USM Victory: The Blockade Warship of the Aegis Shockpoint

The USM Victory was an Earth Defense Force warship assigned to the government blockade of the Aegis System Shockpoint in the wake of the disaster that consumed the Aegis VII Colony. From its station at the edge of the system, the Victory challenged every inbound craft, served as the forward command post for EarthGov's effort to recover Marker 3A, and became the stage for the betrayal that exposed the drifting USG Ishimura to the government and sent the crew of the USM Intrepid to their deaths.

The Aegis blockade#

After the Second Aegis VII Incident tore the colony apart and left the USG Ishimura adrift and silent, EarthGov sealed the approaches to the system. The USM Victory was assigned to the blockade thrown across the Aegis System Shockpoint, the transit point through which traffic entered the restricted zone. Vessels that crossed into its patrol space received the same standing challenge: "This is USM VICTORY hailing inbound craft. You are in a restricted zone. State your identification."

The Victory's exact class went unrecorded, but its size and its role guarding a key EarthGov approach matched those of destroyers such as the USM Valor, the warship lost inside the Ishimura during the incident itself. The officers of the blockade were trusted with more than picket duty. The Victory's captain knew the secret mission parameters of the USG O'Bannon, the government science vessel operating inside the cordon, and could recite them to visiting officials: a team had been dispatched to Aegis VII itself, where the disaster had nearly ripped the planet's core in half, to attempt to stabilize it while searching the wreckage.

For all its vigilance, the blockade did not hold completely. The Magpies, a loose affiliation of freelance miners and illegal salvagers, slipped into the Aegis System in late 2508 or early 2509 to strip ore from the debris field, working unofficially under Jessica Li of the Hunter's Moon. In the asteroid belt they stumbled onto something far more valuable than ore: the lost Ishimura, its hull studded with shards of the shattered Marker.

Secretary Chang and the Oracles#

After the Aegis VII Colony incident, Defense Secretary David Chang of the Earth Government Colonial Alliance traveled to the Victory aboard his personal shuttle, the Skyrocket. Chang was famed for hard decisions and for his hawkish view of the military's place in government, and he arrived with a mandate that put his own career at stake: recover Marker 3A, or any remains of it, or lose his position back on Earth.

He did not come alone. Two Oracles, agents of a covert program answering to superiors whose authority reached beyond that of the Defense Secretary himself, accompanied him aboard. The men in white made clear that they would not involve themselves in civilian or military operations unless a situation touched their own priorities, which they defined as retrieval and secrecy above all. Chang briefed the visiting Oracles aboard the Victory before they disembarked to survey the situation around the Ishimura, and from the warship he ordered the recovery of the Planet Cracker itself, hoping to pull more information about the Marker from its ruined decks.

The defector from the Black Beak#

The Victory's part in the hunt turned on a betrayal. Among the Magpies picking through the Aegis debris, the discovery of Marker shards embedded in the Ishimura's hull split the crews. Jessica Li proposed selling the fragments, which enraged Benedykt Malyech, the devoutly Unitologist captain of the Black Beak; Li knocked him out and had him confined, over the protests of his second in command, Julia Copland.

Copland, a lifelong criminal and scam artist who had taken up freelance mining to hide from the law, answered the insult in kind. She abandoned the Magpies and flew to the EarthGov blockade, carrying a stolen Marker shard with her. Aboard the USM Victory she offered Defense Secretary Chang the location of the USG Ishimura and the shard itself, negotiating for immunity and a reward. Chang took the intelligence and handed her over to the Oracles. The interrogation that followed, which Chang himself helped conduct, wrung from her everything she knew about the remaining Marker shards her crewmates had uncovered. When Copland had given up all of it and asked for her payment, the lead Oracle murdered her instead.

The Intrepid and Schneider's taunt#

Acting on Copland's information, Chang ordered a small ship sent from the blockade to the origin vector of her vessel in the asteroid belt, hoping to find the Ishimura at the end of it. The shuttle USM Intrepid went out under Captain Amise with a small security team of Marines, while the Oracles, who had assembled the exact coordinates from Copland's interrogation, made for the Ishimura ahead of them aboard a Planet Cracker of their own.

Neither party came back to the Victory. Aboard the Ishimura, the Magpie Stefan Schneider lured the Intrepid into an infested cargo bay, where the Necromorphs slaughtered the Marines, the pilot, and Captain Amise. With the Intrepid's crew dead and the Oracles sent after the ship lost to the Victory's knowledge, Schneider himself contacted the warship. He challenged its crew to come and take the Ishimura if they wanted it, warning that the Planet Cracker was filled with Necromorphs. Chang, transmitting from the blockade, ordered Schneider to cease his escape attempts and submit to his authority. Schneider mockingly invited the Defense Secretary to claim his infested prize, then shockpointed out of reach aboard a stealth ship, escaping both EarthGov and the death waiting on the Ishimura.

Aftermath#

Whatever force finally boarded the Ishimura, the recovery Chang had ordered from the Victory's decks was presumably carried through, for the Planet Cracker was transported out of the Aegis System and berthed at Titan Station, where its long and bloody history continued on the Sprawl. The Victory itself simply endured. Among the ships drawn into the Aegis disasters and the hunts that followed, the blockade warship was one of the very few that was neither overrun by Necromorphs nor destroyed, and it passed out of the record still on station, its guns unfired and its corridors clean.