AJW
Well-known member
A Chance Encounter
Disclaimer: I do not own most of the characters, and definitely not the universes as things would be seriously different if I did, that I am about to mangle around and mash together for my own amusement. Sadly, all Robotech and Battlestar Galactica concepts and characters remain the property of Harmony Gold and Ronald D Moore I am merely borrowing them and make absolutely no profit from their use. As a result, please keep the legal attack dogs – also known as lawyers – firmly muzzled and on a leash as I have no money to give to anyone.
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Chapter One
Sitting behind his desk in his small ready room Captain John Harrison groaned in annoyance as no sooner than he saved and closed one report than another appeared on his terminal, flagged for an urgent review. For a moment he considered drawing his sidearm and putting a particle beam through the offending terminal to just have a few minutes of peace. He put aside those thoughts, while it would give him moments satisfaction to do such a thing, long term it would only cause him far more problems among which would be filling in the required forms to requisition a new terminal.
Still, it was at times like this that he wondered just what the bloody hell he had been thinking when he agreed to transfer from flying veritechs to starship operations, which ultimately had seen him awarded his current command. He knew why of course, Rick Hunter had asked him too – and one did not say no to someone that high ranked originally in the Robotech Defence Force and now the Robotech Expeditionary Force not to mention someone who had become a good friend over the years since they'd both been pilots in the SDF-1's airwing – when the RDF had begun laying the groundwork for the mission to find Tirol and the Robotech Masters. They wanted to find the mysterious but undeniably powerful creators of the Zentraedi in the hopes that they could establish a diplomatic relationship with them and prevent the devastation of another war fought with robotech weaponry or, if that was not possible, confront and defeat them far from Earth.
While the idea was simple even getting to the outer reaches of the Tirolian Empire had been anything but.
John recalled that it had been a big surprise to every Terran military officer that the Zentraedi hadn't been able to provide them with much beyond the most basic of directions to Tirolian space and the Masters. The navigational maps that would let them travel directly there were heavily encrypted and could only be unlocked by extremely complex one-time cyphers that only the Masters' themselves could generate. They'd been trying to decrypt their own key unfortunately the encryption was far too complex, based in a form of quantum mathematics that only a handful of their people could grasp, and included a couple of quite fiendish logic traps designed to trip up anyone trying to do a brute force decryption. Thus, since they couldn't travel directly to Tirolian space, they were forced to head in its rough direction mapping space as they went.
Which was the effort his current command was part of.
Ahead of the bulk of the expeditionary force – which was either still in orbit of Earth or in orbit of the handful of colonies and outposts they'd established outside of Sol – small groups of warships, codenamed pathfinders after the pilots who used to guide bomber formations to their targets during second world war, had been sent out. There, goal to find the way across the largely uncharted expanse of the Milky Way to Tirolian space which they knew was somewhere in one of the fifty-eight dwarf galaxies – specifically the Greater Magellanic Cloud – that orbited their own galaxy. A distance of fifty kiloparsecs and while that wasn't an insurmountable distance – they could fold ten kiloparsecs in one go if they had to though the drive would require an extended cooldown and repower cycle afterwards – the problem was the fact that no one knew exactly what lay between them and Tirolian space. It was the purpose of the pathfinders to fill in that gap to both ensure the survival of the expeditionary forces and to find suitable planets for colonization by both Terrans and the allied Zentraedi in accordance with the Gloval Initiative.
Mentally John shook himself, chiding himself for getting distracted, and started to read through the report that had just appeared on his screen. A concerned frown appeared on his face as he read that it was a report from the quartermaster in charge of keeping track of all the supplies on both this ship – the Sirona – and the other two Damocles-class cruisers and four escorting Battle-class destroyers that made up Pathfinder Group Four. They were beginning to run low on some of their food supplies, especially on the Battles which didn't have the extensive hydroponic/aquaponic facilities that the three Damocles did. Facilities that could only offset the destroyers' smaller stores so much. Hmm looks like after we've finished our next survey, we'll have to fold back to the nearest MARS station for resupply, he thought making a mental note to discuss the matter with the other ship captains when they had their regular fold comm meeting later today.
He finished reading the report, saved, and closed it and leaned back thoughtfully. The console chirped and he swore softly in his native Welsh as another report appeared for his attention, this one having all the hallmarks of the bureaucratic make work that the pencil pushers who did all the admin stuff liked to lump on you. He was just about to lean forward again to start the unpleasant task of reading this report when the desk comm unit chirped for his attention. I wonder what this is, he thought with a slight smile of relief as he pushed a button on the offending device.
"Yes?" he asked.
"Sorry to bother you captain but could you please come to the bridge. Our latest probe scans are back and they're detecting something unusual in a nearby nebula," came the familiar voice of Commander Tylen Rou.
"Of course, commander, I'll be right there," John replied, standing up grateful for the chance to get away from his paperwork for a time.
"Yes, sir."
As Tylen signed off, he turned and left his quarters. As he began to make the short journey to the bridge, he couldn't help but wonder what it was their long-range probes had detected; whatever it was, it had to be something truly unusual for the micronized Zentraedi warrior who served as his executive officer to call him to the bridge in this way. While he had initially been somewhat dubious about having a Zentraedi as one of his senior officers –, after all it wasn't really that long ago that they'd been the most mortal of enemies – he'd since come to appreciate him both as a man and as an officer. Thus, he knew Tylen wouldn't call him unless it was absolutely necessary.
It took only a few moments to reach the bridge of the six hundred- and ten-meter-long cruiser. By design the commanding officer's office, or the ready room after the captain's office on Star Trek, was only a few meters from the bridge. It allowed a ships master or mistress to work and still be close enough to the bridge to get there quickly in the event of an emergency. After exchanging polite nods of acknowledgement with the two armoured marines guarding the entrance to the bridge he stepped into the room.
"What is it Ty," he asked as he walked over to where the Zentraedi officer was standing by the main sensor station. The other man looked up and smiled in greeting, having long accepted the affectionate nickname he'd given him seeing it as a sign of genuine acceptance among the mostly Terran crew.
"Captain a few minutes ago we recovered our latest long-range probes. There passive fold sensors detected two brief fold distortions in a nebula point six light years off our current course," Tylen replied. "Both distortions are extremely brief – just a second or two long each."
John frowned. "What could cause that," he asked knowing that space folds normally took between sixty and ninety seconds, depending on both the model of drive being used and the mass of the object being folded, to form fully and for the fold spheres contents to cross the threshold between normal space and hyperspace.
"I don't know," Tylen admitted with a puzzled frown on his face.
"Could it be possible that some local race has a variation on space folding technology that we're not familiar with?"
"It's possible though it would be unlike any fold system ever encountered be either my people or the Robotech Masters," Tylen answered looking quite thoughtful. "We should investigate. I recommend that most of the squadron remain here and just this ship, possibly with a destroyer in support, go to investigate. That way we should not appear aggressive."
John considered that counsel for a moment. He could see where the micronized Zentraedi was coming from, plus they needed to know if those two brief fold distortions had been caused by a previously unknown race – with a previously unknown form of space folding technology – or if they were the result of some kind of previously unknown natural phenomenon. If there were aliens there, then it could indicate that they could be entering someone else's territory and that was the very last thing they wanted to do. Sending just two ships to investigate – and if aliens were present to make peaceful contact and from their negotiate passage for the expeditionary forces through this region – was common sense as they would not be seen to be that threatening, well not to someone who wasn't aware of the level of firepower possessed by robotech warships.
"Good idea," he said after a few more moments of thinking it over. "But before we fold, we should let headquarters know what's going on."
"Agreed," Tylen replied with a smile and a nod of agreement as one of the things he really liked about his current CO was his cautious, prudent nature which was quite a refreshing change from some of the other commanders he'd had the misfortune of serving under – including the late and very unlamented Khyron about a hundred years ago. Though he also enjoyed how the Terran was also teaching him how to play the ritualised form of team combat called rugby. Many such Terran sports – but especially rugby and soccer – were really gaining a near cult following amongst the Zentraedi as it let them have a healthy outlet for the restless energy and competitive nature built into them by the Robotech Masters. But then so did a number of the more combat orientated sports like boxing – which Captain Harrison had also taught him, and they had regular training and sometimes competitive bouts in the gym – and the various forms of martial arts.
Like many of his fellow Zentraedi – micronized or not – the more he discovered about Terrans the more he admired them. They had a warrior fierceness to them that you had to admire but unlike the Zentraedi they had learned how to exist and live beyond it. They weren't slaves to their admittedly impressive martial skills – like the Zentraedi had until so recently been – which was something that more and more of his fellows were endeavouring to accomplish themselves, as becoming more than what they had long been would really be the ultimate victory for the Zentraedi over the Robotech Masters.
He put aside those thoughts as Captain Harrison spoke again. "Communications?" he heard the Terran say.
"Sir?" the lieutenant in charge of the bridge comm station answered immediately.
"Send a transmission to High Command. Advise them of our probe findings and that request permission to take two ships to investigate further," John ordered.
"Aye sir."
"Now we wait," John commented looking over at his XO who nodded in agreement a few moments before the long-range sensor console chirped. "What is it?"
"Sir we're picking up some more of those short fold disturbances," the officer in charge reported immediately. "Same location as the original ones our probe detected, same duration but more of them. This is weird we're picking up the subspace echo of a space fold but there are no alpha or delta wave phase shifts, nor any residual phased gravitons."
"Curiouser and curiouser," John commented. "Forward a copy of the data to comms to relay to high command. Also, how many signatures are you now picking up?"
"Computer determines eight separate disturbances sir," the lieutenant answered. "Given how small the bursts are and they're very short duration I doubt that the ships that made them are very big."
"Understood keep an eye open though for more fold disturbances," John ordered as he made his way to the commanding officers chair at the back and centre of the bridge – which like on all modern REF bridges had its own small workstation in front of it where he could monitor any system on the ship he wanted to at any given time – and sat down in it the synthetic leather padding creaking slightly as it took his two hundred and twenty pound weight. Out the corner of his eye he saw Tylen return to his own workstation near the front of the rectangular bridge to return to his own duties.
"Aye sir."
I wonder how long it will take someone at command to agree to my request, John thought as, to pass the time, he transferred some of his electronic paperwork to his console. He began reading through another supply notification and noted with some concern that one of the other two Damocles-class cruisers – the Minerva – was reporting that its protoculture reserves were down to forty-percent. While not critical at the moment, the Minerva had enough protoculture remaining for another two months of operation well provided they didn't have to engage someone in combat, it only reinforced the notion that he was going to have to seriously consider booking group four in for a service at the nearest MARS station. With the mental equivalent of a sigh, he brought up the proper forms that he would need to fill in and forward to command, who would then check when the nearest station was available to service his fleet and booking them in to fold to its location.
Abruptly the communications console chirped. "Sir we're receiving a response from UEEF High Command," communications reported.
"And?"
"High Command has acknowledged our request sir and Admiral Hayes has agreed with your plan," the younger officer replied. "However, she also orders that the rest of the task force assume full readiness status ready to fold in to support us should we run into hostiles."
Well, that makes sense as while our newer ships are considerably more powerful than the first-generation ones we're far from invincible, John thought with a mental smile. He had been planning to give that order anyway though it was even better that it had come from Lisa herself. One of the other ship captains – that xenophobic bitch Captain Natalia Matheson on the Artemis that Anatole Leonard had forced on him, the man was unfortunately far too good at playing political power games – might have argued with him but they wouldn't with an order from Lisa. Not even Matheson was that stupid, if she tried Lisa would bury her and there would be nothing Leonard would be able to do to help her – and she knew it. So did Lisa which was probably the reason she'd included that order in the first place.
"Acknowledge the order," he said at last. "Relay it to the rest of the fleet. Then inform Captain Charleston on the Inuit that they will be coming with us to investigate the fold disturbances, Captain Turner on the Minerva will be in charge of the fleet while we're gone."
"Aye sir."
"Helmsman begin moving us out of formation with the rest of the fleet," John ordered, "Ty please make sure that out part of the fleet CAP is back onboard and secure for fold."
"Aye sir," both the helmsman and the Zentraedi replied, before setting about their respective.
"Sir the rest of the fleet has acknowledged the order," the communications officer replied.
"The last of our part of the CAP is landing in the portside bay now," Tylen added, he had already started the process of recalling them from the moment they received the okay order from Admiral Hayes. He knew full well that John wouldn't mind, the Terran having encouraged him a few times over the last year or two to act on his own initiative where appropriate instead of rigidly sticking to the command hierarchy. At first it had been a strange, very alien mindset to adopt but over time he had gotten a lot better at it. "The Inuit has moved into formation with us. We should reach fold clearance from the rest of the fleet in three minutes."
"Excellent. Navigation begin plotting a hyperspace fold jump to the coordinates of the fold distortions."
"Aye sir beginning fold computations."
Leaving his crew to do their jobs John turned his attention briefly back to his command console. Carefully he saved the paperwork that he had been working on and closed it, bringing back up general systems display. A glance at which showed him that the hyperspace fold drive was powering up correctly and, in a few moments, would be able to take the ship to investigate the fold disturbances that had first teased their probes then the ships own sensor arrays.
"Fold calculations complete sir."
"All veritechs docked and secured. All stations report ready to initiate space folding."
"Initiate space folding."
"Aye sir initiating space folding sequence. Hyperspace fold in thirty seconds."
Leaning back in the command chair again, John waited, keeping his eyes on the data display that had appeared on the command console showing the countdown to the execution of the hyperspace fold jump. Even after all this time, he still sometimes had trouble wrapping his head around the reality of humanity now having interstellar travel. Granted, they'd had some trouble with hyperspace folding at first – like everyone else who'd been there, he well remembered the SDF-1 space folding to Pluto's orbit when they'd been aiming for the dark side of the moon, incidentally, dragging Macross Island and chunk of Pacific Ocean through hyperspace with them – the Zentraedi who'd sided with them had soon put them straight on how to use space folding properly. Now the people of his homeworld – battered, bruised, and battle scarred maybe – had the whole galaxy at their doorstep, thanks to the miracle of robotechnology. If only that miracle hadn't cost us billions of lives, he thought, feeling a familiar stab of pain at the reminder of seeing large parts of Earth burning during the Rain of Death. Like many people, he'd lost loved ones in the Rain, in his case, one of his sisters who'd been in London where she'd worked at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital when the two millennia old city, and much of the Southeast of England, was obliterated by a mixture of reflex cannon and heavy particle cannon blasts from Dolza's fleet.
For a moment, he saw her again, smiling at him at the last family get together that they'd shared before the First Robotech War began, then the familiar thrum of power through the ship brought him out of those thoughts, and he dismissed Sarah's ghost, at least for now. He looked up at the viewports as a shimmering bubble of eldritch energy popped into existence around the ship as the fold sphere established itself, then the bubble turned into streaking starlight – that never ceased to remind him of the initial hyperspace entry from Star Wars – as the fold bubble submerged the ship into hyperspace…
…but only for a moment.
With a flash, the starlight evaporated into the shimmering bubble of the fold sphere, again only for a moment, as the bubble evaporated. Instead of in the open depths of starlit space, the Sirona and the Inuit were now in a system surrounded by shimmering veins of gas shot through with ribbons of swirling dust. Ahead of them was a planet illuminated by the feeble light of a distant white sun. Even from a distance, the planet looked very uninviting cold, its surface dominated by large fields of snow and ice, its oceans a pale grey.
What an unpleasant looking place, he thought before putting the frigid-looking planet out of his mind for now. There would be time to scan and survey it from orbit later – just to be thorough as Lisa and the other top brass didn't look kindly on you if you weren't thorough with any potentially habitable, if only barely, planet you came across – right now they needed to investigate what had caused the fold disturbances that had drawn their attention to this system in the first place.
"Preliminary scans complete sir," sensors reported, "we read multiple small spacecraft, unknown design. Six are inside the planets atmosphere with two of them landed on the surface. Two more are in high orbit, they appear to be directing a form of lidar at us."
"Life signs?"
"Life sign readings… wait this can't be right."
"Lieutenant?"
"Sir the life sign readings are human."
"Confirm that."
"Confirmed sir the life signs are human."
"Interesting how the hell can humans be out here," Tylen wondered.
"I have no idea," John admitted, "communications hail them let's see if we can answer this puzzle."
"Sir the craft on the surface are lifting off and the ones in atmosphere appear to be making towards orbit. We must have spooked them," sensors reported.
"No doubt. Communications any answer from the craft?"
"Negative sir. I've tried fold comm and laser comms but there is no response. I'm about to switch to radio frequencies."
"Sir one of the craft in the atmosphere is going back down looks like they've got some kind of engine problem and cannot make orbit. The others are entering orbit. We're picking up some kind of fold engines powering up."
"Fold drives on something that small it doesn't seem possible," Tylen commented.
"The other seven ships are folding out sir."
John nodded he could see it himself on his command console screens. In an impressive display of synchronisation all seven spacecraft – each barely the size of one of the old star goose shuttlecrafts – vanished in burst of light. Bursts that from the small amounts of phased gravitons and beta phase tachyons emitted were definitely space folds but were far briefer than the norm and the number of particles emitted by the folds were considerably lower than the norm for a space fold. Incredible, he thought amazed by the event as he had never thought that such a fold system would be possible, let alone be able to be fitted to something that small. While he wasn't an engineer or robotechnologist he would love to get a look at that fold system, and he knew the people back home would be even more desperate to get a look and to start tearing it apart to see just how it worked and if they could reproduce it. After all, if they could reverse engineer, it then it could lead to a revolution in military tactics.
Thankfully they still had a chance to get a hold of one of the drives. Not to mention find out just how the hell humans could be out here several kiloparsecs from Sol.
"Helm move us into orbit of the planet," he ordered after a moment. "Tylen prepare a squad of marines to go down to the planet. They're to check the vessel that went down for survivors, help them if possible and try to recover the craft."
"Aye sir," both the helmsman and the Zentraedi XO acknowledged.
Mentally John sighed and leaned back in the commanding officers chair as the crew began to carry out their assigned tasks. In another couple of minutes, a squad of marines would leave the ship aboard one of the two Predator-class dropships and head down to the surface and the landed – but hopefully not crashed – unknown ship. Hopefully the crew would be alright and be able, and willing, to talk with them and answers their questions. If not, well they would just have to deal with it. Whatever the outcome was he would have to first endure something that he absolutely hated, in fact it was something every captain in the REF fleet hated…
…waiting.
Disclaimer: I do not own most of the characters, and definitely not the universes as things would be seriously different if I did, that I am about to mangle around and mash together for my own amusement. Sadly, all Robotech and Battlestar Galactica concepts and characters remain the property of Harmony Gold and Ronald D Moore I am merely borrowing them and make absolutely no profit from their use. As a result, please keep the legal attack dogs – also known as lawyers – firmly muzzled and on a leash as I have no money to give to anyone.
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Chapter One
Sitting behind his desk in his small ready room Captain John Harrison groaned in annoyance as no sooner than he saved and closed one report than another appeared on his terminal, flagged for an urgent review. For a moment he considered drawing his sidearm and putting a particle beam through the offending terminal to just have a few minutes of peace. He put aside those thoughts, while it would give him moments satisfaction to do such a thing, long term it would only cause him far more problems among which would be filling in the required forms to requisition a new terminal.
Still, it was at times like this that he wondered just what the bloody hell he had been thinking when he agreed to transfer from flying veritechs to starship operations, which ultimately had seen him awarded his current command. He knew why of course, Rick Hunter had asked him too – and one did not say no to someone that high ranked originally in the Robotech Defence Force and now the Robotech Expeditionary Force not to mention someone who had become a good friend over the years since they'd both been pilots in the SDF-1's airwing – when the RDF had begun laying the groundwork for the mission to find Tirol and the Robotech Masters. They wanted to find the mysterious but undeniably powerful creators of the Zentraedi in the hopes that they could establish a diplomatic relationship with them and prevent the devastation of another war fought with robotech weaponry or, if that was not possible, confront and defeat them far from Earth.
While the idea was simple even getting to the outer reaches of the Tirolian Empire had been anything but.
John recalled that it had been a big surprise to every Terran military officer that the Zentraedi hadn't been able to provide them with much beyond the most basic of directions to Tirolian space and the Masters. The navigational maps that would let them travel directly there were heavily encrypted and could only be unlocked by extremely complex one-time cyphers that only the Masters' themselves could generate. They'd been trying to decrypt their own key unfortunately the encryption was far too complex, based in a form of quantum mathematics that only a handful of their people could grasp, and included a couple of quite fiendish logic traps designed to trip up anyone trying to do a brute force decryption. Thus, since they couldn't travel directly to Tirolian space, they were forced to head in its rough direction mapping space as they went.
Which was the effort his current command was part of.
Ahead of the bulk of the expeditionary force – which was either still in orbit of Earth or in orbit of the handful of colonies and outposts they'd established outside of Sol – small groups of warships, codenamed pathfinders after the pilots who used to guide bomber formations to their targets during second world war, had been sent out. There, goal to find the way across the largely uncharted expanse of the Milky Way to Tirolian space which they knew was somewhere in one of the fifty-eight dwarf galaxies – specifically the Greater Magellanic Cloud – that orbited their own galaxy. A distance of fifty kiloparsecs and while that wasn't an insurmountable distance – they could fold ten kiloparsecs in one go if they had to though the drive would require an extended cooldown and repower cycle afterwards – the problem was the fact that no one knew exactly what lay between them and Tirolian space. It was the purpose of the pathfinders to fill in that gap to both ensure the survival of the expeditionary forces and to find suitable planets for colonization by both Terrans and the allied Zentraedi in accordance with the Gloval Initiative.
Mentally John shook himself, chiding himself for getting distracted, and started to read through the report that had just appeared on his screen. A concerned frown appeared on his face as he read that it was a report from the quartermaster in charge of keeping track of all the supplies on both this ship – the Sirona – and the other two Damocles-class cruisers and four escorting Battle-class destroyers that made up Pathfinder Group Four. They were beginning to run low on some of their food supplies, especially on the Battles which didn't have the extensive hydroponic/aquaponic facilities that the three Damocles did. Facilities that could only offset the destroyers' smaller stores so much. Hmm looks like after we've finished our next survey, we'll have to fold back to the nearest MARS station for resupply, he thought making a mental note to discuss the matter with the other ship captains when they had their regular fold comm meeting later today.
He finished reading the report, saved, and closed it and leaned back thoughtfully. The console chirped and he swore softly in his native Welsh as another report appeared for his attention, this one having all the hallmarks of the bureaucratic make work that the pencil pushers who did all the admin stuff liked to lump on you. He was just about to lean forward again to start the unpleasant task of reading this report when the desk comm unit chirped for his attention. I wonder what this is, he thought with a slight smile of relief as he pushed a button on the offending device.
"Yes?" he asked.
"Sorry to bother you captain but could you please come to the bridge. Our latest probe scans are back and they're detecting something unusual in a nearby nebula," came the familiar voice of Commander Tylen Rou.
"Of course, commander, I'll be right there," John replied, standing up grateful for the chance to get away from his paperwork for a time.
"Yes, sir."
As Tylen signed off, he turned and left his quarters. As he began to make the short journey to the bridge, he couldn't help but wonder what it was their long-range probes had detected; whatever it was, it had to be something truly unusual for the micronized Zentraedi warrior who served as his executive officer to call him to the bridge in this way. While he had initially been somewhat dubious about having a Zentraedi as one of his senior officers –, after all it wasn't really that long ago that they'd been the most mortal of enemies – he'd since come to appreciate him both as a man and as an officer. Thus, he knew Tylen wouldn't call him unless it was absolutely necessary.
It took only a few moments to reach the bridge of the six hundred- and ten-meter-long cruiser. By design the commanding officer's office, or the ready room after the captain's office on Star Trek, was only a few meters from the bridge. It allowed a ships master or mistress to work and still be close enough to the bridge to get there quickly in the event of an emergency. After exchanging polite nods of acknowledgement with the two armoured marines guarding the entrance to the bridge he stepped into the room.
"What is it Ty," he asked as he walked over to where the Zentraedi officer was standing by the main sensor station. The other man looked up and smiled in greeting, having long accepted the affectionate nickname he'd given him seeing it as a sign of genuine acceptance among the mostly Terran crew.
"Captain a few minutes ago we recovered our latest long-range probes. There passive fold sensors detected two brief fold distortions in a nebula point six light years off our current course," Tylen replied. "Both distortions are extremely brief – just a second or two long each."
John frowned. "What could cause that," he asked knowing that space folds normally took between sixty and ninety seconds, depending on both the model of drive being used and the mass of the object being folded, to form fully and for the fold spheres contents to cross the threshold between normal space and hyperspace.
"I don't know," Tylen admitted with a puzzled frown on his face.
"Could it be possible that some local race has a variation on space folding technology that we're not familiar with?"
"It's possible though it would be unlike any fold system ever encountered be either my people or the Robotech Masters," Tylen answered looking quite thoughtful. "We should investigate. I recommend that most of the squadron remain here and just this ship, possibly with a destroyer in support, go to investigate. That way we should not appear aggressive."
John considered that counsel for a moment. He could see where the micronized Zentraedi was coming from, plus they needed to know if those two brief fold distortions had been caused by a previously unknown race – with a previously unknown form of space folding technology – or if they were the result of some kind of previously unknown natural phenomenon. If there were aliens there, then it could indicate that they could be entering someone else's territory and that was the very last thing they wanted to do. Sending just two ships to investigate – and if aliens were present to make peaceful contact and from their negotiate passage for the expeditionary forces through this region – was common sense as they would not be seen to be that threatening, well not to someone who wasn't aware of the level of firepower possessed by robotech warships.
"Good idea," he said after a few more moments of thinking it over. "But before we fold, we should let headquarters know what's going on."
"Agreed," Tylen replied with a smile and a nod of agreement as one of the things he really liked about his current CO was his cautious, prudent nature which was quite a refreshing change from some of the other commanders he'd had the misfortune of serving under – including the late and very unlamented Khyron about a hundred years ago. Though he also enjoyed how the Terran was also teaching him how to play the ritualised form of team combat called rugby. Many such Terran sports – but especially rugby and soccer – were really gaining a near cult following amongst the Zentraedi as it let them have a healthy outlet for the restless energy and competitive nature built into them by the Robotech Masters. But then so did a number of the more combat orientated sports like boxing – which Captain Harrison had also taught him, and they had regular training and sometimes competitive bouts in the gym – and the various forms of martial arts.
Like many of his fellow Zentraedi – micronized or not – the more he discovered about Terrans the more he admired them. They had a warrior fierceness to them that you had to admire but unlike the Zentraedi they had learned how to exist and live beyond it. They weren't slaves to their admittedly impressive martial skills – like the Zentraedi had until so recently been – which was something that more and more of his fellows were endeavouring to accomplish themselves, as becoming more than what they had long been would really be the ultimate victory for the Zentraedi over the Robotech Masters.
He put aside those thoughts as Captain Harrison spoke again. "Communications?" he heard the Terran say.
"Sir?" the lieutenant in charge of the bridge comm station answered immediately.
"Send a transmission to High Command. Advise them of our probe findings and that request permission to take two ships to investigate further," John ordered.
"Aye sir."
"Now we wait," John commented looking over at his XO who nodded in agreement a few moments before the long-range sensor console chirped. "What is it?"
"Sir we're picking up some more of those short fold disturbances," the officer in charge reported immediately. "Same location as the original ones our probe detected, same duration but more of them. This is weird we're picking up the subspace echo of a space fold but there are no alpha or delta wave phase shifts, nor any residual phased gravitons."
"Curiouser and curiouser," John commented. "Forward a copy of the data to comms to relay to high command. Also, how many signatures are you now picking up?"
"Computer determines eight separate disturbances sir," the lieutenant answered. "Given how small the bursts are and they're very short duration I doubt that the ships that made them are very big."
"Understood keep an eye open though for more fold disturbances," John ordered as he made his way to the commanding officers chair at the back and centre of the bridge – which like on all modern REF bridges had its own small workstation in front of it where he could monitor any system on the ship he wanted to at any given time – and sat down in it the synthetic leather padding creaking slightly as it took his two hundred and twenty pound weight. Out the corner of his eye he saw Tylen return to his own workstation near the front of the rectangular bridge to return to his own duties.
"Aye sir."
I wonder how long it will take someone at command to agree to my request, John thought as, to pass the time, he transferred some of his electronic paperwork to his console. He began reading through another supply notification and noted with some concern that one of the other two Damocles-class cruisers – the Minerva – was reporting that its protoculture reserves were down to forty-percent. While not critical at the moment, the Minerva had enough protoculture remaining for another two months of operation well provided they didn't have to engage someone in combat, it only reinforced the notion that he was going to have to seriously consider booking group four in for a service at the nearest MARS station. With the mental equivalent of a sigh, he brought up the proper forms that he would need to fill in and forward to command, who would then check when the nearest station was available to service his fleet and booking them in to fold to its location.
Abruptly the communications console chirped. "Sir we're receiving a response from UEEF High Command," communications reported.
"And?"
"High Command has acknowledged our request sir and Admiral Hayes has agreed with your plan," the younger officer replied. "However, she also orders that the rest of the task force assume full readiness status ready to fold in to support us should we run into hostiles."
Well, that makes sense as while our newer ships are considerably more powerful than the first-generation ones we're far from invincible, John thought with a mental smile. He had been planning to give that order anyway though it was even better that it had come from Lisa herself. One of the other ship captains – that xenophobic bitch Captain Natalia Matheson on the Artemis that Anatole Leonard had forced on him, the man was unfortunately far too good at playing political power games – might have argued with him but they wouldn't with an order from Lisa. Not even Matheson was that stupid, if she tried Lisa would bury her and there would be nothing Leonard would be able to do to help her – and she knew it. So did Lisa which was probably the reason she'd included that order in the first place.
"Acknowledge the order," he said at last. "Relay it to the rest of the fleet. Then inform Captain Charleston on the Inuit that they will be coming with us to investigate the fold disturbances, Captain Turner on the Minerva will be in charge of the fleet while we're gone."
"Aye sir."
"Helmsman begin moving us out of formation with the rest of the fleet," John ordered, "Ty please make sure that out part of the fleet CAP is back onboard and secure for fold."
"Aye sir," both the helmsman and the Zentraedi replied, before setting about their respective.
"Sir the rest of the fleet has acknowledged the order," the communications officer replied.
"The last of our part of the CAP is landing in the portside bay now," Tylen added, he had already started the process of recalling them from the moment they received the okay order from Admiral Hayes. He knew full well that John wouldn't mind, the Terran having encouraged him a few times over the last year or two to act on his own initiative where appropriate instead of rigidly sticking to the command hierarchy. At first it had been a strange, very alien mindset to adopt but over time he had gotten a lot better at it. "The Inuit has moved into formation with us. We should reach fold clearance from the rest of the fleet in three minutes."
"Excellent. Navigation begin plotting a hyperspace fold jump to the coordinates of the fold distortions."
"Aye sir beginning fold computations."
Leaving his crew to do their jobs John turned his attention briefly back to his command console. Carefully he saved the paperwork that he had been working on and closed it, bringing back up general systems display. A glance at which showed him that the hyperspace fold drive was powering up correctly and, in a few moments, would be able to take the ship to investigate the fold disturbances that had first teased their probes then the ships own sensor arrays.
"Fold calculations complete sir."
"All veritechs docked and secured. All stations report ready to initiate space folding."
"Initiate space folding."
"Aye sir initiating space folding sequence. Hyperspace fold in thirty seconds."
Leaning back in the command chair again, John waited, keeping his eyes on the data display that had appeared on the command console showing the countdown to the execution of the hyperspace fold jump. Even after all this time, he still sometimes had trouble wrapping his head around the reality of humanity now having interstellar travel. Granted, they'd had some trouble with hyperspace folding at first – like everyone else who'd been there, he well remembered the SDF-1 space folding to Pluto's orbit when they'd been aiming for the dark side of the moon, incidentally, dragging Macross Island and chunk of Pacific Ocean through hyperspace with them – the Zentraedi who'd sided with them had soon put them straight on how to use space folding properly. Now the people of his homeworld – battered, bruised, and battle scarred maybe – had the whole galaxy at their doorstep, thanks to the miracle of robotechnology. If only that miracle hadn't cost us billions of lives, he thought, feeling a familiar stab of pain at the reminder of seeing large parts of Earth burning during the Rain of Death. Like many people, he'd lost loved ones in the Rain, in his case, one of his sisters who'd been in London where she'd worked at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital when the two millennia old city, and much of the Southeast of England, was obliterated by a mixture of reflex cannon and heavy particle cannon blasts from Dolza's fleet.
For a moment, he saw her again, smiling at him at the last family get together that they'd shared before the First Robotech War began, then the familiar thrum of power through the ship brought him out of those thoughts, and he dismissed Sarah's ghost, at least for now. He looked up at the viewports as a shimmering bubble of eldritch energy popped into existence around the ship as the fold sphere established itself, then the bubble turned into streaking starlight – that never ceased to remind him of the initial hyperspace entry from Star Wars – as the fold bubble submerged the ship into hyperspace…
…but only for a moment.
With a flash, the starlight evaporated into the shimmering bubble of the fold sphere, again only for a moment, as the bubble evaporated. Instead of in the open depths of starlit space, the Sirona and the Inuit were now in a system surrounded by shimmering veins of gas shot through with ribbons of swirling dust. Ahead of them was a planet illuminated by the feeble light of a distant white sun. Even from a distance, the planet looked very uninviting cold, its surface dominated by large fields of snow and ice, its oceans a pale grey.
What an unpleasant looking place, he thought before putting the frigid-looking planet out of his mind for now. There would be time to scan and survey it from orbit later – just to be thorough as Lisa and the other top brass didn't look kindly on you if you weren't thorough with any potentially habitable, if only barely, planet you came across – right now they needed to investigate what had caused the fold disturbances that had drawn their attention to this system in the first place.
"Preliminary scans complete sir," sensors reported, "we read multiple small spacecraft, unknown design. Six are inside the planets atmosphere with two of them landed on the surface. Two more are in high orbit, they appear to be directing a form of lidar at us."
"Life signs?"
"Life sign readings… wait this can't be right."
"Lieutenant?"
"Sir the life sign readings are human."
"Confirm that."
"Confirmed sir the life signs are human."
"Interesting how the hell can humans be out here," Tylen wondered.
"I have no idea," John admitted, "communications hail them let's see if we can answer this puzzle."
"Sir the craft on the surface are lifting off and the ones in atmosphere appear to be making towards orbit. We must have spooked them," sensors reported.
"No doubt. Communications any answer from the craft?"
"Negative sir. I've tried fold comm and laser comms but there is no response. I'm about to switch to radio frequencies."
"Sir one of the craft in the atmosphere is going back down looks like they've got some kind of engine problem and cannot make orbit. The others are entering orbit. We're picking up some kind of fold engines powering up."
"Fold drives on something that small it doesn't seem possible," Tylen commented.
"The other seven ships are folding out sir."
John nodded he could see it himself on his command console screens. In an impressive display of synchronisation all seven spacecraft – each barely the size of one of the old star goose shuttlecrafts – vanished in burst of light. Bursts that from the small amounts of phased gravitons and beta phase tachyons emitted were definitely space folds but were far briefer than the norm and the number of particles emitted by the folds were considerably lower than the norm for a space fold. Incredible, he thought amazed by the event as he had never thought that such a fold system would be possible, let alone be able to be fitted to something that small. While he wasn't an engineer or robotechnologist he would love to get a look at that fold system, and he knew the people back home would be even more desperate to get a look and to start tearing it apart to see just how it worked and if they could reproduce it. After all, if they could reverse engineer, it then it could lead to a revolution in military tactics.
Thankfully they still had a chance to get a hold of one of the drives. Not to mention find out just how the hell humans could be out here several kiloparsecs from Sol.
"Helm move us into orbit of the planet," he ordered after a moment. "Tylen prepare a squad of marines to go down to the planet. They're to check the vessel that went down for survivors, help them if possible and try to recover the craft."
"Aye sir," both the helmsman and the Zentraedi XO acknowledged.
Mentally John sighed and leaned back in the commanding officers chair as the crew began to carry out their assigned tasks. In another couple of minutes, a squad of marines would leave the ship aboard one of the two Predator-class dropships and head down to the surface and the landed – but hopefully not crashed – unknown ship. Hopefully the crew would be alright and be able, and willing, to talk with them and answers their questions. If not, well they would just have to deal with it. Whatever the outcome was he would have to first endure something that he absolutely hated, in fact it was something every captain in the REF fleet hated…
…waiting.