My first book attempt: "Not Too Distant"

[OddOne]

A.T. Hagan's prose on the main board inspired me to commit to text a story idea I had pop into my head last week.

This story is Copyright © 2002-2005 by me, and I reserve all rights to this work. (Might wanna see if someone would want to publish the completed version later.)

I'll add more segments into this as I get them written, but for now everyone'll have to be content with the first few chapters.

oO


Reminder:

Please post comments only in this thread, so that this thread can be just for the story. Previous comments posted to this thread have been cleaned out to make it easier to read.

Thanks.

[OddOne]

1
Random Visits

From within the door looked like just an unremarkable metal plate, its plain appearance camouflaging the fact that it was almost a foot thick and made from some very extravagant alloys. It also effectively concealed the lack of atmosphere outside its exterior.

A lone figure seated nearby studied the door as the transport bumped and clamored into its final position on a landing platform. Clicks and whirs followed – the sounds of docking clamps and other miscellaneous mechanical wizardry deploying to make sure the transport stayed put. Then a sudden, deafening hiss announced the airlock pressurizing cycle. After a few seconds the hiss faded away, and with a click and the sound of some rather heavy hydraulics the door swung open. Silhouetted in the newly exposed light was another figure, which called to the first.

“Mister President, I’m Paul Rydus. I’m the station’s UFE liaison. If you’d be so kind as to accompany me, I’ll make sure your gear gets delivered to your quarters.”

The lone figure finished unbuckling various parts of the seat’s harness and stood up. A quick thank-you for the relatively uneventful (if occasionally rough) trip was said to the transport’s crew and then the President and liaison departed down the tunnel-like gangplank. Paul started his briefing, consulting a computer tablet he was carrying. “Our first stop is security so we can get you logged in and get your comm badge. After that, we’ll meet with Admiral Major in TSC central.”

On hearing that name, the President flinched visibly and then proceeded to scowl. He turned to the liaison and muttered, “Oh great, I thought he was drilled out after that one incident.” A look of concern flashed across Rydus’ face but he said nothing as they passed the station’s own airlock doors and made their way out of the docking bay. They then made a left turn onto an elevated walkway – a massive acrylic tube some twenty feet in diameter surrounded the walkway, and it gave an incredible view of the hydroponics sections of the lower part of the station. The President admired the view – still with a scowl on his face – as they walked.

Due to some careful planning the walkways they were to take were empty save for the occasional Earth Defense Force station-security trooper, complete with riot gear and full weapons loadouts that was there for security. Every fifty yards or so another trooper stood at attention, with pulse rifle slung on his or her back.

The liaison continued the briefing as they walked. “Mr. President, I must say that we are honored, and not a little surprised, by your visit. Nothing’s happened around here for so long we were beginning to wonder if we’d been forgotten by the folks back home.”

“Please, call me Mike while we’re not inundated with people,” said the President. “I get SO tired of people calling me ‘mister President, SIR!’ all the time.” As the President was passing an EDF security trooper while saying this, his comment evoked a chuckle in stereo. He smirked and hid a thumbs-up to the EDF trooper behind his back as he walked on, receiving a subdued thumbs-up from the trooper – otherwise still standing at attention – in return.


Michael Talmondson was an unusual man for the job he had – he was a jovial, self-effacing fellow with a calm demeanor that was in charge of the United Federation of Earth. He never seemed to act like a man with control over an arsenal of weapons that could wreck entire star systems, and that’s why he was so well received. He’d been elected only a couple years earlier and still had most of his ten-year presidency to go, but had already earned the respect of peers and competitors alike. He was a man that was content to let others have the limelight, and wasn’t afraid to get things done when necessary


The UFE was also a bit odd.

Things had changed a lot in the 41 years since humans discovered faster-than-light communications. The first thing that had changed was humanity’s perception of the universe – when the first FTL comms receiver was activated it detected communications traffic from hundreds of ships and dozens of populated planets, all within a few dozen light-years of Earth. The sheer volume of communications traffic was massive and comprised every format imaginable, from plain audio to complex layers of multiplexed and often encrypted data.

These communications were subjected to analysis on a scale that was never even considered prior to their discovery, and from them a wealth of information on non-Terran sentient species was gleaned. Societal structures, medical information, languages, histories - and most importantly, advanced technology - were all “pulled from the ether.” Humanity launched its first interstellar-capable sub-light ship five years after that discovery, and within ten years humanity had achieved hyperspace travel and begun building what would shortly become the Terran Starfleet arm of the UFE. All the human interstellar technology was derived from existing tech used by other worlds, with a little of that special brand of human creativity thrown in. This gave Terrans an edge in interstellar relations and allowed the UFE to jump 200 years technologically in only 25.

The UFE itself was intended to be a research organization, drawing members from all over Earth for the purpose of peaceful scientific research. Technological advancements allowed the addition of Terran Starfleet to maintain the travel side of exploring the universe, and from it the Earth Defense Force evolved in order to provide a military arm for dealing with any potential attacks on Earth. Of course, all the attacks were from things like asteroids as no other interstellar-capable species cared about what went on in the Sol system. Humans weren’t important enough, or enough of a threat, to be worthy of more than passing glances. The EDF secondarily provided security and policing capacity to Terran Starfleet ships and stations.

Mike was the UFE’s second president. The first was the UFE founder, Richard M. Greyson, Jr., son of the inventor of the first faster-than-light communications system. Greyson had served a ten-year term as president before holding an election among all UFE members, and was still working at age 68 as the project coordinator in the Technical Development group, the UFE’s R&D arm. The two were old friends and almost inseparable, and with one replacing the other as president the predecessor would often call to offer support and the occasional suggestion.


The pair walked past several EDF troopers spaced along the walkway until they reached a security station. A brief DNA scan provided verification that Mike was who everyone sure thought he was, he was issued a coded communications badge, and they left to head to the nearest elevator to the command decks. As they walked the fifty or so yards to the elevator, Rydus resumed his briefing…

“We have your itinerary from UFE headquarters. They said you were planning to stay here for three days and then head to the Tiberius station?”

“Correct,” muttered the President, still displaying the same irritated look he had put on upon hearing of the person they were about to go meet. At the sight of this, Rydus put on the look of concern he had also shown earlier.

“UFE didn’t state the reason for your visit in any of the data they sent,” said Rydus, trying to ask a question without actually asking a question. Mike knew why he said this – he had given very strict orders that the reason for his visit not be disclosed. “Sorry, can’t say,” he responded, still showing his irritation face.


On the elevator ride to the command deck neither man said a word. President Talmondson was content to quietly watch the scenery flash by as the glass-walled elevator climbed, and liaison officer Rydus was a great deal less than content to note the discomfort level rising as fast as the elevator did. Momentarily they entered the deck section of the vertical ride and the scenery ended, replaced by a blur of decks. This only lasted for a few seconds before the elevator slowed to a halt at the appropriate floor.

A quick credentials check at a security checkpoint and they were on one of the six elevators to the Terran Starfleet Command’s central command center. As the elevator climbed the President started showing signs of agitation, and the liaison officer signs of immense worry.


They reached the final stop and stepped out into the landing area, triggering a snap to attention by the eight EDF troopers present. Not only were elevators present, but additional doors also led to various conference rooms and storage areas. On the far side of the landing area an opening with large tracks set into both floor and ceiling indicated the presence of massive blast doors, capable of isolating the command center from any potential threats coming from the elevators. A quick glance at the tracks indicated that the doors were roughly sixteen or so inches thick.

The liaison walked out through the open blast doors into the command center, the President following. From the blast-door end, the command center was a broad circular room. Along both sides were monitoring consoles tended by numerous officers whose jobs involved monitoring various items of interest, such as locations of asteroids in the Sol system. The far wall held a massive display panel. Near the center was a riser with three chairs perched on it. One chair was occupied, with its occupant busy tending to a report being handed to him by another officer.


Rydus cleared his throat and bellowed “Attention, EDF personnel. President on the bridge!” Several dozen officers jumped out of their seats at various control consoles and monitoring stations around the room and stood at attention.

From behind the President and liaison a snarling voice broke the silence. “Who let THAT piece of crap on MY station? Damn, isn’t there some sort of RULE about who’s allowed up here?” Rydus flushed white, fearing that his worst fears were about to materialize in a big, messy way. Talmondson spun around and said “You MAJOR pain in the ass!” as the source of the snarling insult – a rather intimidating EDF officer with a lot of ribbons on his chest – walked up, snapped to attention, and then saluted while squeaking in a comical, overly nasal nerd voice, “Welcome to TSC central, sir! I hope you enjoy your stay, sir!” The officer waited in salute while the President paused for effect before returning the salute.

“You freak!” said the President, while at nearly the same time the officer said “how ya doin’, man!” The two shook hands vigorously and launched into a blur of chatter almost incoherent to the liaison officer, who had just before then wondered if he’d be faced with the daunting (read: career-ending) decision on whether to call security to break up a fight between the UFE President and the TSC High Commander. Noting the sudden friendliness, Rydus’ facial expression changed from one of extreme concern to a mixture of utter relief and near-total confusion.

Noting this, the Admiral said, “Oh, lighten up Lieutenant! We’re old friends!” “Yep,” added Talmondson, “Carl and I go WAY back.” With the liaison beginning to understand that he’d been royally played by both men, he flushed red and requested permission to depart. The Admiral obliged, grinning, and went back to his seemingly random conversation with his old buddy about everything they’d both been up to in the years since they’d last hung out.

After about two minutes of inane chatter nobody else in the room understood, the executive officer cleared his throat. The President turned to see everyone else still at attention, and said with a chuckle, “sheesh, people! At ease! I mean, really,” he turned back to Admiral Major as the officers made for their respective consoles, “you should have SEEN the look on his FACE!” A twinkle flashed in the eyes of both men, of the sort seen in little boys that were about to do something mischievous. They both broke into laughter and the rest of the command center staff resumed their work.

The Admiral then started introducing his command staff, man-by-man and station-by-station. By the time everyone was introduced the whole command center sounded like a reunion of high-school friends. Talmondson spent the next hour or so asking various members of the command staff about their jobs, their family, what they think needs to be improved, and so on – for an engineer type, Mike could schmooze with the best of ‘em.


After his shift ended, the Admiral took the President on a tour of the less respectable places a High Commander could take a President. To put it more succinctly, they made a beeline for the Admiral’s favorite bar.

While the Admiral went to fetch some drinks, his friend sat at a corner table and pondered old memories. Memories of himself and Carl at their high school dance, memories of Carl telling him of his desire to join the EDF, memories of him telling Carl he was joining the UFE, memories of each telling the other he was crazy, and so on. Every now and then a fond memory would surface, like the time Carl made Major – one just had to laugh at the hearing of the phrase “Major Major,” despite how well that sort of joke went over in a military setting.

The Admiral returned with an entire tray full of stacks of shot glasses and bottles of various intoxicants, and the reminiscing – and drinking – began.

[OddOne]

2
Unexpected Visitors

Both men looked a bit worse for wear when they dragged themselves into one of the station’s medical bays the next afternoon. They’d both gotten far too drunk for their overworked bodies and minds to handle, and the hangovers were brutal. The medical staff was not exactly amused by the situation either. It would, after all, be interesting to explain to the reporters that would likely show up soon why they were treating the two most important people in the UFE for mild alcohol poisoning.

The rest of the station went about its business while the two were being treated for their hangovers. The day passed rather uneventfully, save for some action for the EDF security troops when a fight broke out in a bar elsewhere in the station.

After having recovered enough to do so, Mike and Carl headed to a restaurant overlooking one of the more breathtaking hydroponics domes to get some food to replace what they’d sacrificed to the god of porcelain earlier. While there, the topic turned to Mike’s predecessor and close friend, Dick Greyson.

“When’s the last time you talked to Dick? How’s he doing, anyway?” inquired Carl while spearing a carrot with his fork.

“Talked to him oh, six months ago, give or take. Last I heard he was working on a prototype to that hyperspace defense system he was so hot to trot about.”

A worried look took over the Admiral’s face. “PLEASE tell me he won’t have to send us units to deploy.”

“Nah, these will be self-deploying like the FSG-3s are.” Mike took a healthy chunk from a breadstick, chuckling at the thought of having to deploy something into hyperspace.

“THANK YOU!” Carl gasped, suddenly relieved. “You have NO idea how annoying it got with the first-generation FSGs. We’d send out a ship to deploy 20 of ‘em and there’d be 50 more waiting when it got back. He was literally sending them faster than we could clear transport time.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why I gave him the okay to add propulsion and avionics systems to the mark two.”

“Believe me, I thank God for that every day,” growled Carl as he picked up a forkful of food. “It was nuts. By the way, what did he add to the mark three? I never did get specs on it.”

“Last I heard he added something he calls a ‘hyperspace plasma conduit.’ If any one FSG takes a hit from an energy source, the energy is dispersed across several FSGs via hyperspace junctions between them. Pretty neat idea actually. Can also balance energy outputs if one takes a hit from a solid mass, so I’m told.”

“Sounds like something that crazy bastard would dream up,” Carl chuckled after swallowing the previous forkful. “I just hope it works.”

“Well, the FSG-3s have some other neat stuff, but I don’t think mentioning it here would be appropriate,” Mike whispered, eyeing the room and its occupants suspiciously. He then grinned, triggering a chuckle from the Admiral. “Seriously though, there are some new goodies on the 3s. And the 4s are in the proto stage and they are awesome.” Carl raised his eyebrows at this, and the President continued. “The 4s are going to be self-maintaining. No more repair runs.”


The two old friends continued eating and chatting in the restaurant. Meanwhile, in the command center, a single console showed a single blip – a hit on one particular set of extreme-long-range sensors. A single officer manning it noted this blip and started a routine series of checks and double-checks to make sure the blip was indeed a blip and not a glitch masquerading as a blip. Once satisfied of the legitimacy of said blip, the monitoring officer called the executive officer over.

“Whatcha got?” the X.O. asked.

“Not sure, sir. I ran a diagnostic check and verified the signal with three other probes. Whatever it is, it’s headed toward the Sol system at a pretty good clip. Light-speed times twenty according to the computer.”

“Wow. How long before it reaches the Frontier?”

“ETA, umm…” The monitoring officer waited as the computer did the requisite math. “26 minutes to the Oort cloud and another nine minutes to the Frontier, assuming no change in speed or course.”

“Does the computer think it’s a ship?”

“I checked. All it says is ‘indeterminate’ and gives an obscenely high mass reading. If it is a ship, it’s HUGE. Planetoid kind of huge.”

“Understood. Keep an eye on that unidentified and let me know if ANYTHING changes. I don’t want some rogue object to scream through the system on my watch.”

“Roger that, sir.”

The X.O. walked over to the command seat and parked himself into it. He then pressed a spot on a keypad and spoke into it. “Admiral Major, please return to central.”


Carl flinched as his comm. badge beeped and the executive officer’s voice followed. “Well, there goes THAT idea,” he growled, wadding up his napkin while staring at the large fudge sundae he was about to rip into. Mike started to do likewise with his napkin, adding, “I’ll come with you.”


They entered the command center and surveyed the scene. Officers were running around like there was a major event happening. The Admiral walked in slowly, still looking around, with the President in tow. He called to his X.O. “What’s up?”

“Sir, we have an unidentified approaching the system at light times twenty. It’ll reach Oort in six minutes.”

“Light times twenty? Awful fast for a snowball. Is it a ship?”

“We don’t know, sir. The mass estimate for the unidentified is way too big to be a ship. We’re thinking it’s a rogue planetoid.”

“Ah, I see. Would one of the heavy cruisers be able to stop it?”

“No idea yet sir. We don’t have enough data to know what to recommend yet. I’m afraid we have to wait for it to get within range of the Galileo array before we’ll be able to get enough data. It’ll be within range in three minutes.”

A voice called out from a console almost at the far side of the command center “Sir! The unidentified is dropping out of light-speed. And – oh my God…”

Admiral and X.O. frowned at each other and headed for the officer, while the President stood his ground and momentarily pondered the physics of a planetoid-sized object dropping out of light-speed. He snapped back to the present and joined the others at the console.

The officer seated at the console was pretty excited by what he was seeing, and his voice reflected this. “Sir, that object is a ship – a very, VERY big ship. Computer figures it’s between 80 and 90 miles long.” The officer studied his display again and added, ”Wow! The estimated ship tonnage is being shown in scientific notation!” The Admiral and X.O., both of whom were leaning over each of his shoulders to get a view of his display, leaned back and the X.O. looked with raised eyebrows at the Admiral. Carl responded, “Well, that’s a new one…” Both resumed their vigil as other command officers performed a myriad of checks and recalibrations to verify what the sensors were reporting.

“It’s within range of Galileo now,” added another officer from another console.

“Patch their video feed through to the main display,” the Admiral snapped, returning to upright from his leaning position. He and most of the others in the room all turned to face a fifteen-foot-wide display set into the wall on the opposite side of the room from the elevator landing.

“Roger that, patching through… We have a feed… There we go, on main…”

A side view of a very large ship appeared on the display panel. The word “large” doesn’t really do it justice though – it looked like 80 to 90 miles would be a conservative estimate. The massive ship was fairly rectangular, with a huge outrigger visible on the near side. If the ship were 90 miles long it had to easily be ten miles tall, with the outrigger a good two-thirds that height. The ship’s surface looked like it was studded with odd protrusions, although at the scale and distance from the Galileo cameras one couldn’t identify any specific feature.

“Holy shit that’s big!” exclaimed the startled Admiral. He turned to another officer, “Any idea who it belongs to?”

“No sir, the ship’s configuration doesn’t match anything in our database. We’re scanning the Galileo feed for identifying markings.”

“Keep at it,” said the Admiral, turning back to gape at the massive ship. Almost under his breath he asked for an ETA to the Frontier.

“Two minutes at current speed” was the reply from the officer that had first detected the ship half an hour earlier.

“Where’s the nearest Frontier checkpoint to that ship?” asked the Admiral, mesmerized by the slow cruising of the massive ship. “Hope station, 2.8 million miles from the unidentified’s position” called out another officer from behind and to one side.

“Get Hope’s bridge on the comm. I think we need to talk about this.”

“Roger that,” replied the communications officer. He then turned to his console and called into a headset, “TSC central to Hope Station…”

[OddOne]

3
Pot-Shots

“TSC central to Hope Station…”

“Hope station, come in central.”

“We have an unidentified in your region. Unidentified’s registry is unknown and intentions are undetermined.”

“Roger that, we are also tracking the unidentified. Damn that’s a big ship!”

“Agreed. Please prep for audio-video patch with central.”

“Roger that, setting up… Synching… Ready when you are, central…”


The main display switched to a split-screen. The left half showed the Galileo video feed, complete with massive ship, and the right half showed a UFE/EDF backdrop with the words “preparing for video comm mode…” Presently the right half switched to the video feed, and an officer appeared.

“Hope Station, Captain Martin here. What can I do for you, Admiral?”

The Admiral and Captain discussed the rather large visitor that had shown up on the Captain’s proverbial doorstep. Discussions were very quickly held on what to do if the ship turns out to be hostile, whether – and if so, how – to allow something that big through the Frontier, what to do if there’s a problem such as a hazardous pathogen, and so on. The two covered a lot of ground in the minute or so that it took the ship to reach the Frontier.


The massive ship detected the Frontier and slowed to a halt a few thousand miles from its outer edge. It sensor-swept the Frontier and discovered that the entire Sol system was surrounded by literally hundreds of billions of small, self-propelled shield generators in a hexagonal grid, each positioned to cause its shield to overlap the shields of six of its neighbors. The whole star system was thus inside a giant bubble of energy shields over ten billion miles across. Not only were each of the shields amazingly strong, but the generators themselves appeared to cloak the moment the ship’s scanners tried to locate and lock onto one. It was plainly obvious that this defense system was designed to not be scanner-friendly.

The giant ship studied its new paradox for a while, and while it studied it was in turn being studied. At the President’s request, the UFE central command on Earth was working on a friendship broadcast using all known languages for all local sentient species in order to establish some friendly communications with the visitor. While all this was going on, the TSC command center was a frenzy of activity as officers tried to figure out where a ship that big could have come from and whether to be concerned about it.


Twenty minutes had now passed since the ship stopped outside the Frontier. The Admiral noted this and asked for an update. “No movement, scanning sweeps are continuing, no changes in energy production or output detected” was the reply from the X.O., who was moving station-to-station gathering up a synopsis for the Admiral and President.

“Wait, something’s happening,” calls out an officer. She was watching energy level reports as detected by Galileo. “The ship’s powering up its forward shields.”

The view on the main display, which was still in split-screen, showed both an equal frenzy in the Hope station’s bridge and the ship with no visually discernible changes.

The officer watching the energy display suddenly broke the silence when her display showed something disconcerting. “Whoa, we have an energy buildup in the forward third of the ship. Looks like weapons charging!’

“What?” snapped the Admiral, who trotted over to the officer and leaned over her shoulder for a better view of the display.

“Not sure what kind of weapons system they might be charging but it sure looks like a buildup to fire something.” The officer looked quite concerned, and flipped between displays of various sensor reports.

The Admiral stood up to see the ship on the main when the officer watching the energy buildup shrieked, “Weapons discharge detected!” On the main screen, a massive beam ripped from the ship to the Frontier, illuminating the forward edges of the shield layers. The beam lasted for a second or so and then faded out.

“Damage report!” snapped the Admiral, turning his head toward another monitoring console that monitored the Frontier.

“Direct hit on five FSGs, impact energy distributed among 132 FSGs. No damage to any FSGs. Lowest FSG output level is 98.1%. The Frontier is still closed,” came the reply from the officer at that console.

Turning back to the officer watching energy levels, the Admiral asked, “How big of a burst was that?”

The officer checked some stats coming in from the Galileo array. “Zero point eight terawatts per second of discharge energy, broadband, no coherency detected. Looks like it was mainly plasma.”

“Plasma, huh? Hmmm, looks like they’re just probing the Frontier’s shielding. Okay, watch them closely and get as much info on weapon power capabilities as you can. We might need to know this later.”

“Roger that – sir, they’re charging again. Same power level as the first shot in fifty seconds.”

The Admiral looked at the right half of the main display. The Hope station’s bridge was a VERY busy place. The Admiral called for comms with the station to go off mute and called to Capt. Martin.

“Yes, Admiral?” said the Captain, sliding into view from one side of the Hope station’s bridge. He looked frazzled.

“I know you saw what the ship just did. I’d like you to prep the station for a relocate. If that thing gets really hostile about breaking through the Frontier I’d rather you be inside it.”

“I agree. Putting the word out now.” On the screen the Admiral watched and listened as the Captain gave the orders for the process of moving the station. Moving a half-mile-tall space station was no small feat and it couldn’t be done at the drop of a hat, so a whole bunch of things had to be done and done right now to make it even feasible. After a while the audio muted but the video link remained.

“Last-shot power in five, “ called out the energy console monitor. “Four, three, two, one, equal power.” No blast came from the ship. “They’re still charging. 105% of first shot power and rising.”

[OddOne]

4
Hope Beyond Hope

While all eyes were seemingly on the ship, an officer glanced at a panel briefly and added a new wrinkle to the unfolding situation. “Admiral, Hope station’s started to move. They’ll reach the Frontier gate Epsilon 358 in ninety seconds.”

“Good,” replied the Admiral, still moving between consoles and looking at the still charging ship whenever he had a moment to spare. “Hopefully they won’t draw that ship’s attention.”

As the Admiral finished his last sentence, the display of the Galileo array feed showed a sudden change in attitude for the ship. It was turning, rotating away from the array. For a ship as large as this one was, it was turning rather gracefully, as if it had more engines for attitude control than for forward propulsion.

As it rotated, it became clear that the massive outrigger on the visible side had a corresponding twin on the opposite side. With an end-on view these outriggers revealed that they were giant octagonal launch bays, complete with multiple launch and retrieval doors. An officer noticed this and punched up some zoomed-in images from the array of the rear end of these.

The Admiral arrived to check that console. He studied the magnified images briefly and muttered “oh great, JUST what we need. God knows how many ships that ship is carrying.”

“Ship’s on the move, Admiral,” called out the X.O. as the butt-end of the ship lit from the engine thrust and the massive craft started to move, away from the Galileo array. In mere seconds it was out of viewing range from the array.

“Where’s it headed?” asked the Admiral, completely failing to keep the concern out of his voice.

“Trajectory places it at Epsilon 358 in two minutes thirty seconds,” comes the reply from an officer manning a telemetry monitoring station that was previously only used to track near-Earth objects like asteroids. “Looks like it’s making a run for the door before Hope station closes it.”


The Admiral directed his attention to the insanity that was the bridge of the now on-the-move Hope station, waved at the comms officer for audio, and called out to its commander. “Hey, Captain… You’ve got company headed your way! Might wanna step on it.”

The Captain, whose back was toward the communications camera, turned and called back, “yes, we see it. We’re prepping to accelerate now.”

“I know you don’t really need me to tell you this, but I want you to collapse Epsilon 358 the MOMENT you’re through.”

“Already on it.”


A voice from behind announced that Hope station had started to accelerate. The officer that had tracked the ship was also watching the station.

“Sir, the ship is reacting to the station. It’s accelerating. Revised ETA for Hope station is twenty-five seconds, and for the bogey in pursuit is fifty seconds.”

“They’re gonna be cutting it mighty close,” muttered the Admiral.

“I hope they can plug the hole in time,” added the President.


In a small chunk of space a race was on. The finish line was a fifty-mile-diameter hole in the Frontier known to Terrans as Epsilon 358. Headed toward it were two lumbering behemoths: Hope station from nearby, and the unidentified ship from a greater distance. The ship was moving quite a bit faster than the station.


On the bridge of Hope station, all was organized chaos. Captain Martin was hopping between his own consoles and officers in a bid to both move the station with great haste and prepare to close the Frontier behind him. His task was doubly complex – a layover station is a large, massive thing that wasn’t designed to move much, let alone move fast; and to complicate things the Frontier opening took a couple dozen seconds to close. He was trying to start the closure process early enough to finish it in the twenty or so second between the time Hope station passed through and the arrival of the pursuing ship, while at the same time trying to ensure he didn’t close the front door before he was through it. Achieving the desired result required a mixture of carefully applied physics, microsecond timing, and obscene amounts of luck.

Outside, in the Frontier gate, a few FSG-3s started moving around. These were the mark three version of the Frontier Shield Generators. Each resembled a large trashcan and sported some of the most powerful shield generators ever constructed by a space-faring sentience. In addition, each carried some basic avionics and propulsion systems along with a sub-light drive, which allowed a FSG-3 to deploy itself to wherever it was needed.

In order to create a permanent opening in the Frontier for ships to pass through, three FSGs had to relocate to other locations to form the edges of the opening. These three were already moving toward their closed positions, and once they arrived they would reactivate their shield generators and seal the opening. It took fifteen seconds to move the FGSs and another five to restart their shield generator systems, so Captain Martin was trying his level best to time it so Hope station would pass through the opening just as the FSGs arrived and finalized their positions, with the final few seconds allowing time to get the huge station through the hole.


Back on the Hope’s bridge, the navigation officer called out, “Frontier perimeter in ten seconds.”

A tactical officer joined the play-by-play. “FSGs will hit final positions in ten seconds. We should make it through safely before they fire up.”

“Excellent!” shouted the exasperated Captain. “How far out is that bogey?”

The tactical officer replied, “twenty seconds and closing. We’re cutting this very close, sir… Too close for comfort.”

“Oh, I agree. Remind me to clear some R-and-R time for the bridge staff once this is over.”

“Frontier perimeter in five…” said both the navigation officer on the Hope station and the telemetry officer in the TC command center, simultaneously… “Four… Three… Two… One… Perimeter.” The Hope’s main display showed the faint greenish glow of the Frontier’s shield layers drift past to reveal unobstructed space. They were now inside the bubble, and inside the Sol system.

The Hope’s tactical officer immediately added, “FSGs in final positions… Now. Igniting main reactors… Self-check complete… Positioning complete… Final checks… Igniting shields!”

The three FSG-3s fired up shields right on cue.

“The Frontier is now closed!” shouted officers at both Hope station and TSC command, again simultaneously. A rousing cheer went up at both locations.


Amidst the cheering, the telemetry officer shouted “SIR! THE SHIP’s slowing to a halt outside Epsilon 358.” He had to scale back his shouting when everyone stopped cheering in the middle of his sentence, turning a slight shade of crimson in doing so.

“Now what?” muttered the Admiral. “We closed their only nearby hole.”

“Sir, they’re still charging their weapons,” mentioned the officer at the energy-monitoring console. “They’re at 2.5 orders of magnitude higher than the first shot and still building.”

“Okay, look sharp people,” the Admiral called out, effectively eliminating the smiles from everyone’s faces. “They can still shoot and we do NOT know how big a bang they’re packing.”


The huge ship reached the now closed Epsilon 358 gate, and rotated to face the Frontier where the hole was a moment earlier. Still on the move on the other side was Hope station, putting some distance between itself and the Frontier as it performed a controlled deceleration.


A lone officer had been tapping maniacally at a keypad ever since the giant ship first appeared. He was the TSC command center’s information officer, tasked with looking up anything needed about anything. His entire world was focused on finding out what the hell that ship was, and who the hell sent it. So far he was not finding the answer he sought, and was trying unorthodox searches of more obscure areas of the UFE’s StarNet system-wide data network to find anything of any use. He was a man possessed of a singular purpose and hadn’t paid the first bit of attention to the drama that had played out for the last several minutes right behind him.

Suddenly an obscure search hit on something. One of the zoomed-in shots of the ship that he had on his display was showing a small logo on it. Not finding anything in the normal StarNet sections, he had started searching historical records and archaeology databases for references to the logo. He had found an old reference to some intercepted technical information that mentioned a specific star system’s population had a history of annoying their interstellar neighbors. A cross-reference of the system against StarNet military R&D records turned up what he was looking for.

He stood up and shouted “I GOT IT!” The effect of this was an instant turning of every head in the room to face him. He looked around and said, more calmly, “I have a match on that ship. It’s a Struvian capital ship.”

“Excellent! Do we have any translator lingua-filter files for that species?” asked the startled President.

“Yes, sir, we do. Don’t know how old they are though. There’s not a lot of info on Struvians.”

The Admiral and President both walked purposefully to the officer’s console. As they did, he tapped on the keypad and information scrolled on the display. “There’s very little info on StarNet about them, but there’s tons of data in the military R&D section. Found this image of a Struvian capital ship.”

A few quick taps and a basic exterior schematic of the ship they had been watching popped onto the screen. There was no mistaking it – they definitely had an ID on their bogey.

“According to the R&D records, the ship’s from a planet we call Struve 2737,” added the officer.

The Admiral hadn’t heard of such a star. “How far from Earth is that?”

“Computer says that it’s about 200 light-years from Earth. It’s a binary star system. No records of any planets in the system though.”

“Why would a capital ship come two hundred light-years just to pick a fight with us? There are plenty of better choices around this part of the galaxy.”

“Obviously we have something they must want,” added the President.

“Sir!” called the energy-monitoring officer, “the capital ship has stopped charging.”

Carl nodded and his attention returned to the information on their bogey. “Maybe. What do we have on them?”

The information officer tapped some keys and more information scrolled on his display. “Apparently they’re a pretty advanced species. A lot of EDF weapons technology was based on Struvian tech intercepts. Our lightning gun was almost directly taken from their weapons designs.”

Both Admiral and President frowned. “This just keeps getting better,” said the Admiral, who was rapidly growing tired of the never-ending stream of surprises that had come along for the last hour or so.

[OddOne]

5
Supply and Demand

The Struvian behemoth turned and headed back to where it had first encountered the Frontier, drawing some reactions of confusion from the TSC command center’s staff. The most popular guess was that the ship was returning to the spot where it had already probed and taken a pot shot at the Frontier. On the upside, the ship was back within visible range of the Galileo array, so they again had a video feed to watch the ship with.


Mike suddenly went into “Mister President” mode, his expression changing from concern to resolve. He tapped his friend on the shoulder. “I’d like to open comms with that ship. See if maybe I can talk them into a more diplomatic approach than to rush up on us and try to break through our defense layer.”

The Admiral pondered this for a moment and then called a communications officer to the bridge. “Not a bad idea. I take it you want to try that linuga-file?”

“Yep. No sense in trying this if they won’t understand me.”

The additional comms officer arrived, and was briefed on the situation. His task was to help orchestrate the communication attempt from one of the conference rooms attacked to the command center. Comms officer and President headed toward the landing near the elevators and then turned into the room.

Inside the conference room, each headed to the opposing side of the conference table that dominated the room’s center. The comms officer handed Mike a microphone and transmitter pack and then turned his attention to setting up a small camera and display panel on a stand on the far side of the table, while the President worked out where to clip the transmitter and how best to route the tie-clip microphone’s cable. Once both men had completed their setup work and the comms officer confirmed with the communications control officer in the command center that he had a good feed, he let the President know that they only needed his go-ahead. The President tapped the lone button on his comm. badge.

“President Talmondson to TSC comms control, ready to hail the Struvian ship.”

“Roger that, sir. Hailing them now,” came the reply, through the comm. badge.

After what seemed an eternity, but was in reality only about ten seconds, the comm. badge woke back up. “TSC comms control to President Talmondson, we have a reply from the Struvian ship. Patching you through now. On five… four… three… two…”

The comms officer working the camera waved the last second and starting cue to the President, and he began.

“Struvian capital ship, this is Terran Starfleet Command. I am Michael Talmondson, president of the United Federation of Earth, of which Terran Starfleet is a part. Since we have never spoken, I must express my concern at your recent actions. I wish to discuss your firing on our perimeter defenses, and inquire if we can seek a peaceful resolution to whatever issues you feel are worth weapons fire. I welcome the opportunity to talk to you in a spirit of peace.”

The President glanced at the comms officer, who then tapped a button and said, “muted.”

The President continued staring into the camera, occasionally glancing at the comms officer, while they waited. He hoped that by continuing to transmit a live image feed to the Struvian ship he would convey that he did indeed want to talk about the attack on the Frontier with the aggressor ship.

A few uncomfortable moments passed.

Suddenly the President’s comm. badge activated. “TSC comms control to President Talmondson, we have a return feed from the Struvian ship. They’re hailing. Patching through to your display…”

The display mounted just below the small camera winked to life to display what the President assumed was a Struvian and hoped was the commanding officer of the capital ship.


The Struvian was roughly humanoid, as Terrans had discovered most sentient races are. They appeared to be pretty similar to Terran humans, but the skin tone was more bluish in tone and smoother, almost rubber-like in texture. Scale was difficult to determine but the height and build also appeared to be humanoid. The Struvian’s hair was a darker shade of blue. All in all, the President was reminded of the blue aliens shown in ancient television shows.


The Struvian spoke, its native language being translated in real time and a superimposed translation playing through the display’s speakers. “President Talmondson, I am Galak Nor, High Commander of the Struvian capital ship T'Vor-Lankh. I must say I find it surprising that you have the ability to translate our language.” The depth of the Struvian’s voice, as indicated by the faint original language played along with the translated, suggested that this Struvian was their equivalent of an adult male.

The President slowly smiled, lips closed so as to not expose teeth in case that was an aggressive action in their culture. “I appreciate your willingness to talk with me. I am very concerned that we Terrans have somehow caused an incident that warrants such an aggressive response. My task is to discover what this is and correct it so that our people will have no reason to fight. What can I do to assist?”

The Struvian blinked, as if surprised. “I am not aware of any such incidents, although I fear this is about to change.” As he said this, the Struvian commander smiled, exposing teeth. Apparently Struvians were omnivores, as the dental work exposed was about the same as what an adult human has. The bluish pigmentation was also present in the teeth, which were very faintly blue.

The President was not overly thrilled with the expression change, and a sense of foreboding crept into his politically experienced heart. There was a bad vibe emanating from the Struvian commander, like he was about to spring some bad news. The Struvian commander noted the slight shift in the President’s demeanor, and continued.

“The Struvian High Council has dispatched the T'Vor-Lankh to collect needed resources from this star system. We have a high demand for certain raw materials that are in short supply on our world. We have the demand but lack the supply.”

The President relaxed, but only slightly. “Excellent, we can help each other. One of our major goals is the establishment of trade of goods, services, and information with neighboring worlds. If you seek resources we can most certainly discuss trade agreements, and if you are in desperate need of materials in a short timeframe we would be happy to help.”

“I fear you do not understand Struvian resource acquisition practices,” interrupted the Struvian commander. “We do not trade with anyone. We take. And once there is no more to take, we destroy. We are a proud people – we will not resort to barter to solve our problems.”

The President thought this confusing. “If you do not trade with your neighbors, how have you provided the resources you needed in the past? Surely you did not invade and destroy all your neighbor systems.”

“Yes, we did. We have emptied planets in nine unpopulated systems and have destroyed life on planets in another five systems. Yours is the only remaining system in this region of space that possesses the resources we seek.”

The President found the candid nature of the Struvian commander’s revelation of previous acts of aggression disturbing. “Did any of these systems resist?”

“They all resisted, sometimes to the last creature. This does not matter. We take, and then we destroy. Resisting only delays the inevitable.”

The President’s demeanor shifted again, this time to finely controlled aggression. His eyes started to show that narrowed, beady look a person gets just before they try to break your face. “Although we still offer your people the opportunity to begin a peaceful relationship, you must realize that my people will fight to protect themselves.”

“Of course. That, too, does not matter. You lack the technology needed to stop us. We will take, then we will destroy.” The matter-of-fact posture the Struvian commander displayed showed that it was perfectly normal for a Struvian to be the winner of any and all conflicts. This was a being that was used to winning. It also indicated to the President that this fellow was going to have a go at making good on what he had said, no matter what the President said to dissuade him.

The President sighed audibly, and then leaned forward on the table, hands clasped in front of him. “We will fight to protect ourselves. However, we will ONLY fight to protect ourselves. If, at any time, you wish to reconsider and discuss a peaceful solution to your resource problem, I would welcome you. I will instruct my people to allow you safe passage out of the system at any time, should you decide to leave. If you wish to leave in peace we will permit this and not pursue.”

The Struvian blinked again. He clearly didn’t expect the recipient of a “we’re going to rape and then obliterate your system” threat to still give the attacker an out. “I appreciate your sentiments, but as I said they do not matter. This protective cocoon you have built will not stop us.” With that, the Struvian waved at someone off-camera. “Goodbye, President Talmondson.”

The screen went blank, and then displayed a UFE/TSC background with the words “Transmission ended” in the center. “We’re clear,” added the comms officer manning the camera.

At the same instant, the President’s comm. badge fired up, startling both men in the conference room. Carl’s voice flooded the room, and he was very excited about something. “Hey Mike, you’d better get in here.”


The President, with comms officer in tow, exited the conference room to see chaos in the command center. Mike finished removing the microphone, handed it and the transmitter pack to the comms officer, and walked quickly toward the Admiral, who was himself a picture of controlled madness as he literally dashed from console to console.

“What’d I miss?”

“You’re gonna LOVE this,” said the Admiral, in a tone of voice that indicated that what he had just dealt with might have been related to what the President had just discussed. “They fired at the Frontier again. Gimme a status update on the Frontier!” he shouted to the appropriate officer, who was typing like mad on a keypad.

“Six FSGs are borderline and in self-repair mode, eighteen FSGs moderately damaged. Blast energy dispersed across 11,843 FGSs. Nine FGSs overloaded from the dispersion but weren’t damaged. The Frontier is still closed but won’t take another hit that strong,” came the reply. The officer didn’t so much as slow down in his manic typing while reading off the stats.

“Well, I can do you one better. They’re here to strip-mine the system and destroy everything they can’t use,” added the President. This revelation stopped everyone in the command center in his or her tracks.

“I take it you offered a trade pact and they said ‘no’?” offered the Admiral, a new wave of concern replacing the previous on his face.

“Of course. According to their commander they don’t trade – ever. The Struvian commander’s body language suggested that they aren’t used to losing, either.”

“Great. Just what we need. We’re gonna have to prep for battle I assume?”

“His exact words were ‘resistance only delays the inevitable.’”

“Hmph. Well, hmm…” The Admiral’s face showed that a large number of thoughts were fighting for equal time. He called his executive officer over and started reading off orders in a hurry. “Get a fleet location report and get hold of the Doomsday. Get the Endeavor and Intrepid on the line and see if they’re able to mobilize for a possible combat-support station. Also, put the word out for all non-coms to get clear of this half of the system in case we have a major war break out.” The word “war” made everyone’s feet skip a step and heart skip a beat.

The X.O. trotted over to the comms console and started relaying orders to the officer seated there, and both got to work. The Admiral shouted to the X.O. some extra orders, causing him to turn his head to the Admiral, “Get hold of the Tech people at UFE headquarters while you’re at it. We might need whatever firepower they have working.” The X.O. nodded and turned back to the comms officer.


The telemetry officer interrupted the conversation. “Sir the ship’s on the move again. They’re backing up.”

All eyes turned to the Galileo video feed, which indeed showed the giant capital ship retreating. But something about the retreat felt wrong – the ship was pointed directly at the same spot it had previously fired on, and was backing straight away from it. The Galileo feed zoomed out as the ship moved, so that both ship and Frontier edge remained visible as one put some distance between itself and the other.

“What the hell are they up to?” asked both President and Admiral at the same time. They stared at each other, both thinking that in another place and time that would have warranted a laugh.

“They planning to ram the Frontier?” asked the President.

“The Frontier’s weakened, but not weakened enough that they can just punch through,” the Admiral replied. This confirmed what the President was thinking.


As they watched, the massive capital ship pulled back for a bit, and when it got a sufficient distance away it stopped.

“How far did they back up?” called the Admiral to the telemetry officer.

“Fifty thousand miles, give or take,” came the reply. At the zoom setting the Galileo feed was using, the ship was a small white speck and the curvature of the Frontier as it wrapped around the system could faintly be seen.

The ship stayed in its new position, and the eerie lack of any action was disturbing in and of itself. The feeling of dilated time was tangible, as if seconds were drawn out into minutes.


“Launch warning!” shouted an officer at one of the sensor consoles. “Bogey just fired an unidentified, headed right for the Frontier. Impact in ten seconds.” On the Galileo feed a smaller dot streaked from the small dot that was the ship.

“What is it?” asked the Admiral, concerned by yet another unpleasant surprise. This was getting to be too much.

“Looks like a missile of some sort. Impact in five… four… three… two… one…”

The Galileo feed flushed white, causing everyone watching it to cover his or her eyes as if trying to fend off a fireball.

[OddOne]

6
Hole In The Wall

“Status report!” shouted the Admiral.

One officer replied, staring at his console’s display and typing furiously, “sensors are down, no data yet. Whatever that is it let out a huge broadband noise burst. I’m working on it now.”

The Galileo feed was a solid white screen.

“Sensors are coming back online,” called out the officer as the Galileo feed started to fade from white to its previous view of space. The ship was still there.

The officer watching the Frontier flushed white as his sensors became usable. “Sir, the Frontier is open!”

The Admiral and President dashed over as the X.O. turned from the comms console, all in response to this. The urgent voices of various officers silenced briefly, then resumed with more vigor and less volume. The Frontier monitoring officer added more details as the two converged on him.

“Direct hit on one FSG and that one’s gone. Severe damage to twenty-three FSGs, moderate damage to 481 FSGs, blast dispersed over…” - the officer consulted his display – “over half the Frontier?” He shuddered briefly, then recomposed himself.

“How big is the hole?” asked the Admiral, who wanted desperately to throw his hands in the air and scream like a maniac, just to relieve the tension.

“Only one FSG is down, so the hole’s small - only eighty by a hundred twenty feet. Not nearly enough to get that ship through,” replied the officer after consulting another status report on his display.

“But plenty big enough to get more of those missiles through,” added the President. The Admiral nodded in agreement and both headed to the energy monitoring officer’s console.

“Precisely what in heaven’s name was that missile?” the Admiral boomed as he approached.

The energy-monitoring officer checked some figures and replied, “looks like an antimatter warhead of some sort. Similar output signature to our Mjollnir-5 warhead.” This was not well received, for the Mjollnir (or Thor’s Hammer) was one of the more powerful weapons systems the EDF possessed. Larger versions of it could crack small planets in half.

“Great,” muttered the Admiral, turning in disgust toward the main display. “Wonderful. JUST what we need.” Mike noted that this was Carl’s favorite stress-relief saying, and the more often he said it and more he emphasized it the more stressed he was. Right now he figured Carl was about an eleven-point-five on the one-to-ten stress scale.

“Any way to tell how many of those damn things they have?” asked the increasingly more worried President – particle cannon fire they could deal with, but a Mjollnir equivalent was a whole other story.

“Not that I’ve been able to find yet, sir,” replied the officer, taping furtively at a keypad and flipping through pages of incomprehensible (to the President, anyway, engineer though he was) scans and sensor reports. “If there’s a way I’ll find it,” she added, with a sharp tone.

A voice rang out from across the room – the telemetry officer was standing. “Sir! The ship’s backing up again.”

Several pairs of eyes focused on the Galileo feed, which had backed out to its widest field of view but could not keep both Frontier and ship on the screen. It panned to the ship and zoomed back in until the ship filled half of the screen.


The right half of the main display suddenly got more lively. The Hope station’s captain was trying to get someone to enable audio at the command center end. The comms officer finally noticed and did so.

Captain Martin addressed anyone that was listening. “TSC command, Hope station here. We have our cruisers ready to deploy to intercept any missiles shot through the hole.”

“Roger that,” replied the Admiral. “Deploy your ships but stay well clear in case they detonate against the Frontier. Also, make sure they shoot the missiles only – no pot-shots on the capital ship.”

“Understood. Hope on standby.”

The Captain of Hope station darted out of camera range and the right side of the main display showed the UFE/EDF logo with “Comms on standby – channel open” in the middle. The comms officer tapped a few keys and the main display was all Galileo feed instead of split-screen.

The comms officer jumped as if startled by something, and called to the X.O. They conferred briefly and the X.O. headed to the Admiral and President, still at the energy-monitoring console.

The X.O. relayed his news. “Sir, comms has the Doomsday on the horn. Captain Velasquez is getting the briefing now. He has the Ticonderoga and Yorktown with him in defense-combat group Omega.”

“Good. Make sure he has the most up-to-date data we have and tell him to get that crate ready to roll,” replied the Admiral. “Coordinate an intercept with him and the captains of the Ticonderoga and Yorktown. If that ship breaks through the Frontier I want it intercepted between there and here.” At that the X.O. took off for comms again.

“I hope we don’t have to use the Doomsday’s main guns,” added the President. His own stress meter just pinged about a twelve on the ten scale. “That’s an awfully powerful blast to shoot inside our own home system.”


Several million miles away, the Tiberius station hung in space, orbiting the star Sol between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. This was one of seven major stopovers for ships moving goods and people back and forth between the inner and outer planets. At one end, its eight large docking stations could accept large cruisers, and at its opposite end a mile plus away hundreds of small- to mid-sized ships could dock. Every ship that could make for space was doing so at a fevered pitch, and traffic around the station was crazy. Most of the ship traffic was headed to the far side of the Sol system, and a few were leaving the system completely by making for a Frontier gate.

A cruiser undocked from one of the eight ports reserved for large ships. At roughly twelve hundred feet long and two hundred feet tall in the middle the cruiser was big, low profile, and shaped like a stingray when viewed from above. The nameplate on its top read “EDF-002A – Doomsday.” Its two engine-tipped wings swept back into a single tapered tail, and at that tail’s tip were two openings that were each fifty feet in diameter. It had a sparse crew – only three hundred people – although its size suggested that it would need many more hands than that. But, when your ship is all engines, power plants, shield generators, and guns you don’t have room for a lot of people. She was a no-nonsense ship; Doomsday only carried enough crew to make everything work when needed and keep working when done.

The Doomsday was the EDF’s crown jewel, the ultimate defense ship – a star destroyer. The two holes in the tail were the exit ports for Doomsday’s main guns, and with these it could unleash the fires of Hell itself. Her two main guns could take out minor stars and most certainly blow holes through solid-cored planets. She packed shield generators that were stronger than even the FGSs’, an array of incredibly powerful weapons systems that could be aimed in any direction, defense turrets that bristled her surface like hairs, sensors that could reach into frequency ranges no other EDF ship could match, and sported an elite crew culled from the best the EDF had to offer. She had eight matter-antimatter collision reactors and sixteen engines, and this made it possible for her to do seven hundred times light-speed with shields up – making her the only Terran ship capable of faster-than-light speeds while shielded. She could also stop on a dime and rotate in any axis at a frightfully uncomfortable 75 degrees per second, enabling her to perform acrobatics that defied description for a ship her size. All in all, the Doomsday was the nastiest of attack craft, formidable in every sense of the word.

Already moving out of the station’s approach area were two other, smaller ships. One was labeled “EDF-323 – Ticonderoga,” and the other “EDF-324 – Yorktown,” and both were identical twins. They looked intimidating in their own right, despite being only eight hundred feet long and about as tall as the Doomsday. They were heavy assault cruisers, carrying their own potent armaments and defensive systems although the Doomsday dwarfed them in both size and punch. The Ticonderoga and Yorktown headed for a rally point away from Tiberius station and waited momentarily for the Doomsday to catch up, which it did in a hurry.


Back at the TSC command center, the X.O. compiled a report on the ships and got the Admiral’s attention. At the X.O.’s command the tactical officer posted a chart of the relevant area of the Sol system on the main display.

A series of concentric rings flared into view, a dark-green one near the left edge of the display marked “FRONTIER,” along with dark gray arcs representing the orbits of planets. All the way on the left edge was a red circle with a crosshair in it – the Struvian capital ship – and a label appeared above and to the right, which read “T'VOR-LANKH.” Just inside the Frontier line was a yellow circle with a crosshair in it, labeled “HOPE.” Near the right edge of the display was a white circle – with the legend, “EARTH.” A few planets appeared next as gray circles, each with legend text. “PLUTO,” “JUPITER,” and “MARS” were represented. Between the orbit lines of Jupiter and Saturn was another yellow circle/crosshair combination labeled “TIBERIUS,” and just below it were three green circles, labeled “EDF-002 – DOOMSDAY,” “EDF-323 – Ticonderoga,” and “EDF-324 – Yorktown.”

Entering the view at the top, just inside Mars’ orbit, was a purple circle labeled “EDF-108 – ENDEAVOR,” and entering the view at the bottom was another purple circle labeled “EDF-540 – INTREPID.” An assortment of green dots, each representing smaller ships, were all over the chart, with areas like Earth and the Tiberius station surrounded by an almost solid green. A lot of these dots were headed in the opposite direction of that one red circle at the far left of the map.

The Admiral and President surveyed the map, and the X.O. said, “for clarity we’re only showing class three cruisers and larger on the tactical. The Endeavor and Intrepid are headed for a rally point here…” The tactical officer pressed a button and a yellow ‘X’ appeared just outside Uranus’ orbit, labeled “RALLY ALPHA.” The X.O. continued, “And the Omega battle group is at their rally point and posed to intercept the bogey should it get into the system. The Hope has fast-attack ships here…” Another button press from the tactical officer and a handful of blue dots appeared between the plotted locations of Hope Station and the Struvian capital ship, as the X.O. continued, “and they’re ready to intercept any missiles that enter the system. If they miss, the Omega group can intercept from their location.”

[OddOne]

7
Security Breach

“Sir, the ship’s stopped again,” called out the telemetry officer. “They’re a quarter million miles out now.”

“Lovely,” responded the Admiral, his sense of foreboding tingling in light of what happened the last time the ship slammed into reverse. He looked around and called to nobody in particular, “heads up everybody, they might fire again.” His attention then focused on the comms officer. “Tell Hope station and the Omega group to get ready.”

The comms officer nodded and started flashing the news via emergency comms channels to the various ships and station involved. The small intercept ships the Hope station dispatched moved into position.


Meanwhile, several million miles away, the Omega group formed up, with the Doomsday aimed directly toward the hole in the Frontier and the two assault cruisers moved into position off each of the Doomsday’s wings. The trio was ready to rumble, and only needed something to rumble with. On board each ship, crews were prepping systems, checking, double-checking, triple checking, calibrating… getting ready.


Back at the TSC command center, officers were in a mad rush to get combat-capable ships into position and non-combatants out of harm’s way. With dozens of larger ships and thousands of smaller ones in the system, coordinating everything was interesting to say the least.

“Launch warning!” called out an officer.

Several heads snapped toward the main screen as the tactical display still visible on it zoomed rapidly in on that red circle and a blip in orange streaking from it.

“Is that another missile?” the Admiral asked, with a look on his face that indicated that he already knew the answer.

“Yes, sir, another – wait… Launch warning! Second missile outbound form the bogey. Same track as the first.” Another orange blip appeared on the tactical display.

The President flushed white as a thought he wished wouldn’t ever need to be thought entered his mind. “They trying to take out Earth?”

“No idea,” replied the Admiral, whose sudden pallor indicated that he apparently thought the same thing.

“Launch warning! Third missile outbound from bogey! First missile will reach the Frontier in thirty seconds!”

“THREE?” shouted President and Admiral, simultaneously.

Te President swung to face the Admiral. “If those are each on par with the Mjollnir-5, we’re in BIG trouble!”

“Agreed,” added the Admiral, and turning to the comms officer, said, “tell the Omega group to intercept those missiles no matter what the cost.” A nod from the comms officer and more flash traffic was sent to the appropriate ships.

“Launch warning! Missile four outbound from bogey. First missile will reach the Frontier in fifteen seconds.” The tactical display zoomed out to show the red circle that represented the capital ship, the arc representing the edge of the Frontier, and a row of four orange dots, all headed in a straight line toward the arc.


The flash traffic reached the Omega group, and the three ships wrapped up preparation and moved to their plotted intercept location, holding formation. They were now in a straight line themselves, directly between the hole in the Frontier and Earth itself. The ships powered up their shields, with Doomsday activating its multi-layer generators. Doomsday grew three additional forward shield layers, in anticipation of using them to repel the force of the blasts from the missiles if they couldn’t shoot them down first. Doomsday was ready to ram the missiles if it came to that.


“First missile will reach the Frontier in five… four… three… two… one… mark!” On the tactical display, the first blip entered the inner regions of the Frontier. It then started to slow, with the three behind it catching up.

“Why’s that first one slowing?” asked the startled President.

“Second missile is at the Frontier… now!” The second blip reached the Frontier on and also decelerated.

“What the hell…” muttered the Admiral. The missiles were clearly waiting for each other for some reason.

The third and fourth did the same thing, reaching the Frontier at full speed, entering through the hole, and then slowing. All four were now side-by-side in a grid pattern.

“Oh HELL no,” gasped the Admiral as a realization popped into his head. As if queued by this realization, the four missiles fanned out, fired back up to full thrust, and did a screeching U-turn heading back to the frontier – but not toward the hole they had entered through.


A couple dozen jaws dropped as the four missiles slammed into the Frontier, from behind. All four hit, and exploded, simultaneously. The shockwaves buffeted Hope station and the intercept ships that were positioned to shoot at the missiles that never came their way. The flash was so bright it was visible on the bridges of the Omega group’s ships despite their being four planetary orbits away.


“Status report!” shouted the Admiral at the Frontier monitoring officer. The officer was pounding keys maniacally as the sensors came back online.

The officer got the information he needed and shouted it to the Admiral, while still typing at a fevered pitch. “Thirteen FSGs gone, Two thousand nine hundred twenty-six FSGs damaged. The whole quadrant was overloaded by that attack. The Frontier is open enough to allow breaches.”

“How big is the hole now?”

“Three hundred ten by two hundred forty miles.”

“More than big enough to drive that ship through,” added the President.

“Agreed,” the Admiral replied. Turning to the comms officer, he started calling out additional orders. “Tell the Endeavor and Intrepid to step on it, and get the Omega group ready to repel invaders. Get Tech on the line and have them dispatch replacement FSGs and repair ships. We don’t need anyone else crawling through that hole.”

The comms officer nodded, and set to work. Suddenly he turned and called back to the Admiral. “I got the Andrew on the horn – they want to know if we need them.”

“Hell yeah we need ‘em! Have the Andrew link up with the others at Rally Alpha.”

The comms officer nodded and resumed work. Again, he turned. “Sir, just got another call from Luna! They’re on their way back from their Barnard’s exploration and want to know what we want them to do.”

The President perked up at this discussion. “Luna? I thought they were supposed to be gone for another few weeks.”

“They were monitoring the news feeds and heard about the situation, so they cut it short,” explained the comms officer.

“They could be critical to this mess,” the President said to the Admiral, who nodded in agreement.

“Yeah, as long as they get here in time,” quipped the Admiral.


The telemetry officer redirected the discussion yet again. “Sir, the ship’s on the move. Headed for the opening. ETA – fifty seconds.”


The main display switched to a split-screen, tactical on the left and Galileo feed on the right. Presently the ship, only a slowly moving white dot, appeared on the Galileo feed.

The President watched, as did the Admiral and about half of the command staff. “There they go…” he added as the ship drew close enough to the Galileo array to be more readily recognized as a ship.


All was silence as the massive Struvian capital ship sailed silently through the Frontier and into the Sol system, unmolested and undeterred. Its commander was right – the Frontier did indeed only slow them down temporarily.


The Admiral called to the comms officer, with eyes still transfixed on the Galileo feed, “tell Omega they get first crack at the bogey. Tell them to use minimal force – we only want to chase ‘em out of the system if possible. And flash alert epsilon to all stations and ships.” The comms officer emitted a deep sigh and turned back to his tasks.


All over the Sol system, every EDF ship went to its highest alert status. Every station did likewise.

[OddOne]

8
Angry Swarm

The Omega group was on the move.

Having seen the reports and data feeds from the TSC command center as well as the video feeds from the Galileo array, the crews of the Doomsday, Ticonderoga, and Yorktown were well aware of the situation and what actions had to be taken next. The time had come to go do their job.


In the command chair, usually referred to by EDF troops as the “hotseat,” was Raul Velasquez.

Born of Mexican immigrants that entered the United States illegally, he was a man that came from humble surroundings. Velasquez was a quiet man, reflective, with a fire in his eyes and a burning desire in the depths of his soul; he was driven by a simple goal – to be the best. That goal had already earned him two doctorates in applied astrophysics and mechanical engineering and gotten him to Sixth Dan in Tae Kwon Do. He had then turned his attention to the Terran Starfleet arm of the UFE, and entered EDF training at age thirty-two after receiving his second doctorate. After almost a decade of dedication and excruciating effort in his part he was the Captain of the most advanced piece of machinery human hands had ever built.

Velasquez looked at various reports on the display panel built into the armrest of the command chair, gathered his thoughts, uttered a brief prayer under his breath, and then looked at the infinity of space as shown on the ship’s main display.


“Comms, let Ticonderoga and Yorktown know we’re headed out. Helm control, plot an intercept course for our visitor and move out at your discretion. One tenth light speed if you please.” Both helmsman and comms officers acknowledged their respective commands with a “yes, sir” and the ship started to move. The twin assault cruisers, the Ticonderoga and the Yorktown, followed suit, maintaining their formation.


Back at the TSC command center, the President asked his old friend Carl for another round of comms time. “I think I’d better address the people and let them know what’s going on.”

“I think you’re right,” replied the Admiral, calling for a comms officer and transmit gear again.

The President went to the conference room and got situated. The same comms officer that helped him communicate with the Struvian cruiser returned and was directed into the conference room, and the two went through the equipment setup again.


The Admiral sighed deeply, rattling his ribcage in the process. “How long until the Omega group reached the Struvian ship?”

“Thirty-one minutes at present speeds, sir!” was the reply from the telemetry officer.


“Launch warning!’ shouted out a startled officer.

The tactical chart taking up part of the main display showed a cloud of orange dots streaming from the red circle. The Galileo feed showed nothing useful, as the ship was out of visual range of the array.

The Admiral gaped at the display. “PLEASE tell me those aren’t all missiles.”

“Working on that now, sir,” came the reply from another officer.

“They’re ships, sir,” added an officer manning a scanning console. “Looks like small strike fighters. They’re moving to intercept the Omega group, at half light speed. ETA – six minutes at present speeds.”

“Wow, as if we weren’t worried enough, this just keeps getting better. Comms, warn Omega to expect company.”


“Roger that, TSC command. Understood. Doomsday out.” The comms officer turned to the Captain. “Sir, TSC command reports the bogey has released a large group of small fighters. They’ll intercept us in just over five minutes.”

“Well well, someone doesn’t want us to get too close,” replied the Captain. “Tactical, who, what, and how many.”

The tactical officer tapped some keys. “No existing records of this ship config to fall back on. Between a thousand and eleven hundred total hostiles that I can get a bead on, could be more masked by each other. Looks to be small, fast-attack ships. Sub-light drive, undetermined weapons, shields are a tuned-multiphase design. They look small enough to be single-seaters but I’m not able to get lifeform readings on them yet so I can’t tell for sure.”

The Captain pondered the notion of firing a weapons burst right into the middle of the cloud of advancing ships, but that would violate the orders he’d received from TSC command earlier to inflict minimal damage. He suspected that he could wipe most of them out in one shot, but the notion of killing a thousand plus beings without giving them a chance to leave on their own didn’t sit well with him.

“Let’s see how well they can chase. Helm control, wait until we are exactly one second from them and jump to half light speed. Comms, relay that to the rest of the group.” A pair of “yes, sir” responses were returned.

“Five minutes to bogey group, Twenty-seven minutes to Struvian ship,” advised the tactical officer.


During the five minutes at their disposal, the trio of destruction-inducing ships prepared their own defenses and tightened their shields down, with the Doomsday backing off the multi-layer approach in view of the change of situation. Several dozen defense turrets on each of the three ships were armed, tested, and set to active defense mode – these turrets were intended specifically to protect against attacks from smaller ships but were never actually tested in a combat scenario.

There were a lot of systems designed for combat that were about to experience their first real-world test.


As the five minutes passed, the trio of ships comprising the Omega combat group and the swarm of fighters from the Struvian capital ship were about to meet. With a few seconds left to go the swarm started to break into groups to prepare to envelop and pounce on their quarry from all sides. At exactly one second to contact, right on cue, the Omega ships jumped from one-tenth light speed to one-half, zipping right through the suddenly open space between the various groups.

The startled and surprised pilots screeched in disjointed arcs and plunged into pursuit. The Struvian commander, watching on his own tactical display, threw his hands up in disgust over the stupidity he had just seen – there would be some serious discussions on combat tactics with some pilots after this was all over.

Of more immediate concern to the Struvian commander, though, were the Omega ships, now unmolested by the fighters – as they couldn’t get up enough speed to catch up with the trio – and only a few minutes from reaching the capital ship. With his own forces behind the approaching ships he suddenly had an idea. He didn’t reach his rank and position by neglecting combat tactics and strategies, and with his enemies headed straight for him and his own forces in a good position to prevent a retreat he had a clear shot at them.

The Struvian commander issued the appropriate orders, and the Struvian fighters bunched up to make sure their quarry couldn’t get away with any sharp course changes while staying clear of directly behind them lest they be destroyed.

Noting this, and being no dummy himself, Captain Velasquez ordered the other EDF ships to close up on his flanks and then had the front multi-layer shields reactivated.


“They’re charging forward weapons,” called out the Doomsday’s tactical officer after his display indicated the buildup. “Looks like a buildup for a plasma or directed-energy weapon.”

“How long until we’re in their face?” asked Velasquez.

“Three minutes thirty seconds… mark.”

“Prep our offensive turrets and double-check the defensive ones – when we slow down those fighters are going to be all over us.”

“Roger that. Three-twenty to engage.”


The trio tightened up, with the Doomsday in the lead and the Ticonderoga and Yorktown mere hundreds of feet apart directly behind. Behind them, in numerous groups of a few dozen each, were the Struvian fighters. In front of them was the Struvian capital ship, still closing. All were headed toward a single point in space at a combined six-tenths the speed of light.


Presently the tactical officer noted activity on a sensor display. “They’re preparing to fire! Incoming plasma burst!”


The Struvian capital ship fired. From a turret on its nose a single, bright blue burst of energy roughly a hundred feet wide spat forth. Riding this burst was a single white fireball of super-compressed plasma wrapped in a powerful magnetic field. The burst was a guide, the fireball the actual destructive charge. The burst hit the Doomsday head-on at the speed of light, and the fireball was launched up its guide beam at about half light speed. The Doomsday thus had about twenty seconds to see the shot coming thanks to the distance from point A (themselves) to point B (the Struvian capital ship). With enemy fighters all around and two ships to protect, they had no choice but to block the shot and hope they would survive it.

“Attention all decks! Brace for impact!” shouted the Captain after pressing a button, his voice played all over the ship. The Captains of the other two did the same thing. On all three ships, crew were securing anything loose and diving for the crash seats, complete with five-point harnesses, that appeared in every cabin and every so often in groups of four in each deck hallway.


The plasma burst and the outermost Doomsday shield met each other. The explosion scattered the pursuing fighters and temporarily blinded sensors on all involved ships. The hit was dead on the money, right in the most forward point of the Doomsday. The Struvian commander grinned and praised his gunner for the perfect shot, and then called for a report on how much damage the target had taken as soon as their sensors were back online.

The smile vanished quickly when the bright flash died down to reveal the same trio of ships, still on a collision course. The Struvian officers gave their various reports, the synopsis being that the shot, while perfectly on target, was ineffective against the human ships’ shields.

This had a predictable effect – the Struvian commander was livid.


“Damage report,” called Velasquez.

The tactical officer consulted his display. “Direct hit to the outermost layer. It’s down to seventy-one point three percent. Mild overheating on forward MLS generators but nothing serious. No damage.”

“Comms, how’d the others fare?”

“Waiting for the reports, sir.” After the reports came in the comms officer said that both ships were shaken but otherwise undamaged. One crewman on the Yorktown had been injured by falling gear but was doing fine in their medical bay.

The tactical officer interrupted the conversation. “Launch warning! Inbound missile form main bogey. Headed right for us. Impact in fifty seconds.”

“How far are we from the big ship?”

“One minute thirty seconds.”

“Comms, give me engineering.”

“Roger that.” The comms officer hit a few keys.

“Engineering here,” answered the intercom system.

“You have about thirty seconds to prep for an antimatter warhead collision.”

“Shi—er, gotcha. Working on it. Engineering out.”


Roughly forty seconds later the lone missile, a clone of the ones used to break through the Frontier, slammed into the outermost shield layer of the Doomsday. The explosion again buffeted and blinded everybody, and was visible by both Hope and Tiberius stations. The Galileo array detected the shockwave.

On board the Doomsday there was smoke and sparks everywhere. People on all three ships that didn’t manage to strap in somewhere were thrown all over the place.

“Damage report!” shouted the Captain over the hiss of a ruptured airline that made up part of the life support system. He jumped onto his command chair and reached up to close the appropriate valve and the hissing stopped.

The tactical officer picked himself up off the floor and jumped to his console to check. “Layer three is down, the MLS generators are badly stressed and some have failed. Minor vibration damage to decks ten through fifteen, several reports of moderate injuries.” He frowned as a new piece of information appeared. “One fatality reported by medical.”

It was now Velasquez’ turn to be livid. That was the first man under his command he’d ever lost. "There was no time for that now," he thought, and snapped back to the here-and-now.

“How about the others?”

The comms officer got the reports in and relayed them. “Ticonderoga reports minor hull damage, a small hull breach that their S.I. fields are holding, and a few injuries. Yorktown has minor damage and is reporting their engine output is down.”

“Can they both make three-quarter light speed?”

The comms officer asked and relayed two affirmatives.

“Good. Helm, run us up to three-quarter light speed. Let’s close the gap so we’re too close to use another of those damned missiles on.”

“Roger that,” agreed the navigator and pressed the appropriate keys. The trio of ships put on some speed, pulling away from their pursuers and closing the distance enough that the Struvian capital ship didn’t have the time and range for another missile shot.

[OddOne]

9
Strafing Runs

“Comms, get the other captains on the horn.”

“Roger that, sir,” replied the comms officers. The main display flipped to a split-screen.

“Yorktown here,” replied the first face to appear.

“Ticonderoga here,” replied the second.

“I want to send these people a message, but I also don’t want to cause any more fatalities than absolutely necessary. Here’s what I’m thinking.”

Velasquez outlined a rather strange plan involving a strafing run across the entire top of the approaching Struvian capital ship, under its shields. The plan was to use part of each ship’s defensive turrets in an offensive role to surgically strike individual targets of opportunity on the capital ship’s surface, while the remaining defense turrets would be keeping the pursuing Struvian fighters at bay. Since the capital ship was moving, some rather fancy flying would be required in order to strafe the lumbering giant without smashing into it.

The other captains agreed, and the Yorktown’s captain added the idea of setting the defense turrets designated for the fighters to target engines and weapons systems only. The others agreed to this as well. A consensus was quickly reached to hit only weapons, communications, and any exposed systems on the capital ship, but to leave life-support system components alone. With that agreed on, the communications ended and all three ships’ crews maniacally raced to reconfigure their defensive and offensive weapons systems.


In mere seconds, the trio of Omega group ships reached the outer shields of the Struvian capital ship. At the same instant, a broadcast went out from the TSC command center to every receptive ship and structure in the entire Sol system.


“Members of the United Federation of Earth, and citizens of Earth’s nations. Greetings. My name is Michael Talmondson, and I am the president of the UFE. I speak to you today concerning a grave situation we as a planet’s populace now face.”

The Omega group slowed to a more useful speed and breached the capital ship’s shields. The Struvian fighters, still coming in at half light speed, overtook all four in a couple seconds.

“A little over one Earth hour ago, a capital ship originating from the binary star system Struve 2737, some two hundred light years from our home star, breached the Frontier and entered the Sol system. We at the UFE’s Terran Starfleet Command contacted the ship, and were told of their purpose.”

The Omega ships dropped in low over the bow of the Struvian capital ship to begin the strafing run, with swarms of hundreds of fighters diving in behind, aside, and around to start their own attack on the Omega ships.

“Their purpose, sadly, is malevolent. The Struvian High Commander has told me that they have come to mine resources from the planets in our home system, and then destroy whatever remains. I have made numerous offers of peace and have even offered to help them obtain the resources they seek, but to no avail.”

The Omega ships fanned out, forming a large ‘V’ with Doomsday in the lead. The attack run started with Omega ships firing at any surface feature on the ship that emitted anything other than waste gases. If it shot at the ships, their guns immediately targeted it and shot back. The fighters raked the tops of each Omega ship with pulse-cannon fire, eliciting return fire from defense turrets set to deal with them. Energy bursts were flying fast and furious.

“They have made it clear that they do not want peace. They do not want trade. They do not want to allow us to help them in the manner civil systems have long employed. They have instead chosen to invade, to conquer, to take, to destroy.”

Each Omega ship continued, firing at anything strategically important in a five-mile-wide arc while their upper defense guns swatted the fighters like flies. Once every few seconds a fighter would take a hit to a critical system and spiral out of control, some crashing into the capital ship, others crashing into other fighters taking part in the melee, still others spiraling out into space away from the combat.

“A few moments ago, the EDF heavy assault cruisers Ticonderoga and Yorktown, and the EDF destroyer Doomsday, engaged the Struvian capital ship that had entered our system. Additional ships, including the EDF capital ships Endeavor and Intrepid as well as the EDF fighter transport Andrew are converging to provide support and help defend Earth.”

Yorktown fired at an intriguing target and drew a large secondary explosion, and with that some of the capital ship’s turrets went offline for a brief moment. All three continued shooting up anything and everything they could track, and had already knocked out several dozen fighters. However, the constant barrage on the ships’ shields from the capital ship guns and the hundreds of annoying fighters were starting to take their toll.

Inside the capital ship, the command crew saw the approaching Omega ships and relocated from the main bridge, which jutted out of the top of the capital ship where its nose ended and body began.

“We ask all those that value life to consider the people engaged in combat. If you are religions, please pray that we may find a peaceful resolution that benefits both Terrans and Struvians, before any additional blood is shed.”

A lucky hit from one of the Ticonderoga’s upper defense guns blows a tight group of three fighters to smithereens. A fourth fighter slammed into the wreckage and exploded.

The trio can see the end of the capital ship’s giant nose and in the distance a horizontal line – the windows into the main bridge – comes into view. All three ships head right for it, and defensive fire from the capital ship gets a lot more intense.

“To the Struvians, we repeat our offer of peace. If you disengage and leave our system we will allow you to do so in peace. Our offer to help still stands.”

The Struvian capital ship’s high commander reaches a backup control center deeper within the giant ship, and starts shouting orders at various crewmembers. The President’s broadcast is playing in the background, over a comms console – the command crew had been listening to it as they relocated, courtesy of their own form of handheld computers.

“ We will still be happy to help you with your resource problem, but only if you are willing to embrace a more civil course of action than to invade a sovereign system and threaten its peoples.”

All three Omega ships reach, and pour concentrated weapons fire into, the main bridge. It explodes, shaking the whole front half of the ship and taking a fairly large chunk from its surface. The three climb over the transition from nose to body and start working down the main part of the ship, fighters still pressing them from every side with obscene amounts of pulse cannon fire. Defense fire from the capital ship was now so thick it’s becoming hard for the Omega ships’ computers to track all the targets presenting themselves.

“To the people of Earth, I will restate the original purpose of the EDF – the defense of Earth from all significant threats. Whether from near-Earth objects or other celestial phenomena, or from hostile action from other sentient peoples, we WILL fight to protect our home.”

The Ticonderoga reports to the Doomsday that its upper shield generators are starting to overheat, and another report indicates the Yorktown’s belly-shield gennies are doing likewise. All three continue their relentless pounding of the surface of the T’Vor-Lankh, while all ships Struvian pound them with equal mercilessness. So far, a good hundred Struvian fighters are disabled or destroyed.

In the distance a port in the top of the giant capital ship opens. A huge cannon slowly rises from the opening. The three ships’ command crews notice this and discuss what to do if it fires at them.

“We will show all that attempt to crush us, that we cannot be crushed. The human spirit will become legend throughout the galaxy, as it is already legendary on Earth. We will overcome. We MUST overcome.”

The giant cannon finishes exposing itself, and is easily several hundred feet tall. The Omega ships are still roughly fifty miles from it but it dominates the views of all. They have a really good view of the barrel, which quietly begins to glow a faint blue. The mad weapons fire from Struvian capital ship and fighters to Omega ships and vice versa, continues.

“We will show our attackers today that we are a people that desire peace, and can defend against any attacker. We will prove that we will protect ourselves without hesitation but still help our interstellar neighbors. We will prove that we are not just a primitive warrior race bent on conquest, but are instead willing to act responsibly with respect to other races.”

The giant cannon fires a massive burst, which hits the front shields of Doomsday. Several of the Doomsday’s multi-layer shield generators immediately overload and explode, causing small pimples of smoke to erupt from its otherwise smooth exterior.

“Despite everything, we still wish peace. We would still welcome the Struvians in peace of they would only do so themselves. We would still offer our assistance in any way we could, if they would only ask. There is no need to resort to violence when the other side wants to help.”

Dozens of fighters descend on the Ticonderoga, firing concentrated weapons fire at its back end. Ticonderoga’s FTL engines go offline as it fires back, destroying two of the attacking fighters and sending a dozen more tumbling off in random directions. The Doomsday fires a larger ion cannon burst at the massive cannon, causing a secondary explosion from one side of its base. Its barrel begins to glow again.

“Again, we ask the Struvians to end their hostile actions and leave the system. Once they are outside the system we can discuss getting them what they need as fast as they need it. Please, Struvian ship commanders, please reconsider your actions!”

All three ships fire concentrated ion cannon fire at the giant Struvian cannon and it explodes at its base, the cannon itself floating off and away in a cloud of debris and uncontained plasma. The sudden drain on the Struvian ship’s power systems causes all of the defense guns to stop momentarily, but the fighters’ attacks continue without mercy. A few seconds later the defense guns start to come back online and the firefight intensifies.


Back in the TSC command center’s conference room, the President wraps up his speech, and in the command center itself the Admiral and command staff watches the firefight unfold. The three EDF ships are making a strong showing, destroying hundreds of turrets and knocking out or destroying hundreds of fighters, but that much of a pounding can’t be taken for that long without something giving.


The Omega ships reach the halfway point down the ship’s length.

“Doomsday, we’re getting beat up pretty badly here,” called the Yorktown’s captain over the open communications link between the three ships. “We’re gonna lose a shield in about two minutes at this rate.”

“Ditto on that here too,” added the Ticonderoga’s captain.

“Okay, let’s punch it and get to the back end of this thing. Maybe we can knock out something important in the backside and at least slow it down,” offered Velasquez, knowing that even the mighty Doomsday couldn’t endure much more. She had already lost her multi-layer shields and was down to a single shield layer, and that wouldn’t hold for long.


The three ships accelerated, picking targets more carefully and making things harder on the fighters. In the distance, at what looked to be close to the engine end of the ship, features looking strangely like giant tubes were starting to come into view. Velasquez noted these first due to the magnification setting of Doomsday’s main display, and all three ships’ captains decided to pump fire into them from a distance in case they were part of the ship’s propulsion systems.

A number of shots at the right spot ruptured one of the tubes, and uncontained plasma went everywhere. They were plasma conduits, presumably to provide energy for the ship’s engines. A shooting spree ensued, with loads of secondary explosions shaking the entire capital ship. It began to slow down.


In the command center within the bowels of the T’Vor-Lankh, the Struvian commander was informed that the Terran ships had wiped out two main engine feeds and taken their sub-light drive offline. They were coming to a stop.


Seeing the explosions intensify in the distance, the Omega group broke off and headed up away from the capital ship’s surface, several hundred fighters still in pursuit.


Back in the Struvian command center, a comms officer called the commander. “Sir, you have a message coming in from the home world.”

“Transfer it to my office,” replied the Struvian commander, standing up with a look of extreme concern about the situation and timing of the call from home.

[Prairie Lady]

Ready for more!!!



PL

[OddOne]

10
Ultimatum

As the Struvian commanded headed to one of the conference rooms off the control center, the Omega ships headed back toward the front of the now almost stopped capital ship. Since they had already cleaned out most of the defense turrets, their only hassle was fighter cover, and with no need to worry about the capital ship’s surface guns all available turrets on each of the three was being devoted to spanking down the fighter hordes.


The Struvian commander entered the conference room, tapping a spot on a touch panel below a large display set into the wall. Another Struvian appeared, an older one complete with the wrinkles of age mixed with a lifetime of stress, and immediately started talking.

“Finally. I need a progress report for the Council,” said the distant Struvian.

“We have not yet reached the populated planet,” replied the commander. This was going to be delicate – failure brought harsh repercussions in Struvian society, and failing a mission this big and this important could easily get him exiled to some mining colony, or worse. He put on his best poker face.

“WHAT?” screamed the Struvian on the display. “You should have subdued the planet and started offloading scout drones by now!”

The commander remained calm. “We have encountered more concerted – and much more severe – resistance than expected.”

“How is that even possible? We are more powerful than ANY system we have yet encountered,” bellowed the distant Struvian, not bothering to hide his indignation at the mere idea that anyone dare oppose them.

“Our intelligence on the indigenous sentient creatures in this system was woefully inaccurate. They are roughly on par with us technologically. I had to resort to using five Alkard missiles to breach the protective energy fields they have surrounding the system.”

“FIVE Alkards?” cried the distant Struvian, his complexion paling to a pastel blue as he did so. This was not at all what he was expecting to hear.

“Yes. And even now three of their ships have breached our shields and attacked. In their attack they damaged our main engines. We are—“

The distant Struvian interrupted. “This is wrong. This is VERY wrong. Intelligence command ASSURED me that the sentients in that system were barely even space capable, let alone able to take us on.” Veins pulsed visibly on his forehead.

“Their assessment was incorrect. As I started to say, we are making repairs and expect to be ready to resume our action against the only populated planet shortly.”

The distant Struvian took on a grimmer demeanor. “If you must, destroy their home world from a distance. Do whatever you must to get what we need.”

“I plan to.”

“Notify me when you are ready to begin the surface invasion.”

The display went blank as the communications ended. The Struvian commander slumped into a nearby chair and sighed heavily. That went better than he thought it would, and he did not expect the intelligence officers back home would be well received when news spread on how far off the mark their intel reports were.


The Omega trio was by this time parked outside the T’Vor-Lankh’s shields, above and out front of the giant’s nose, defiant. The impression was one of three mice standing before an elephant, daring it to proceed. Only a few hundred fighters remained by this time, the rest disabled or destroyed – with all their guns brought to bear against them the fighters were losing more ships faster than before. While the trio sat in their blockade pose, bursts from their defense turrets shot in all directions like glowing quills from a trio of very annoyed porcupines.


Inside the Doomsday, Velasquez was on the line with TSC command, discussing what to do next now that they had slowed them down for a moment.

“Endeavor and Intrepid should reach Rally Alpha behind you in about fifteen minutes,” said the Admiral, the view of his face on the main display of the Doomsday’s bridge showing the stress he was under.

‘Roger that. Should I contact the ship and tell them to get out of our system?”

The Admiral and President, who came into view, conferred briefly. The President stepped toward the camera that was relaying their images. “I’ve got a better idea. Watch your flash traffic.” The President tapped madly at a computer pad he was holding.

Presently the Doomsday’s comms officer received a message and piped it to the display in the armrest of the hotseat. Velasquez skimmed it and looked up, surprised and smiling, at the other end of his conversation as shown on the main display. He chuckled audibly and added, “Are you kidding me?”

“Nope,” replied the President, smiling as well. “Might as well show ‘em we have huge cajones.”

Velasquez chuckled. “Roger that. But what if they don’t buy it?”

“If they don’t—“ interrupted the Admiral, “as far as I’m concerned you have Captain’s discretion for neutralizing the threat.” The President turned to the Admiral seemingly in surprise, and the Admiral said to the President “we’ve screwed around with these people long enough.”

The President nodded and turned back toward the comms camera on his end. “I’m afraid he’s probably right. If these guys are what I think they are, they’re not going to go unless we drag them. But please choose your force levels carefully – I for one don’t want to see any unnecessary deaths.”

“I agree completely,” added Velasquez. “We’ve destroyed several dozen of their fighters but only disabled hundreds more. They can’t say we’re not trying to minimize their casualty count.”

“And for God’s sake use the main guns on that thing ONLY if you absolutely have to,” quipped the President, the smile dropping from his face in an instant.

“Agreed there too.” At that the President backed up from the camera on their end and the Admiral stepped up.

“We’ll advise when your backup arrives, but until then you’re the only thing between them and the inner perimeter. Just hold ‘em back as long as you can.”

“Roger that.”

“We’ll be in touch. TSC command out.” With that, the main display flashed to black momentarily and then reverted to the forward view, a nice large up-close shot of the capital ship’s nose.


The Captain of the EDF’s finest stood up, collected himself, straightened out his uniform, and spoke. “Comms, hail that ship.”


In the bowels of the capital ship, an excited comms officer ran into the office to get the commander. “The attacking ship is hailing us!” The commander got up and followed back to the command center. Doomsday was transmitting, their message displayed on the main display of the control center. Velasquez’ voice was superimposed by the translation in the Struvians’ native language.

“Attention, T’Vor-Lankh. I am Raul Velasquez, captain of the Earth Defense Force ship, Doomsday. At the request of my commanders I have been asked to relay the following. Terran Starfleet Command wishes to extend the same offer that the President of the United Federation of Earth did –negotiation of a peace agreement between our peoples, with emergency assistance for your resource crisis. Barring that, we also extend the offer of safe passage out of our system.”

The Struvian commander frowned. “If only it were that easy,” he thought.

“However, if you refuse to choose instead to attack our home world, we will fight to protect it from you. We have already demonstrated that three small ships can inflict damage to the T’Vor-Lankh, and we are currently damaging or destroying your fighters as well while we sit. We do not want to resort to hostilities, but if you leave us no other option we will attack your ship with much greater firepower than we have used to this point. We cannot guarantee the safety of any of your crew if such actions are taken.”

The proud warrior in the Struvian commander flared up, instilling a “how DARE this impudent weakling challenge ME!” vibe. The commander, wizened by years of military experience, pushed down the emotional reaction and focused on what was – and wasn’t – being said.

“We have three options presented before us. Option one – you end your hostile actions and enter into discussions on a peaceful resolution and how we can help you with your own problems. Option two – you leave the system in peace. Option three – you try to continue and we stop you by whatever means necessary. Please know this: our commanders have given permission to use any and every method at our disposal to prevent you from proceeding. If you attempt to do so, we will do just that.”

“Please choose wisely. Your fate may depend on it.”

The Struvian commander walked over to a comms console and tapped a spot on a touch screen. The Doomsday transmission vanished, replaced with the view from the nose of the capital ship, complete with the trio of EDF ships. They were still dealing with fighters but in much lower numbers.

As the Struvian commander watched a few more fighters tumble disabled away from the fight, he thought about the stakes of his mission. His home world was desperate for raw materials, but for what? Was it this important?


“They closed the channel on their end,” interrupted the Doomsday’s comms officer as Velasquez prepared to discuss the three options in more detail.

“Not surprising,” replied Velasquez, who really was more surprised they hadn’t cut off the comms earlier into the delivery of his message.

“Now what?” asked the tactical officer.

“Now we wait and hope they make the right decision.”

[OddOne]

11
Collision Course

The Struvian commander had pondered briefly and reached a decision on which of the three options he would run with. “The impudence of this species amazes me. I grow tired of this – tactical, give me a firing solution for those ships.”

“Sir, I cannot reach a firing solution,” replied the tactical officer.

The commander swiveled in his command chair, which was centered on a three-step riser that was in turn centered in the control room, to face the tactical officer. “And why not?”

“They destroyed all of our defense guns AND took out our ion cannon. The only beam weapons we have require distance to collimate, and they are far too close for them to be effective. We already lost most of our fighters and the remaining ones won’t last long.”

“Then use missiles.”

“They are too close to use Alkard warheads, and nothing we have that is small enough to use at this range will penetrate their shields.”

“Our enemy stares us in the face and insults us, and all we can do to them is make facial expressions?”

The Struvian command swiveled his seat back to the forward position, facing the main display. “Where are our engines?”

“Coming back online now sir,” replied the helmsman.

The Struvian commander snarled. “Ramming speed.”


On the Doomsday’s bridge, everyone waited for a response from the capital ship. The tactical officer noted a relevant piece of sensor data and said “they got their sub-light engines back online.”

“Very well – keep an eye on them in case they decide to move that beast.”

“I think we’re about to get their reply,” added the tactical officer, excitedly. The capital ship lurched as its engines went to full power. “Holy shit! Collision warning!” The alarming sight of a miles-wide ship’s nose suddenly moving toward them, really, REALLY fast, made everyone on the bridges of all three ships jump.

“Evasive!” shouted Velasquez, while the helmsman reacted to the new threat in the ordered manner even though he didn’t wait for the order. All three ships went straight up from their current positions as fast as their maneuvering thrusters would take them, as the capital ship bore down on the trio.

“Collision in ten seconds!” called out the now even more excited tactical officer. The helmsman pitched the Doomsday at a nauseatingly fast rate and punched the engines to give the ship a burst of speed. The others did the same thing, albeit more slowly as they couldn’t pitch as quickly. All three ships hit one-tenth light speed for a second or so to get clear and the giant capital ship zipped along under them.

“We’re clear, but they’re headed for Earth,” added the tactical officer, excitement suddenly replaced with concern over where the sensors plotted the ship’s path was taking it.

“Comms, give me the other ships.”

The main display changed to a split-screen and the captains of the Ticonderoga and Yorktown both appeared.

“We need to take out their engines, for good if necessary. Get ready – we’ll make a run at ‘em from behind. Target their propulsion systems only.”

Both captains agreed and comms flipped the main display back to an image of the capital ship scooting along, still accelerating. About the time the giant hatch that used to conceal the large cannon they blew up earlier came along, the trio of ships turned back at the capital ship and headed for its rear end.


In roughly half a minute they reached the back end of the ship and prepared to turn in behind and fire at it. A quick sensor scan changed the plans however – there was so much uncontained plasma and debris from the earlier conflict stuck in the electromagnetic slipstream behind the capital ship that trying to get in close enough to effectively destroy anything was risky.

“Ticonderoga and Yorktown – give us cover but get at least a hundred miles away. We’re going to put some fire up their backside.”

Both ships acknowledged and separated, all the while shooting at the remaining fighters. The Doomsday dropped into the slipstream from the engines and worked its way to the center of the engine wake where there was very little turbulence. Doomsday pointed away from the capital ship’s engines, with its tail pointed right at the rear end of the giant ship, right in the center between the eight huge engine thruster nozzles.


“Sir, the Doomsday is charging her mains,” called out an officer. Both Admiral and President stared at each other with looks of concern mixed with terror on their faces. The tactical chart on the main display indicated that the Doomsday was pointed at the capital ship, which in turn was headed for Earth. A miss of the intended target would, at full power, cook the atmosphere off the planet about twenty minutes after they fire.

“What the hell are they doing?” bellowed the Admiral. “Zoom in!”

The comms officer tapped on a keypad and the tactical display zoomed in to reveal the capital ship leaving and the others positioning themselves to take a shot.

“Get Doomsday on the horn, NOW” called the Admiral. The comms officer did so, and the main display changed to a split screen with Velasquez appearing in the right half.

“Doomsday here. Please make it fast – we’re only going to have one crack at them.”

“What’s your plan?” asked the Admiral, making an effort to not scream “are you OUT OF YOUR EVERLOVING MIND?!” at the well-respected officer he was talking to.

“I plan to stop them. A medium-power burst from one of the main guns should wreck their engines enough to ground them for a while.”

“I don’t have to tell you what kind of hell you’ll unleash if you miss,” added the also very worried President.

“No sir, you don’t.” The look on Velasquez’s face indicated he knew the risks all too well and was convinced that this was his only viable option.

“Good shooting!” called the Admiral, waving for comms to end the conversation. The main display went back to a tactical display.


Velasquez ordered one of the Doomsday’s two main cannon to charge for a thirty-percent shot. He hoped that would be enough, as if it wasn’t he would be putting his entire home world in jeopardy if it didn’t.

“Roger that,” replied the tactical officer. “Cycling power…. Reconfiguring… Targeting… Firing solution’s online and ready… I have a green panel – waiting for the final word.”

Velasquez sighed. He had hoped from the first moment of his having been told of the Struvians’ potshots against the Frontier that he would not be firing the EDF’s most powerful cannon at them.

“Tactical, fire when ready.”


As the other two ships played swat-the-fighter with the last few dozen fighters still buzzing them, the Doomsday positioned itself carefully, its tail aimed at the very center of the rear of the departing capital ship. One of the two holes began to glow brilliant neon purple as containment fields activated along the main cannon barrel’s length.

Suddenly a blinding ball of light seared from the tail of the Doomsday. It grew immediately to a diameter comparable to the wingspan of the ship that fired it, and then became a great beam of whiteness too bright for eyes to behold. The blast zipped at light speed to the backside of the Struvian capital ship, which by now was a few light seconds away. As it went, it warped the very fabric of space and time, ripping atoms into quantum particles and breaking the bonds that held matter together.

Two seconds later the beam, still hundreds of feet wide, reached the rear end of the capital ship and neatly sliced into its hull as though it were made of plastic wrap. The blast cut through hull plating, through bulkheads, through plasma conduits, through power regulators, through deck floors, through walls, through crew quarters, through the atoms of individual crew.

The blast only lasted three seconds. All was suddenly dark. The tail of the Doomsday showed no signs of having unleashed the energy of a hundred suns in a single burst, except for the faintly visible purple ionization trails from the containment fields.

The T’Vor-Lankh was another story.

A neat hole was excised into the great ship, as if cut cleanly with a coring tool. Edges of decks were cut cleanly, neat arcs where deck floors used to be. The blast had excised a neat hole almost half a mile deep into the ship. Every structure, from flimsy wall panels to meters-thick bulkhead structural beams, was sliced away as though with a scalpel. Plasma conduits dumped plasma into the space, irradiating the exposed and unshielded decks and instantly cooking crew trapped by structural-integrity fields that prevented the back part of the ship from breaking into pieces and falling away. The engines were all silent and dark, unable to get their required feeding of plasma from the ship’s reactors.

The Struvian capital ship wouldn’t be able to repair that kind of damage any time soon.


The Doomsday called TSC command. “We’ve disabled their engines, for good I think,” Velasquez said, torn by the conflict of the loss of life he had just inflicted versus the lives saved by preventing the capital ship from reaching Earth.

“Excellent,” replied the Admiral. “Nice shooting!”

“Thank you. There are a lot of damaged fighters out here – you might want to send someone out here to pick up the survivors and render aid.”

“Roger that. I’m dispatching rescue ships now. You sit tight and keep an eye on them in case they have any extra tricks up their sleeve. TSC command out.”


At this point, several things happened at once:

On the Doomsday it was decided to move the Omega team back to the front of the now disabled capital ship to prevent any nasty surprises like missile launches. The trio started to head for a blocking position in front of the capital ship, still coming to a stop on momentum alone.

At the Tiberius station, the heavy transports Moscow and Canberra undocked and made ready to head to the site of the battle to pick up survivors. Each ship could carry several thousand people, and was equipped with salvage and rescue equipment that would be necessary for retrieving the pilots of the disabled fighters adrift in space. They also carried state-of-the-art medical facilities that rivaled the best station hospitals.

Several million miles farther into the Sol system, the Endeavor and Intrepid arrived at their rally point. Other ships were still en route, the largest of them being the Andrew. The supply transport Melbourne was headed that way, along with the personnel transports Seattle, Calcutta, and Sydney, each loaded with everything from scientists to emergency workers to EDF troops.

The TSC command center started calling out to the Struvian ships, large and small, to tell them that the Terrans had dispatched rescue ships to recover surviving fighter pilots and assure them that the recovered pilots would be well treated and returned to the Struvian ship as soon as was practical. Offers of medial and repair assistance were also extended to the T’Vor-Lankh, along with a repeat of the previous offer of safe passage out of the system – the UFE and EDF were trying to make the point plainly clear that they didn’t want a war and were only involved in the combat for self-preservation.

On the T’Vor-Lankh the Struvian commander was screaming orders at his officers in an attempt to contain the amazing amount of damage they had just taken. He had no idea the Terrans had weapons even remotely as nasty as what was just used on them, let alone from such a small ship. They were dead in the water, able to move with maneuvering thrusters only, and with all the damage they’d taken they were pretty much unable to defend against another attack. They were well and truly screwed and he knew it.


Among the mad action, the Struvian commander called to his exasperated comms officer. “Get the home world on the comm.”

[OddOne]

A quick bump to let everyone know it's in the main forum now. I'll replace this post with chapter 12 when I get it typed up. :-)

oO

[Donald Shimoda]

Howdy, Folks!

But, but...where are the <a href="http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/1996-12-16/index.html">nekkid radioactive zombie girls</a>?

[Just a thought]

bttt

[Just a thought]

bttt

[Just a thought]

last bttt

[michaelteever]

foot taps.......

[epaul]

A.T's story is great,, but this one needs some more. How about it?



epaul

[OddOne]

12
Conflicting Attitudes

The display in the Struvian commander’s office winked back to life, again showing the same aged Struvian he had been talking to before. Only this time the older one looked older still, as though aged detectably by the stresses he had been under since his last appearance.

“Report,” he barked.

“We are disabled, our engines and most weapons systems are offline,” replied the Struvian commander.

Neither spoke for a moment. Then the older Struvian on the other end came unglued. “You are WHAT? You were sent to a relatively insignificant little world and now you tell me that the creatures there disabled your ship?”

“Apparently this world is a great deal more significant than was thought,” countered the commander. “Technologically they are on par with us.”


Several million miles away, at the TSC command center, the discussions between the Struvians had attracted attention. As soon as the connection was established an officer manning a transmission-monitoring console was alerted to the fact that the Struvian capital ship was transmitting a thin subspace carrier in the direction of its home system.

“What is that?” asked the Admiral.

“Based on the bandwidth I’d say it’s an audio-video feed,” answered the officer. “Computer’s working on the compression algo now. In the meantime I’ve set the signal recorder to capture it.”

“Good, let me know what you find out.”


The older Struvian was less than pleased at the first conversation he had with the commander of the T’Vor-Lankh. This second conversation was about the epitome of a worst-case scenario as far as he was concerned. He sighed once his initial tirade had passed.

“I am very disappointed in your results.”

The commander bristled at this, but retained his composure. His pupils took on a tight, beady appearance. “Perhaps you would be better served by finding out precisely how the intelligence sector missed the technology level of this world’s species in their capability assessments.”

The distant Struvian was rather surprised by such a blunt challenge – the intelligence officers in their military were held in high regard, and challenges to that position were usually dealt with rather harshly. For the commander to say what he did, he clearly must have encountered resistance that defies description. He pondered this and then asked, “Assuming that you are not to blame for this disaster, what level of technology have you encountered?”

“This system’s sentient species has interstellar capability – “

“That’s impossible,” interrupted the distant Struvian, who was looking over the tech assessment the T’Vor-Lankh was given. “Only a handful of their ships ever left their system.”

“Perhaps, but we have seen several ships that clearly had hyperspace capability. They were using sub-light drives inside the system but the engine signatures suggested hyperspace-capable propulsion systems were present but offline or on standby.”

The distant Struvian did not like this at all – this conversation had started of very bad and was getting worse. “Hmmm, very well, what else?”

“From what we have seen, their technological level is roughly the same as ours. They seem to have better shield technology than we do, and weapons are comparable.”


Back in the TSC command center, the officer that had first picked up the transmission suddenly shouted, “I think I got it.” This caught the attention of both Admiral and President, who were both tending to various other tasks to prepare for the next phase in the repel-the-invaders operation.

“Put it on main,” called out the Admiral, to which the officer replied “sir!” and pressed a few keypad buttons.

The sound of digital noise came from the speakers, to which the officer responded, “Give the computer a second to sync up with the compression.”

Presently the digital noise took on a duck-quaking style and then resolved itself into legible sounds, with the translation superimposed on top.

“Beeeeeepboopstatic-beeeeepboopstatic-quacksqueakquackgurglegrowl technology than we do, and weapons are comparable.”

“Yes, got it!” exclaimed the excited officer. Everyone turned to listen to the rest of the conversation.



“I see,” continued the distant Struvian, noting that the intel report was indeed way off the mark – it listed the Terrans as not faster-than-light capable and with weapons technology that wouldn’t even break a nav shield for a troop transport. “How did they disable you then?”

“One of the ships that attacked us was a star destroyer. They fired on us with their main cannon and destroyed our engines.”

The effect of hearing this produced a facial expression on the distant Struvian that was very similar to the ice falling off the forward edge of a glacier, as the disappointment and annoyance tumbled off to reveal panic. His jaw fell open.

The commander laughed inside himself – now this conceited blowhard from the council could see what he was dealing with. “Our tactical officer says that they only used one of two main cannon, and could have charged that cannon up a lot more than they did. They shot to disable us, not destroy us.”


Outside, the Moscow and Canberra were arriving on the scene, having moved at eighty percent of light speed to get to the survivors of the fighter engagement as quickly as possible. The Moscow headed to the first contact point away from the capital ship, and the Canberra headed to the capital ship to pick up disabled fighters drifting away from it. All the while they broadcasted “we’re here to rescue you” messages to the fighters as they approached.

The Struvian tactical officer in the capital ship noted the arrival of the Canberra and watched as it sought out and tractored in any disabled or derelict fighters it could detect. To him it was yet another atrocity heaped on top of a protracted nightmare – first they were resisted, which in and of itself was unthinkable, but now they were disabled and their pilots were being taken prisoner. He called over the intercom to the commander, who asked the other side of his conversation to hold on a moment while he checked out the new event.

After surveying readouts of sensor reports, reading the transmissions’ translation, and watching the video feed of the Canberra retrieving fighters, he switched back to the conversation at hand.

“The system’s sentients have dispatched a ship to pick up the disabled fighters. They claim they are acting in a rescue capacity and will return the ‘recovered’ crew when they are medically safe to transport. Whether that actually happens I expect we will see soon enough.”

The distant Struvian was aghast. “You are allowing them to capture your crew?”

That beady-eye look returned to the face of the commander, only this time the composure was not as well maintained. “What do you propose I do? Throw rocks at them and demand they stop? We have NO viable anti-ship weapons, NO propulsion, and NO shields to speak of. We are quite literally at their mercy.” The commander leaned back in his chair, adding, “They continue to claim they seek peace… It appears that we will see how serious they are.”

The distant Struvian continued to show is terror face. “I must report this to the council. I will contact you when they reach a decision.” The communications connection ended.

The Struvian commander looked slowly around the office, wondering how much of the situation would be described as solely his fault. Even if the council is told that their high-and-mighty intelligence core screwed the pooch on this action, he knew his career was likely quite thoroughly ended. He wondered whether they’d exile him to some distant rock or incarcerate him for life. Perhaps they’d publicly execute him. He suddenly thought about the victims turned potential captors outside the confines of the great ship and wondered how they treat prisoners.

[OddOne]

13
Search And Rescue

The Moscow arrived on the scene of the first encounter between the Omega group and the fighter swarms the capital ship belched forth to resist them. They started firing their tractor beams at anything Struvian their sensors picked up, and the recovery began.


The EDF heavy transports were designed to not only transport lots of goods and/or people, but also secondarily to act as emergency rescue ships. Each ship had two-dozen multi-headed, long-range tractor beam turrets. These were designed to pull an object in from several hundred miles away. The basic idea was to pull into the middle of a scattered field of debris and fetch as many life pods or recoverable ships in as possible, at the same time, and deposit anything smaller than a light transport into one of several recovery bays situated along the length of the ship. Each recovery bay could hold several dozen ships the size of the Struvian fighters and even had its own tractor system to manage retrieval and positioning.

Compactor units were placed between two adjacent recovery bays to crush derelict craft or debris into manageable blocks for easier storage until it could be recycled. A few of the fighters recovered in best condition were to be kept intact for research on Struvian technology and ship design, and the rest would be crushed into ten-foot cubes and stored for recycling the metals content.

The heavy transports also carried a few hundred of the best-trained medical personnel the EDF has under its command. With eight fully equipped medical bays, each able to tend to a hundred critical patients at a time, the ships could patch up anyone they rescued. The medical folks on the Moscow were literally standing around in each bay, gurneys and triage equipment at the ready, waiting for the first recovered fighters to be hauled in.

Also present in each bay were EDF security troops, armed but with weapons slung, positioned to discourage the Struvian pilots that were capable of doing so from “trying anything funny” while on board. They were positioned, and each equipped with a computer pad with the Struvian language translator program installed, to herd the mobile pilots into one of four massive troop-transport bays normally used to take a lot of people from one place to another. Each of these bays looked like a movie theater, with a giant display set into one wall and row after row of high-backed bucket-style seats to keep everyone comfortable and keep their minds occupied while on the way to wherever they were going. Each room could hold three hundred fifty people, giving the six-hundred-crew-member heavy transport the capacity to carry one thousand five hundred people in relative comfort and still have space to hold several medium-sizes ships in the transport bays.


The first few fighters were hauled in, and as soon as the bay’s tractor control people set a chunk of mangled metal on the deck a swarm of salvage and medical people descended upon it to hack it open and pluck out anyone inside. Another group working mech-style loaders stood at the ready to move the emptied craft into the compactors and out of the way. Once everyone started getting to their jobs the medical crews were moving the wounded or deceased into the medical bays or self-mobile pilots toward the troop-transport bays at the rate of around six pilots a second.

The pilots that were still conscious when their ships were peeled away from them met their rescuers with either terror or fierce resistance depending on the mentality of the pilot. Terrified pilots were given reassurances that they were being rescued and not captured, and would be returned to the T’Vor-Lankh as soon as this could be done. Pilots that had taken a “take as many out first as you can” posture were simply sedated and then worked over. Each pilot that was unable to speak was photographed to provide a record of who they were, in case they would not be able to identify themselves later. The dead were also photographed and placed on gurneys bound for a medical bay, as though still alive. Once the triage team was finished with someone, he would have a piece of colored tape stuck on his flight suit – green for minor injuries that required basic medical attention, yellow for severe ones, red for life-threatening ones, and black for deceased – and they’d be whisked away to a medical bay for a more thorough working over.

Pilots with minimal or no injuries were checked over thoroughly and literally pushed toward the nearest EDF security troop to get them out of the way. The security troops usually simply held up their computer pads with the text “please move this way” in Struvian displayed and an arrow below it pointing toward the nearest troop-transport bay. A steady stream of Struvian pilots had thus started to enter each troop-transport bay, and when they arrived they were asked for some form of identification such as name or serial number so that their safe recovery could be reported to their ship. Although they were – as was expected – very suspicious of their hosts, the Struvians generally complied and provided minimal ID information of the name-rank-serial type common to military personnel.


Inside each troop-transport bay, the giant display screen showed a number of window-like sections that each displayed relevant portions of the conflict. The largest was of the Struvian capital ship and a tactical plot where it, the nearest EDF rescue ships, and the fighters were. Another displayed recovery figures – in Struvian – listing the number of detected fighters and recovered pilots broken down by level of severity of their injuries. Yet another showed the President’s earlier speech asking for a peaceful resolution.

This struck the pilots as odd. Here they were, captured by the enemy, but the enemy was going out of its way to treat them well and even provide what could be considered potentially useful information from a tactical viewpoint.

Ten terminals situated in pairs along the walls were set to allow minimal functionality in Struvian, and one of the functions available was a searchable list of recovered pilots so that they could find out whether their buddies had made it. These were subject of a lot of attention, so much so that more computer-savvy Struvians simply stayed seated at each and did searches for anyone that came up asking about someone.


In the medical bays doctors ran around like crazy tending to patients at a fevered pitch. Pilots with a black triage marker were examined to ensure they were beyond any chance of recovery, and those that were indeed gone were moved off to waiting cryo-storage capsules to be flash-frozen for body return later. The rest were sorted out by color code and treated accordingly. Green-tagged pilots that could do so were patched up and sent to a troop-transport bay while more severe injuries earned bunk space in the infirmary bays. Thanks to a well-rehearsed system of triage and treatment, and the latest in Terran medical technology, the medical bays were processing injured survivors about as quickly as the recovery and triage crews were retrieving them.


Statistics on the recovery efforts from each of the two EDF transports were sent once every five minutes to the TSC command center, parsed and sorted, and then relayed to the Struvian capital ship. The statistics spelled out the number of recovered pilots, a breakdown of pilot counts by injury level, and the number of pilots that were dead on recovery. Accompanying the stats was a running list of all pilots that identified themselves or could be identified from what they were carrying or wearing. And these updates always started and ended with the promise to return the rescued crew as soon a possible, coupled with the reassurance this was a rescue mission, not a prisoner-capture effort.

[OddOne]

14
Long Distance

In the TSC command center, the rest of the Struvian conversation had been decoded and reviewed. The Admiral thought it amusing that the Struvians expected to just waltz in and take whatever it was that they were after, only to discover a very determined and very advanced adversary met them.

The President suddenly had an idea. Turning to the comms officer he asked, “Do we have the handshaking part of their conversation? Can we reproduce it?”

The comms officer presented a slightly confused look and thought about this query. Suddenly he realized where the President was going with it, and grinned. “You want to pretend you’re that ship and hail their home world?”

“Exactly. That might provide some impetus to break this attack off and go find some other world to invade. If they thought we were that backward it’d sure put the fear of God into ‘em if we show we can shadow their comms traffic.”

The Admiral started to laugh at the thought. “Damn, that’s a great idea!” he exclaimed, still chuckling. “Check into it,” he added to the comms officer, who acknowledged, still grinning, and set to work.


On the Struvian home world, the old Struvian was discussing matters with a member of their high council. It was a rather heated discussion, complete with accusations flying from both sides. The council member clearly thought the failure was solely the fault of the T’Vor-Lankh’s crew and specifically its commander, and the fellow that had just ended a conversation with said commander was now concerned that the commander had encountered severe resistance for which he was woefully under-prepared by the home world.

Suddenly a beep from a panel set into the old Struvian’s desk beeped, and his secretary announced that the T’Vor-Lankh was calling again. The conversation with the now angered council member was ended and the old Struvian flipped to the incoming capital ship comms traffic. What winked into view on his display was entirely not what he was expecting.

He expected to see the commander of the disabled capital ship, but was instead seeing a Terran face. That human started talking, a translation superimposed over the audio of his voice.

“Greetings. I am Michael Talmondson, the president of the United Federation of Earth. I represent the peoples of the planet whose system your ship, the T’Vor-Lankh, has invaded. I would like to discuss this situation with you in hopes of reaching a peaceful conclusion, and to arrange for you to recover your ship and its crew.”

The old Struvian was astonished. “How… How are you able…” he stammered.

“How are we able to transmit to you? As your ship’s commander advised you, we are comparable in technology. When you and he last talked we detected the transmission, and our scientists worked out how your data feeds worked. Your video compression algorithms are very good, so good that some of our scientists are already researching adapting them for our use. We simply duplicated your communications handshaking process, and your end thought we were the ship.”

“Erm…” offered the Struvian. This was just too much – they were not only as advanced, but they were willing to take anything and everything they found useful and adapt it to their own purposes. He realized he was dealing with a race that was not only advanced, but also very flexible and adaptive, something advanced races usually weren’t.

The President continued. “We felt that since you obviously have command authority over the ship it would be wise for us to discuss how best to help you and them both. Our offer for peace and to assist where we can in your resource-acquisition efforts still stands - we disabled the ship only out of necessity.”

The Struvian recovered from his initial shock. “A peaceful people would not resort to capturing injured prisoners.”

“We are not planning to detain any of the rescued pilots. In fact, the safe return of your injured crew is one of the things I want to discuss. So far, we have recovered eight hundred fifty-six pilots, of whom two hundred twenty-three were dead on arrival and another ninety-one died from their injuries after rescue. So we have five hundred forty-two pilots of varying physical condition to return, and that figure is rising.”

”Do you really expect me to believe that you plan to return these pilots?”

“Whether you believe this or not is irrelevant. The plan is to return them all as soon as they are well enough to withstand transport. As I said, that is a rescue and recovery operation and nothing more. When recovery is complete we will work on returning everyone that is safe to transport.”

“Please forgive me if I seem less than convinced,” responded the Struvian, skepticism crisscrossing his face.

“We will prove our intentions in that regard in due time. For now, there is the more pressing issue of how to deal with your stranded ship. I have dispatched some of our repair ships to pull the T’Vor-Lankh out of our system so that your ships may recover its crew. We would be happy to provide repair capability to mend life-support systems and help patch up the hull, but you will still need to come get your crew.”

“I know what you plan. You plan to take everyone and strip our ship of its last secret. All we will get back is an empty hulk.”

The President sighed, and responded. “If we wanted to take your ship and capture its crew we would have started this already. The ship is disabled – it would not offer any serious resistance if we were to board it right now. But that is not what we intend. We have never intended to fight you, and we do not intend to exploit the crew of your now disabled ship tactically. As for stripping it of its secrets, we already have comparable technology so this would not pose any real benefit.”

The Struvian grunted in disbelief.

“Since you clearly do not believe me, I will contact you again when your ship is ready for your recovery, and you may wish to talk with its commander at that time to verify that what I have stated is what we will have done. Perhaps that might convince you that we are serious in our offer to help.”

“Perhaps. But I will not build up any hope in this unless and until it happens.”

“I understand. Talmondson out.”

The conversation ended. The old Struvian tapped a few keys on the keypad on his desk and the council member reappeared on the display.

“Did you hear everything?”

“Yes. Yes I did. I will approve your request for additional ships. And I will call for an investigation into the intelligence reports on that system. I’ll be in touch.”

The display went dark. At this the old Struvian leaned back and thought of happier times, before the cabinet appointment and attendant stresses, back when he was content to hop into a ship and just go without worrying about the destination. That life seemed so far removed, so distant…

[A.T.Hagan]

bttt

[fi103r]

Excellent,

(foot tapping )
please continue.

r

[OddOne]

Whoa mama what an old thread to bump... But there's a method to my madness!

oO

[OddOne]

And here's the method to that aforementioned madness...

15
Reinforcements

The two massive EDF capital ships, Endeavor and Intrepid, waited between Earth and the now crippled Struvian capital ship at a distance of about two-thirds of the way out from Earth. In the distance another dot was approaching, the EDF carrier Andrew. From another direction a few more dots entered visual range – the personnel transport EDF Sydney, laden with a few contingents of medical relief workers and scientists to assist in helping get the Struvian ship ready to move out of the system; the supply transport EDF Melbourne, carrying repair parts and salvage equipment; and a number of smaller support ships.

In a spherical region of space perhaps fifty thousand miles in diameter a great collection of ships of all sizes was gathering, with the idea of being ready for anything.


In the distance, just entering the detection sphere of extreme-long-range sensors, more reinforcements were coming.

The tactical officer noted this and called out, “Sir, I’m detecting another massive inbound, coming from a slightly different angle.”

This brought the Admiral and President over in a hurry, and caused several nearby officers to shoot startled looks in the tactical station’s direction. The tactical officer pointed at the relevant sensor blip and said, “There’s the new inbound.”

“Please tell me that’s the Luna,” added the Admiral.

“Mass readings are comparable to the Struvian capital ship. Speed is light times thirty, ETA with the hole in the Frontier is three minutes. Luna’s not on my scope yet, sir.”

“Lovely,” sighed the Admiral as he took to a standing position from his lean-in to see the monitors. “JU-U-U-U-UST lovely.” He turned to the President, and both took turns showing each other their best worry faces.

The tactical officer’s voice caught their attention before they could discuss this change of scenarios. “Umm, sir? You might want to look at this…”

They again leaned in to see the monitors, and two additional blips were visible, trajectory plots putting them on a collision course with the hole in the systems’ protection. Mass readings for these new blips looked comparable to the original. The Admiral hung his head in frustration and stood back up, with the President watching him, still leaning on the tactical officer’s chair armrest.

The Admiral threw his hands up in frustration, muttering a number of expletives and incoherent choice phrases over this new development.


On the Doomsday, technicians were hurriedly repairing and rerouting and reconfiguring, and a few repair drones were working on removing the damaged shield generators and patching the various holes in the ship’s superstructure. Captain Velasquez was himself helping fix the ship – he was standing on the comm. chair again, repairing that airline that had popped loose in the earlier fray. Technicians were running around the bridge and the chatter was flying fast and furious as everyone coordinated the repairs or simply got out of the way of someone else.

Suddenly the comms officer interrupted everyone’s work. “Sir, I just got a flash from TSC Command…” he was turning white.

Velasquez looked at him, arms still reaching overhead into the guts of the life-support system. “What’s up?”

“They’re tracking three additional inbounds. They think they’re Struvian capital ships.”

This news made everyone stop what they were doing and stare, in some cases agape. Velasquez raised an eyebrow.

“Three more capital ships? Are they sure?”

“They say they’ll have the inbounds on visual in ninety seconds.”

The Captain nodded and resumed work on the airline, renewed in his vigor and motivated to expedite the work by this recent news. Everyone else went back to work fixing things, but this time nobody spoke a word.


He finished the repair work and reopened the valve carefully. No leaks. He grabbed a leak detector and checked. Satisfied, he reopened the valve fully and closed the maintenance hatch, stepping down off the chain once finished. He then inhaled deeply.

“Okay, it looks like pucker time’s coming. What do we have working?”

A technician that was supervising chimed in from behind and to one side, causing the Captain to turn to face him.

“Sir, we have partial multiplayer shielding up on forward and full everywhere else. Nav is one hundred percent, comms is ninety-eight, fire control is ninety-one, power is eighty-two. We should have all speeds on demand and all-axis maneuvering. We lost twelve shield generators and fifteen defense turrets are damaged but still usable. Main cannon are ready and power-cycling at fifty percent.”

“Roger that, good job,” replied the Captain, flashing a quick smile. “Better get us ready to rumble – I see needing the mains in a few.”

“Understood,” replied the head technician, who then fired a few checks and an order or two at the other technicians.

The technicians were finished with the bridge about the time the comms officer noted that TSC Command is tracking the first inbound entering the hole in the Frontier, with the other two coming into view at that time. They were definitely Struvian capital ships – the Galileo feed proved that conclusively.


Suddenly an idea popped into the Captain’s head, but he’d need approval to try it.

“Get TSC Command on the horn,” he called to the comms officer.

[OddOne]

16
Sniper Style

“Whatcha have in mind?” asked the Admiral.

“I want to pick one of them off as it enters the system.”

The Admiral rolled this idea around in his head for a few seconds, and the more he thought about it the more he smiled. “You sure you can hit ‘em from that kind of range?”

“I think so, yes. We’d need to tweak the beam collimators to account for the distance but I think it’s doable.”

“Go for it, but make sure you don’t leave yourself open.”

“Roger that. Let’s just hope it works.”


The main display flipped back to a two-windowed view, one of the back end of the T’vor-Lankh and its new gaping hole, the other a tactical plot of the system and all ships bigger than a small freighter.

Captain Velasquez leaned back into the command chair as the technicians cleared the bridge. It was time to get the next act of this show underway and the techs all knew it.


Doomsday swiveled to point its tail – and those cannon – toward the hole in the Frontier through which the first Struvian reinforcement was carefully slipping, and the Ticonderoga and Yorktown, still conducting their own repairs, moved out of the way of what was going to be an impressive shot.


In the TSC command center, the frenzy of activity continued unabated, with a new sense of urgency added by the arrival of support for the other team. The President quietly approached his old friend – leaning over an officer and brainstorming ideas with him - from behind, placed a hand on his shoulder and said quietly “Carl, we need to discuss activating the defense net.”

The Admiral stood up. “Nah, no need to discuss. We need to do.” He turned to one side.

“Deftac,” he called to an officer on the other side of the center, “warm up the surface guns and start defense net.”

The “deftac,” or Defense Tactical officer, called back “I’m on it, sir” and his hands became a blur on the keypad.

“I’ll go get the liaisons ready,” added Talmondson, walking toward the door to one of the conference rooms. “They’re gonna love this on the surface.”


On the Doomsday, every mind that knew anything about directed energy weapons was hard at work adjusting the main cannon to fire a shot at a target twenty light-minutes away. Everything was made ready, the cannon collimators adjusted, and then the entire back half of the ship was evacuated.

They were going for full power for this gameplan.

On the bridge, the Captain was sitting silent as his crew got their respective jobs done. These were the best of the best, the cream of the EDF crop, and generally only needed to be told what their goal was. Once so advised, one need only get out of their way.


The tactical officer turned around from his seat. “Sir, mains fire control has a green panel. We’re ready to fire.”

“Excellent. Status?”

“Full power available, both cannon power-cycling at fifty percent. We get two fifty-percent shots and then it’ll take ninety seconds to cycle for two more.”

“Work a firing solution up on that one ship coming into the system and fire when ready.”

“Roger that, sir.”


Five seconds later, one of the two holes in the Doomsday’s tail again lit a bright purple as the collimating fields, this time much more intensely powered, came online. The brilliant fireball appeared, grew suddenly into a great ball of the purest light, and zipped off into the darkness toward its target. After three seconds it faded out, leaving ionized dusts as the only reminder of its passage.

The tactical officer tapped a spot on his console, changing its display to a tactical plot of the energy discharge, zipping on its path toward its intended destination. “Shot’s away, T minus nineteen minutes to target.”


An officer at TSC command noted a new blip on her display. “Sir, the Doomsday just let out a potshot at the second capital ship.”

The Admiral looked up from his conversation with two other officers and acknowledged this, muttering “let’s just hope he doesn’t miss” under his breath as he resumed his conversation.


The T’Vor-Lankh bridge was a somber place since the last conversation with the home world. Doomsday’s shot invigorated everyone briefly, but when it was obvious the shot wasn’t a finisher directed at them the morose mood resumed. Galak Nor didn’t even both to ask where the shot was headed, as he was sure he was doomed no matter what.


Right on time, the burst of energy reached its target, an unaware Struvian capital ship that had also not been adequately briefed on the situation. The burst impacted the ship on its nose just below the bridge and cut a swath diagonally down its side and across one of the outrigger launch bays. Secondary explosions rocked the ship and total surprise rocked its crew – they were told to rescue a damaged capital ship and her crew but didn’t have any warning that the supposed victims of their might had been the ones that crippled it.

The tactical officer on the Doomsday shouted “YES! Direct hit!” when his tactical plot and a verification from Galileo confirmed the hit.

The would-be rescuer yawed sharply to one side as a large chunk of its aft outrigger broke off in a shower of plasma and debris. Its captain ordered an all-stop to assess the damage and discover precisely what the hell had hit them; still unaware of the sniping hit having come from a ship they had detected but paid no heed to.

The Captain asked his comms officer to open a communications channel to the stricken ship on its medium-range scanners. Comms officer waves a “clear to talk” gesture, and Captain starts, with a booming quality caused by a tinge of conceit over having to come rescue a comrade.

“T’Vor Lankh, this is Argol Nor of the capital ship T'Vor-Nalokh. Please respond.”

[colibree]

A jolly good read.
When is the rest coming in?

[OddOne]

Rather slowly given that the previous chapters were like two years ago. What can I say, I'm busy.

I also have more for my other story that I need to wrap up and post.

oO

[Eleven:FiftyNine]

Ok, it's been eight months! When's the next chapters coming? What's your other story? Has it been posted? Inquiring minds want to know!

[OddOne]

Hehehe, holy thread resurrection, Batman! I'm up to my eyeteeth in stuff, but am also working ever so slowly on two stories. More will be forthcoming, eventually.

oO

[OddOne]

Here, chew on this for a while...


17
Meanwhile, Back On Earth

In the hill country just southeast of Broken Bow, Nebraska, a white dome juts from the otherwise fairly barren landscape. This dome is three hundred feet across and a hundred fifty feet tall and essentially looks like a half-buried ball. A closer look reveals that the entire top of the dome consists of overlapped panels, hinting that the dome is able to open to expose its insides.

Surrounding the dome are four smaller rectangular buildings, each at a cardinal direction, connected to each other by a giant tubelike structure that rings the entire affair and makes it all look like a giant cartographer’s locating mark from space.


Roughly five miles to the northeast, high school coach Larry Andersen takes his track team for a morning jog. The thirty-some-odd teenagers jogged down the street, with the coach in pursuit in a golf cart. Suddenly, one of them spotted something unusual and slowed to a halt, the others following suit in response.

By the time the coach and a few stragglers catch up with the now fidgety but no longer jogging students, they had formed a large mass of chattering teens. Although the coach couldn’t hear the conversations, the looks of concern he was seeing as he pulled up raised his curiosity. What would possess them to stop when they all knew they had a track meet coming up they needed to prepare for?

The coach slid to an abrupt halt next to the group to refocus their attention. “Hey, why’d ya stop? We still have another two miles yet.”

One of the students, the first to slow to a halt, pointed into the distance behind the coach and said “the dome’s opening!”

The coach spun round in the golf cart’s seat to face southeast. Faintly visible in the warm air was the upper third of the dome, and its top was clearly split. The dome was indeed opening.

None of the people noting the dome’s changes have ever seen it open before, so naturally this was creating some concern. The coach recalled that the school had advised teachers chaperoning students outside the school to return immediately if the dome opened, so he turned back to the crowd and said, “okay, let’s head back and find out what’s up.”

The entire group made much better time back to the school than they’d made from there to the point where the dome was noticed. Coach Andersen barked an order for his assistant coach to tend to the kids and roared right into the school’s main hallway, still on the golf cart and hardly even letting off the throttle to negotiate the sharp left he had to make to execute the move. He zipped to the office and practically leaped off the cart when he arrived.

The increasingly concerned coach bowled over a couple students waiting at the office front desk in his not-quite-a-run for the principal’s office, ignoring the secretary’s greeting as he threw open the door. Inside, the principal and student she was talking to both jumped in surprise by the sudden intrusion. The nameplate on her desk read “Adell Gibbs, Principal.”

“Ma’am, we’ve got a problem.”

“What is it, Coach Andersen?”

“The dome’s opening.”

Adell was a strong-willed, opinionated, and occasionally abrasive woman, and she often clashed with Coach Andersen, who was just as strong-willed, opinionated, and occasionally abrasive. She was aware of her own bad side and good alike, and by using each when and where necessary she’d clawed her way from a basic community college degree in teaching to become one of the state’s first black principals. Despite her sometimes-heated disagreements with the coach, whenever something major happened neither even cared about the other’s idiosyncrasies. The coach, she instantly noticed, was in that mode.

The principal’s jaw dropped slightly, and she abruptly dismissed the student while grabbing the remote for the old television in the far corner. As the TV tube faded into view she tapped the channel number for CNN, catching the latest news report in mid-sentence.

“—domes all over the world are opening. We don’t know yet what’s going on but the word from the UFE is that the Earth Defense Force has mobilized every ship it has.”

Another reporter at the CNN news desk interjected, holding her hand over hear earpiece as she received news to report.

“I’m getting word that the UFE has released a news report to all of its ships approximately half an hour ago. We now go to Terran UFE headquarters.”

The view cut to a large room with a podium at one end with a sky-blue drapery backdrop. Tons of microphones studded the surface of the podium, sporting a veritable who’s who of news organizations’ logos. A somber-looking official sauntered up to it and cleared his throat as other nervous-looking UFE members and EDF officers looked on from the sidelines.

“Good morning. My name is Terrence Jones, and I am the head of UFE public relations. I have a statement and a prerecorded message to play back, and will take a few questions at the end of this briefing.” He shuffled his notes and continued as a plasma display bearing the UFE logo motored down from the ceiling on some thin but barely visible cables.

“Approximately eighteen hours ago a capital ship originating from the star system Struve 2737, roughly two hundred light-years from Earth, approached the Frontier, the EDF’s protective barrier around our solar system.” As he finished, a picture of the T’Vor-Lankh, as captured by Galileo, popped onto the monitor. This drew a mixture of reactions from the reporters, with the predominant reaction being shock. The usual murmurings from the press were replaced by a grim silence.

“UFE president Michael Talmondson relayed this message to all UFE and EDF stations…”

At that, the message broadcast throughout the UFE was rebroadcast throughout the rest of the TV-equipped populations of Earth. When it concluded, Terence continued his briefing.

“The EDF has activated the planetary defense system. The giant domes scattered all over the world contain this system, a network of surface guns designed to shoot down any asteroid that threatens to crash into our planet. This will mark the first time the defense guns will be used to defend Earth from an attack from beyond our system.”

The news feed shown on CNN suddenly changed to a multiple-windowed affair, with the briefing in one box and another box showing a dome opening as viewed from a helicopter, the caption for it reading “EDF Defense Gun” with “Santa Clara, CA” below it. As the dome opened it was pretty clear that there was a very large gun within.

“These defense guns will act as our last line of the defense of Earth against our attackers, should they reach Earth orbit. If you live within two miles of an EDF defense gun, please tune to your local television channel for evacuation information.”

At that, the principal and coach both looked at each other. From the principal’s office window the dome was partially visible, and from what they could see it was most of the way open. A giant gun that had to be every bit of a hundred feet tall protruded from the ground like some sort of evil sculpture. Both knew the gun was about five miles away, but five miles wasn’t a comfortable distance by any stretch of the imagination from a gun designed to blow mile-sized rocks out of geostationary orbit.

“In the meantime the EDF is suggesting that all citizens of all nations begin to arm themselves and organize to repel any invasion that may occur should the EDF fail to stop the advancing hostiles. If we cannot defeat them, the survival of humanity will rest with each of you.” Reporters visible on the camera started looking at each other in shock – there had been a tendency by the media to downplay the positive applications of privately owned firepower, and now they were being advised to arm up to repeal otherworldly invaders. “Nations of the Earth are also advised to mobilize everything they have in preparation for the worst. We hope this will be only a precaution, but prudence dictates we prepare for any possibility.”


At that instant, the phone rang, eliciting a chirp-like shriek of surprise from the principal and a “Damn!” from the coach. She pressed the intercom button angrily and nearly shouted “what?” at her secretary.

“Emergency management is on line two.”

“Oh, sorry. Thanks.”

With one hand she turned the TV’s volume down, and pressed the line-two button with the other, handset still in hand.

“Yes, principal Gibbs here, go ahead.”

The coach could faintly hear the voice on the other end, and although he couldn’t make out individual words the inflection and tone were one of controlled panic.

“Yes, we do have an evac plan… Yes… Not yet, I just heard of it… No… I don’t know, I’ll have to pull today’s numbers… I’m thinking we need to go into lockdown… I disagree, they’ll be much safer here than they will at home – a lot of these kids live right around the dome… Yes, we can do that, but I wouldn’t recommend it… Yes… Of course… Will do, thanks… Keep me advised… Okay… Goodbye.”

The coach’s facial expression spoke “tell me now!” but he said nothing, as principal Gibbs hit the intercom button again.

“Sally, get the department heads here now and activate emergency plan alpha. No, it’s not a drill. Thanks.”

Hanging up the phone, she looked at coach Andersen gravely.

“That was the state emergency management office. They’re declaring emergencies in every city that has an EDF defense station, and want us to hold students here for pickup by parents only.”

“And you’d prefer a total lockdown I take it?” asked the coach, who was not big on preventing parents from taking their kids home as was common in school lockdowns. This being a high school made things more difficult, as most of the students were able to drive themselves home and several were technically adults in terms of age.

“Yes. The state’s plan was to--”

The school intercom interrupted. It was the vice principal. “Your attention please. Nebraska Emergency Management has declared an emergency for our area. Effective immediately, all teachers are to move their students to the gym when called by room number. Principal Gibbs will explain the situation there. To repeat, teachers please move your students to the gym when called.”

“As I started to say, the state’s plan is to release students to their parents when they come to pick them up, but keep them here until then.”

“What about the ones we have that are eighteen?”

“State law says I can’t keep them here against their will, but I’ll try to talk them into staying simply because it’s safer here than out there.”

“I’ll give you that, for now,” grinned the coach, heading out the door to return to his own students and get them ready.


Over the next hour the entire student body and all but a handful of faculty had relocated to the school’s gym. Being a fairly small town with active sports, the gym was big enough to hold quite a few more people than actually went to or worked at the school. While that was being done, the office was busy pulling a list of all 18-and-over students and the first wave of hysterical parents were arriving to fetch their kids. When advised that anyone within two miles of the gun dome was to be evacuated, several accepted the offer to stay in the gym with their kids.


As the last students filed into the gym – and some parents filed in with them – principal Gibbs stepped out to the center of the basketball court, microphone in hand.

“You attention please… Hey, settle down, people!”

The crowd quieted.

“Here’s the current situation. The EDF has activated the Earth defense system, including the gun inside the giant dome a few miles from here. As a result, the state has activated emergency measures for every city near an EDF installation, and that includes us. Until the state of emergency is lifted all students will be kept in the gym. We’ll turn the news radio on in here so that we can get the latest news.”

The crowd became noticeably less quiet, and several students became belligerent or hysterical depending on their personalities. Parents or teachers or both descended upon them to keep chaos in check.

“Okay, let’s calm down people, this building is the safest on campus. As I was saying, the EDF has activated all of its guns including the one in town. If you live within two miles of the dome, you would be getting an evacuation order by now.”

A hand went up in the crowd. “Principal Gibbs! How long are we staying in here?”

“I don’t know. But by state law I have to keep you here unless you’re eighteen years old or a parent or guardian comes to pick you up. If you’re eighteen or older I would advise against leaving as you’re safer here than at home, especially if you live close to the dome.”

That quieted the crowd a bit, so the principal continued. “If you are eighteen or over and decide you must leave, see one of the office staff. Otherwise, we’ll call your name when you’re being picked up.”

She then departed from center court as a news radio discussion on the situation and EDF press release filled the gym, quickly reducing the chatter level to low, concerned murmurs.

[fruit loop]

Put the backstory into the real story and the characters into the scene rather than describing what the scene looks like to the reader. You drag the reader out of the action, then put them back in, and it's somewhat jarring. You want action, action, action, uninterrupted.

Example:
Both men looked a bit worse for wear when they dragged themselves into one of the station’s medical bays the next afternoon. They’d both gotten far too drunk for their overworked bodies and minds to handle, and the hangovers were brutal. The medical staff was not exactly amused by the situation either. It would, after all, be interesting to explain to the reporters that would likely show up soon why they were treating the two most important people in the UFE for mild alcohol poisoning.

The rest of the station went about its business while the two were being treated for their hangovers. The day passed rather uneventfully, save for some action for the EDF security troops when a fight broke out in a bar elsewhere in the station.

After having recovered enough to do so, Mike and Carl headed to a restaurant overlooking one of the more breathtaking hydroponics domes to get some food to replace what they’d sacrificed to the god of porcelain earlier. While there, the topic turned to Mike’s predecessor and close friend, Dick Greyson.

EXAMPLE:
"You look a bit worse for wear, Carl," Mike moaned over the agony of his hangover.

"I think I got way too drunk for my already-overworked brain and mind to handle," Carl mumbled. He gave the medic what he hoped was a winning smile. "Morning, doc-"

The medic's face showed his lack of enthusiasm but he wiggled his fingers at his nurse, who gave them an equally disdainful glance but obligingly fetched something from the drug case. "Well, you've brightened an otherwise dull day. I can't WAIT to tell all those newshounds skulking outside about treating our two most important people for alcohol poisoning!"

[OddOne]

FYI: I have a comments thread so as to not break up the reading.

oO

[OddOne]

18
Return Fire

“Sir, the T’Vor-Nalokh is hailing us,” called out the frazzled comms officer.

Galak Nor frowned. He and Argol Nor, the captain of the T’Vor-Nalokh, were rivals since childhood, and it was yet another in a long and growing list of insults that had been piled upon him since entering the system. “On screen,” he scowled.

The face that greeted him was infuriatingly smug. “Ah, I see you have done an excellent job of subduing this… “ The smugness was then mixed with disgust, as he said, ”system.”

“And I see you have already experienced a taste of the power of the sentients of this… system.”

“A minor annoyance I intend to rectify.” With that, Argol Nor gave a gesture to someone off-camera.


“Launch warning!” called out the officer watching the T’Vor-Nalokh.

“Please tell me it’s not another of those missiles,” snarled the President.

“Negative, sir. It’s nowhere near as big but it’s moving FAST. Half light and accelerating.”

“What’s the target?” added the Admiral.

“Calculating that now. Whoa, it just made light speed. Still accelerating.”

“Damn that thing’s moving fast.”


Galak Nor made no attempt to hide the contempt he held for the other Struvian captain. “You do realize the sentients here can intercept our transmissions.”

“I assume as much, yes.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Yes, what do we do…”

The communication link abruptly ended, terminated by Argol Nor at his end.


“We have a trajectory on that weapon. It’s on an intercept for the Doomsday. ETA is hard to determine. I don’t think they have long.”

The Admiral turned to the comms officer, who still had links open to practically every major ship in the system. “Warn ‘em.”

“Roger that,” replied the comms officer, “Doomsday on screen now.”

The main monitor did the split screen thing again, and again displayed both a tactical overview of about half of the solar system and Captain Velasquez.

The Admiral looked up to the main screen. “You’ve got company.”

“I see it. Can’t get a good fix on it though. Are you seeing the kind of speeds we are?”

“Yep. Up to six times light and climbing. Whatever it is it’s gonna be hard to dodge.”

“That’s what worries me.” With that, Captain Velasquez looked toward his navigation officer. “Gimme a random walk at about a quarter light speed if you please.” As the nav officer acknowledged, Velasquez looked back to the camera right above his viewscreen. “We’ll try to shake it. Doomsday on comms standby.”


The Doomsday’s navigational computer is a pretty impressive piece of gear. If you tell it what star, planet, or base you want to go to and how fast to get there, it calculates all of the vectors and speeds necessary to make that happen safely. In this case, however, it was instructed to do a random walk. This entailed using a stream of random garbage. The navicomputer would take four random numbers and use the first two for a new course heading, the third as a speed modifier, and the fourth as a time delay before doing it again, and thus made the ship change directions at random times to random course headings and alter its speed randomly, all the while heading generally away from wherever you don’t want to be.

As Doomsday random-walked in one direction, the Ticonderoga and Yorktown straight-ran in two others, spreading out lest they all be hit from the inbound weapon.


The tactical officer noted the results from this and called out, “Hostile weapon is matching the Doomsday’s course changes. Twelve times light speed and still accelerating.”

The scientist in President Talmondson was curious. “What kind of weapon would you use that goes that fast inside a star system? And how do you keep it together with all this crap in the flight path?”

Carl shrugged. “Dunno, man. That’s your department not mine. Any idea what the hell it is?”

“Not a clue. But I’d sure love to analyze one.”

The Admiral scowled. “Maybe you’ll get to.”


“Is our inbound still on us?”

“Affirmative. Less than two minutes to impact, although that’s a very rough guess.”

“Okay, increase the random walk speed to half light.”

“Errr, roger.”

Doomsday was equipped with amazing technology, including some of the best inertial dampening fields humanity had yet developed. But even those have their limits, and at half light speed a slight course change brings a tremendous amount of strain. Doomsday was changing way more than enough to allow some of that strain to break through the dampening fields.

This was going to be a very rough ride.

The ship lurched as it pitched and yawed simultaneously well outside the aforementioned dampening field limits, in response to another series of random numbers. “And give me as much shielding as you can.”

“Roger that,” added the tactical officer, who was turning green from the lurching as Doomsday changed attitude.


Half a light-second away from where the next random walk step would end, the weapon launched from the T’Vor-Nalokh exploded into a cloud of nearly fusing plasma. That cloud expanded at near light speed while traveling forward at a few dozen times light speed, and by the time it reached the Doomsday it was a couple dozen miles wide and still moving at speeds Einstein had no calculations for.

The cloud enveloped the Doomsday and arced around its shields, which held up under the load for only a few small fractions of a picosecond before the generators blew out. As the shields fell, the side of the ship exposed to the blast flashed to hundreds of millions of degrees, and as the plasma spent the thermal portion of its energy on that half of the ship it liberated untold numbers of neutrons and subatomic particles which in turn blazed through the other half of the ship. Everyone and everything in the side closest to impact was vaporized so quickly the crew that died never actually saw or felt the mechanism of their demise. Not even viral or bacterial tissue survived.

On the bridge, the entire room flashed an eerie cyan color, its air ionized into fluorescence by the massive radiation zipping through that part of the ship. The life-sciences officer then suddenly let out a moan and went limp in her chair, with a tiny line of blood oozing from her mouth and nose. Captain Velasquez was just as suddenly hit with a powerful wave of nausea, and a sharp metallic taste filled his mouth.

“Damage report.”

“Plasma damage to thirty-eight percent of the ship, thermal damage over another nineteen percent, fatal radiation exposure everywhere else. Mainly neutrons but plenty of subatomics and quantums in the mix.” Velasquez turned to the tactical officer, who posted a very morose facial expression. “We’re toast. Most of the crew will be dead in the next few minutes. We only took twelve thousand rem on the bridge, so we’ll last a little longer.”

“Thought so. Give me TSC command.”

The comms officer choked back some nausea and replied, “Comms is out. I’m trying to reconnect to TSC now.”


The officer watching the strange weapon from its launch got to watch its impact. “Direct hit on the Doomsday!”

The Admiral was watching the impact, too. “What’s their status?”

“We lost comms with Doomsday,” added the comms officer. “I’m trying to raise them now.”

The President was talking shop with the tactical officer. Together they studied the flurry of incoming data on the weapon, and what they saw was very, very bad news.

“I have Doomsday on comm, voice only.”

The Admiral then called out, “What’s your status?”

Velasquez sounded like he’d run a marathon. He was winded, spoke in short phrases, and exhibited a subtle but detectable delay in responding.

“We’re toast. That blast… melted a third of… the ship and… irradiated…” – That word required some recovery time in the form of a few seconds of pause – “the rest. We all took a… fatal dose. Already loosing crew to… radiation… poisoning.”

The President turned white and the Admiral took on a sad expression. “Roger that.”

“With your permission… I’d like to go… out with a bang.”

“One final shot with all the trimmings?”

“Affir… mative.”

The Admiral sighed. “Understood. Do what you have to do.”

“Roger. Captain Velasquez… and Doomsday out.”

The comms officer coughed, and added “comm link closed.”


“Give me a… ugh… firing solution on that – ship.” Velasquez then started tapping some keys on the keypad in his chair armrest, and on other panels on the bridge and in the ship’s engineering room a request popped up for what the crew called a “collapse shot” – Doomsday’s ultimate, but final, attack.

Everyone still alive that had the authority to approve a suicidal last move did so, recognizing that they were done for anyway. The ship’s computer accepted the order and all of Doomsday’s powerplants went to full power.

TSC command was silent as the tactical display showed Doomsday orient itself tail toward target and begin its buildup. The tactical officer added, “final shot in ninety seconds.”

Only a second later the tactical officer shouted, “Launch warning!”

The Admiral’s expression turned suddenly from sadness to rage. “Wonderful. What did they shoot this time?”

“Looks like one of the Mjollnir clones. Second missile. There goes a third. Looks like a killshot on the Doomsday. ETA twenty-one minutes.”

“Good. At least they’ll get their shot off,” added the President with the hoarseness of sadness apparent in his voice, and wiping a small tear as he spoke.


Ninety seconds later, everyone stood at attention on the bridge of the Doomsday, although for most it was already difficult to stand thanks to the effects of extreme radiation exposure. A few of the bridge crew passed out from the exertion. Captain Velasquez pressed the intercom button on his chair keypad and spoke to the remaining crew, slurring his words slightly.

“It has been – an honor – serving as your Captain… May the world – mmfff – remember our sacrifice.” He released the button and tapped the part of the keypad that was lit in red with the text “FIRE FINAL.” The tactical officer, navigation officer, and chief engineer did the same.


Doomsday’s tail lit with the brilliance of uncounted stars as everything its power systems could produce was directed into the main cannon. The blast that spat forth from the tail of the ship was brilliant enough that it would be detected six years later by researchers at the observation outpost orbiting Barnard’s star. As the main cannon fired, the power systems exploded throughout the ship, and in a massive explosion the part of the Doomsday that survived the Struvian plasma weapon became an expanding cloud of vapor and radioactive particles.

On the bridges of every EDF ship, and on the floor at TSC command, everyone stood at attention in honor of the fallen.


Galak Nor watched the shot Doomsday had fired, and hailed his “friend” on the T’Vor-Nalokh to warn him.

“Ah, Galak, so kind of you to call.” Argol Nor still exuded smugness in quantities sufficient to make Galak want to fire at him himself.

“The ship you fired upon has fired back. It appears they destroyed themselves to fire at you.”

“Excellent. I thought that would be the most appropriate weapon to use against their gunship.”

“Their final shot is surprisingly intense.”

“I would hope so. No matter, the missiles I had launched to finish them will tend to their weapons fire.”

“I do not think you under—“ At that, the comm link was terminated, again at the other end. “Stand.” Galak leaned forward and placed his head on his fingertips, muttering, “Fine, you are on your own then.”


Argol Nor watched with a smug smile as his missile trio made contact with the incoming blast from Doomsday, but his smugness quickly changed to concern as the missile detonations made no difference whatsoever to the blast’s intensity or course.

A couple minutes later the blast impacted the T’Vor-Nalokh, which was not clear enough from the Frontier to maneuver. The blast impacted the great ship just under its nose and ran almost the length of the ship, coring it out neatly and leaving only a few decks at the top and bottom to hold the outriggers together. The remainder of the T’Vor-Nalokh then slowly broke up, with the remainder of the damaged port outrigger slowly spiraling toward the Frontier and the intact starboard one flipping end-over-end in the general direction of where the T’Vor-Lankh had first tangled with the Omega group.

The final of the trio of Struvian capital ships, still parked outside the opening in the Frontier, thought better of the affair and backed away from the opening. This prompted a chuckle from Galak Nor. Strangely appropriate end to the jerk, he thought.