Ivan Kal - Sanctuary

“Warships? How many?” Adrian asked, becoming excited as well. He always knew that they needed more ships if they were to protect their home.

“Twenty. And the best part is that we are the ones to decide which class we build.” She said.

“That is amazing. What did you decide?”

“We settled on 8 light cruisers, 6 heavy cruisers, 4 battleships and 2 dreadnoughts.”

Adrian was surprised.

“No carriers?” He asked.

“No, we decided that they weren’t feasible, at least not yet. With the level of technology we currently possess it is impossible to make fighters that can stand against a warship, or even keep up.”

Adrian nodded, that was his realization as well. He knew that there were people in the Fleet, those from the old days, before they went into space, that tried to push for more traditional Fleet. One that would mirror that of the Earth navy. Which was stupid of course, space was not water, or atmosphere. They borrowed the names, but the purpose and the way the ships fought would be nothing like navy.

Adrian could already imagine a fleet of 20 ships orbiting Sanctuary, it would be an awesome sight. Then he remembered something.

“Dreadnoughts?” He asked, confused. Adrian was part of most every planning for fleet, through Laura, and back when they tried to dream up warship classes there was no mention of a dreadnought class.

Laura smiled widely. “Yes, we managed to flesh out the details a few months ago and all simulations were successful, I didn’t tell you anything because I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“A surprise?” Adrian asked weakly, he knew Laura very well, and he could feel one of her schemes coming up.

“Of course! One of the dreadnoughts is yours.” She said.

Adrian blanched.

“Oh, good! I’ll have a new toy to play with!” Iris exclaimed excitedly.

“What! You can’t. There are other more experienced Ship Masters!” Adrian said.

“Shut up Adrian! Don’t you dare turn this down!” Iris said.

Laura just kept smiling and shook her head. “No, there are not. There are those that served longer than you, but none have more experience than you. And your simulator scores are the best in the entire Fleet. You can’t wiggle out of this.”

Adrian swallowed hard, he knew that he was capable, but having an even more responsibility thrust on his back so fast wasn’t pleasant at all.

“How long?” Adrian managed to squeak out.

“Three months. We are building all the parts that we can here, and then sending them out into open space at another shipyard we have built between the orbits of Sanctuary and Boreas. The shipyards here just can’t hold a ship of that size. The other shipyard will be specifically equipped to build bigger ships.” She said.

Adrian felt light headed, Too big? He thought, the hulls he saw laid out in the shipyard were already double the size of Athena.

“This is going to be so much fun.” Iris cheered on in Adrian’s head.

“Alright, between the two of you, I know I will never be able to escape.” Adrian said, resigned.

“Good. Thank Iris for me.” Laura said, grinning wickedly. “Now, I’m going to send you all the data on the dreadnought class warships. You will need to study it all. We are putting new weapons systems, faster computers and a million other things that you need to became an expert on. Also, you need to choose a crew. You will be limited of course, you can request a transfer from the warships we have now. But many of those officers will be placed on other new ships. While those old ones will be given to the ones that were put on mining or transport ships. We are in a bit of a shortage of personnel, but there is nothing we can do about it for a while.”

Adrian listened carefully, nodding. “Okay, I guess I better get acquainted with the data, and then decide on personnel.” Adrian said.

“Good, I am needed down on the planet for a few days. Our weapons are being manufactured there, and I need to oversee a few things. You can stay on the station until your ship is ready. Officially you are still Ship Master of the Athena, but you can stay onboard the station in my quarters, here is the access code.” Laura said, sending him the access code to her quarters via her imp.

Adrian smiled weakly, and nodded again.

“Okay then, I will see you when you come back.”

They hugged again, and Adrian left, he downloaded the stations map from the net, and then followed the route to Laura’s quarters. He had a lot of studying to do.

November 2169 – OES Voyager

A flash of blue light announced the arrival of Olympus Explorer Ship Voyager into a new system. The ships gray hull glistened with the aftereffect of leaving hyperspace. Blue energy arcs jumped from the hull, but a moment later they were gone.

“Anything on sensors?” Ship Master Eric Donaldson asked his Sensor Handler.

“Nothing on short range. We will have a full picture of the system in a few minutes.” Sensor Handler said.

“Good.” Ship Master Donaldson said. He watched the holo, as the image of the system slowly appeared. The system star was old, and its center was a brown dwarf. As it was a low mass star, they were able to exit hyperspace much deeper into the system. Brown dwarf’s aren’t really stars, rather they are stars that don’t have sufficient mass to ignite a nuclear fusion in their cores. This system had only one planet that orbited the brown dwarf in a wide orbit. Voyager came out of hyperspace very close to the planet, only a few light minutes, 120 million km away.

The holo now showed a very empty system. Only one planet, that had one moon, orbiting the systems brown dwarf.

“Navigation, take us to the planet. Let’s see if there is anything valuable down there.” Ship Master said.

The mission of Explorer ships was to map out their neighborhood. To find other habitable planets, and stellar bodies that could possibly be used for mining. They would need to send a shuttle down to the planet in order to scan more accurately. It took them about two hours to get to the planet, they placed the ship in high orbit between the planet and its moon. They sent the shuttle down to the surface to run scans.

“Ship Master, the sensors detected a light source.” Sensor Handler said.

“Where is it?”

“It was there only for a moment. It was gone too fast to determine exact position, but it was coming from the direction of the moon.” Sensor Handler said.

“Any idea what it was?” High Prime asked.

“No sir. It didn’t match anything in our databases.”

“Keep an eye on the moon then. Perhaps it was nothing.” High Prime said.

“When is the team scheduled to return?” Ship Master asked.

“In ten minutes Ship Master.” High Prime said.

Ship Master nodded, and went back to studying the holo. Soon after the shuttle team reported that there was nothing of interest on the planet, and that they were on their way back. A few minutes later they were back on board. Eric was just about to order them to the moon, when his Sensor Handler yelled out.

“Incoming weapons fire, one minute to impact!”

“Combat stations! Evasive maneuvers!” Ship Master yelled out. His High Prime immediately sounded the alarm throughout the ship. Eric looked at the holo, dozens of tracks appeared and were on an intercept course with his ship. Immediately Eric realized what had happened. The previous flash of light was the launch of missiles. He knew that they were missiles as they were accelerating. The missiles cruised unpowered until they closed the range, then their drives kicked in to take them the remaining distance. The scanners couldn’t identify the missile type. Which was no surprise, they haven’t encountered anyone in this part of space yet.