On board the huge station known as Delta base, a throng of people had begun to crowd the viewports. Family members of crewmen; as well as their children were all gathered together, Jana and Theo were also there, and had managed to get a good spot; as they watched the Ulysses make ready to depart.
Lights gradually twinkled along the hull of the massive vessel, as its main power systems came online. Running lights began to flash along the sides of its sloping forward section, as well as on its navigation towers; located in the center of the ship. Its docking arm was still connected to the station like a giant metal proboscis.
Onboard the Ulysses it was a hive of activity, as hundreds of officers and crewmen hurried about their duties making final systems and pre-flight checks, and generally preparing the ship for departure.
With a slow metallic creak, the securing latches of the main docking arm slowly began to detach from the station, and then re-attach themselves to the docking arm itself. With a blast of pressurized air the main docking arm jettisoned from the airlock, and with a groan of metal on metal slowly retracted in upon itself. Finally with a metallic ‘thud’ the magnetic interlocks held the docking arm firm for travel.
Jana and Theo watched intently as the huge vessel slowly began to drift away from the station.
An announcement came over the stations internal communications system. “E.D.F. S Ulysses, has successfully un-docked from the station.”
A huge cheer went up around docking port twelve as the crowd watched; however Jana didn’t feel like cheering, she just wanted her husband to return safe.
When the Ulysses reached a safe distance, four bright white streams of super heated gas flared into life out of the frontal section of the ship. They counter-acted the ships vast weight and slowly the ship began to reverse.
Theo watched as the battleship grew steadily smaller, the front port side thrusters blinked out, and the rear ones fired instead. With the starboard forward and port rear thrusters firing simultaneously, the ship slowly began to turn.
“What is it doing mummy?” Theo asked.
“It’s turning,” Jana answered, with a smile.
As the ship slowly, gradually turned on what seemed like a huge arc, Jana and Theo truly experienced the sheer size of this behemoth of a ship. Michael had once told her just prior to him becoming a Lieutenant, that it was fully 3,810 meters long from the forward docking arm, to the rear boosters, and it bristled with some of the biggest weapons in the Navy.
The Danitza class battleships were truly a foe to be reckoned with.
On board that battleship, Michael paced, when he was made a deck officer he became responsible for the smooth running of his deck. And right now, he was nervous.
He was in charge of deck 18; which fate would have it, contained the targeting arrays for the primary port rail-cannons.
An Ensign walked up to him, “Here are the results on the targeting arrays sir; as requested.” The short stocky Ensign handed him a small device. It consisted of a large screen and three buttons; an on/off button, an escape button, and an access button. At the rear of the unit, a stylus was stored.
It was a touch screen system, similar in function to the older pocket P. C’s of the late twentieth and early 21 ^ st centuries, some of which still remain in circulation in the less developed, backwater areas of E.O.C. A today.
Michael scrolled down the information on the ‘data navigator’ as they were called, and studied it. It read a 98 % efficiency rating on the targeting arrays and a point 27 second lock on time.
I hope that 2 % efficiency doesn’t cost us in battle with those things, whatever they are, he thought. But he also knew that there was no way he could get the targeting systems any more efficient than that, so he approved the results anyway, signing the bottom of the screen that read deck officers’ signature with his stylus.
He handed back the data navigator to the Ensign, and said smiling. “That’s good work, maybe you’ll make Lieutenant some day too.” They both saluted, and the ensign replied. “Thank you sir, we’ll show these clowns, you’ll see.” And with that the Ensign turned on his heel and left whistling.
Smartass, Michael thought.
A huge roar began to reverberate throughout the ship, as the inter-system boosters fired up, which are designed to take the ship out of the system, before the plasma drive system hurtled them to their destination.
On board Delta base, Jana and Theo could see three bright yellow dots in the distance, which were the sight of the Ulysses’ inter-system boosters firing up.
Gradually they got more distant, until they became barely visible. And Jana came to the realization, with a mournful sigh, that she might not see her husband again.
“Bye my love, please come back safe,” she whispered to herself.
Finally the yellow dots disappeared altogether, as the Ulysses went out of sight.
Later that day, Michael was beginning to get bored, his deck was running smoothly and everything seemed fine, there was a slight short in one of the power couplings that was located in the forward docking arm. Probably happened after we left Delta base, he thought. The engineers fixed it relatively quickly, and he had signed the repair orders himself.
He had his usual end of shift meeting with the Chief operations officer, but that wasn’t until nineteen hundred hours.
He decided he would pay Dylan a visit and headed over to deck 11, the munitions storage area. He thought Dylan would probably be loading the massive magazines in the rail-cannon turrets, and when he arrived he found he was right.
The munitions storage area was huge, it was two decks deep, and was racked from floor to ceiling with shells for the rail-cannons, together with energy pods for the smaller point defence lasers that were dotted around the ship.
“Hiya mike, what’s up?” Dylan shouted to him from across the room.
Michael walked over, “slow day. Now that all the rush is over with, and my deck is all sorted, I’ve not got a lot left.”
“Good for you,” Dylan harrumphed. “It’s mad as hell here.”
Within the Munitions area there were dozens of crewmen heading back and to from the racks; many of them had a specially modified motorized autoloader, which they used to retrieve the heavy shells from the racking.
Since each shell the rail-cannons fired, can be anywhere up to 4 meters long and weigh 2 tons, the autoloaders were the only means to transport them when onboard. Each turret magazine could carry ten rounds, however the magazines had to be filled by hand using the autoloaders.
This could be a long process, especially since each autoloader could only carry one shell at a time. And in total there were seven rail-cannon batteries on board the Ulysses.
“How far have you got?” Michael asked.
“Why, you wanna give us a hand?” Dylan asked playfully.
“Sorry, I’m not authorized,” Michael responded in kind.
“Well, the two main forward batteries are done, as is the rear, we have just the two port, and the two starboard batteries to do, they should be finished in about an hour. Then there are the lasers to do; but they are much easier.”
Dylan spotted something out of the corner of his eye; he turned to see a crewman with an autoloader carrying a rail-cannon shell, veering wildly.
“Whoa you there, stop! What are you trying to do, kill us all!?” Dylan shouted at the young crewman.
Both Michael and Dylan came running to the crewman’s position.
Dylan noticed that the shell wasn’t sitting centrally on the autoloader. “You’ve got to get the shell in the middle of the autoloader, or it will tip; like this.”
Dylan showed the crewman, and the three of them. Together with half a dozen others who had come over to help; barely managed to heave the heavy shell centrally on the long ‘v’ shaped platform at the rear of the autoloader.
“Sorry sir, I’ll get it right it right next time,” the crewman replied.
“You had best do; if you drop one of these, it’s more than all our lives are worth. You understand.”
“Yes sir,” the young crewman responded. As he started up his autoloader, and headed out of the room. Dylan and Michael watched the young crewman go.
“Damn kid,” Dylan said. “The academy seems to be pushing them out even younger these days.”
“Yeah; we were like that once,” Michael said. Thinking of what Theo would be like if he ever decided to join the Navy, like he was talking about.
“True; do you remember that time, when we were studying for our class two pilot certificate, and we were servicing that fighter. I think they were called the Cirrus fighter back then. And you accidentally broke an elevator linkage, and didn’t say anything in case it would harm your chances of passing the course,” Dylan said laughing.
“Yeah,” Michael replied breaking into hilarity, “the next pilot went to take it out, and wondered why it wouldn’t get off the ground.”
“You were grounded for about three months,” Dylan replied hysterically.
Michael finished laughing and said, “I’ve gotta get back to my deck, I’ll catch you later, okay.”
“Sure, I’ll be in the bar after my shift anyway.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you there.”
And with that Michael left to get back to his deck, a little while later the Ulysses had reached the edge of the Orion system, and was preparing to enter plasma drive.
The plasma drive was one of the biggest breakthroughs of the twenty first century. When positively charged plasma particles collide with negatively charged plasma particles, the result is known as the plasma wake, a type of tunnel through space-time, were standard restrictions on the speed of light, no longer apply. It is travel through these tunnels, which allows vessels to travel between the stars at a fraction of the time it would take a ship traveling at sub-light speeds.
Both of these positively and negatively charged particles are fired into a predetermined point directly in front of the ship, using the ships plasma emitters, two long cannon like protrusions at the front of the ship, with a coil at the end of each.
A loud klaxon sounded on board, and a green warning light lit up on selected panels throughout the entire ship; a young crewman hurried over to Michael, “What is that noise, are we under attack?”
“Relax,” Michael replied, marveling at the inexperience of the man. “It’s just the ship preparing to make the jump into plasma drive; you might want to sit down, gets a little bumpy when the ship begins to make its jump.”
The young man hurriedly rushed out of sight. Michael calmly sat down in a chair in his office.
Outside the Ulysses, the forward plasma emitters began to glow an intense bright blue light; which slowly increased in its intensity until two massive bright blue beams of pure plasma energy lanced out from the emitter coils.
Ahead of the battleship the beams converged upon one another, until they collided, releasing a terrific burst of plasma energy; and in the space of a split second the huge plasma wake opened.
It looked like an enormous mass of swirling blue, purple, and red colours; it was almost liquid like in its consistency. The blue would swirl and collide with the red and purple in a vivid splash of colour. At the edge of the anomaly, there was a thin halo of bright white light.
The Ulysses slowly accelerated into the wake, and as the ship passed through it; the anomaly disappeared upon itself as the ship passed into plasma drive proper, it entered an infinite tunnel of flashing blue, red, and purple colours. Through this transparent tunnel normal starlight could be seen, although the Ulysses couldn’t be seen, as it had left normal space-time completely while it was within plasma drive.
Onboard the battleship, the shuddering ceased, and the green warning lights stopped. The klaxon had also stopped its wailing; everything returned to normal and the crew carried on with their duties.
The rest of the day passed uneventfully, the only difference to normality came when you looked out of the view ports and into the swirling translucent mass, which was the tunnel through space-time that the ship was travelling.
Michael checked his watch, it was 18:40, and his relief would be coming in soon, then he could knock off.
Sure enough his relief walked into his office, Lieutenant Junior grade Curtis was the relief deck officer on deck 18. Michael informed the Lieutenant of the events of the day, including the problem with the docking arm.
He gathered together his things; including his own data navigator, and bidded Lieutenant Curtis good day, before heading toward the elevator.
Then he remembered about the meeting, damn, he thought, as he headed toward the meeting room located on deck 4. A few minutes later he had arrived, luckily he was early, and most of the other deck officers had filed in, however not all.
Michael sat down; they were all waiting for Lieutenant Commander Rennick, the chief operations officer on board, and third in command, after Commander Angel.
The meeting room was a long rectangular shaped room, dominated by a long boardroom table located in the centre. There was a small table bearing a coffee dispenser in one corner, and there were large view ports at one end of the room.
The remainder of the other deck officers filed in, soon followed by Rennick, who sat down immediately. Together there were a total of 32 deck officers, one for each deck of the ship.
“I will now call this meeting to order,” Rennick began.
Michael thumbed through his data navigator at the events that took place during the day.
Rennick then proceeded to ask each officer in turn if there were any problems during the shift. Many of the officers simply didn’t have any. One had a power cut to the forward section of deck 8; another had a coolant leak in the engineering section of deck 16. The toilets weren’t working properly on deck 19, minor things really.
Finally Rennick came to Michael, “Lieutenant Alexander, what about your deck?”
“We had a minor short in one of the power couplings in the docking arm, I had some engineers take a look at it, and it was fixed within half an hour. It probably happened after we left Delta base.”
“Good,” Rennick replied. “And what about the tests on the targeting arrays on the port rail-cannons?”
Michael picked up his data navigator. “They show a 98 % efficiency rating; and a point 27 second lock on time sir, I have the results here.” He passed his navigator over to Rennick.
“Good, no excellent Lieutenant, we haven’t had the rail-cannons that precise for a long time, see that they stay that way Lieutenant.”
“Judging by the nature of our enemy sir, I made it a priority,” Michael replied.
“Good thinking Lieutenant, when we do finally find those bastards, we don’t want to miss,” he said laughing.
The rest of the room laughed with him; however Michael felt that they were being a little overconfident, given what happened to the Montfort.
Soon after that they were all dismissed. As the officers left the room; Lieutenant Young, the deck officer for deck 12 approached Michael. “Hey you got Rennick laughing; he’s a tough nut to crack.”
“Must be my style,” Michael said with a smile as he left for the bar to join up with Dylan.
Soon enough he arrived at the Eagle bar, the meeting place, and general rest area onboard the Ulysses. Several tables were laid out, some were already occupied. A soft Jazz music played in the background.
There was a snooker table where a couple of officers were playing, as well as a large screen viewer mounted on a wall, and a row of large view ports directly ahead that looked out to the mass of colours that was plasma drive.
Dylan was sat at the large bar area with a beer, watching the viewer, Michael pulled up a chair next to him.
The bartender came over to him and asked “What are you having son?” George was the cheerful civilian bartender onboard. Although not strictly part of the E.D. F Navy, he was paid by the E.D. F like everyone else. Most people affectionately called him Georgie.
“I’ll have a beer, and some roasted peanuts please Georgie,” Michael replied.
Georgie proceeded to pull the pint with typical practised skill. Dylan was sat quiet.
“Hard day?” Michael asked, trying to read him.
“First one on a new mission always is, especially when you’re going to use live ammo,” Dylan replied.
Suddenly, the news flashed up on the viewer. “Hello, my name is Annika Raumov, this is the outer colony news service. The top stories tonight; the entire E.O.C. A is in mourning after the carrier E.D.F. S Montfort was destroyed this morning. It is the biggest disaster to hit E.D. F forces since the pirate attacks some fifteen years ago, no survivors are known to have escaped. Also in the Agemman system, mass panic has begun to take hold as the people are increasingly worried of an attack on the colony itself.”
Georgie passed Michael his beer and peanuts, “four credits please.”
Michael passed him his payment card.
Shortly after Georgie gave Michael his card back, “damn thing’s been on all day,” the barman said looking at the viewer.
Michael and Dylan both shushed him; Georgie silently put his hands up in mock surrender, and busied himself cleaning some glasses.
They both turned back to watching the news.
“Several civilian transports have been spotted leaving the colony, reputedly carrying refugees, while trade to the colony has all but ceased. E.D. F troops from the 22 ^ nd ‘Black Panthers’ company have been drafted in to help the local police force quell several riots that have broken out in areas of the colony. And in some areas looting has already begun.”
Footage of troops and police in full riot gear could be seen trying to contain the hundreds of rioters, as various pieces of detritus was hurled at them by the desperate populace.
“Breaking news has just come in, we have lost contact with the Agemman system, and I repeat all contact has been severed with the colony.”
The entire bar area became deathly quiet, as everyone’s eyes were fixed on the viewer.
“You know what this means,” Dylan whispered. “Alert level one.”
“All out war,” Michael finished for him; “the first alert level one, in our history.”
Later that evening, the green warning lights flashed on again, and the warning klaxon sounded.
“We are dropping out of plasma drive,” Michael said, stating the obvious.
In front of the Ulysses fringed in bright white light, was an opening into ‘normal space’, the ship headed toward it, and in a blinding flash the huge battleship returned to ‘normal space’ once again.
Ahead of it could just be seen the forms of the E.D. F task force, which the Ulysses was to rendezvous with.
Michael could feel the ship slowing, we must be at the rendezvous point, he thought.
He had arrived back in his quarters now, after having the single pint with Dylan, he didn’t want to drink too much in these uncertain times. He needed to keep his head clear and focused.
Looking over to the small viewport built into the wall of his cramped quarters. He could see the shapes of two other vessels floating past, one was a small sturdy looking Gandhi class destroyer, distinguished by its sloping forward section, and its raised rear crew quarters.
The second was a larger, sleeker, Alexander class medium cruiser, sporting a wider hull which tapers into a thinner forward section and then tapers again, where the forward docking arm is located. He could see the running lights of both ships blinking, their forms slightly silhouetted by the light of a far away star.
He noticed the Ulysses was moving slightly faster than the other ships in the task force, so it could manoeuvre into its lead position within the fleet.
Michael retired to his bunk for the night, it had been a long day, and no doubt it would be the same tomorrow he thought.
He peered out the viewport for the last time, and felt somewhat re-assured by the shapes of the other vessels gliding alongside. Slowly tiredness overcame him and he relaxed into a fitful sleep.
He awoke next morning to find his comm. Chip chirping incessantly again, he groggily pressed the acknowledge button on it; it was Rennick.
“Lieutenant, there is a ship wide briefing at 08.30 hours, in the cargo hold. Make sure your there.”
“Yes sir,” Michael replied.
He ended the communication, got up, washed, and got dressed. Soon after he headed down to the galley and grabbed a quick breakfast, before hurrying to the cargo hold.
Dylan was already there, and Michael walked over and sat next to him. “Three guesses what this is about,” he whispered.
Michael smiled. The rest of the crew filed in. Followed by Captain Wainwright, who once again took the stage. A Naval whistle blew, and the whole crew once again stood to attention.
“Please be seated,” he said. “I’ll not take much of your time; I know we are all anxious to get on with our duties.”
The assembled mass, sat down as one.
“We have some very important news, which is again highly classified. At 21.10 hours yesterday evening, we lost contact with the Agemman colony. Since we cannot determine the exact cause of how we lost contact, E.D. F command has ordered us to maintain a level two alert; we have however begun to translate some of the communiques sent by the alien force before the Montfort was destroyed.”
Captain Wainwright was replaced by a slightly younger looking officer, whom Michael didn’t recognise.
The man began, “the original messages have been put through our linguistics programs, and we have also run it through several probability matrices. Here is the original recording again.”
The deep harsh Krenaran voice was played over the speakers. “On mulv varash a’lahun, al orash vak kroluth.”
“That was the first communication received by the Montfort. Here it is now that it has been partly translated.”
“On Mulv varash a’lahun, the Terrans will die.”
“And here is the second message,” the man said as he played another recording.
The screaming alien voice was heard again. “On vak drovath lok al Krenarii aden!”
“And here is the translation,” the man went on.
“On vak surrender lok al Krenarans immediately.”
“We think that the word Krenarii is the plural for the name of their race,” he continued. “And finally here is the third recording.”
The man played the final recording, followed by the translation.
“Krenarii mulv brolis, al orash vak kroluth!”
“Krenarans mulv stronger, the Terrans will die!”
“We can now surmise with reasonable accuracy that the last message is saying that the Krenarans are stronger and all Terrans will be killed,” the man said rather gloomily.
Captain Wainwright walked back onto the stage and replaced the man. “As of 07.30 hours this morning, we have new orders. The task force is to continue towards the Agemman system, investigate why contact has been lost, and report back to E.D. F headquarters. Furious will still be joining the fleet to give fighter support, are there any questions?”
A man towards the rear of the room raised his hand.
“Yes, what is your question?” asked Wainwright.
“If the translations are correct; then why are we still at alert level two? Clearly the aliens are a hostile force and destroyed the Montfort. They have most probably attacked the colony as well; they are behaving extremely aggressively; surely we should be at alert level one?”
“The answer to your question is that E.O.C. A is still holding out for a diplomatic solution. Also we don’t know if the Krenarans have actually attacked the colony. Until we find out what has happened, E.D. F command cannot authorize alert level one. Does that answer your question?” Wainwright responded.
“Yes sir, thank you sir,” the man sat down.
“If there are no further questions; then this briefing is over,” Captain Wainwright said.
Commander Angel dismissed them, and the officers began to fall out, talking amongst themselves.
Dylan turned to face Michael, “What do you think of that?”
“I agree with part of it, we should investigate what has happened at Agemman, but I also think we should be responding in force, they just killed 740 people Dylan, people with wives and families,” Michael replied.
“Yeah; if they show up, we should blast them out the stars, besides its obvious what’s happened at Agemman, the Krenarans blasted it; you heard the translations. The Terrans will die, the Krenarans are stronger.”
“Perhaps,” Michael replied thoughtfully. “For once I hope you’re wrong,” however in his heart Michael didn’t think Dylan was.
Later that day, another blinding flash of light near to the fleet announced the arrival of the Furious. The large carrier slowly maneuvered into position between the Yukon and the Europa, in order to give the carrier some protection in case it was attacked itself.
The Furious launched a small squadron of fighters that swung around and performed a routine sweep of the area, before heading back into the carriers fighter bays, once they were secured back onboard. The entire fleet of seven vessels shifted into plasma drive and was gone.
Michael had an uneasy feeling all day, he thought if the Krenarans didn’t attack the colony, and contact was lost due to the riots and the mass panic. He could be traveling to his death, because those ships were still out there, and would doubtless attack the fleet anyway. And if the colony had been attacked he could be traveling to his death anyway, because of those darned ships again. He thought of Jana and Theo; and wondered how they were coping back at Delta base.
Never had he missed them more than he did at this moment, however he was an E.D. F Naval officer, and he had a job to do, so with a supreme effort he pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind.