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I Icatus
Part Five - A surprise
“Incoming message”, first communications
officer said to High Admiral Varn walking the bridge above.
“Let me hear it.”
“It’s…a coded channel, only one way.”
“Fine”, Varn added a serious frown to his forehead.
“This is Viceroy Hvakle from Pi Draconis IV”,
the message seemed to have a hard time coming through, which
in it self was quite impossible considering the fleet was
only about a fraction away from the system.
The message continued with a disturbing static added to the
background.
“We have a possible enemy fleet approaching on our vector
outside Pi Draconis II. We have only a small contingent of
support vessels in that area and the ships are of unknown
design. Attached in the data stream of this message is a detailed
description of the vessels…”
“Download, now”, Varn blurted out.
“…and we hope anyone gets this message before
it’s too late. We are putting our fleet on high alert,
but it will be too late to intervene on Pi Draconis II behalf…”,
then the message turned into blurry static and Varn told the
officer to cut the feed.
“What’s the status of the download?”
“It’s coming through.” On five different
monitors the summary of the enemy fleet came up. Most of it
was unintelligible garble but there was no mistaking on who
the enemy fleet belonged too.
“Damn”, Varn clamped his teeth so hard his jaws
hurt. “First officers to my tactical room, ASAP.”
Five minutes later the 10 main officers were assembled in
his tactical room, all looking in disbelief at the huge blow
up of the New Orion ships on the tactical view screen.
“They’re here”, Varn started pointing with
the light pen on the screen, “approaching Pi Draconis
II. They haven’t opened fire yet, but they are all in
tactical attack formation. But that doesn’t say that
they will attack. Largely due to their aggressive posturing
in the past.”
“How many?” Fleet captain Dorvel asked.
“As far as we can tell, 160-170 ships, very few missile
boats, several formations of carriers though and then three
long ranged.”
There was a great silence and Varn felt compelled to break
it.
“The question here isn’t whether they will attack
or not, the question is whether they will see us, or double
back and attack us in the rear when we reach Orion.”
More silence.
“Also, if they attack our fleet in this area, they might
not be equipped to survive it, since they are at least two
generations behind the latest designs and if their fleet gets
destroyed, the Raas will for sure take advantage of the situation.
Any thoughts?”
Admiral Kurn stepped forward and swept with his eyes over
the display.
“If we attack Orion and these guys come after us, we
will have a hard time getting out in one piece.”
“And”, Fleet Captain Dorvel added”, if they
attack our main fleet in this system and manage to destroy
our maintenance facilities on Pi Draconis, then we will have
a hard time supporting this attack fleet.”
“So, we attack then”, and they all nodded unwillingly
realizing that this first contact with the New Orions, might
just well put a stop to the war before it even started.
“Get up sleepy head”, Nesh yelled and kicked
his second in command on the leg. He sat up with a glazed
and confused look on his face. “Huh, what, where…”
“The scramble just sounded”, Nesh returned grabbing
the flight gear before he bolted out through the door and
ran down the corridor. The rest of his officers were coming
out behind him. He waited only for half of them before he
let the turbo lift swoop down and then sideways towards flight
deck.
“What the hell’s going on?” Lieutenant Mork
wondered clamping his boots on him as he tried to tuck his
big boots into the wrong shoe, then cursed as he fixed it.
“Don’t know gentlemen”, Nesh exclaimed,
“but we are sure going to find out.” The turbo
lift came to a grinding halt and they poured out of it at
about the same time as all the other 100 turbo lift started
to spill out support personal, pilots and officers.
Hanging from the roof, the enormous lifts with dozen or so
fighters came down, unfolding like a winged beast as it released
the crafts one by one. That way, a relative small space (although
the flight deck was HUGE) could accommodate more then 100
fighters. Nesh jumped onto an electric support vehicle as
it sped to the first crafts in line, jumped off with a roll
and took the three steps onto his cockpit in one giant stride.
Sergeant Graf from the support squad was already there doing
a last download of mission data onto his back console, helping
him strap in as he plopped down into it.
“Good morning”, he said over the roar of Evons
and machinery, “I didn’t have time to make your
Erka’th this morning (coffee)”, he said with a
big grin and Nesh muttered smartass back to him with a smile,
“but I bet where you’re going, you won’t
be needing anything else than a good ‘ol diaper change.”
“Oh, be off with you”, Nesh shouted back, “I
should have taken the chance and replaced you when I could”,
he shouted back.
“But Commander”, Graf said with a wounded look
on his face, “who’s not going to make you’re
Erka’th then”, and with that he shut the cockpit
on Nesh before he could reply and signaled to his crew to
unbolt the locking clamps and jumped down before the craft
rose slightly on it’s anti-gravity pillow.
Unlike all the previous carriers he had been on, this one
didn’t have a main lift up to the launching tubes. That
usually took time and there had been a couple of times when
good ships had been damaged or lost during a surprise raid
while fighter crafts were still on the lifts. Instead there
were 20 express lifts for single crafts lifting the fighter
up into the launching tubes and the new carriers had 200 of
those, capable of launching a full flotilla in less then fifteen
minutes.
“Here we go men, see you on the other side”,
he said over the com channel to all his men in his unit, guiding
the interceptor into the lift and felt his heart lift into
his throat as his fighter all of a sudden lifted rapidly into
the tube. Tube door closed and the flight deck officer asked
him if he was ready to launch. “Yes, commander Nesh,
1005th flotilla ready”
Shortly thereafter he heard:
“Second in command…”
Damn, he thought as his friend finished, how the hell did
he go from complete asleep to second into the launch tubes.
But before he could finish the thought his fighter was accelerated
out of the launch tube with such a speed not even the dampening
field could stop the force of gravity from feeling like it
was crushing his spine.
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