E.D.F chronicles - The Krenaran massacre. Page 4

  The bolts hurtled toward the carrier at a horrific speed, and smashed into the partly powered up boosters, tearing through armour and shredding the main engines entirely. The massive impacts rocked the entire E.D.F ship. All along the rear of the carrier pieces of twisted, blasted, hull plating were simply torn off the ship by the force of those energy bolts. Replaced by more fires and twisted wreckage.

  The stricken carrier was still making a brave effort to escape its assailants. However, in the end, the carrier was simply too large and too slow, and eventually, like a pack of rabid wolves, the alien ships began tearing apart the E.D.F vessel.

  Their powerful green energy beams sliced the carrier to pieces, until ultimately its inter-system fuel supplies detonated, and the carrier blew itself apart with an almighty explosion. And then the video went blank.

  All this footage happened within the space of a few minutes. The hall was totally silent. The crew of the Ulysses were stunned by what they had just witnessed.

  Michael was equally stunned, especially since his cousin had served aboard that ship. A pang of grief welled up inside him. Captain Wainright looked over the assembled crew, seeing the shocked faces, and gave them a few seconds to let what they had witnessed sink in.

  Slowly, almost whispering; he spoke. “Make no mistake gentlemen; we have hereby made contact with our first alien species. E.D.F intelligence services are trying to translate the alien messages as we speak. However, judging by what we’ve all just witnessed, we can assume they are a hostile species, and represent an immediate threat to E.O.C.A citizens. I will now hand you over to Lieutenant Commander Hudson.”

  The Captain stepped to one side and motioned for the Ulysses chief engineering officer to take to the stand. He was an older looking man than Wainwright, jovial, balding, but also possessing of a keen intelligence. “Although the information we have managed to gather at the present time is somewhat thin. From the sensor data, and video we have received so far, we can be certain of the following facts.”

  The projection showed a rotating three dimensional representation of one of the alien ships. It had intermingled black and silver panels on its hull, just like in the video. The vessel seemed to be shaped like a triangular wedge, with a large cannon like protrusion at the lower bow of the strange ship. It had another thin; yet broad protrusion, towards the widest part of its hull at the top of this wedge.

  Michael studied the image. It had very few windows or running lights, suggesting that it had a limited crew, he thought.

  As the representation panned around to the rear of the alien ship, it revealed a large, thin, bright blue strip that ran almost across the entire width of the vessel.

  Lieutenant Commander Hudson continued. “They must be using some sort of stealth technology, which would explain why our fighter patrols, or the Montfort, couldn’t pick them up until the alien ships were almost on top of them,” Hudson paused to allow the assembled masses time to let this sink in.

  “The protrusion at the lower, forward end of the ship, must be a weapons system of some kind, since that’s where the ‘green energy beams’, for wont of a better word; come from. The smaller triangular protrusion near the top of the vessel, must be another weapons system, since the white energy ‘bolts’ originate from there.”

  The projection panned over to the rear of the ship once again, showing the bright blue strip.

  “We think that this could be some sort of unknown propulsion system, similar to our own inter-system boosters and turning thrusters,” he took a short breath.

  “However, whenever the vessel performs a maneuver, the engine seems to glow brighter. We have no ideas of the numbers of crew aboard, or even if it is unmanned. We do know however, from measurements taken of the vessel, that it is 140 meters long, by 60 meters high, at its widest point,” he said, pointing at the projection.

  “The vessels maneuverability; as shown from the video; is astonishing, comparable to our own God-hammer bombers.”

  Captain Wainwright replaced the engineer once again. “Our orders are to rendezvous with task force six, at 22:00 hundred hours, comprising of the Gandhi class destroyers Alberta and Yukon, the Mandela class light cruiser Endurance, and the Alexander class medium cruisers Invincible, and Europa. Fighter support will be supplied by the Montgomery class carrier; Furious,” Wainwright explained.

  “The Ulysses will be acting as flagship for the task force. However the Furious will be delayed, as it is in the process of replacing one of its Peregrine fighter wings, with a bomber wing. So for around 12 hours we will be operating without fighter support; so everyone needs to be extra vigilant,” he allowed the crew time to reflect before making his next point.

  “We all know the threat this new species represents, and I can vouch for everyone here that we will all perform our duties to the best of our abilities, and we will not rest until the safety of our territory is restored. We depart in one hour, Thank you gentlemen.”

  And with that Captain Wainwright retrieved his book, and left the hall.

  A young female Lieutenant quickly mounted the stage. “Lunch is available from the ships galley, which is open now.”

  Finally a whistle blew, and again as one, the crowd stood to attention. The whistle blew a second time, and the men fell out.

  “Well, what do you think of that?” Dylan asked turning to Michael.

  “I think we are in deep shit,” Michael replied, “if those ships can slip in and do that to a carrier; then they can do it to any ship in the fleet.”

  “And running without fighter cover makes me nervous. I suppose we are just going to have to blow them out of the sky before they get a shot off,” Dylan added.

  “What makes you think we can?” Michael replied.

  Chapter 4 The rendezvous

  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, Jan
a 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 21stcenturies, 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.