Dust to Dust 1

It was to Donovan's great pleasure that ARC had allowed him to sleep for a full fourteen hours. He would have slept for longer were it not for the dog waking him up for food.

Only three days in, he already had a lead! He was ecstatic at the prospect of this mission ending even that much quicker.

On his way back he came to the decision that he would travel above the plane of orbit, far above it. There should be much less debris there, even if it would be harder to see courtesy of the sun.

Playing with the dog until she was tired (in defiance of ARC's warnings not to due to her recent meal) Don thought about what he would do once his tour was over. Up to this point in his life, his only goal was to become a pilot, he was without a plan for life after this.

He supposed a command role was not out of the picture, but he was sure that the navy would keep him in his current position until he was too old to go on, probably his thirties. After that they likely wouldn't want to risk him leaking information. It wasn't impossible to become an admiral, but it was unlikely.

He might have a future in doctrinal design. He was more aware of ship capabilities in general, and he was the first pilot of what was ostensibly the next generation of combat style. Combining this with actually having studied the current operational standards, he was sure he would be able to come up with some way to counter enemy formations that would be consistently effective.

Ship design wasn't off the table either. Actually having experienced piloting this ship as well as the docking procedures to a carrier, he already had a large number of design changes he wanted to implement.

The first of these, without a doubt, was the addition of a second or even third crew member.

He would also reduce the thickness of armor in order to create more internal space, as well as get rid of the 30 millimeter cannons. He loved both of these things, but railguns just don't rotate fast enough to track the ship even if they do get a target, and it makes no sense to have a level of armor to stop something that can't hit it.

Much to the same beat, having the cannons doesn't really do much as they aren't even really countermeasures. Escort ships, the biggest ships they can damage, can't hurt it. The railguns could stay though, even if he suggested they be downgraded to only Heavy Railguns in order to increase ammunition.

Drawn from his thoughts by Mercedes' exhausted collapse to the floor, he decided that it was finally time to get going. Hopping back in his seat, he turned towards the perceived source of this 'Split' radiation and set the throttle to the same comfortable level as before.

He had lost tons of momentum yesterday, but he had gained enough sleep to bear with getting it back. Now that he as well rested, mistakes were less likely and he felt confident that any anomalies would not escape his notice.

ARC would help on this front, but previous combat had shown that it wasn't proficient at differentiating a non accelerating ship from an asteroid. The irregular shapes of asteroids often looked like ships on sensors if you lacked experience in profile designation.

Over the course of the next two days, Don actually encountered a ship. This ship did not encounter him of course, it was a 'civilian' mining ship splitting and preparing for hauling an asteroid ARC suggested might be particularly high in platinum. This ships sensors were far from capable of seeing him, but its presence did hint to there being something out here.

It was way too far away from any station on his map, and platinum is an extremely important component in railguns owing to its high conductivity and relative resilience to heat, as well as how much of it is used in the computation systems.

If there WAS something large being built out here, it would require a lot of platinum.

Additionally, he had also noticed that this radiation glow was slowly getting more intense on the sensors, to the point he was actually able to make out a clear circle in the direction he was heading. The signal was now more intense than the sun, though he couldn't see anything in that direction that would suggest there was indeed something there.

As far as he could tell, there was naught but empty space. Evidently, there was some fuckery afoot.

IF there was something in that direction, then its signature was being concealed on every wavelength save this Split radiation.

Though the lack of a gravitational signature was causing a bit of apprehension, Don supposed it was feasible to hide such a thing with an artificial gravity field.

But before he could continue, he opted to once again stop and rest. He had been up for a long period of time once again, though he was significantly less irritable this time around owing to the fact he wasn't being shocked awake every half hour.

He had still consumed some chocolate to aid him in staying alert.

Taking the time to slow down, he discussed with ARC the possibilities of what they were looking for was.

"Could it really be a super ship?"

"It is entirely within the realm of possibility. We have evidence of such after all."

"Aside from the platinum trawler and this signature, what else is there?"

"The space in this region has an extremely low concentration of debris. If there were a construction project going on, the first order of business would be to clear the area of threats, correct?"

"Yeah, but that could be coincidence. I'm more concerned with the fact we aren't seeing anything. If we operate under he assumption that they have the same tech as us, that means they also know how to make that field that gives us our level of stealth."

"Are you suggesting a data breach?"

"I'm suggesting we may be in over our heads."

"How so?"

"If we can detect Split Radiation in spite of such a system, and they have an equivalent level of technology, presumably our own, what's to say they don't already see us?"

Unable to come up with a satisfactory response, ARC fell silent. Eventually, Don and Mercedes fell asleep too.