models, formed with the bulbous, solid-cast hull plates, so difficult to maintain and harsh on the eyes, that had graced the first generation, but she wasn't up to standards anymore; the third generation had been optimized for power efficiency and dispensed with the old conventional fusion drives; instead, the entire stern assembly of the second-generation had been converted into a Direct Artificial Quantum Singularity Propulsion and Power Generation Assembly; an upscaled version of a single Destroyer core had been re-engineered with a solid neutronium assembly to support an exponentially larger singularity - the production process was laborious and expensive, as it involved an incredibly complex cocktail of heavy metals and gases mixed and compressed to enormous levels whilst being bathed in radiation from the Razgriz - and, as opposed to the destroyer where the singularity simply acted as a sparkplug to increase the efficiency and cleanliness of an array of conventional plasma rockets, the singularity itself provided the propulsion with a direct pulsar powered by solid lithium injection. It emitted an abnormal radiation signature, like a temporal anomoly, making it very difficult to focus on; it was not at all a conventional Deuterium fusion drive. It could even be completely 'shut down' simply by cutting the flow of lithium into the event horizon, reducing its energy signature to zero instantly without the complex, energy-consuming process of starting up a Dreadnought's conventional fusion engine. The entire ship, with its optimized power grid, could essentially be blacked out - a perfect ship, capable of running completely silently for extended periods of time, but quickly mobilizing (albeit only in one direction) and delivering devastating firepower to a target; moreover, it was very large, capable of supporting both the facilities she needed and the highly enhanced sensor systems already native to the third generations, which she would be further enhancing for her work. An invisible, floating fortress.

She liked it.

*****

***find lightbringer corporeal***

***find***

***locate***

***conjoin***

Brother Bonello lay on his back, gasping for breath in the sparse infirmary. The sedative and analgesic in his IV kept him drowsy, but he was still conscious, and the voices were loud, very loud. He wanted to get up, to find whatever corporeal lightbringer the voices kept pounding into his brain, but he couldn't. Father Vigaro appeared over him, reciting dim verses from his bible and waving an incense burner over Brother Bonello. The sickened monk recognized it as an exorcism; he prayed to God as best he could that it made them stop so he could be well again.

---

Quick comment - we thought that Panzer was the Leader, Swift. -Agmen

Which Dreadnought was that?

One of your nine.