Teaser
Streaks of green, blue, and amber energy criss-crossed the orbit of the planet called Trenik. Small fighter craft buzzed in every direction, fighting their own duels in the airless void in keeping their counterparts away from larger targets. Ships continued to streak through this fire, taking hits against their protective deflector fields that would lit up bright blue over and over, all seeking the safe distance from the planet's mass in order to escape from the ongoing conflict.
An Alakin warbird came up beside them. A winged ship of red coloring and yellow wings, the vessel was firing repeated blasts of blue energy from the particle cannons in its prow and main body. Green energy ran across its faltering shields repeatedly until they collapsed. Flame plumed from the red hull where the energy bolts and beams now struck the armored hull plating. Ahead of this winged warship a gray-colored vessel moved into position, pouring missile and energy fire into it and blocking its path and that of the smaller ships it was protecting. The gray vessel lacked the sleek beauty of its foe; it was boxy, with smoothed edges, and its hull slanted in the middle to a lower section that bore twin engine nacelles much like the gold-colored ones at the tips of the wings of the winged starship; save that instead of the gold, it was tipped with blue light and majority red in the bulk of the nacelle's surface.
And along the upper and lower armored hull plating of the ship was an insignia known and dreaded across the multiverse.
The hooked cross, black, set on a white circle in a red square.
The insignia of the Third Reich; the Nazi Empire.
The Nazi warship was clearly getting the better of its winged adversary, which was too busy protecting those helpless civilian ships beside it to maneuver freely. The Alakins did not back down from the fight, but it was a losing fight.
This changed when a series of sapphire bolts of energy slammed into the flickering shields of the Nazi cruiser. Amber bolts and beams played over the shields and overtaxed them, leaving them weakened to the blue-white sparks of light that now passed effortlessly to crash into the hull of the gray-hulled ship. Its weapons quieted. Energy and flame briefly erupted from its damaged hull before defense mechanisms staunched the wounds.
Undaunted,
Starship Aurora continued her attack.
The azure-hulled starship loomed gracefully over the stricken winged ship. Again her bow cannons blazed with sapphire fury; again the Nazi cruiser's shields failed. This time her torpedoes were joined by further blue bolts and torpedoes from the winged ship. The damage nearly gutted the enemy ship.
"
Sedan-class cruiser is turning away, she's badly damaged and trying to get out of the fight" Jarod reported on the bridge of the
Aurora. The ship shook again; their wounded foe was firing at them in defiance. "Shields holding at sixty percent."
Robert kept an eye toward the tactical display of Trenik and its orbital spaces. "Angel, finish them off," he ordered.
"Exactly what I'm doing, sir," Angel answered from tactical. Under her control the
Aurora's weapons continued to batter their foe. "Their shields are failing. A few more good hits and…"
"I've got more warp contacts coming in!" Caterina turned in her chair at the science station. "Subspace distortions are consistent with anti-matter pulse drives!"
"Great.
More Nazis," Julia breathed from her seat at Robert's right.. "Jarod, what is our status on the evacuation?"
"The last evac ships are lifting off now," Jarod said. "The current convoy is going to warp in three… two… one!"
The civilian ships that had fled Trenik elongated one-by-one and disappeared; bound at warp flight speeds away from the raging battle.
The ship shuddered again. "Shields at fifty-seven percent," Jarod said.
"The
Wakipa's shields are failing," Julia added. "Captain Dukap is having to maneuver his ship away from the fight."
On the screen the Alakin warbird pulled away in space, trying to avoid further fire from the burning Nazi heavy cruiser. Angel was still firing into it; another barrage from
Aurora's pulse plasma cannons in the bow caused the starboard nacelle of the Nazi cruiser to explode.
A sense of elation went through Robert when the next spread of solar torpedoes crashed into the enemy ship. White energy erupted from within the Nazi cruiser's hull. A moment later, the remaining debris and scrap metal was a dead, hollowed hulk in the orbit of Trenik.
That wasn't Lamper's ship…, he thought, recalling their first contact with the Third Reich not half a year before. Even then he, and Captain Joachim Lamper, had agreed with each other that regardless of their ability to work together against pirates, war between their governments was inevitable. "
We are your nightmare and you are our's," Lamper had said.
And he had proven distressingly right.
"What about the
Bolivar?", Robert asked, referring to the FedStar heavy cruiser that had accompanied them to Trenik.
"Still engaged to the other Nazi cruiser," Julie answered. "It looks like they're winning."
"Signal
Wakipa, tell them to fall back to the last convoy, we'll keep the enemy reinforcements off of them."
"Signalling…"
"Oh my God…" Cat looked up. "Those warp signatures! Captain, one of them…"
Several more Nazi warships dropped out of warp ahead of them. Robert recognized four as
Z-2500 destroyers. Their shield-disruptor torpedoes could pose a threat, but in general he wasn't afraid of even four of them, not with
Aurora's advanced technology. More intimidating was another of the Nazi cruisers.
But even more intimidating was the big ship in the center of the formation.
"Confirmed. New contacts are led by an
Aryan-class dreadnought," Jarod said, with far more calm than the situation merited.
Robert swallowed. They had faced one over two weeks ago. It hadn't been a conventional fight, and they'd gotten away after laming the dreadnought with a ram by the habitat vessel
Tikvah. But this…
"We can't stay here," he said. "Evasive maneuvers!"
Locarno did what he could, and what he could do was very fancy flying with a kilometer-long starship. But they weren't a light ship that could shift and dodge incoming fire with the ease of an attack ship.
Missiles erupted from the enemy cruiser, joined by disruptor fire. Their interceptors met the incoming missiles and shot them all down. The disruptor shots played over their shields without effect. "Shields at fifty-six percent," Jarod said.
And then the dreadnought fired.
Its three spinal-mount super-disruptors were right on target. Their emerald beams lanced right into
Aurora's shields. The ship shook violently from the resulting strain on her defensive systems. Communications exploded in sparks. The Alakin lieutenant manning the station, Jupap, fell back from the station with the skin around his hand digits smoldering.
"Shields down to thirty percent!"
At the Engineering station, Lucy Lucero looked up. "We've lost one of the primary shield generators, diverting power to secondaries! Port shields have lost cohesion!"
The ship kept rocking as disruptor fire poured into the weakened port shields, scouring hull and tearing into the armor of the
Aurora. "Multiple hull breaches," Jarod warned. "Armor self-repair systems are working to cover the damage."
"Bring the bow to bear!", Robert shouted.
Locarno did so, enabling another shot from the enemy dreadnought to miss. Behind them the
Bolivar moved up. Its design was arrow-like, long with sharp, sleek aesthetics. Phaser fire erupted from the cannons in the ship's prow. It was moving in fast with its gravitic drive lit up an intense blue.
Aurora's fire joined the
Bolivar's. Angel let the Reich dreadnought have it with a full barrage from the bow pulse plasma cannons, the bow-facing phasers, and the torpedo launchers.
Bolivar's own armaments continued to lay into the Reich ship.
But unlike the cruiser, the dreadnought's shields didn't fail from the barrage. "Enemy shields still at ninety-two percent effectiveness," Jarod said.
"Sweet Mother of God, how much punishment can those things take?!", Angel shouted, even as she poured more fire into the enemy dreadnought.
The
Aryan-class dreadnought opened up again. This time, her target was the
Bolivar.
Bolivar jinked to avoid the super-disruptor shots and evaded two; the beam that made impact slammed into the ship's shields and destabilized them.
Unfortunately, this provided ample opportunity for the enemy
Z-2500 starships to slip in. Intense bursts of white energy came from their blow emplacements. "Disruptor torpedoes!", Jarod shouted.
Aurora's interceptors fired, seeking to intersect the incoming torpedoes with particle bursts that would detonate them. But the energy fields propelling the projectiles - and providing them shield-disrupting power - kept most from being destroyed.
Again
Aurora shook hard. The first two torpedoes slammed against her bow shields and caused them to flicker and degrade. A third slammed into the ventral hull of the primary section. The ship's shaking was so intense that the crew were being bruised by their harnesses. A cry of pain caused Robert to turn and see where sparks were still flying from tactical. "Angel!", he called out.
Angel looked up. Her hands moved gingerly back to their station as emergency systems restored the control panel; she'd suffered an electrical burn to her hands. "I'm fine," she lied. "Dammit, we've lost two of the bow pulse plasma cannons."
"Bow shields have lost cohesion!"
But what had happened to them didn't compare to
Bolivar. Her shields failed completely on the first torpedo strike; four more of the torpedoes slammed into her one by one. Flame and energy erupted from the crushed prow of the cruiser and her gravitic drive started to die down.
The Nazi dreadnought fired again. And she didn't miss. All three super-disruptor beams bored into the
Bolivar.
The FedStar cruiser blew apart in a white fireball.
More shots were striking
Aurora's hull even as this occurred. "Bow shields aren't stopping anything!", Lucy shouted.
"We've got damage on all decks in the bow area sections!", Jarod added. "Hull breaches in Decks 3 through 10 and 12 through 15!"
"Come about! Get us distance!", Robert shouted. Locarno swung the
Aurora away from the monster dreadnought, turning to port to present the starboard shields.
Just in time; the dreadnought fired again.
Aurora shook hard. "Shield systems down to twenty-five percent," Jarod warned.
"Incoming disruptor torpedoes!" The
Z-2500s again.
Despite the injuries to her hands Angel was able to use her phaser cannons to blast all but two of the torpedoes away before they slammed into
Aurora's shields and exploded. Because the shields were still strong on that side the torpedoes didn't collapse them and the fire that poured into the starboard shield was resisted. For the moment.
"
Captain Dale, you must withdraw!" The voice over the tactical comm line was Dukap's, identifiable by the chirping nature of Alakin speech translated into Human vocabulary. "Wakipa
can cover the last convoy until its escape."
"Captain Dukap, your ship's shields are out, you won't last!"
"
No. But our people must get to safety. And the fleet cannot afford to lose the Aurora
as well. Withdraw, now!"
Robert clenched his teeth. Like most captains in the Alliance service, Dukap had seniority in rank and in rate. Most officers would consider his orders binding.
But it rankled. The idea of leaving someone behind.
The ship shuddered violently again. This time it was secondary tactical that exploded in sparks. "That dreadnought still has a bead on us," Jarod pointed out. "Our shields are collapsing!"
"The entire shield system is failing!", Lucy added.
Robert knew he had no choice. "Recall all surviving fighters! Now! Locarno, full impulse, break off from the fight! Jarod, have the transporters beam as many of our escape pods in as they can while we pass by."
Aurora broke away from the engagement. Her Mongoose fighters followed, coming in for a landing as she moved away from the planet. Around them intact escape pods, from ejected fighter pilots, began to disappear in columns of white light.
"The dreadnought's turning toward the planet. Enemy cruiser…" They shook again from another hit. One of the auxiliary stations sparked. "...is trailing. Two of the
Z-2500s are pursuing us and trying to lock torpedoes again."
"Fire aft weapons, make them break off."
At Angel's command the rear-facing pulse plasma cannons fired. The two emplacements sent repeated bursts of sapphire energy that the nimble dagger-shaped warships jinked to avoid. A spread of torpedoes found one and battered its shields down enough that the last two torpedoes hit bare hull, leaving the ship a flaming wreck.
Behind them, the Reich cruiser engaged the
Wakipa. The stricken Alakin warbird poured fire from her particle cannons into the fresh enemy. It was to no avail beyond keeping their attention as the final group of civilian ships broke from lower orbit and approached a safe position to warp out.
The dreadnought's disruptors lashed out. The spinal super-disruptors struck home on one of the solid-hulled civilian transports. The civilian ship literally disintegrated under the attack until it disappeared in a white ball of energy. Several of the other ships took hits and began spewing flames and atmosphere, their safety systems overtaxed by the assault.
Another barrage would have destroyed most of the remaining ships. But Captain Dukap maneuvered his ship to intercept that fire. Instead the fury of the
Aryan-class ship vented against the armored hull of the
Wakipa. Flames and debris spewed forth from the wounds that resulted in the warbird. But the Alakin ship defiantly retorted with torpedoes and particle cannon fire that battered the shields on the cruiser.
The Reich warships began a maneuver to get around the dying
Wakipa and get at the civilians she was protecting. But they were too late. Robert felt a surge of elation at seeing the
Wakipa's surviving charges start going to warp, one after the other. In the span of about five seconds, they were out of the system.
Wakipa turned toward her foes. But that was all she would do. Several beams and bursts of emerald disruptor fire tore into the warbird. The super-disruptors of the dreadnought ripped her guts out and sliced her wings off. A missile found her engineering spaces a moment later.
All Robert and his friends could do was watch as Captain Dukap and his crew of four hundred plus Alakin died in a white fireball of matter-antimatter annihilation.
Nobody immediately noted that the Reich destroyer pursuing them had decided not to risk the fate of her sister ship and had turned away. "Laurent's last flight is coming in," Julia said, if just to end the stunned silence on the bridge.
"Set course for Harris Station, Mister Locarno," Robert said quietly.
"The Reich ships are taking up orbits over the Alakin colony sites," Jarod reported. "They're firing."
Robert forced himself to watch the result. Emerald beams and bursts of energy slicing into the surface of the healthy garden world that the Alakin had settled just eight months before. Entire towns and cities being blasted into ruins in a matter of seconds.
Just as they had in his dreams for months.
"How… how many?", Robert asked. "How many didn't make it out?"
Jarod checked his numbers. Probably just for show, Robert figured; he would know the numbers in his head already. "There were still sixty-two thousand five hundred and sixty-four civilians on the planet and two thousand Alakin on that transport that was destroyed. Counting the nine thousand we beamed up, that leaves roughly forty thousand survivors from Trenik."
"Oh God…." Robert felt like throwing up.
Caterina looked at them with tear-filled eyes. "There are no more life signs coming from the planet's surface," she said. "They're… they're all dead."
"Flight deck reports all fighters have landed," Julia said, trying not to think about Caterina's report. "Commander Laurent is still counting casualties to the flight group."
Robert buried his face in his palms. "Get us back to Harris," he ordered, speaking through his trembling hands. "Maximum warp."
Locarno obeyed immediately.
Aurora jumped to warp, leaving behind her victorious enemies and the thousands they had failed to save.
Undiscovered Frontier
"The Art of Diplomacy"
Ship's Log: ASV Aurora; 23 July 2641. Captain Robert Dale recording. We're still ten minutes out from Harris Station. Repairs to the ship have proceeded as fast as Mister Scott and his engineers can manage. The hull breaches caused ten casualties, six fatalities. We were able to recover all of our ejected flight crews, but we still lost eight pilots. This means I've lost roughly ninety-seven crew since the war started, another four hundred and eighty wounded. And as for the war…..
We're losing.
Since Krellan Nebula the Reich's warfleets and armies have been relentless. Every colony within thirty light years of the Nebula has been abandoned or destroyed. With human colonies the Reich lands troops and seizes them; if they're non-Human, they're bombed from orbit. Thousands of innocent Alakin, Dorei, and other species have died in just the past few weeks.
And it's all my fault.
I started this war at 33LA. I know I did. Everyone tries to tell me this was inevitable. But we would have had more time if only I had held back at 33LA. If only I'd canceled the operation the moment we had the security breaches that Changeling caused.
All of this blood is on my hands too. And I'm not sure how well I can live with myself any more.
Robert looked up from his computer monitor at the tone at his ready room door. He hit a key on the hard-light keyboard to file the log. "Come in," he said.
The door slid open and Julia stepped in. She was holding a digital pad in her hand. Robert accepted it and moved his hand over the hard-light interface to check the data. "Looks like we won't be spending any major time in the drydock," he said. "This time."
Julia nodded. "Yeah. And Leo wants you to know that Angel's burns weren't severe. She's getting dermal regeneration done now. She should be cleared for bridge duty tomorrow."
"Good." Robert hput a stencil to the pad interface and signed his name in holographic light. A final stenzil press to the surface filed away the official damage report. "How's the crew holding up?"
Julia slid into the seat across his desk. "Morale could be better," she admitted. "People miss their friends that have gone down in the fight."
"Yeah."
"Everyone's wondering about these reports that the Ninth Fleet beat them back at Grenaris," Julia continued. "If we managed to pull out a win here, maybe we can hold them back before they get to Harris."
"They'd already be to Harris if not for the Phosako," Robert observed. "Their attack on the Reich's fleet bases after Krellan Nebula is the only reason the Reich's blitz hasn't gotten that far yet."
"Probably," Julia agreed. "So that's a win for us, I guess. We're the ones who made first contact with the Phosako and made sure they would see us as natural allies."
"Not quite natural, if you remember what Commander Kelsuulo was telling us ," Robert pointed out.
Julia remained silent for a minute. "The crew needs you to be a leader right now," she reminded him for the upteenth time. "They don't need to see you wallow about in self-pity and guilt."
"My decision caused this war," Robert pointed out. "If we'd only had more time…"
"It wouldn't have mattered if the Reich had found that Darglan data facility," she said. "Then they'd have eventually found the Facility Cat's talking about. And we wouldn't even know it existed yet."
Robert went quiet at that. "You think we were the only ones who could have done that mission?' he asked.
"I think that if you had delayed, there was a good chance the Reich would have realized something was up and would have intensified patrols there, those patrols might have found it. Probably would have eventually." Julia leaned forward in the seat and reached across the desk, settling her hand on his. "I think, Robert, that we had already tipped our hand. You had to act then and there before the Nazis could respond."
"So you would have made the same call I did?"
"About that? Yes." She shook her head. "I would have told Zack about Draynal, though."
"Yeah." Robert sighed. His decision to not speak on the suspicion he and Meridina had felt, without evidence granted, that Lieutenant Draynal was not whom he had seemed had been why Zack had not paid any mind to his "last-minute" (and forged) transfer to
Koenig for the 33LA mission… which had allowed the Changeling to sabotage the ship and cause the battle with the Nazis at 33LA. A call that he regretted bitterly, as it had contributed to Zack Carrey's alienation from the others and ultimately his desire to depart
Aurora and get a different assignment for his ship, the
Koenig. "I miss Zack," Robert admitted. "If he were here, he'd probably put an arm around my neck and try to talk me into a baseball practice or something."
"He'd know what to say, that's for sure," Julia agreed. She tried not to think about how Zack might feel over the situation between them, though. Sometimes she still had trouble accepting his confession of romantic love for her. "Anyway, I should get back out there. We're coming up on Harris Station by now, I'm sure."
"Probably" Robert agreed. "Maybe we'll have some good news…."
"
Jarod to Dale," came the voice of the ship's operations officer. Jarod was presumably manning the bridge while Julia was in here. "
We're arriving at Harris. You… should come and see this."
Robert and Julia exchanged worried looks and went to the exit. They arrived on the bridge, where Jarod stood up from the command chair. His eyes were still fixed on the holoviewer. They turned and faced it.
Harris Station was still burning.
It wasn't destroyed. They could verify that in the first several seconds. The core of the station was completely intact, as were many of the arms reaching out from the center to provide docking ports. But several of those arms were wrecks of metal and debris. Half of the drydock facilities were visibly destroyed.
Even worse was the number of ships that had been laid to waste. A Dorei starbird to their left looked completely dead. Several other ships were in various stages of disrepair.
And in one of the drydock berths, the dreadnought
Achilles had been reduced to a burning, twisted wreck.
"What the hell…?!", Julia gasped.
Robert took his seat while surveying the destruction. "Jarod, signal Admiral Relini. Tell her that we're ready to dispatch rescue teams to assist."
"Sending the signal now."
"Looks like we've got some friends here," Locarno observed. Robert looked toward the distance and noticed what he meant.
Hovering near Harris Station was a fairly-sized flotilla of starships. He'd seen them before: Phosako vessels.
"Hell of a way to greet our allies," Locarno muttered.
"It doesn't exactly make us look good," Robert agreed.
"I'm reading debris from Reich attack ships," Jarod noted.. "It looks like this was some sort of mass raid. I guess our side got some before they could retreat."
"Yeah." Robert shook his head. They kept losing ground, day by day, and now this? Harris Station was the main fleet base in S4W8. And the Nazis had just given it a hard drubbing.
"Admiral Relini is responding," Jarod said.
The Dorei woman appeared on their holoviewer. She was blue-skinned and teal-spotted, with long purple hair bound up in a series of buns at the back of her head. Piercing blue eyes looked at Robert and his crew, and they were fraught with tension and maybe nervousness. "
Captain Dale." She didn't look pleased, or even relieved. "
I haven't had a chance to read over your report from Trenik."
"
Bolivar and
Wakipa were destroyed," Robert answered. "We got most of the evac ships out before the main Nazi squadron arrived." He swallowed. "They had a dreadnought."
Relini nodded. "
I see. God help them all." She looked distant for a moment. "
As you can see, we are not in any condition to give you proper repairs."
"According to my operations officer our self-repair systems can handle the damage."
"
That is good. I'll have Station Control relay a station-keeping position for you. You'll be wanted over on the station in a few hours, I imagine, so you may want rest."
Robert thought that curious. In general Relini and Admiral Rutsinov had not wanted him to be around for strategy meetings of any kind, not that he had particularly minded. "Admiral, I've never attended anything before…"
"
And you won't be now," she answered. "
But I have been informed they'll want to see you."
"Who?"
"
President Morgan and Admiral Maran," she replied. "
They're due to arrive in a few hours to meet with the leaders of the Phosako for a war summit.
Suddenly the Reich raid on Harris made more sense. "Then this raid…"
"
Undoubtedly an attempt to forestall the meeting, or a mistimed effort to exploit it for an attack. Either way, it will progress as planned, and the President has relayed to me that he will have a personal meeting with you to discuss a report from your science officer."
Robert's eyes widened. "Oh. Oh yes, that one. I'll be ready for their arrival and when they call for me, Admiral."
"
See that you are, Captain. Relini out."
"Morgan must have seen our report about the new Facility," Julia said. "Think this is a plan to do something about it?'
"I don't know," Robert answered. "We'll see."
"You look like hell," Julia pointed out to him. "You should go and get some sleep."
"Don't need it." "Didn't want it" was the more truthful reply, but he didn't say that. What good was sleep when his mind was constantly wracked by nightmares?
Julia gave him a stern look. "No sleep means poor judgement, Robert. Get some. We need you rested."
Ah. It was
that look. Robert sighed and nodded. "Alright. I'll go get some shuteye. Call me if anything happens."
"You'll be the first to know," Julia lied. And he knew full well she wouldn't call him for anything short of a Nazi attack.
After being released from the bridge Caterina had rushed back to Lab 1 to check on the decryption of the Darglan data from the 33LA facility. It had become her main past-time since the war began; they needed to find that alternate Facility before the Nazis got any indications of it. And since its acquisition is what helped lead to the war anyway…. it felt like a way to justify all of the death that Cat had seen over the past three weeks.
'
There were a few more universe designations from the data. Some technical schematics. A late entry to the Omega Threats list, even. But nothing more on the coordinates of the S4W8 Facility.
If only we knew where it was, exactly. We could find a way to get to it without alerting the Nazis…
The door swished open and admitted Angel. Her hands were still bandaged to protect the dermal regeneration that had healed her burns. "It's getting late, sis," she said to Cat. "You should get to sleep."
"Don't wanna sleep," Cat said. "Too busy trying to find that Facility."
"You've been running that program for weeks. And you admitted it'd take months to reconstruct everything." Angel went up and hugged her little sister from behind. "It'll still be here tomorrow."
"But don't you see. This… this is why so many people are dying now." Cat shook her head as tears came to her eyes. She thought of all those innocent Alakin on Trenik. "It'll mean nothing if we can't find it. We have to before
they do."
"And we will. But not if you're too sleepy to do your job right," Angel pointed out.
Cat couldn't argue that. "Give me a few minutes," she said. "And I'll go to bed. I promise."
Angel nodded. "Still having bad dreams, Cat?"
"I'm not always having nightmares, Angel," Caterina protested. "And sometimes they're a bit of both and weird. I keep having these dreams of being chased through the ship by a big rock monster carrying a club."
Angel smirked at that. "Really?'
"Yeah and there's this really tall English guy running alongside me, wearing this really cool purple jacket and tie. " She shrugged. "But I can never remember much else when I dream of that."
"Dreams are like that sometimes." She felt relieved her sister was having something other than nightmares about the beating she received on the
Battlestar Pegasus. Angel looked over one of the consoles and tapped a few keys. "Another Omega-level threat, huh?"
"Yeah. Must have been an extra one that our old Facility wasn't updated with."
Angel brought up an image. It was a small object that soon expanded into a humanoid form. "....what is that?"
"I'm not sure. It looks like some kind of gem-based life-form that form their own bodies, presumably made of hard-light or bio-replicated mass," Caterina answered. "I'm not even sure how such a species could evolve naturally. It might be artificially constructed."
"Somehow they don't sound more dangerous than Daleks…" Angel tapped a key and the humanoid figure was shrunk to stand beside a planet that became gradually hollowed out. "....unless that's what they do to planets. Okay, yeah, they're as bad as Daleks, I guess."
"A lot of those Omega level threats are
really scary," Caterina observed. "But I guess you don't need to be one to do horrible things."
"Yeah."
"How many colonies have we lost?", Cat said. "how many people have died already? And we're just a couple weeks into this war. What if… what if we can't stop them? They've got so many ships…"
"We'll stop them, Cat," Angel insisted. "Remember, they can't hit our shipyards. We'll just keep building ships and sending them through."
"Unless they manage to get enough debris to recover our IU drives," Cat pointed out. "Or if they get their hands on that Facility. Then they can attack us everywhere."
"That's not going to happen," Angel insisted. "Now, finish up what you're doing and go to bed. Okay?"
Cat sighed. "Okay."
Robert was grateful. He had been so exhausted he had slept without a nightmare.
Which was a good thing given the sight he woke up to.
The remains of Ninth Fleet.
He stood on the bridge and watched the wounded dreadnought
Churchill limp into one of the few surviving drydocks she could be taken in by. The ship, from the British Stellar Commonwealth of Universe C5O2, had clearly been put through the wringer and she was evidently one of the luckier ones.
"Sixty-four ships," Locarno sighed from the helm. "Out of how many?"
"One hundred and eighty," Jarod said somberly.
"At this rate we're going to run out of ships faster than we run out of colonies," Angel muttered.
"At least the
Park survived again," Julia noted, seeing the small Darglan-model utility ship take up a small dock near the core of the station. "Ibraham's been doing great keeping her alive."
Robert allowed himself a slight grin. Despite everything, the fact they hadn't lost
everyone they knew at Krellan Nebula to the Nazi attack had been a bit of a silver lining in this terrible dark cloud that had settled over their lives as of late. "Hopefully the Ninth Fleet gave the Nazis a bloody-enough nose that they'll have to back off for a while," he mused.
"Interuniversal jump point forming," Jarod said. "I'm getting massive power signatures coming through. One of them… it's the
Kentan."
And it was clear why. The
Kentan was a massive vessel, single-hulled, with warp pod nacelles on either side and slightly angled upward by thick armored pylons. Launch decks on the top and bottom of the ship allowed for the massive Gersallian flagship to disgorge hundreds of starfighters; along the sides of the ship were massive particle cannon emplacements joined by legions of retro-fitted phaser strips.
"The flagship of the Gersallian fleet," Julia murmured. "A dreadnought-carrier. Who would have thought of something like that?"
"The Gersallians," Robert answered drolly.
It wasn't alone. Beside it was a very large Dorei starbird, nearly the length of
Aurora but much wider and with far more weapons on her. "That's the
Dormari," Jarod observed.
"Flagship of the Dorei Federation," Robert murmured. "Named for the founder of the Federation and its first President."
Behind these ships a third one came out. It was the closest to the design of the
Aurora, with a clear distinction between the primary and drive hulls but no neck or slant like Federation or Nazi ships. "The
Cincinnatus." Robert shook his head and smiled. "Flagship of the Earth Confederacy. I always wondered if we'd see her."
"It looks like someone's pulling out all of the stops." Julia marveled at the colossal ships now approaching Harris.
The large dreadnought joined the other flagships in taking up station near the station. The flagship of the Earth Confederacy of H1E1, its purpose here was fairly clear by the extra ID signal being given off. It had a special designation today: "PTN".
Presidential Transport - Naval.
"Looks like the President is here," Robert said, standing up. "I'd better go get ready. Julia, you have the bridge."
It was four hours before Robert was escorted into the Admiral's Office of the station. He found Morgan and Maran standing with Admiral Relini and… yes…. Admiral Davies. Robert showed no reaction to the hard look he got from the latter. "Captain Dale." Morgan gestured to a seat and sat down himself at the head of the kidney-shaped table. Robert was seated in the inward curve of the table, the President and the others on the opposite side. "First off, I would like to extend my gratitude for you for the fine work you did in the unsettled areas of N2S7. Princess Syrina and Director Anjila have informed me of their gratitude for your peaceful contact with the Colonies."
"And yet you have made an enemy of that machine civilization with a direct assault on their positions," Davies pointed out. This won him cold looks from the rest of the room. "You seem to be making our Alliance a lot of enemies lately, Captain Dale."
Morgan's look made it clear that he didn't appreciate Davies' remarks. Again Robert got a bad feeling about the tension in the room. It reminded him of when the Defense Committee had basically exonerated him over 33LA. He'd been given a reprimand, yes, but compared to the clear inclination of Davies and Defense Minister Hawthorne to remove him and the others from the
Aurora, it had barely counted as a slap on the wrist. And Davies had not been happy.
"Additionally, your rescue of the people from
Tikvah has been a morale boost," Morgan continued. "I'm informed that Arik Shaham and his people are already providing useful political intelligence on the Third Reich and further contacts with other Remnant bands that are proving vital intelligence as well."
"Thank you, Mister President," Robert answered.
"I'm sure you have questions about your new orders," Morgan said.
"I imagined we would be kept with Ninth Fleet," Robert answered. "Or at least under Admiral Relini's command.
Aurora might not be a match for a dreadnought, but we can fight pretty much every other Reich warship we've seen so far. And we're able to evacuate thousands of colonists more than most ships our size."
"All true," Maran conceded. "but that's not where we need you."
"Oh?"
"Effectively immediately, Captain Dale, you are being re-assigned," Morgan said. "We're pulling you and your crew off of the front."
