“CFD Orion, you are cleared for launch. Good luck and Godspeed.”

  Robert Ferguson nodded, “Thank you Stationmaster. All being well we will be back soon.” He turned to the Captain, “Sir, we’re cleared for launch.”

  “Thanks Rob,” Gordon said and turned to face forward, “Take us out Chris.”

  The helmsman edged the huge ship gently away from the central control tower and turned it towards one of the outer doors. All the workmen and shuttlecraft stopped to watch the newest ship in the fleet glide gracefully out of the station and into space.

  Nathan tried to relax in his chair to the right of the captains and let the helmsman do his job. However, most of his career so far he had piloted ships of various sizes, from fighters to Destroyers and Cruisers, so he had always found it difficult to sit and allow someone else to do it. Despite his unease, the Orion exited the Orbital Platform without any problems and turned towards deep space.

  “Chris, half NSpace until we clear Earth's gravity well, then engage the Hyperspace engines and head to the designated co-ordinates. I’ll be in my office if anyone needs me.” With that Gordon stood and made his way to the left of the bridge and a door opened to allow him into the Captain’s personal office.

  With the Captain gone from the bridge, command fell to Nathan, but he was well aware that the crew knew this ship better than he did, so he just sat back in his seat and let them do their jobs.

  NSpace was the term given to Normal Space, it was also the name given to the speed when travelling through normal space, sometimes abbreviated to NS. The hyperspace engines were never normally used in a star system as the various gravity effects generated by the other planets could cause errors within the ships navigation, which in space could cause you to appear light years from where you planned, or even send you through a star. Nathan guessed that this mission was critical enough for the Confed to bend the rules slightly to allow the Orion to get to the battle site quicker.

  Within five minutes, the Orion had cleared Earth's gravity and Chris was preparing for the jump to Hyperspace.

  "Commander, Hyperspace engines are ready."

  Nathan nodded, "Let's go." He said, "Go for it."

  Nathan watched the stars elongate as the ship accelerated and shot away from the Sol System. The co-ordinates had already been entered in to the computer and Chris gave the helm over to the AI, and sat back.

  “How long until we return to NSpace?” Nathan asked the helmsman.

  Chris looked at the readouts before him, “About four hours. Until then, other than any problems, we have very little to do.”

  Nathan wasn’t sure that he trusted an AI, however advanced, but he knew that lots of testing had gone on to perfect the system and having read the technical specs, knew that it had performed faultlessly during those tests. He also knew that he really didn’t have any choice any way, so he settled down to enjoy the quiet, before entering the unknown.

  After four hours of watching the stars shoot past and reading the last specs on the ship, Nathan was glad when the alarm sounded to say that the co-ordinates had been reached. Chris disengaged the hyperspace engines and the ship moved back into normal space.

  Nathan turned to the science station, “Sam, scan the area, long and short range. I want to know if there’s anything out here that shouldn’t be.”

  Samantha ran her fingers over her console and turned back to Nathan, “Nothing here apart from the Comet, Endeavour and the Lincoln. Wreckage from the Illustrious and the Defiant is scattered throughout the area, scanning it now.”

  Nathan nodded and turned to Robert, “Hail the Endeavour, let them know we’re here and get a status update.” He touched a control on the arm of his chair. “Captain, we have arrived at the battle site.”

  “On my way.” Gordon responded.

  A few seconds later, Gordon entered the bridge. “Status?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary here on long or short range scans. The Endeavour is on comms and waiting for you.” Nathan answered.

  Gordon turned to Robert, “Patch them through.”

  A heavily bearded face appeared on the main view-screen. “Good morning Gordon. Are we glad to see you? Sitting here for four days on our own has not been much fun.”

  “Captain Arnold.” Gordon said with a smile, “We’re glad to see you too. How are things going? Have you made any progress as to discovering what happened here?”

  Captain Arnold shook his head. “No. The residue energy is so different to what we are used to that the scans are coming up with all sorts of gibberish. I hope that Orion can make more sense of it. Lt Fletcher is awake now but can’t help too much more either. She can only tell us what she saw, and most of that doesn’t make sense. When you get here, come on over and we can go through the reports. Endeavour out.”

  Gordon turned to his bridge crew, “Chris, Take us to where the other ships are and then hold position. Sam, scan the area and liaise with your counterparts on the other ships to get any information that they have and then get Orion to work on it. See what you can discover. Nathan, you’re coming with me. Karl, keep an eye out, the moment anything happens that shouldn’t, let me know.” Then motioning Nathan to follow he turned to the door and left the bridge.

  Down in the docking bay a shuttle was prepped and ready. As Gordon and Nathan climbed aboard, the doors closed and the pilot lifted off, swinging out into the vastness of space. The Endeavour hung motionless of the port bow, with the Lincoln and Comet beyond. The shuttle flew between the two ships and approached the smaller docking port on the Endeavour.

  Touching down in the landing bay, the shuttle doors opened and Gordon and Nathan were met by Captain Matt Arnold, who looked even more like a bear in real life. The three men shook hands and made their way to the briefing room. The first thing Nathan noticed about the endeavour was how much smaller than the Orion it was. He’d spent most of his active service on a class of ship similar to the Endeavour, but he was still taken aback by how much larger the Orion was.

  The briefing room was a large room with a metal table placed in the centre. Sitting around the table were the senior officers from the Endeavour, Comet and Lincoln as well as Elizabeth Fletcher, who smiled when she recognised Nathan. Nathan grinned back, genuinely pleased to see her.

  Captain Arnold introduced his first officer, Commander Thomas, a small dark haired woman with pale skin and piercing green eyes and the captain and first officers of the other two ships, Captain Jones, a stocky no nonsense woman with short gray hair and Commander Whitaker, a tall balding man with dark skin and a ready smile of the Comet and Captain Vaughn, a very short and squat man with a pencil thin moustache and Commander Detchev, a heavily built bald man but with big bushy eyebrows of the Lincoln.

  Nathan let his Captain do all the questioning as had been agreed on the journey over, he just sat and listened to all the reports and ideas that were being passed around, trying to get a grasp on what was happening.

  It appeared that no real progress had been made. The energy signatures from the enemy weapons were completely unknown to the computers on the older ships; they all seemed to be pinning their hopes that the Orion would be able make some sense of them.

  The wreckage of the two carriers had yielded no information either, other that the apparent ease with which the two had been destroyed, although they had located the flight recorder from the Illustrious and had patched it into the Endeavours computer.

  Beth Fletcher had been helping as much as she was able but was also unable to shed any light on what had prompted the attack. As far as she could tell they had appeared out of nowhere and just attacked. The first she had heard was the klaxons indicating an attack and the order to scramble.

  She stressed that the two Confed carriers had been completely outclassed by the aliens and kept saying that there was nothing they could have done differently. Captain Arnold repeatedly stated that there was no blame attached to anyone regarding the destruction of the two carriers, but it didn’t seem to reassure her much. The officers were however very interested in Beth’s report of the destruction of the Alien fighter.

  “Have we found the debris of the alien ship?” Gordon asked.

  Matt nodded slowly. “We have and we've scanned it, but so far we can’t make head nor tail of the results, the material is something that we’ve never encountered before, almost impervious to our scans. We are in the process of bringing some aboard to be analysed, but now that you're here, we'll take it to the Flagship and we can hope that the Orion will be able to make more sense of it.”

  “Sam’s running through the analysis with your crews and Orion now, so hopefully she’ll have some news for us soon.” Gordon looked around the table, “Until then, I suggest we retire and get something to eat. I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry. Shall we meet up on the Orion at 18:00 hours and update each other then?”

  The other officers agreed and the meeting broke up. Nathan quickly made his way over to Beth and gave her a hug.

  “It’s been a long time.” He stated.

  She smiled and nodded, “It certainly has, six years in fact, since my Graduation parade. You were already a hotshot pilot then, now you’re first officer on the Confed flagship. I should never have let you go! Talking of that how is Emily?”

  Nathan laughed, “The friction when we were fighting always overshadowed everything else. I think that if we hadn’t split up, then the lecturers at the academy might have split us up. Emily’s fine thanks, unlike us she’s sunning herself on holiday. Are you coming over to the Orion?”

  Beth nodded, “Yes, just as soon as my Talon’s up and running sufficiently, I’ll be flying over. See you then? Dinner?”

  “As soon as I can get away we’ll meet for dinner. Let me know when you arrive and we can arrange it then.”

  Gordon was waiting by the doors talking to Captain Arnold when Nathan walked over with Beth.

  “Once the sample of the alien ship is brought over to the Orion, I’ll get Sam and Orion working on it.” Gordon was saying, then he grinned, "Come over to the Orion and I’ll show her off to you."

  Captain Arnold smiled back and nodded, “I look forward to it Gordon.”

  The two Orion officers made their way back to their shuttle and over to the Flagship. Then they headed straight to the science lab where they met Sam.

  “Any progress?” Gordon asked as they entered.

  Sam shrugged, “A little. The weapons appear to be energy based, but the energy that’s being used is something that I haven’t seen before. It seems to be much denser that anything we have. It goes through our shields like they aren’t there. I might be able to make some modifications to the shield harmonics, but no promises that it’ll work.”

  “Just try your best. We’re going to need all the help that we can get if this gets any worse.” Gordon smiled reassuringly, “Keep me posted, I’ll be on the bridge.”

  The next few hours passed without any incident and Nathan was sitting in his quarters reading through the crew requests when the intercom buzzed.

  “Scott here.”

  “Nathan.” It was Beth, “Are we still on for dinner?”

  “Absolutely. Where are your quarters? I’ll meet you there in, say,” he looked at the clock on his desk, “an hour?”

  “Sounds good to me. Deck twelve, section 4, room 8. See you in an hour.”

  Nathan hurriedly had a shower, shaved and got dressed and left his quarters with ten minutes to spare. Making his way down to Desk twelve he reminisced on his last few years in the academy when he had met Beth.

  He had been almost eleven when she had started, a year later than him. He was already well on the way to becoming one of the best pilots the academy had ever seen and he wasn’t afraid to show off in front of anyone.

  That was actually how they’d met. Nathan had been taking part in a demonstration for the new students. They had been flying small one man training craft, and were involved in a mock battle in the space training station back in Earth orbit.

  He had been leading his ‘squadron’ of six fellow students, and was up against another seven students. The first year students had been watching from viewing windows to help with their own training.

  At first the ‘battle’ had gone well, Nathan‘s team had lost one to the ‘enemies’ three. However, Christian Hollows, one of the few students who came close to Nathan’s ability, had led the other team. He wasn’t happy that Nathan was winning and had decided to try a manoeuvre that backfired badly.

  Not only did he destroy his own craft, he also took out two of his own team and Nathan’s craft. The two members of his own team had been killed outright, but Nathan and Christian had survived by the skin of their teeth.

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  The first year students had been tasked to help take the two injured students to the infirmary, and Beth had stayed with Nathan for the entire afternoon after he’d come out of the operating theatre.

  She had visited him as much as she could during the three weeks that he had been stuck in the hospital and they had soon started ‘going out’. They stayed together all through the seven years that they had been at flight school together, but they’d broken up soon after Nathan had graduated.

  They’d stayed as friends up to Beth’s graduation and then they’d been sent away on tours of duty to either ends of the confederation so had lost contact in the rush of their new duties.

  Nathan arrived at Beth’s door just before time and taking a deep breath, pressed the door buzzer.

  The door opened and Nathan’s breath caught in his throat. Beth was dressed in a tight red top and black trousers that hugged her figure and left little to the imagination. Beth caught his expression and laughed.

  “All of my clothes were lost on the Illustrious, so I had to borrow some from Samantha, but I see that I can still get a reaction from you!”

  Nathan blushed, “Yes, well,” he stammered, “shall we go?”

  They made their way to the mess hall and after getting food from the counter found a table in the corner.

  “I know this isn’t overly private, but it’s the best I can do under the circumstances.”Nathan apologised.

  Beth laughed, “It’s fine. I always enjoyed military food!”

  Nathan laughed as well, “You always were a strange girl!”

  They ate in silence for a short time, enjoying the old memories that returned.

  “I’m sorry about what happened to the Illustrious. She was a good ship and Captain Fitzgordon was a good man. I served under him for a time soon after I graduated.”

  Beth smiled sadly, “I lost a lot of friends on that ship. I can’t wait to get another shot at those Bastards, to make them pay for what they did. We had no warning whatsoever. There was no hyperspace alert or anything. They just appeared. It was as if they have portable jump devices.”

  Jump devices had been a theoretical possibility for a few years now, ever since the jump gates had been devised. Hyperspace was one way to travel the galaxy, but it would have taken weeks to travel between the planetary systems, so scientists working for the various galactic races had managed to harness wormhole technology to create jump gates.

  There were gates in each planetary system linked to another gate in another system. By using the gates, ships were transported almost instantly over vast distances. Unfortunately gates could only be linked to a single gate so travelling across the known galaxy still took time, but a lot shorter than hyperspace.

  Hyper-sleeper ships could have travelled the distance, and had done so hundreds of years ago, but the hyperspace fuel was limited to what a ship could carry, so the sleepers would have had to have been massive to be able to carry enough fuel to travel so far.

  “If they have portable jump drives, then they would be able to appear anywhere. But their ships would have to be far bigger than the one that attacked you. The generators needed for the jump gates are huge; they would never fit into a Starship.” Nathan looked thoughtful as he took another bite of his food.

  “Whatever they used it gave them the ability to appear out of nowhere without the usual hyperspace distortion that the Illustrious would have detected.” Beth stated.

  Before Nathan could respond, Robert Ferguson’s voice sounded over the comms system, “All hands report to duty stations. I repeat all hands report to duty stations.”

  Nathan looked up and dropped his fork on to his plate in frustration, “That’s typical. Why is an alert always sounded during my off hours?”, he looked apologetically at Beth, I’ve got to report to the bridge, you might as well come with me as you have no duty station of your own to report to. There might be something that you can help with.”

  They followed the exodus from the mess hall and made their way to the main lift. Stepping inside, Nathan asked for the bridge and they waited as the lift travelled half the length of the ship. In just under two minutes they were stepping onto the back of the Bridge.

  Nathan hurried across to his seat while Beth followed to stand just to the side. Captain Walker looked up at their approach and nodded to Beth.

  “Nathan, we have a priority message from Command. It says that there’s been another incursion and we’ve been ordered to go and investigate. Comet and Lincoln are remaining here to continue the analysis, but Endeavour is coming with us.” He turned to Lieutenant Cox, “Chris, please plot a course as per Comm-Centrals co-ordinates and signal the Endeavour to see if she’s ready. I want to leave as soon as possible so please hurry her along.”

  Chris Cox nodded and turned to his console, talking into his mike whilst tapping away on his screen. After a couple of minutes he turned back.

  “Course laid in Captain, Endeavour signals she’s ready.”

  Captain Walker nodded, “All hands,” he spoke into the comms system in his chair, “Prepare for Hyperspace.” He turned back to Chris, “Lieutenant, go for Hyperspace on my mark? Now.”

  Nathan watched the screen as the stars elongated as the ship leapt into Hyperspace. “How long until we return to NSpace?” he asked.

  Chris looked at his console, “Approximately thirty minutes sir.”

  “Very well.” Captain Walker spoke in to the comms system again, “This is the Captain, we don’t know what to expect when we re-enter NSpace so be prepared for anything. All hands to battle stations and prepare for the unknown.”

  Over the next half an hour, the ship transformed from a science vessel into the flagship of the Confederation fleet, ready and willing for battle. Weapons systems were readied and tested, missiles were primed, and the fusion engines were locked down in case of any damage.

  The tension slowly built on the bridge as the time approached to return to NSpace. Nathan sat as calmly as he could in his seat, without showing the tension that always came before possible combat. Eventually Orion’s voice sounded across the bridge.

  “One minute to NSpace.”

  Captain Walker walked from his office and sat down in his chair. “Ready people, we don’t know what to expect when we arrive.”

  Nathan marvelled at the calm confidence that emanated from his Captain. It seemed to permeate around the bridge and everyone visibly seemed calmer. Almost seeming to read his first officers thoughts, Gordon turned to him and winked.

  Trying to keep a straight face, Nathan turned to his displays and watched the final few seconds of the countdown.

  “NSpace in 5-4-3-2-1.” Chris counted down.

  The ship seemed to pause for a moment as it jumped from Hyperspace to normal space and then alarms and claxons sounded all over the bridge. Everyone started shouting updates at once as they began to receive information from their systems.

  Captain Walker stood up and shouted for quiet over the noise. Instantly the bridge quietened down.

  “Right, what’s happening?”

  The main viewer showed what all the shouting was about as it displayed drifting debris and explosions. One of the huge tube shaped ships hovered in the middle of the screen while three Confed carriers surrounded it. Two more carcasses span silently, spewing oxygen out into space. Fighters spun and twisted like a huge mass of flies as they tried to destroy each other.

  “Karl, status?” Gordon prompted.

  “Oh, yes, sorry sir,” Karl stuttered and turned from the carnage on the screen, “We have the carriers Covington and Bristol, with the destroyer Samuel and fighter support. The two casualties are the Madagascar and L’orien. Both the Bristol and Samuel are badly damaged, shields down to approximately twenty percent. The Covington is largely undamaged.”

  “Launch all fighters. As soon as we’re in range I want a full spread of Quantum torpedoes fired at that mothership. Let’s see what Orion can make of it.” Captain Walker sat back down.

  “Aye Aye Sir, Full spread all launchers.” Karl responded and pressed buttons on the console in front of him.

  The main view screen showed ten torpedoes as they hurtled towards the huge tube. Nathan held his breath as the torpedoes closed the gap, but suddenly they all veered off in various directions and exploded harmlessly in space.

  “Dammit!” Gordon said quietly, and then more normally, “Karl, what happened?”

  The ships weapons officer answered, “There was suddenly nothing to lock onto. It was as if the ship suddenly disappeared.”

  There was a large flash and the view screen momentarily darkened, when it lightened again there was another floating piece of wreckage that had recently been a Starship.

  “Sir; that was the Samuel. Lifeboats on sensors.” Sam said.

  “Tell them to stay near the wreckage. We’ll get to them if we can.” Gordon answered.

  “Yes sir.” Robert said turning to his console.

  The spread of torpedoes had attracted the attention of the mothership and she started to turn towards the Orion.

  “Sam, please tell me those shield modifications are ready and waiting.” Gordon asked.

  “Yes sir, we may last five minutes now!” she answered grimly.

  “I hope you can give us longer than that!” answered the Captain, “Brace for impact people.”

  The whole ship lurched sideways as the first of the enemy beams slashed across the shields. Amazingly they held.

  “Shields at eighty three percent.” Karl said. “Seventy Percent.” as another beam slashed out.

  “Fire all photon banks.” Gordon snapped.

  Photon banks all along the Orion’s starboard flank fired at the mothership and splashed harmlessly across the shields. The alien ship fired more beams and again the Orion lurched with the impact.

  This time one of the beams got through the shields and impacted on the hull. A section of the starboard hull vanished in a spray of vaporised alloy and exploding conduits. Air escaped explosively and wreckage disappeared into space.

  Alarm bells shrieked on the bridge as damage reports scrolled across screens and were shouted into earpieces.

  “Hull breach on deck’s seventeen and eighteen. Casualties reported. Emergency force fields in place and holding.” Robert shouted.

  “Keep firing Karl, everything we have,” Captain Gordon turned to Robert, “Contact the Bristol, Covington and Endeavour and order them to gather their fighters and get the hell out of here. We’ll hold them as long as possible and then retreat. Order all our Talons to return. Chris, take us in towards the enemy ship.”

  Space was momentarily lit with flashes as the Orion bravely charged at the mothership firing every photon laser that it had. Quantum torpedoes roared out and harmlessly veered off and exploded. The enemy ship was blocked from view as the energy discharged across it’s shields as they diverted all incoming fire.

  The Talon fighters had broken off from the battle and were racing back to their retreating carriers who had turned and were pushing as hard as their NSpace drives would allow. The Orion was staggering more and more as the enemy beams increasingly broke through the shields and ripped huge chunks from the hull of the ship.

  On the smoke filled bridge, the air circulation unit had stopped. Bared wires hung down and sparked dangerously. There was more than one blackened workstation and a few bodies lying near them.

  “Shields down to ten percent, Captain.” Karl shouted over the noise.

  “Hull breaches on multiple decks. Casualty reports coming in.” Robert shouted in turn.

  Just then there was the biggest lurch yet and the ship swung round to the right. Inertial dampeners failed momentarily and everyone was thrown against their seats.

  “What happened?” Nathan shouted when he could sit upright again.

  “The engine room's been hit. Main engines are offline. Power down to fifty percent, and we have no weapons.” Karl said.

  “Helms down as well Captain.” Chris said, slamming his hands on his console.

  The bridge was strangely quiet after the din of the past few moments. Other than the sparking wires and the occasional computer ping no one could hear anything not even the sound of the enemy.

  “Why have they stopped firing?” Sam asked.

  “Sir! Look at the enemy ship.” said a surprised Robert.

  Nathan looked at the screen but couldn’t see anything.

  “Magnify!” Gordon snapped.

  “Magnifying sir.” Robert acknowledged.

  The main view screen showed the mother ship and Robert pressed a few buttons zooming in on a patch of the ship. Clearly showing was a hole ripped in the hull of the ship.

  As they gazed out of the view screen, the massive tube shaped mothership, turned away and directly in front of it there appeared a shimmering ’hole‘ in space. The ship waited while all its fighters boarded and then moved through the hole and disappeared.