The Shepherd’s Path, Part 24: Beyond the Angels

The Order of Saint Martin oversees the infantry formations of the Shepherds. These units operate as mechanized infantry, either in direct combat roles or as combat engineers. Infantry often fulfill security roles in urban areas. Typical units are mounted in Tenet APCs with a command vehicle for the platoon and company command elements. Doctrinally, these units favor fire and maneuver, and include a selection of heavy weapons to deal with a variety of targets.

The Order of Saint Mary is the smallest of the orders that make up the Shepherds’ military. It is responsible for marine operations, and most of its members are search and rescue or marines. Several squadrons of capital ships and a dozen submarines operate in the polar ocean. During winter, when the sea freezes, the surface assets are moored in several bases across the polar continent. The Order of Saint Mary will also support search and rescue operations for fishermen or other lost souls in the north pole. Their actions have earned the Shepherds a very positive reputation amongst these isolated communities.

The Order of Saint Therese covers tactical and strategic air assets. The Shepherds maintain a wing of strategic bombers and a selection of ground attack fixed-wing aircraft, but the majority of aircraft are transports with large VTOL and STOVL aircraft designed to transport angel teams to hot spots. Smaller VTOL aircraft are used for tactical support of forces in the field.

The Order of Saint Elijah is a larger order, on par with the Order of Saint Micheal . This order specializes in space forces. The Shepherds’ typical foes do not have space capability, so most Saint Elijah ships are instead designed as hubs where angel forces can be rapidly deployed or as surveillance platforms to watch troop movements. Warships of Saint Elijah are outfitted with orbit to ground missiles to destroy key targets. Warships of the Order of Saint Elijah are mostly named items or relics. Examples include the Nalain Shareef, Lance of Longinus and Excalibur.

One last asset, which belongs to the Order of Saint Michael directly, is the Arks. Arks are large mobile bases which can support a full company of angels, support craft, transports, and all the technical crew to maintain it. While slow, Arks are incredibly well armed. Many attacks have attempted to destroy Arks, only to meet their doom at the end of high-caliber ordinance. Arks are numbered as their primary naming scheme however each Ark typically adopts a nickname. These names are more poetic than angel pilots. For example, Ark 04 is known as the Horn of Gabriel while Ark 09 is known as Tranquil Reverie. Many angel pilots will spend multiple tours aboard an Ark during long-range patrols.

“Radiators stowed. Debris path intersect in three… two… one. Multiple minor impacts on hull. No apparent loss of structural integrity.”

Lieutenant Commander Miretz leaned back in her chair and let out a breath of relief in response to the comms officer’s words. She tapped a button on her armrest. “Cancel alert status. Maintenance, get a drone out to check on the impact zone. Comms, run a trajectory analysis on that debris and scan for the origin point.” She gazed out at the void of space through the bridge’s viewscreen, watching idly for a minute as the light of distant stars occasionally winked out behind the floating wreckage.

The comms officer turned to her. “Scan complete, ma’am. We have the trajectory, but no identified origin point.”

No origin point was a bad sign. It meant that either their sensors were broken or an ablation cascade had just started. Both were dangerous.

Miretz gritted her teeth. “Control, take us out of the debris field. Medium burn, vector two, niner, zero—”

“Belay that. Keep the Caliburn at its current position within the debris field.” An old man in a captain’s uniform floated through the bridge door. Captain Brigham’s voice had hints of anger, but his eyes showed only fatigue.

Miretz turned to him. “It’s not your shift, sir. You should be sleeping.”

“I know, Mir, but your yil’an alert made sure I couldn’t.”

Six months ago, Brigham would have had a heart attack before swearing like that. The Long Patrol had an almost supernatural ability to erode military discipline. Mireya had heard tales of hardened captains who had endured years-long fire support missions without batting an eye but broke down into blasphemies during their second orbit around Nerites. She didn’t bother pointing it out. “The ship was struck by debris, sir. I gave the order to exit the cluster to make sure it couldn’t happen again.

Brigham sighed. “You know the mission, Mir. Covert observation. We’re under strict orders to mask our signature in any way possible, and that includes hiding within this schmutz.” 

Miretz straightened her posture. “I don’t believe we’re at risk of detection, sir. I don’t think even the Hegemony has radar that can reach all the way out here to L4.”

“The Caliburn has almost completed its Long Patrol, inshallah,” Brigham said with the intonation of a prayer. “The last thing I want is for all of us to get booted over to Saint Martin when we get back because my XO couldn’t handle a little excitement.”

Miretz crossed her arms. “It’s the Long Patrol, sir. There’s nothing exciting or interesting about it.”

Brigham shrugged. “Interesting things happen to us all the time. Remember that intact Concordat shuttle?” 

“Yes, sir,” Miretz retorted. “As I recall, it was completely empty.”

“And still I was schepping naches from it.” Brigham rand his hand through his graying hair. “Is there anything capable of getting you excited?”

“Of course. We could come across an old luxury passenger ship, still fully stocked with champagne and cold towels.”

Brigham smirked. “A regular comedian you are. If you had put half that much—”

“I’ve detected a large radiation signature at a point on the trajectory of the debris from earlier,” the comms officer interrupted. 

“A solar flare? We couldn’t have missed one of those,” Miretz replied incredulously.

The comms officer shook his head. “Not a solar flare, ma’am. Tannhauser radiation.”

“What? That can’t be right.” Miretz unbuckled herself from her seat and kicked over to the comms officer’s console. Sure enough, it displayed strong Tannhauser readings in an area that had been previously empty. “Rerun that scan.”

“Roger, ma’am.” The comms officer pressed a few buttons on the console, and the screen flickered before displaying a new Tannhauser reading in the same location, even higher than the old one. “It’s there, and it’s… growing.”

“Growing? That doesn’t make any sense. The only way it could be growing is if someone was opening a gate.” Miretz only realized the implication of what she had said after it exited her mouth.

“Oy. Interesting things, she said she wanted. Well, you’ve got your ‘interesting’ now.” Brigham joked, but he wasn’t smiling. “General Quarters. All hands to action stations. I think now we have bigger concerns than radar.”