Michael Alexander studied the viewscreen, taking in the grey silhouettes of the E.D. F ships, and the sleek metallic crescent shaped hulls of the Solarian ones. All surrounded by the swirling reds, blues, and purple colours of the plasma wake that they were using to travel through space much faster than the speed of light.
He knew that in comparison, the Liberty and the Solarian ships were travelling very slowly, only at plasma factor 3, which was all that the larger and far slower Hermes and the other E.D. F ships could manage, since they had far less advanced plasma drive systems than they had.
In truth the Liberty had a top speed of plasma factor 7, over twice as fast as any E.D. F ship, and the fast and powerful Solarian battlecruisers could even manage plasma factor 9.
Later that night, Michael went off duty and retired to his quarters. On his desk lay several systems status reports that required his attention. Walking over to the food synthesiser on the far wall, he keyed in a request for a latte from the touch screen menu system, and then sat down to pore over the reports.
He had chose Ensign Jeffrey Hawkins to be in command during the nightshift, since the young ensign was soon to go through his bridge officers training, prior to his push for promotion to lieutenant as a sensory specialist. Michael thought the experience might do him some good.
The door opened, and in stepped Kinraid. “Do ya’ mind, if I have a word with ya’ cap’n.”
“ No, not at all commander, come, have a seat,” Michael motioned to an empty chair by the side of his desk. “Would you like a drink, I’ve just ordered one.”
“ No thank you,” Kinraid replied as he sat down, brushing his long auburn locks as he did so. “it’s tha’ crew sir, I think they ‘r’ a little nervous, so they are. This is the biggest fleet action in tha’ history of the E.D. F, the crew have only been working together for seven months, and I have only been here a month myself.”
“ I know everyone is a little edgy commander, hell so am I, and I have no idea how it is going to turn out or even if we’ll make it back.” He rose from his desk and walked towards the viewport, pointing a finger out to the ships gliding alongside. “There are seventy other ships out there, feeling exactly the same as we are, some of them don’t have the benefit of reactive hull armour and fusion cannon that we do. They have wives and families too, all they can do is dive right into the lions den and hope to god they come back out alive. We all have to have faith in one another commander.”
Kinraid paused to consider this for a moment, “thank ya’ captain, I hope the poor souls on those other ships do make it back.”
“ So do I.”
The next few days went largely without incident; Michael toured the ship as he usually did when there was not a great deal to do. Always marvelling at some new piece of technology that he didn’t know was there. The Liberty wasn’t just an ordinary ship to him; it was more like his home and his friend. With this ship they had helped overturn the whole Krenaran war, this tiny little vessel and he had fought and bled together. If it was even possible for ships to bleed, he felt as though the Liberty was almost an extension of himself.
He visited engineering, checking if everything was okay there, even managing to help Lieutenant Logameier cure a slight problem with the secondary transjectors, which smoothed the flow of Ions into the negative Ion propulsion drive. Michael hadn’t the faintest idea how it worked, this was all Solarian technology and radically advanced to him. It was a good job we had those Solarian assistants onboard, he thought.
Over the course of the next few hours, they neared the Wolf 359 system.
Michael had made his way to the centre of the bridge, waiting for word from the Hermes to drop out of plasma drive, after about ten minutes or so, the holographic viewscreen automatically shimmered into existence.
“ Hermes to the fleet, prepare to drop out of plasma drive on my order.”
Michael nodded to Kinraid.
“ Liberty confirms,” the commander spoke into his station.
“ Prepare to drop out of plasma drive in one minute,” the face of Sato addressed the fleet.
Exactly one minute later, the entire flotilla dropped out of plasma drive together with a gigantic blinding flash; their inter-system boosters blazed into life and the fleet gradually accelerated toward the other battlegroup that awaited them.
Michael had begun to get a bad feeling in his stomach, over the course of the past few months he had learned to trust that feeling. It had kept him alive on more than one occasion.
“ See if you can get me a visual on that second battlegroup commander.”
Kinraid flew into action, his fingers working the console, “sure cap’n, here ya’ are.”
Sure enough, there was the source of Michaels’ bad feeling. In the distance he could see the faint tiny shapes of the ships that made up the other battlegroup. However, distant flashes of far off explosions could also be made out, like the faint twinkling of starlight, blinking into and out of existence all around the other fleet, faint blue traces of fusion cannon beams were barely perceptible in the dark starlit backdrop of deep space. The battlegroup was under heavy attack.
“ Hermes to the fleet; advance attack speed, and engage.” The voice of Admiral Takeda Sato rang out through the speakers.
On the viewer, Krenaran stealth ships could be seen rapidly darting into and out of the battlegroup performing attack runs, like hungry barracudas picking off stragglers. Their sleek, angular wedge shaped hulls almost identical to the Liberties own, minus the plethora of upgraded systems, with their dark matt-black colouring interspersed with silvery metallic panels. Towards the rear of the tightly packed mass of vessels, the flaming broken hull of an Alexander class medium cruiser listed. Explosions continued to rip through the shattered vessels hull.
Jesus, Michael thought, they are like a pack of fucking wolves. “Order battlestations, bring reactive hull armour online and boost power to the fusion cannon, and torpedo launchers.”
Virtually as he was saying it, the command centre became a hive of activity as the veteran crew of the Liberty carried out his orders with speed and precision, lights dimmed, giving the room a menacing air, an alarm gently rang out, indicating the ship was at maximum readiness. The reactive hull armour crackled as a faint blue shimmer ran through the dark outer hull of the ship. The awesomely powerful Solarian fusion cannon powered up, with its customary low pitched ‘thoom’ noise. The Liberty was now ready for battle.
The viewscreen shimmered into existence once again, “6 ^th battlegroup, break and attack.”
The Liberty and the accompanying Solarian elements of the fleet, shot forward, easily outpacing the rest of the E.D. F battlegroup, thanks to their far more powerful thruster systems.
The massive Hermes hung back, co-ordinating the rest of the fleet, and made ready to disgorge its waves of fighters and bombers it had placed on hot standby, when the time was right.
The huge, hulking Danitza’s, ponderously manoeuvred their great size to bring their awesome weapon systems to bear. While the smaller, more agile Ghandhi class destroyers and Mandela class light cruisers sped forward into the assault.
Some of the Alexander class medium cruisers hung back to form up as escorts, helping protect the larger ships from attack themselves. The accompanying Jefferson class heavy destroyers although barely a third of the size of a Danitza added their considerable firepower to the fray, their specially designed rotary rail-cannons although much smaller than the battleships allow them to get in close and literally pound the enemy to pieces, some of them had gone through the upgrade process, changing their rail-cannons for the Solarian based high power lasers, as rail-cannon shells proved so ineffective against Krenaran shipping during the onset of the war.