The Dawn of our Age - Teaser - 1
#1 of The Dawn of our Age
The Dawn of our Age
Teaser - 1
By Mog Moogle
"_CS Hanging Gardens_reporting all go for fold." The voice crackled over the intercom speaker.
"Roger," the comms operator at the short wave station acknowledged. "Good luck, and Godspeed."
Three kilometers off the steep angled port bow of the carrier, a more rounded colony ship not even a quarter of its size went dark. The view ports incandescent illumination faded out and a dull red glow began pouring into the vacuum. The hull of the ship began to radiate with energy and then a blue sphere engulfed it and flashed away as fast as it came. The ship was gone.
"USS Merrimack reporting quantum entanglement system green, all go for fold."
"Roger."
The Merrimack, a cruiser with the aggressive angles much like the carrier off the port side two kilometers behind the colony ship went dark, then the observation deck emitted the same more dull red glow. As the colony ship before it, a blue sphere encased the vessel and flashed away. The comms operator slid his chair from the short wave station to the quantum entanglement station adjacent to it. A halloscreen flickered to life with monochromatic text that read, 'FOLD SUCCESSFUL. CS HANGING GARDENS AND USS MERRIMACK ENTERING ORBIT OF C118.'
"Sir!" the comms operator said as he looked toward the elevated rear platform of the bridge. "Fold successful. The Merrimack and the Hanging Gardens are entering orbit."
"One down, twelve to go." The captain eased forward against the five-point restraints of his command chair. He was an aged man, easily in his late fifties. His hair was beginning to gray, and the color was fading from his well trimmed facial hair. "Send word to the Fredricksburg_and the _Arbor to begin their preparations for fold."
"Aye, sir," the comms operator replied as he slid back to the short wave station.
The second colony ship and cruiser ran through roughly fifteen minutes of checks before they too activated their fold drive and disappeared from the fleet. The operation was proceeding according to plan. Three carrier groups approximately one hundred kilometers apart hanging in deep space a full spiral arm away from the shipyards orbiting Mars where the fleet had originated.
Each carrier group oversaw fifteen cruisers, (thirteen of which would stay with the colony ships in orbit to maintain their communication with Earth,) twenty frigates, two battleships and thirteen colony ships. They were to seed thirty-nine planets that had been identified as Terra worlds, bringing humanity's total colony count to forty.
It had been an ambitious plan over a century in the making. Most of the captains of the capital ships had been involved with seeing it come to fruition their entire adult lives. Captain Ronald J. Townsend was no exception. His ship, the_USS Pacific_ was the largest of humanity's three carriers. Three times the length of the USS Missouri and_USS Bismark_ battleships in its group, it stretched five kilometers and weighed more than all of the aircraft carriers that ever sailed its namesake combined.
With such imposing vessels, it would have been easy for someone of limited sight to view the warships as a vanguard of a human galactic invasion. Visionaries, like Townsend and his father before him, realized that encountering life beyond Earth was inevitable, and it wouldn't hurt to be prepared. Luckily for Townsend's father, the inventor of the fold drive that made travel in the galaxy near instantaneous, the Federated Planetary Alliance officials elected to oversee the construction of mankind's first interstellar fleet agreed.
If Townsend's fold drive was the doorway to stellar planetary colonization, the quantum-reverberation entangled twins were the key. Vibrating an atom in a way to produce bits of data for text or simple audio messages allowed communication to and from Earth. They were incredibly difficult to produce, however. In the century of building the fleet, only enough entangled twins had been produced to outfit the cruisers or larger. Smaller vessels relied solely on wireless communications that traveled at light speed very similar to microwave communication of the twentieth century.
Townsend looked at his comms officer and acknowledged the third set of colony ships had folded and confirmed arrival. Eighteen ships across the three groups were on their way to stepping man onto the galactic stage. Townsend was seeing his father's dreams become reality. But the best laid plans ...
"Sir!" a young Ensign to his left at the sensor station called out. "Spectrograph is detecting ... something."
"Can you be more specific, Ensign?"
"I ... I don't know, sir. Trying to confirm it with LiDAR."
"Position?"
"It looks like, fifty kilometers off the starboard side of Indian's carrier group."
"Comms. The Nagato is off her starboard. See if the Indian or the_Nagato_ can get confirmation."
"Aye, sir," the comms officer acknowledged and switched to the _USS Indian's_frequency. "Uh, sir?"
"Report, Lieutenant?"
"I got a general distress call from the Nagato, then she went silent."
"What?"
"And ... the Indian just went silent."
"Dammit, someone tell me what's going on? Is there a danger to the fleet or is this some random anomaly?" Townsend barked as he unclasped his harness and pushed himself from his command chair toward the conn station. He came abreast of his helmsman and caught himself on the console without putting his feet down on the deck, suspended in the weightless environment.
"Sir!" the comms officer yelled. "CIC just confirmed the Indian, Nagato, Iowa, Charleston_and _Savannah transmitted the fold drive implosion signal. They ... they were scuttled after drive separation from the conn."
"Can you give me details, Lieutenant?"
"Comm traffic sporadic, sir, but ..." he looked up at Townsend. "we're losing colony ships in_Indian's_ group. I think we're under attack."
"General quarters! Battle-stations!" Townsend ordered. "Patch me to the fleet, Lieutenant."
"Aye," the comms officer replied as he tapped some buttons on the halloscreen. "Command override, combat protocol engaged. You're patched in to the fleet."
"Now hear this. This is Captain Townsend. I'm assuming command of the fleet. All colony ships and cruiser escorts initiate emergency fold to target destinations." Townsend took a deep breath and looked up at the observation windows on the open floored deck directly atop the bridge. "Atlantic_group and any _Indian group still receiving. Hard starboard and head-in to the distortions. Prime all mass drivers, batteries, Hornet drones and Raptor fighters."
"Atlantic group acknowledged, sir," the comm officer reported.
"Indian?"
"Two frigates, the Ariel_and the _Phobos acknowledging."
"Two frigates?"
"Sir," the comm officer looked at Captain Townsend and shook his head, "they're all that's left of_Indian's_ group."
"My god ... what are they?"
The starboard maneuvering thrusters fired on the fleet's ships, save the colony ships and cruisers that were scrambling to go dark. The Captain continued to look out of the windows above him as he received the report that the last two frigates in Indian group were gone. Flashes of light in contrast to the blanket of stars became visible through the windows as his carrier turned to where it could see the ships in_Atlantic_ group.
The rear forced pulse drives of the battleship, USS Odin and her carrier, the USS Atlantic came into view. The two groups oriented themselves toward the empty space where fifty-one of their ships had been not an hour ago, and none remained. What they could see in the midst of where the fold scuttled ships had been was a faint outline of a ship with a rounded nose cascading back in layers like a cocoon and spires with glowing tips protruding out of its hull.
"Order Atlantic group to advance and put distance between the colony ships. Tell captain Soto to launch his Hornets and Raptors as soon as he feels it's advantageous. Order our group into a phalanx formation and bring our engines to full."
"Aye,sir." echoed up from various stations as the dull hiss of the thrusters was replaced by a roaring thrum of the fusion reactor powered engines.
Townsend could see that the hostile ship was advancing toward the Atlantic and her support ships. Just as his group was maneuvering into position beside Captain Soto's group, the first of the colony ships folded. Shortly after two more colony ships folded and then the first of the escort cruisers.
The hostile ship was still out of range of the fighters and drones to engage effectively when a beam shot past the two carrier groups and hit one of the colony ships that was not yet dark. Townsend saw the massive bolt of energy fly over the top of his ship avoiding it by a few meters in a carefully aimed shot.
"Damn them!" he cursed and slammed his fist on the console beside the conn. "Get me firing solutions for all mass drivers. I want every ship in the fleet to put fire on that bastard!"
The CIC's began calculating trajectories and relaying the information to the bridge. Gunnery officers released safeties on the large magnets that surrounded the tubes of the guns that spanned the ships from stern to stem. They began to rotate around the massive barrels staggered and increasing in speed as it reached the end of the guns. Dense tungsten sabots with iridium cores were loaded into the breaches by robotic arms and suspended in the magnetic fields.
Before full power was diverted from all non essential systems to the guns, the enemy ship fired as another of the ships in Atlantic's colonization group came into range. It hit a cruiser shortly after it had gone dark and was spooling its fold drive. The beam caught the ships broadside and washed over it like a cascade of lightning. When the blast subsided, the cruiser was off kilter and the fold drive was in emergency shut down, but it was still intact. The comms officer relayed that information to Captain Townsend as quickly as he could.
Townsend looked over at him curiously then excitedly ordered, "Patch me to the fleet!" The Lieutenant did so and told the Captain he was patched in. "All ships, engage faraday circuits. Do not spool your fold drives. I say again, engage faraday circuits and run dark." The lights on the bridge blacked out and the screens of the stations went blank, then dimly illuminated with red displays as the red self contained backup lights activated. "They're using our own power against us somehow. Now that that advantage is gone, lets see how they like our guns."
Townsend looked at his gunnery officer with a furled brow and vengeance in mind.
"Fire!"