Post by flightoficarus on Apr 28, 2015 19:35:42 GMT -6
Chapter 1: Contact
October 9, 2525
1500 Hours (Shipboard time)
Epsilon Indi System
The two Berlin class fast attack craft, Hamburg, and Dresden swept into the system at FTL speeds. Their warp bubbles terminated; the accumulated high energy particles cascaded outwards in all directions, rapidly diffusing in the vast distances of space. Their sensors were blind before in the warp bubble, but now they awakened and greedily soaked up data like a gluttonous guest at a dinner party. The LIDAR, RADAR, and optical arrays took in everything that was worthwhile. They ‘sailed’ further into the system with every second. By virtue of conservation of momentum, they kept their pre-jump velocity.
It was a fairly unremarkable system as far as the rest of human settled space was concerned. It was a K-type main sequence star, which was common in the universe at large. Several worlds and an asteroid belt orbited the star, which was named Epsilon Indi. The only interesting part of the system was the habitable world of Harvest. It was named for its bountiful agricultural fields. It was out of the way and quite remote; it was the furthest colony from Earth, about 95 light years away.
It was rare for military vessels to be out here. Hamburg and Dresden were there because contact had been lost with the system. They were investigating what may have caused the break of communication. The crews expected it to be a milk-run, so to speak. They expected it was just a broken communications array that needed replacement. Little did the FAC crews know; the problem was actually much worse than that. It took mere milliseconds for the supercomputers to make something useful out of the tsunami of ones and zeros.
A visual representation of the area was displayed on Captain Keith Armstrong’s screen. Startled would be a mild word for what he felt. A portion of Harvest’s surface was melted down to glass it seemed. Some parts of the glassed area were still hot from whatever had bombarded it. He knew nuclear weapons got hot enough to glass areas, but how could the Innies get their hands on enough high yield nuclear bombs to do this? “Is there any sign of radiation on the surface?” he inquired. “No sir, we’re not reading any radiation or residual fallout. This wasn’t the result of a nuclear bombardment,” the sensors tech replied. He paused, “There’s one other thing, there’s a ship in orbit. Doesn’t fit any CMA, UNSC, or UEG designs.” The Captain stared at the representation grimly; some instinct told him it might be the culprit.
It was bulbous and sleek with several projections he could only guess at the purpose of. It looked almost like one of Earth’s whales. In other words, it looked nothing like any human design. It was all curves, while human ships were utilitarian in every way. A contemporary human vessel (Berlin class FACs included) has three main sections, the nose, the core, and the drive section. On the Berlin FAC, the engine section was 3/5ths the length of the vessel while being twice the diameter of the rest of the ship. It housed a single fusion reactor and several back up molten salt reactors. The engine section was also filled with capacitors, which were informally called batteries. Nacelles were on the outside of the engine section which housed radiators that were folded away during combat or FTL jumps. Housed inside the radiators were photovoltaic panels for secondary power.
The core section contained the internal centrifuge. The core section housed much of the ammunition on the vessel and the inner decks had crew rations. The crew quarters were in the centrifuge, along with the gym, medical bay, and mess hall. The very outer decks of the core section housed missile launch bays. In addition, the waste recycling system and RCS maneuvering thruster fuel tanks are here. Four turret mounts surrounded the core section, which were armed with gauss cannons. They used tightly wound magnetic coils to launch projectiles at high velocities. Last but not least a hangar is in the core section with two Pelican dropships. It wasn’t hard to imagine this was the most vital part, if you ignored the engines.
The nose section isn’t very remarkable as far as design goes. It contains an observation deck in the tip. The bridge is buried deep within the nose, not far from the core section. Some docking ports surrounded the nose, along with RCS thrusters. There wasn’t really anything else worth mentioning in this section. From bow to stern the FAC was about 450 meters long, or 1,300 feet to those not versed in the metric system. It had a crew of roughly 90 men and women. The FACs were nicknamed ‘suicide boats’ within the space forces. However, the crews took that infamous nickname as a compliment. They’re the smallest craft that deserve the term “warship” and filled the historic role of frigates.
The alien ship turned towards the small FACs and exhaust flared out of its main drives as they flashed into life. “Unknown vessel, cease movement now, further attempts will be considered hostile provocation,” the captain said, sending off the message. He didn’t know if they could even understand, but it didn’t hurt to try. “No response and no change in heading,” an officer said. Fuck, Armstrong thought, I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this. “Fire a warning shot across their bow,” he ordered. The ship shuddered slightly as a gauss round left the barrel. “Still no change in heading,” the officer called out again. Captain Armstrong felt the tension rising and saw the other techs looking at him from their workstations. “Fall back; we can’t take a vessel of that size. Hopefully we can outrun it,” he said, trying to sound confident.
He knew they had waited too long and the ship would catch up before they could change their vector. The FACs turned around, but still had forward velocity towards the alien ship. They had to burn that velocity and then rebuild it in the opposite direction. At the moment Armstrong despised the physics that governed the universe. Tension continued to build as they decelerated and started accelerating again. The thermal nuclear rockets strained their hardest to gain speed. The alien vessel hadn’t had to decelerate, so it had an advantage. “I’m detecting an energy build up. I suspect it’s a weapon of some sort.” A glow appeared at the tips of one of the ships’ projections. After a few seconds a beam leapt out and speared Hamburg through the drive section.
The charged particle accelerator gutted the FAC. It became a new star for a moment as the fusion reactor lost containment and released its plasma. All that was left of several thousand metric tons of metal, and ninety men and women was an expanding and cooling cloud of dust and particles. The crew of Dresden stared at the screen in horror. Armstrong watched the seconds tick by, every moment seeming like an eternity.
Eventually, in what seemed like an unimaginable period of time, Dresden started to gain velocity on the alien battleship. The crew cheered at the revelation they were going to survive another day. Dresden’s warp drive charged up and a new warp bubble was formed. It leapt out of the system faster than light ever could.
A few weeks later the shell-shocked crew and FAC arrive at Reach, the military capital of the UNSC.
Armstrong sends a high priority code black message to FLEETCOM HQ. Code black meant it was top secret and had the highest encryption codes. There was no sense in starting a panic over what they had seen. Besides, ONI would have their heads from a blatant security breach. That was in a literal sense. Now they only had to wait for further orders.
October 9, 2525
1500 Hours (Shipboard time)
Epsilon Indi System
The two Berlin class fast attack craft, Hamburg, and Dresden swept into the system at FTL speeds. Their warp bubbles terminated; the accumulated high energy particles cascaded outwards in all directions, rapidly diffusing in the vast distances of space. Their sensors were blind before in the warp bubble, but now they awakened and greedily soaked up data like a gluttonous guest at a dinner party. The LIDAR, RADAR, and optical arrays took in everything that was worthwhile. They ‘sailed’ further into the system with every second. By virtue of conservation of momentum, they kept their pre-jump velocity.
It was a fairly unremarkable system as far as the rest of human settled space was concerned. It was a K-type main sequence star, which was common in the universe at large. Several worlds and an asteroid belt orbited the star, which was named Epsilon Indi. The only interesting part of the system was the habitable world of Harvest. It was named for its bountiful agricultural fields. It was out of the way and quite remote; it was the furthest colony from Earth, about 95 light years away.
It was rare for military vessels to be out here. Hamburg and Dresden were there because contact had been lost with the system. They were investigating what may have caused the break of communication. The crews expected it to be a milk-run, so to speak. They expected it was just a broken communications array that needed replacement. Little did the FAC crews know; the problem was actually much worse than that. It took mere milliseconds for the supercomputers to make something useful out of the tsunami of ones and zeros.
A visual representation of the area was displayed on Captain Keith Armstrong’s screen. Startled would be a mild word for what he felt. A portion of Harvest’s surface was melted down to glass it seemed. Some parts of the glassed area were still hot from whatever had bombarded it. He knew nuclear weapons got hot enough to glass areas, but how could the Innies get their hands on enough high yield nuclear bombs to do this? “Is there any sign of radiation on the surface?” he inquired. “No sir, we’re not reading any radiation or residual fallout. This wasn’t the result of a nuclear bombardment,” the sensors tech replied. He paused, “There’s one other thing, there’s a ship in orbit. Doesn’t fit any CMA, UNSC, or UEG designs.” The Captain stared at the representation grimly; some instinct told him it might be the culprit.
It was bulbous and sleek with several projections he could only guess at the purpose of. It looked almost like one of Earth’s whales. In other words, it looked nothing like any human design. It was all curves, while human ships were utilitarian in every way. A contemporary human vessel (Berlin class FACs included) has three main sections, the nose, the core, and the drive section. On the Berlin FAC, the engine section was 3/5ths the length of the vessel while being twice the diameter of the rest of the ship. It housed a single fusion reactor and several back up molten salt reactors. The engine section was also filled with capacitors, which were informally called batteries. Nacelles were on the outside of the engine section which housed radiators that were folded away during combat or FTL jumps. Housed inside the radiators were photovoltaic panels for secondary power.
The core section contained the internal centrifuge. The core section housed much of the ammunition on the vessel and the inner decks had crew rations. The crew quarters were in the centrifuge, along with the gym, medical bay, and mess hall. The very outer decks of the core section housed missile launch bays. In addition, the waste recycling system and RCS maneuvering thruster fuel tanks are here. Four turret mounts surrounded the core section, which were armed with gauss cannons. They used tightly wound magnetic coils to launch projectiles at high velocities. Last but not least a hangar is in the core section with two Pelican dropships. It wasn’t hard to imagine this was the most vital part, if you ignored the engines.
The nose section isn’t very remarkable as far as design goes. It contains an observation deck in the tip. The bridge is buried deep within the nose, not far from the core section. Some docking ports surrounded the nose, along with RCS thrusters. There wasn’t really anything else worth mentioning in this section. From bow to stern the FAC was about 450 meters long, or 1,300 feet to those not versed in the metric system. It had a crew of roughly 90 men and women. The FACs were nicknamed ‘suicide boats’ within the space forces. However, the crews took that infamous nickname as a compliment. They’re the smallest craft that deserve the term “warship” and filled the historic role of frigates.
The alien ship turned towards the small FACs and exhaust flared out of its main drives as they flashed into life. “Unknown vessel, cease movement now, further attempts will be considered hostile provocation,” the captain said, sending off the message. He didn’t know if they could even understand, but it didn’t hurt to try. “No response and no change in heading,” an officer said. Fuck, Armstrong thought, I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this. “Fire a warning shot across their bow,” he ordered. The ship shuddered slightly as a gauss round left the barrel. “Still no change in heading,” the officer called out again. Captain Armstrong felt the tension rising and saw the other techs looking at him from their workstations. “Fall back; we can’t take a vessel of that size. Hopefully we can outrun it,” he said, trying to sound confident.
He knew they had waited too long and the ship would catch up before they could change their vector. The FACs turned around, but still had forward velocity towards the alien ship. They had to burn that velocity and then rebuild it in the opposite direction. At the moment Armstrong despised the physics that governed the universe. Tension continued to build as they decelerated and started accelerating again. The thermal nuclear rockets strained their hardest to gain speed. The alien vessel hadn’t had to decelerate, so it had an advantage. “I’m detecting an energy build up. I suspect it’s a weapon of some sort.” A glow appeared at the tips of one of the ships’ projections. After a few seconds a beam leapt out and speared Hamburg through the drive section.
The charged particle accelerator gutted the FAC. It became a new star for a moment as the fusion reactor lost containment and released its plasma. All that was left of several thousand metric tons of metal, and ninety men and women was an expanding and cooling cloud of dust and particles. The crew of Dresden stared at the screen in horror. Armstrong watched the seconds tick by, every moment seeming like an eternity.
Eventually, in what seemed like an unimaginable period of time, Dresden started to gain velocity on the alien battleship. The crew cheered at the revelation they were going to survive another day. Dresden’s warp drive charged up and a new warp bubble was formed. It leapt out of the system faster than light ever could.
A few weeks later the shell-shocked crew and FAC arrive at Reach, the military capital of the UNSC.
Armstrong sends a high priority code black message to FLEETCOM HQ. Code black meant it was top secret and had the highest encryption codes. There was no sense in starting a panic over what they had seen. Besides, ONI would have their heads from a blatant security breach. That was in a literal sense. Now they only had to wait for further orders.