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KN02 Danrik 001
Arrival
The Grajeda System, Williams Quadrant, Avalon Sector
MAY 06 2793/2793.126; 0259 Hours (CST)
The Desiccator came out of jumpspace at a point no less than one hundred meters from a Confederation battle group consisting of two carriers and a patrol frigate—one battle group among innumerable task forces and convoys. Vell glanced at his flagship directly beside him, then to his squadrons of Blades and Vendettas swooping overhead. They were itching for a fight, but there was no enemy in sight.
Giving his Celestial HUD a thorough looking over, he overlooked the hundreds of green and blue blips to notice a smattering of light gray blips six thousand klicks out. He would have punched the afterburners and flown in to investigate right away were it not that all the assembled ships—ConFleet and otherwise—seemed to be holding a tight formation over an invisible line. He didn’t want to jump the gun and piss off the off the gang by crossing it.
"This is Space Marshal Michael Tierson of the fleet carrier Enforcer to all allied craft," a deep, authoritative voice came over the comm of his Danrik fighter. Vell assumed the man was broadcasting on all channels so that everyone gathered could hear. "I thank everyone on behalf of the Terran Confederation for joining us in the defense of humanity. First, let it be known that I will be the coordinator of this offensive—all individual assaults should be brought to my attention.
"As you can see, there is no sign of the enemy we are gathered here now to confront. By now, you’ve probably all detected the neutral signals a distance out and are quite curious to find out just what they are." The guy’s a natural mind reader, Vell mused to himself. "I have just given orders for three wings of Nexus-class fighters to scout the area and report back," Tierson informed. "Any non-Confederation ship that wants to reconnoiter the neutral signals may feel free to do so at this time, but all capital ships are advised to stay in formation."
Well, that was the green light. Maxing his thrust and pushing his afterburners to the limit, Vell shot toward the blips, accompanying the Nexus wings. He watched the distance between his ship and the nearest one fall on his readouts: 5,000, 4,000, 3,000, 2,000, 1,000, 500. At 250 klicks he finally got a good look at it.
A massive chunk of metallic debris floating through space, electricity sparking off its exposed wiring conduits.
The wreckage of the 22nd Fleet.
"Enforcer squadrons and unidentified Kindred fighter—break off your advance!" the space marshal exclaimed in his ear all of a sudden. "Our sensors are detecting an enormous electromagnetic distortion directly in your flight path! Pull back!"
Vell caught Tierson’s warning in fragments—he was too busy staring in horror ahead of him. As if space itself was alive, the blackness of vacuum and the bright specks of stars shimmered, eerily fluctuating and pulsating. When it ceased only a matter of seconds later, Vell found himself gazing in horror at the single most gigantic craft he had ever seen, let alone ever imagined.
It was alien, that much was certain. A solid neon-green pyramid structure of some kind was embedded in the center of its mass—that alone at least five kilometers in diameter—partially concealed within a branching series of thick interlocking struts and glowing green orbs the size of seventy megacarriers meshed together. The overall structure formed a humongous boomerang-shape, the curved arc end facing ahead with the pyramid protruding up from the center. Despite its seemingly random appearance outside of its form, the struts and orbs came together within its outline with perfect symmetry. From side to side, the thing spanned far beyond the length of the entire assembled Terran fleet, stretching out some fifty-five thousand meters from side to side.
Vell had little more time to study the alien construction before him—red blips were appearing on his radar like wildfire. Hundreds of them—thousands of them, all pouring out of that ship’s innards like an unruly horde of insects.
He already had his fighter spinning back in the direction of the fleet when he saw a wing of the Confed Nexus fighters erupt in a sudden chain of explosions out of the corner of his eye. When Vell was already afterburning his way back to the front lines, another two erupted almost at the same moment while the rest scurried to regroup with Vell.
The assembled Fleet was already moving forward—they’d come for a fight and the opportunity was now readily available.
The comm cackled, then let out a loud static roll. "TERRAN PEOPLES," a high-pitched, sickly voice spoke in speckled, monotone English. "WE ARE THE STELTEK, OF THE STELTEK MAGISTRY. WE ARE THE FOUNDERS OF THIS GALAXY AND YOUR RACE’S PREDECESSORS. WE HAVE BEEN MONITORING YOUR RACE FOR CENTURIES. WE HAVE WATCHED YOU EVOLVE. WE HAVE OBSERVED THE CHAOS YOUR PEOPLES HAVE WROUGHT. WE HAVE DETERMINED THAT YOU WILL DESTROY YOURSELVES IN THE FUTURE, THAT YOU WILL TAKE OUR FORMER GALAXY WITH YOU AND BECOME OBSTACLES TO THE PURPOSE. WE HAVE DETERMINED THAT YOU MUST BE ELIMINATED TO VINDICATE YOUR DISEASE FROM CAUSING FURTHER HARM TO THE UNIVERSE. WE HAVE COME TO RECLAIM OUR WORLDS. YOU WILL DO THEM NO ADDITIONAL HARM. THE STELTEK HAVE RETURNED."
"What is this, fuckin’ Star Trek now?"
Vell felt like cussing the alien bastard out, but knew the diplomatic bull was better left to Space Marshal Tierson for all the good it seemed that would do. He waited for the high and mighty Confed Fleet Commander to speak his piece. Then he waited some more. After three minutes of afterburning back toward the fleet, it simply didn’t happen.
On a suspicion, he quickly ran an all-channels check, trying to get in communication with his squadrons, then trying to contact Melissa. Nothing.
Clever bastards. Well, it explained why the 22nd wasn’t able to send out a distress call—the Steltek had jammed all communications.
TCS Blair; Bridge
Holding position
The Grajeda System, Williams Quadrant, Avalon Sector
0319 Hours (CST)
On the bridge of his namesake’s megacarrier, Blair could only gaze in awe at the gigantic alien vessel that loomed in the distance.
Captain Kincaid approached him from behind. "Space Marshal Tierson has ordered the entirety of the Space Navy armada to intercept and engage that Steltek ship. Suggestions, General?"
Blair shrugged. Time to act like he knew what he was doing. "Well, from what I’ve seen, the TCS Blair is a top-of-the-line megacarrier." And what a megacarrier it was. Back in his day, the Vesuvius, the St. Helens, and even the mammoth Midway would be easily dwarfed by his new command ship. He imagined a smile on old Captain Eisen’s wizened face, proud that Blair was able to land such a position. "Let’s go to full speed and flank the Enforcer. The lesser carriers can pull up the rear and sides."
"And when we reach the Steltek vessel?"
"Let’s dispatch all squadrons and hit the damn thing with everything we’ve got." And pray it’ll be enough, he grimly added to himself.
A tech in a crewpit to Blair’s left, Lieutenant JG Pter, shot around in his chair and yelled at the top of his lungs, "Sir, the Steltek ship is releasing fighters! I’m counting thirty... aw, hell no... fifty squadrons!"
"Shit," Blair muttered under his breath.
"Attention, all Terran-allied fleets," an unfamiliar, stern voice spoke over the vidcomm. It was coming from an outlying Salvia-class destroyer, one beside a small task force made up of other Salvias, Veldor-class carriers, and a Yackyard-class dreadnought—all of which registered as neutral blue blips on his HUD. "This is Commander-In-Chief David Hassan of the Tri-System Central Intelligence Services, CIS. The Steltek fighter squadrons now engaging our front lines are drone ships. In 2669, a privateer in the Gemini Sector was chased by one such ship and became forced to destroy it. He had the advantage of owning one of the Steltek race’s cannons to do the deed. We don’t. We do, however, have the advantage of well over a century’s worth of time to study and analyze breakdowns of the Steltek drone’s schematics. As you can tell, we’ve already cracked the Steltek comm scrambler. I’m uploading a detailed file on the drones’ potential vulnerability points and schematics for all to receive. Hassan out."
"Did you get the file, Pter?" Blair asked, leaning over the rail of the uppermost portion of the bridge.
"Yessir, it’s in our databanks."
"Have a science crew look it over right this fucking second—with any luck we can find a way to break their jamming of comm signals as fast as Hassan has. We’ll need to maintain communications with the rest of the armada if we’re going to keep our head up in this."
"Yessir."
"Then arrange a briefing for all squadron leaders ASAP."
"Right away, sir."
Blair turned away, fixing his gaze once more on the mammoth Steltek ship, his heart beating at the promise of the battle to come.
It felt good to be back, but moreover it felt... right.
TCS Blair; Air Group Briefing
Room
0331 Hours (CST)
The role of the Commander Air Group and the Space Force chain of command 2793 was somewhat different than in Blair’s own time. Rather than conducting a briefing filling in every pilot on their assigned carrier, CAGs briefed only the wing commanders of the various fighter wings, who, in turn, briefed the squadron commanders of their fighter wings, who in turn briefed the pilots of their individual squadrons and elements. This was all due to the increasingly large fighter compliments on the increasingly larger Confed capital ships, particularly the latest generations of supercarriers and megacarriers (though such nicknames with the "mega" and "super" prefixes seemed to have become increasingly misleading in this new era).
"My ACAG should have had the deck officers brief you and your squadron commanders on the schematics of the Steltek in the CIC," Brigadier General Blair went on. "You know what we’re up against." Blair strode back and forth in a line in front of the gathered wing commanders—there were four of them, the WCs of the 617th, 962nd, 421st, and 623rd tactical fighter wings, the squadrons of which adding up to a total fighter/pilot count of about 410. They were not like the rest of the crew, not as brash or so evidently inexperienced. They were not gawking at having a one hundred and sixty year-old Confederation legend standing before them—they were listening, eager to go back and relay what he had to say to the squadron commanders of their respective fighter wings. "I was never one for speeches, let alone pep talk. I won’t lie to you. Many of your squadrons may not be returning from the battle ahead. We may not know jack shit about these Steltek baddies to make heads or tails of them... all we know right now is they grow them big on their side of the galaxy. Despite our numbers, the odds are against us." Blair paused, letting his gaze pass over each of the wing commanders. "Some would say it wasn’t so different for us one hundred and twenty-four years ago. Humanity had its back against the wall, the Kilrathi Empire was only months away from undisputed dominion of the galaxy. Entire sectors and star systems were slipping through our fingers like water. Then, just before all hope for the continued existence of the human race was certain to vanish forever, one final suicide run destroyed Kilrah and all but crippled the Empire." Blair forced a grin, then unfolded his arms. "We can win this, people. I’ll be flying out there with you to see that we make it happen. Dismissed."
Blair watched the gathering of WCs scatter and leave the room. His eyes remained fixed on them while they exited, a gaze that betrayed the uneasiness he felt inside but hadn’t wanted the men and women to see.
He sighed, then reached for his spaceflight helmet.