Eve sat at the controls of her shuttle, it was small, like really small for spaceflight being the same size as a first generation Volkswagen Type Two. It was capable of traveling through folded space though and because of its size it had two big advantages: it made no detectable wake exiting fold space, and it barely showed as anything more than space debris on scanners. It was absolutely black, or as Professor Tolkien once wrote “as dark as a patch of midnight that had never been cleared away.”
She exited fold space after she had been traveling for three days at the edge of the Didactic star system. Her targets on this mission were both at the Dida orbital shipyard of an outer planet in the system. This was the point where some of her jobs got really boring though as to make her approach quietly, meant cutting her engines off and letting momentum bring her in as unnoticed as any piece of space debris usually is. She would just sort of float close to the shipyard, but it would take thirty hours just to get close.
Eve spent her time ensuring her weapons were ready, preparing her jumpsuit, charging her electronics, eating, and sleeping, up until an hour before perigee. With an hour left she suited up, turned the atmospheric controls to evacuate the cabin much like an airlock before exiting, and once the cabin was atmosphere free she opened the side door and kicked herself out of her ship toward the shipyard at the exact moment of perigee. Her free float took almost twenty minutes before she was close enough to engage her suits thruster pack without risk of being seen.
She landed on the surface of the newest Octavian dread naught without a sound. The ship was set to be christened in a few hours by the High Emperor himself and common knowledge was it was to head immediately after directly to Earth. She also knew that the highest commanders, royal advisers, and ship designers along with most of the station’s and ship’s crews were supposed to be in a lavish party on the station overlooking their great achievement in the construction yard.
Eve climbed to the top of the ship and found a suitable spot to scan the area from. It took a painstaking fifteen minutes to find the correct window, but once she found it she pulled out her cross bow, drew back the string, and loaded one of her special bolts. A lot people over the years have thought her cross bow was too out of date, but it had a lot changes from the original design, not only did the bow bend but it was also fitted with a multiple springs, cams, and gears, to get its range out to a kilometer while maintaining its lack of report, and lack of recoil. With crossbow loaded she carefully took aim at the Emperor and released the bolt. The bolt went straight through the glass and into the Emperor and before the atmosphere finished venting the ampule containing a pure sodium core had broken inside the Emperor. The pure sodium reacted with the moisture inside of him, quickly releasing hydrogen as the sodium went critical with heat causing the hydrogen to explode and ignite the pure magnesium bodkin point and shaft of the bolt meaning there was absolutely no way the Emperor would survive nor would there be any trace of the bolt. Basically the Memento Mori calling card, do the job, leave no trace.
With the party and the attendees now ended, Eve made her way down the side of the dread naught to an airlock and entered it. Once inside she sent the command for her ship to autopilot its way back to the rendezvous point and she proceeded to the bridge. She was surprised that intelligence got it right that there would be no one on the ship as she couldn’t imagine such an oversight, but her trip was uneventful.
On the bridge she sealed the doors, then began reading the controls. She entered the unlock command that cyber intelligence had provided, then plugged in the data chip that loaded the override. The override did several things, it set the ships transponder to read Gian registry, the name to show as HMS Bounty, changed all the consoles to display in English, and consolidated flight commands to one central command chair. She sat down in the chair, immediately finding it extremely uncomfortable and entered the rendezvous coordinates. The overrides basically meant the ship would fly itself but she still had to spend the next twenty hours at the helm as this ship could approach light speed but the Octavians had not achieved entering fold space.
Eve was nearly asleep at the helm when she saw a familiar shape in the distance, the IJN Yamato, she was surprised to not see the Missouri, but handing the ship off to her dad was as good as handing off to her grandma.
“HMS Bounty, this is IJN Yamato do you copy?”
“Yamato, this is Bounty, one ship and one crew coming in, prepare to board as I’m more than a little tired of flying this heap. Be warned it pulls to port and minus zed, also the ride is bad enough but the seats are awful!”
“Copy that Bounty. Commander Toyoda is bringing a shuttle's worth of crew as we speak, should be docking with you in three minutes, forward starboard airlock level five.”
Eve cut the engines, brought the Bounty to a stop, and proceeded to deck five. She arrived at the airlock just as the shuttle docked and was standing at attention hand in salute, when the airlock door cycled open.
“Permission to come aboard Lieutenant?"
“Permission granted Commander Toyoda, upon the orders of Gian high command I present to you the commandeered Octavian constructed dread naught HMS Bounty.”
The crew entered the ship and with a “crew to stations” from Commander Toyoda, began to fan out to their appointed stations leaving father and daughter standing in the hallway.
“I had no idea it was you they sent to do this until I heard your voice over the com’s channel. I just knew you were on another radio silent mission, probably best I didn’t know as I knew too much about this mission anyways. I was really worried they sent someone on a suicide mission.”
“The mission was really a piece of cake dad. Flying this heap back now that was bad! Get it up past point six of C and it shakes something terrible!
Then it pulls to port and minus zed so bad that the autopilot had to be adjusted twice an hour the whole trip here.”
“Well I’m glad you made it, I guess even Olivera didn’t know they sent you or you know your grandma would have been here for the handover.”
“I was surprised to not see the Missouri, but was also glad to see the Yamato because I knew I’d get to see you. As much as I am so relieved to see you though, dad I need a nap. Twenty hours of driving this has worn me out.”
“I’ll have the shuttle pilot take you back to the Yamato, you can crash in my cabin.”
“Thanks dad, I’ll see you when I wake up.”
Maura out