here's the second pat of my wee storie. The next one is gonna be a little differnt. This one appears to have turned out a little longer than i had planned. oh well.
CHAPTER 2 :Burnt Offernings.
“What we got coming at us” calmly questioned Trev. All along hoping that it wasn’t another major xenon offensive. Not that it would have been much of a problem, since his trading was part of the front line of defenses. It had an extended military hanger on board, this hanger now included half the whole internal hanger space of the station in stead of the usual eighth. Also they now had the corvette “Infection” stationed on a recently installed military enhanced external dock. Which was located on the other side of the station to the trading one, and was capable of docking and powering three M6 class craft. As well as providing armored hoods for the front of the craft to enable secure access to the crafts even if the station was under attack by mass drivers. Also if needed help could be called on from the Spec Ops monitoring station which housed nearly as many craft as a M1.
“I’m not sure replied Charlotte all I got was a god awful scream over the radio frequencies and then silence. Not even the normal com chatter it’s almost as if everyone is waiting for something.”
“We’ve got a projectile coming at just under 3000m/s”, announced Michel.
“We got a size and destination for this”. Question Trev.
“Yep. Here, and 2 minutes”.
Trev turned to his computer pressed a symbol that looked like some small rectangle with a circle in the middle. The circle was filled with a representation of some mesh or other. The symbol flashed once, then a dark bar came across the screen with the words ‘coms open’ scrolling along it.
“I want Angle wing launched and them to destroy what ever that projectile is.” Trev then ordered the two specially installed flak turrets to target the projectile and fire as soon as it comes in range. More as a reassurance to the crew then a defensive measure. Beause at the speed it was coming they would be lucky to get two shots of. Their best and only hope was that that angle wing could destroy the incoming threat. He then sat and watched the Holographic representation of the projectile coming towards the base. It looked like a strange pyramid almost incomplete like it was just the front of something larger. As the projectile advanced ever onwards, the image of it became ever clearer. Gradually it was easier to see that it was pointed at the front.
Angle wing took off with after Burners on full. Scorching the immediate area in the hanger around them. Angle wing was mad up of three special prototype discoverers. Only a few dozen of them had ever been made and most of them were used by black ops, with a couple on each carrier. These discoverers were capable of 1000m/s. Two of the three mounted a pair of dc mass drivers, whilst the other mounted a single mass driver and a tractor beam. The dc’s were so called as they were a double caliber version of the standard military mass driver. As they approached the incoming threat, Captain Charles Danna, (a distant relative of Ban Danna), opened up his com.
“Line abreast if you please” he ordered.
“We will only one have pass at this so make every shot count”
“Any idea what ‘this’ is,” queried Ensign Chapman. As their ships thundered ever closer to the oncoming threat.
“Sir it looks like the front end of scorpion” Noted Ensign Mark Gardna in the third Discoverer.
“Yes but don’t forget that it’s doing nearly 3K/s, and that the front ends of those ships are specially armored, so that in a last ditch effort the pilots could ram their quarry. If it hits the trading station it will make quite a dent.” Pointed out Charles.
Angle wing continued ever onwards straight towards what was once a Split M4 class ship and had a unfortunate entry in to Black Hole Sun.
“Were now at thirty seconds to intercept, slow to 100m/s so we have maximum firing time.” Ordered Charles.
The three discoveres slowed and the Gun ports covering the dc’s onboard Chapman and Danna’s discoverers opened. As the fragment of the Scorpion came with in 10K of Angle wing they opened fire. The Next three seconds past like it was three minutes for Charles. As he stared at the stream of over size mass driver projectiles streaming from his ship, towards the unwitting missile. At one second till they past the Scopion the projectiles started hitting it. The slugs were hitting the amour with such force that they would melt chunks from it. Gradually they started to make an impact and the dents they were making in the armor became holes, meaning that the bullest could start hitting internal componets. As there was now a clear path the bullets started to hit the auxiliary fuel tank, which was located in the very front of the ship. This caused the remnant of the scorpion exploded, sending small molten particles every where. Chapman’s discoverer was the closest to the scorpion when it exploded. So was worst hit, completely depleting his shields and damaging his hull. This meant that his speed was now down to a more sedate 300m/s.
“Damage report” said Captain Danna.
“Left dc out, all but one shield destroyed and hull at 30%, speed now down to 300m/s,” matter of factly stated Chapman
“Minor impacts to my shields, which are recoving normally every thing else it A ok,” reported Mark.
On the Trading Station the whole crew that was on the command deck was in the control room. Staring at the hologram table, watching the events that were happening between them and the north gate. The holographic display was so zoomed in, that when the discoverers started to open fire they could see the stream of projectiles coming from them and hitting their target. All of a sudden the target disappeared much to the reliefe of all in the control room. Also the holograms of the ships faded to nothingness as their location was obscured by the explosion, The first thing that was seen to reappear was a tiny object about the size of a small missile heading away from the ecliptic at far slower speed of 600m/s.
“Captain Danna Status?” Radioed Trev as he watched the three discoverers reappear on the display and cheer went up.
“Target destroyed, two ships fine. Chapmans has been serverly damaged, but can limp back to base” replied Captain Danna.
“Good job, can you intercept and ID the object that flew out of the explosion it may be the black box. If it is, it needs to be recovered if at all possible”
“Yes sir we’re on to it” Danna confirmed, whilst turning his ship to the heading that the suspected black box headed.
“You heard the man let’s get after that object”
“Ai sir” said Mark whilst bringing his Discoverer in to position just of the port wing of Danna’s.
Once there, They engaged their after Burners accelerating their craft to their maximum speed at 8g. Twelve seconds later they were cruising after the unknown object gradually eating in to it’s lead. After thirty seconds of chasing the object they were now just under twenty kilometers away from it.
“It’s defiantly a black box and appears to be mostly intact” announced Mark as he looked up from his scanner screen and towards a point in space in front of him where the black box was now unsuccessfully trying to fly away from them.
“That’s good, is it responding to the standard retrieval codes” Asked Charles as he tried to get a fix on it with his vision enhancement goggles.
“That’s the mostly bit. Guess we’ll have to do it the hard way. I’m charging the tractor beam. And preparing for the collection of the box” Mark said as he flipped the switch for the tractor beam. Although the beam was a miniaturized version of the ones used by capital ships, it was never intendended to be used by M5 class ships. To get over this problem they had filled most of the M5 with high energy capacitors which had to be charged. This meant that the tractor beam had only a limited time of use, before it needed to be recharged. The time however,could be extended by the transfer of energy from other sytems.
It took 25 seconds for the capacitors to charge, after this time there were nearly on top of the black box. Mark fell into formation with the black box, 50 meters directly behind it. Charles fell in to a loose formation 1km off of Marks starboard side.
“We’ve found the object of our chase. It is indeed a Black box, though it’s slightly damaged. Ensign Gardna is attempting to retrieve it manually.” Charles radioed to the Trading station.
“Acknowledged. Keep me abreast of the progress and any information that you can get out of the box.” An anxious Commander Gardna said back.
Mark powered down his shields and fired his tractor beam at the black box. He then gradually started to retard his speed. As the black box was rotating around several axis. None of which were the one which it was traveling along, his first attempt failed. This was because the spinning box meant that the point the tractor beam was locked on disappeared to the other side of the box causing the fail safe on the tractor beam to kicked in to stop it ripping what ever object it was locked on apart. Also as the Mark’s discoverer was starting to slow it caused the black box to change direction and spin even more erratically.
“Dam, this is going to be harder then I though.” Said Mark, as he readjusted his craft to be back behind the Black box.
He then changed the setting of the tractor beam to a wide area setting. Although this used far more energy it would also stop the box from rotating far quicker. Checking the energy levels of the tractor beam he was pleased to note that it was now back at full power. “Those shields must use a lot of energy if it can charge that quickly.” Mark though to himself as he pulled the trigger and locked on to the black box for a second time. Although this time it was not just one beam to one point on the box. It was a dozen smaller less powerful beams each trying to keep the bit of the box they had locked on at the same distance from the craft, and as and when a beam got broken a new beam would lock on to the opposite side and try to do the same. Gradually the black box’s rotation was ceased, Mark then checked the Energy level. “Good its at thirty percent and rising. Should be able to halt this box in one.” He radioed to ever was monitoring his progress.
“Preparing to stop this box for the second time” Mark announced.
“Good and be quick about it,” Taunted Charles.
The black box was now quickly bought to a complete halt. As it was no longer spinning, it was a simple operation for Mark to open his cargo bay and retrieve it. Mark then switched the power back to his shields and fell into formation with Charles, who had swung his ship round and started to head for the trading station.
“We’ve retrieved the box and are heading for home” Charles radioed in.
“Good job, have Ensign Gardna see if he can ascertain any information from the box before you reach the station, time is of the essence we do not know why that ship exploded through our gate” Commander Gardna replied.
“You hear that Mark, just put your ship in to a formation autopilot to mine and have a look at what you can get out of that box in your cargo hold”
Mark dutifully obey the ordered all the time wondering if the commander knew just how crampt it was getting in to the cargo hold of a discoverer. He slipped out of his bulky space suit and squeezed himself past his chair and the paneling behind it, in to the small and low cargo hold of his ship. Sitting dead to the world in the middle of the hold was the black box. The out side was extremely battered, with one corner missing. But being as it was basicly about a foot of armour surrounding a dtat storage unit, it seemd very likely that the data storage unit was intact. Unfortunaly the external port for retrieval of the main data was destroyed, meaning that the box would have to be taken apart to get at it. The port for the short term data, mainly the last thirty seconds that was recored. Appeared to still intact and that it could easily be plugged in to the main computer of marks discoverer. Mark scrammpled around his cargo hold to get in one of the storage compartments that happened to have such a cable and a port connected to his main computer. There was one small snag the Black box was too far away for the cable to reach. This presented a little predicament of how he was going to move an object which was basically a three foot buy two foot square lump of armor. Then it struck him, he turned of the artificial gravity and shoved the box towards the cable. As it was now well in range of the cable mark turned the gravity back on and promptly fell back down to the floor. He now scrambled around looking for the end of the cable again, hoping it hadn‘t fallen under the black box. To his relief it was sitting on top of one of the other storage containers. He grabbed it and plugged it in to the black box. The indicator lights next to where the cable plugged in to his ship, lit up indicating that the connection was good. Now all mark had to do was scramble back in to his flight chair and he could access the data with in.
As mark sat in his chair he sifted through the data, to his great relief that all this effort hadn’t been a waste of time, it was intact. Once he found this he sent a com to the trading station asking for a secured channel to download the data to the station.
Charlotte received the request and opened a secure channel. “Secure data channel open,” She announced. More to inform the people in the control room then to tell Ensign Mark Gardna.
As the data streamed from his ship Mark Com’d Captain Danna. “You seen this data. It looks like that there was a major skirmish in the ‘472, and that the scorpion was being chased out of the sector.”
“Ai I saw it. Guess I’ll be going on a little recon mission in a minute or two.” Charles said back with a hint of anticipation about what might to happening in the next few minutes.
In the control room the Commander and Captain Miadon, who had returned to find out what was causing the chaos that had erupted just as he got to the entrance of the bar.
“So what do you think,” Trev asked Chris. “Do you reckon it’s the start of an invasion?”
“I’m not sure, But it doesn’t look like Xenon aren’t going about their business as usual. What ever that might be.” Chris replied.
“That’s what I thought.” Trev said whilst turning towards Charlotte,
“Ensign Gardna patch me through to Captain Danna”
“Sir your connected” Said Charlotte after flipping one of the three flashing switches. There was a switch for each of the ships owned by the station and a couple more for any extra ships that they may have under their direct command. The switches light up when any ship was off the station and flashed if they were under specific orders which weren’t there standard patrol of the sector.
“Captain Danna. I have a little mission for you. I want you to go take a peek at what’s happening in ‘472. You do still have those probes on your ship I trust.”
“Yes sir I do and I’ll head for the sector right away.” Said Charles, as he turned his discoverer towards the North gate and hit the After Burner.
A Misadventure (chapter 2)
Moderators: TheElf, Moderators for English X Forum
-
Captain Chris sTc
- Posts: 991
- Joined: Fri, 6. Feb 04, 01:21
