War Fleet: Resistance

the enemy ships and then continued onwards towards the Tapper.
Olsen closed his eyes and waited for the worst.
But before it could destroy the hull, he heard the satisfying double beep from Schmidt’s computer, indicating the shield systems had come back online.
“Sometimes, sir,” Chang said over the intercom, “all you need to do is flick a switch.”
Of course. The backup shield that Chang had hardwired in. Olsen had forgotten all about it, and the captain had neglected to announce the development to the crew.
The explosion dissipated, and all went silent on the bridge for a brief moment.
Then Olsen let out a breath, not realizing he’d been holding it so long. He looked around the CIC and saw the shoulders of his officers relax.
“Any life forms in range, Santiago?” If there were survivors, they were obligated to render assistance.
“Negative, sir.”
“Debris, anything dangerous?”
“Nothing dangerous, sir.”
“Very well—”
“Except,” Santiago interrupted him. She frowned down at her controls.
Olsen waited for her to continue, sharing a glance with his XO as he did so. He could feel the tension that had just started to ebb out of the bridge crew come flooding back. “Except, Lieutenant?”
Santiago cleared her throat. “There’s something … something out there, though I’m not sure what it is.”
“Visual,” Olsen said as Santiago shifted the viewscreen image. He frowned up at what he saw. “What the hell is that?”

7
In the center of the screen, surrounded by rocky debris and yet seemingly undamaged, an object floated where the center of the asteroid had been: a slowly spinning cube that looked as large as the Extractor shuttle.
“Magnify it.”
The image grew in size, but only got softer in focus, as if the edges were undefined.
Olsen turned around to his XO, who he knew was already scanning the object. “Is this what’s hitting us with those waves?”
“It would appear so,” Rob said after a moment. “It’s emitting high radiation levels. Other than that, I’ve cross-referenced the object against the ship’s database, and I cannot find a single match.”
Olsen looked up at the viewport. “Can you give me sharper magnification, Santiago?”
“I can,” she said, “if I incorporate energy beyond the visible range.” Her hands danced over her controls as the display zoomed in on the cube, overlaying it with false color, making all its intricacies visible — a web of grooves and ridges in layers all over the surface. The object must have been the size of a shuttle, but no larger than that, and it would have needed some kind of defensive energy shielding to have survived that blast. But who, in the entire galaxy, would go to all that effort to protect a cube? And it must have been housed inside one of these asteroids to be so well concealed, but again, why bother?
“What’s its N-number?” Olsen asked.
“Off the scale,” Rob replied. “We don’t have the technology to detect that.”
“Can’t you even hazard a guess? We need to know what we’re looking at, Rob.”
“Sir, without a previous reference, I don’t even know where to start.”
Olsen clenched his teeth. This was the problem with Fleet Command’s new robotic second-in-command devices. Cyborgs were all well and good until they were asked to think for themselves. But after the Grashorn incident, Earth’s politicians had deemed it safer for AIs to keep their superiors in check, rather than a human commander. Rob was a level beneath Captain Olsen, but he interfaced with a network of quantum computers, called Admiralty AI, that had replaced the lower levels of the Admiralty. The AI was constantly analyzing his tactics, something he was very well aware of. It could, in theory, overrule him.
But that hadn’t happened to Olsen—yet. Out here, in the far reaches of space on a lowly mining mission, Admiralty AI didn’t seem to care what he did.
Olsen stood up, folded his hands behind his back, and peered even further at the viewscreen. “Chang, come up to CIC a minute, I need you to look at something.”
“With all due respect, sir, I’m busy repairing the shield generator.”
“It won’t take a minute.”
“Okay, I’m on my way.”
A few moments later there came a clanking of boots from the corridor and Olsen had to marvel at the ensign’s ability to move fast in mag boots. Then Chang rushed in the room, sweat across his brow and his yellow uniform streaked with grease. “At your service,” he said with a salute.
Olsen pointed to the screen. “We could do with some insight on what this might be,” he said. “Did they ever show you anything like this at MISE?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it, sir. What’re its readouts?”
“Incredibly high radiation and an off-the-scale N-number.”
Chang bit his lower lip. “Which means it’s made of incredibly dense material, and I’m guessing it was our source of radiation in the asteroid.”
“That’s what Rob worked out. But it would’ve had to have shielding to—”
Olsen was interrupted by Santiago. “Sir, we’ve detected another object coming in at warp speed.”
Olsen swallowed a curse and kept his face neutral. “Aren’t we popular today,” he murmured.
He could just imagine his brother sitting across from him, shaking his head as he drew cards. What Olsen needed—what they all needed—was a second to think. Unprovoked attacks and unexplained objects didn’t just happen. Not out here, and not after months of nothing.
But the universe wasn’t going to be that accommodating. “Put it on screen,” he said.
“That’s the thing, Captain. There’s no visual sign of anything.”
Olsen swallowed hard. This was the second impossible thing he’d encountered in the last ten minutes. “Then focus on where the FTL-warp signal’s coming from.”
“Aye, sir,” Santiago replied, and the screen went almost black, with only a few asteroids floating by, lit by the sun.
At least, for a second.
Because Olsen blinked, and then he saw it: a ship with two large side engines, connected by a thin curved hull to a massive central sphere. Its shell was semi-transparent for a moment before uncloaking into solid form. The design looked more like a post-modern statue you’d see in an art gallery than something that could fly.