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One of the key plot threads that appears in all three of the major Starships Universe military science fiction story collections is continuing encounters with what human crews believe are the remnants of an Ithis presence near Alliance star systems and throughout the contested regions of Core space.

The encounters grow in complexity as the series progresses, and they also begin to change as the threat to the Alliance comes into focus. The first to address the alien presence is a man named Zachariah Atwell, who is believed to be a former high-ranking officer in the Skywatch Marine Corps. There is also considerable evidence he is either an active duty intelligence operative or in some way attached to a covert operation of some kind. Given his access to weapons and advance knowledge of the movements of Skywatch fleet spacecraft, it is highly likely he is being continuously briefed by someone in a position to access sensitive information.

The first mission of the battleship Argent is to locate and verify the status of DSS Dunkerque, a Pershing-class strike cruiser under the command of Vice Admiral Charles Hughes. Dunkerque was on course for the Gitairn region, a series of partially contested sectors that contains the Bayone, Raleo, Manassas and Core VII star systems. The reason these systems are remarkable is because there is an unusual Imperial presence in them despite the fact they are far removed from Sarn space. This presence is not new. By the time Argent and the Perseus Task Force arrive, Sarn warships have been operating in and around the Gitairn systems for some time.

The first unusual event when Argent arrives is reception of an extraordinary signal warning her captain of a trap. Argent encounters a cruiser-class warship which fires on her. She also attacked by a boarding party that somehow got aboard ship without the use of a transport. Her point defense apparently fails, leaving her vulnerable to an inbound missile attack. It requires heroic intervention by Argent’s chief engineer to save the ship from a second attack.

Key to the mystery of what actually took place during the battle is the fact the enemy cruiser was simply there. No course was detected. Long-range scanners didn’t pick up the vessel at any appreciable range. It only took Mockingbird 114 a few seconds to break Argent’s defensive perimeter. The question Captain Hunter never had time to ask was “where did that ship come from?” Some might credibly conclude the only reason Argent wasn’t more seriously damaged was that Hunter launched a Nemesis and a heavy ready alert right when he needed them most.

Because the events of the encounter took precedence, there wasn’t time to evaluate the question of where the boarding parties came from either. Although they were discovered in the engineering section near Argent reactor seven, there was no telling what other sabotage they might have perpetrated against Hunter’s command prior to the alert. There is every reason to believe the enemy boarding party was responsible for the point defense malfunction. That would have been the obvious system to take off-line if they had knowledge the enemy cruiser was preparing a missile attack. Argent did manage to deploy countermeasures against the missiles, but they were only partially effective.

The real question is what combination of technologies made it possible to simply drop a cruiser-class warship almost on top of DSS Argent and to simultaneously position armed boarding parties in her engineering section? Where was the cruiser’s crew? Why didn’t they issue a challenge?

It is then Major Moody and Lieutenant Curtiss encounter Zachariah Atwell. He claims to have wired the entire spacelane traffic control deck, and like the boarding parties he was somehow able to get himself aboard Argent with no obvious transport ship.

The problem with Atwell’s story about a giant fleet ready to attack the entire Core frontier is the deployment of his forces don’t make any sense. Lieutenant Zony Tixia points this out almost immediately, which raises suspicions even further. How and why does Colonel Atwell believe interfering with the missions of both an admiral’s flagship and a five-million-ton battleship will benefit him somehow? What is he after?

Then yet another cruiser materializes, only to serve as a screening vessel for multiple war shots from the Sentinel weapon on the surface of Barker’s asteroid. This would have made a fine second act for the mystery of the appearing and disappearing spacecraft except for one thing.

Almost exactly the same series of events is taking place at Station Nineteen. But this time they are targeting Jayce Hunter’s command, not Argent.

It is at this point most would be asking why these two officers and their ships are being targeted? Absent heroic actions by their crews and fellow ship captains, Task Force Perseus and DSS Argent could have easily been crippled or worse. Heavily armed enemy personnel were encountered both aboard Station Nineteen and at least one Perseus warship.

Somehow both men and ships are simply winking into existence at times and places where they consistently pose an extreme threat to two of the most capable commanding officers in the fleet.

This is only the first of several mysteries Skywatch will face as the story of the Ithis unfolds.

Key to the Starships at War series is recognition that Colonel Atwell, whomever he is working with and the crews of numerous Skywatch spacecraft have encountered something none of them can adequately explain. Later in the series, Captain Hunter finds almost full-size replicas of several ships inside the Lethe Deeps planetary defense base complex on Bayone Three. An expedition to the subterranean levels beneath the complex reveals whatever is happening to the ships might also be happening to their crews.

But the speculation, shaky evidence and fear that follows is what compels Hunter and Alliance forces to consider something even more outlandish: that wherever these alien artifacts and technologies originated, their space is totally dissimilar to Core space. Human scientists have evidence their civilization might have perished more than a billion years ago, and that even if we had the ability to find their home planets, no human would be able to survive in Ithis space because its temporal characteristics and the total absence of physics as we know them make it impossible.

It isn’t long before human scientists uncover more evidence suggesting crew members of at least one Skywatch vessel have already somehow already arrived in an Ithis star system. It is so far from human space nobody can even measure or comprehend the distances involved. How they got there is an even bigger question.

So in case you are wondering if Strike Battleship Argent is just a story about big spaceships shooting at each other, allow me to assure you it isn’t.

From Starships at War

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