Future Vision: Chapter 4
Chapt. 4
"Hows the scans coming?" GP called to the two Class-A Covert Frigates. Both were fit with deep space probes and top notch pilots that with their cybernetic enhancements could detect something as minor as a drones impulse drive.
"No ships detected anywhere in system." replied one of the Pilots.
"Same here, I'm keeping a probe sitting on the other gate to watch for activation. At that time we should have 3 minutes before they would be on us."
"Rodgered" GP announced over their private COM channel before closing it. He never had an easy time talking to cloaky frigate pilots, they always freaked him out how they would come out of nowhere. Opening another COM to the one Class-B Tactical Assault Battleships that wasn't EW fitted, he wondered if it would have a salvaging system installed. However no communication was needed as his ship sensors picked up low power energy signatures matching that of a tractor and a salvage apparatus. The pilot of the ship was still kind enough to answer the COM.
"Well Howdy" Said a larger than normal Red Fox with a deep country drawl. The Fox was definitely aged but played the part of acting young very well. The only real things that gave away his age was the silver lining his fur was starting to show and the large permanent scar from the top of his left eyes to the right side of his cheek where no fur was present. He seemed to GP to wear the scar in pride rather than trying to cover it up. One thing that GP could never wrap his mind around was why some Morphs adopted accents from Human culture. Although some species have an accent due to the fact that it sometimes helped the clearness of communication because of their jaw structure, country was not one of the ones that made communication significantly better. Most of the time a more "British" way of pronouncing words was picked due to the ability to skip T's and other unnatural sounds that presented problems. However in these times most species that have issues pouncing certain words either go around them or use a form of short speak which was overall much easier than having an accent or skipping consonants.
"'Howdy' yourself, mind telling me what you've torn off that ship?" GP normally spoke in a authoritative manner, and could sometimes come off as rude though most that knew him knew when he was being rude, which in all honesty was far and few between. The rule was "If he isn't yelling at you, he's being nice".
The Pilot of the battleship knew very well when GP was being nice, but he liked pushing his buttons, so after a quick smirk and a seconds to gather up a cocky sentence, he simply replied "Well hey now, How I am suppose to tell you whats on this ship if you contact me before it's even tractored into salvaging range? By looking out my here window, I'm guessing a extra solar panel on that there wingy bit." And with that he crossed his arms in the front of his chest and cocked a sideways stance .
GP couldn't help but give himself a mental facepalm, but not for the reason of the question he had asked. He did it more for the reason that he, like on every other Op, would always ask Gene or try to talk him about something that should be obvious and self explanatory. He often had mental drawing of Gene as a prissy cheerleader who always had the answer to what song and dance routine they should do at the next big game. That image alone was probably the only thing that ever kept his temper in check when trying to attempt a conversation with him.
With a smirk GP closed the COM channel and walked over to the tactical gunnery station and waved the officer away from the console. With swift flawless movement he disabled the auto-targeting system and manually targeted 1 of the 16 large 3 semi-truck sized Pulse Lasers right at the side of Gene's ship. Though the auto-targeting system could effectively do the same thing, he knew that Ships like that had a ping system that would pick up any sort of target locking system, and target the offending ship back. He adjusted the power level of the laser back a little due the Gene's ship being well within the 70KM range that the carrier could shoot out to. Gene's ship was actuly within 12KM and a full blast from the Laser at this distance wouldn't destroy his ship, rather burn a hole right through it.
With the power lowed to 30%, he stood up straight to view all the officers on the bridge eyeballing him. With no grace to speak of, he let his hand slip down the console to the "Activate" button and give it a firm push against its capacitive touch screen and gave a sudden but pretend shock expression of "Oops" and shrugged his shoulders. All the officers turned their head slowly to the bridge window in curiosity if he had actually done what they thought he did. No more than a second later a large green pulsating light flashed from the ship to Gene's and in the 3 seconds that it was active it pulsated 10 times before the energy charge was depleted, then disappeared as suddenly as it came into existence.
All the officers turn back to face him finding that he was doing nothing than looking closely at an extended claw on his right paw. He looked up and with a smirk growing bigger by the second he put his paw to his heart and asked like an innocent pup "Oh no what happened? Did we have a misfire of cannon one? Oh I'll get someone to check it out once we dock." As the officers were about to break out laughing at GP's bold decision, the frigate pilots sounded the alarm and opened a haste public COM to the fleet
"We have large gate activation with off the scale gravimetric surges. The probes can't identify what came through, but it's huge. It can't possibly be human because if my probe is reading this right, it's over 5KM long. Wait what's this? Oh no. GP we need to leave right now"
"Slow down pilot, what wrong?" GP replied in a authoritative but calm manner.
"I can't tell you, but whatever these ship are, they are sharpshooters. They locked my probe and shot it before it could warp back to me. Hell it was moving well over 1KM a seconds mind you."
"What kind of weapon was it, did it return any relevant data?"
The frigate pilot was silent for a few seconds, which was followed but an irritated groan of disappointment. "The data it too corrupted, but if I had to make a guess from these reader this ship that shot it was a drone moving at twice the speed my probe was. I've already told all remaining probes to return to us"
"Alright. All ships, burn toward the gate at maximum velocity and do full reverse sensor sweeps" GP announced as he waved his paw up in the air and followed up with "I'll bring this fat bitch up to the gate as fast as I can. He looked at the navigator and gestured to his tits on just how lofty the carrier was.
At about 17 KM away from the gate back to the orbital, two extraordinary things happened much faster than anyone could have thought possible. The first was that the humans were already landing on the gate and targeting GP carriers. While the EW battleships had them jammed for the moment, they would not last long against the last ship to arrive at the gate. What GP and his fleet saw was of course poorly constructed and looked much like a unfinished building turned sideways with some thrusters, but it was the size which gave it imitating look. GP glanced at the sensor system which promptly told him everything about the ship. It was 5.674KM long, weighed over 374,000 metric tons, and was equipped with 38 battleship class blaster cannons and 16 bomb launchers. On the bright side if they survived, it had no shields, little armor, and the main reactor was very close to the main thruster assembly.
The second thing happened right when GP and his fleet were going to engage in combat. Out of nowhere a large subspace disruption appeared right in the middle of the two races and obliterated their sensor locks. After the nearly blinding bright flash of red spiraling light that followed appeared a ship much larger than one could ever conceive.
GP leaped over station to the sensor station and tried scanning the ship, but the electronic were just as confused as everyone else spitting out a simple message of "OBJECT NOT SCANNABLE". GP looked up from the console back up to the mammoth which made the almost 6KM skyscraper of a ship look like your modern day office building. What he was looking at was a ship, or movable station of over 15KM long if GP had to guess. He couldn't possibly fathom the weight or the armaments the ship had.
How GP didn't have to guess as one of the Human ship took it upon themselves to manually lock and fire upon the large vessel, which seemed silly as it was a frigate with weapons that could barely scratch a battleship class vessel. After about 12 seconds of it orbiting the behemoth at a approximate speed of 1.12KM/s, the vessel let out a controlled EMP burst from what could be assumed as one of its shield generators and gracefully let the ship tumble out of control smashing into the gate blowing up in a small silent explosion.
It wasn't long after that GP sensors alerted him that the human were turning tail and aligning their ships to the other gate to leave the system. However the visitors were having none of it, and with technology beyond comprehension disrupted the area of space around their fleet making the smallest movement impossible. GP watched as the freaked out trying everything from full thruster fire to small hydrazine alignment thrusters to move their ship. GP dared not to even sneeze fearing that whoever these beings were would disrupt the space around his noise to cause what expelled from his muzzle to go into his mouth. GP wasn't a canine which seemed to like the taste whenever someone wasn't watching, and the very thought was both as displeasing as it was true.
For a moment everyone stood still like a time clock nearing the end of a work shift. Than out of nowhere, ghastly voices rang out of the COM systems like a unified collective. "Unacceptable conflict" it said, like a dozen ghostly voices "Dire consequences. Both will lose"
With that GP felt himself pulled and pushed at the same time as he and his fleet where somehow moved right outside their Orbital. GP could not help but feel somehow glad he was not dead, when really he should be ashamed he didn't even get to fight. But whatever those Beings where, they must have been Gods.
Not ten seconds later their ships were being tractored into hangers and GP and Nexus were in open COMs with each other sharing the event that just happened. Data combined from the Orbital's sensor as well as sensor data from every ship in the fleet made no further advancements into explaining what happened.
Just as they were about to close their COM channel, GP choked and quickly added "Im glad I get to see you for another day at least" than closed the channel and opened the hatch of his carrier and made his way to his quarters.