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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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