by Terry Frost
Katin turned and looked at Cina and said, “We shall give the Daakie sometime to settle in, then I want you to schedule a single Predator to go to Daak on a regular basis. We have given much to help our friends and I don’t want it all to perish in case the Hive comes back.”
“But, Your Grace. We have all but depleted the Hive in our sector of the galaxy. I’m not without reservations about their return, but we can feel good it won’t be anytime soon.”
“It would please me greatly if that turns out to be true, but no one knows their true numbers and the two nests, plus the strange ship I’m guessing held their queen must have had gone somewhere the queen knew would be safe for them to go. The thought of watching over our Daakie friends if only for a while pleases me greatly.”
“As you wish, my beloved Empress. I will order one of our commanders to comply with your command.”
“Please, Cina, I wish you to remember when we are alone that you address me as Kish. There are times when I only want a friend to talk to, and as you are my only one true friend, it would please me if we could drop our titles when we are alone.”
“As you wish, Kish,” Cina said with a smile that made the Empress laugh. “How is your child doing? Is it still moving about?”
“She is doing fine, and yes, she is an active one.”
“How do you know the child is a female?”
“Because my child being a female pleases me.”
“I surely want you to be pleased, Kish, as do all your subjects. I remember a few times in the past when you were not pleased and no one wants to see that again.”
Chapter 25
It took a month for Admiral Allen’s briefing video to reach the USC on Mars. During the last two years, the USC had been building two new starships with the designation of Guardians. The starships were sleek in their design and resembled the Air Force’s B4 bomber used by that branch of service in the years 2190 through 2225. The B4’s were called the flying wing as they looked like a wide, single wing, and carried a full payload of new powerful weaponry, including the Aborian Photon torpedo and teleportation technologies forwarded to the USC by Allen, several messages back.
The Martian engineers also discovered a new combination of metals that gave the Guardians stealth capabilities that came as close to cloaking as Humanly possible. The USC committee felt it necessary to build the ships and send them to Colossus solely for the purpose of extra firepower to aid in the protection of Humans only generation starship.
It was through Admiral Allen’s briefing messages that lead to the USC’s desire to send him the extra protection from aliens they had learned were one of the possibly many alien races that could potentially destroy their priceless generations starship.
The USC named the two ships, Trident and Hercules, and informed Admiral Allen by way of the return message, that they would be sending the Guardian class starships when they were scheduled to be completed in under a year. Their only hope was that Colossus could manage to avoid annihilation until the new starships could arrive, which including the year to finish building plus the two years it would take for them to reach Colossus.
The Trident and Hercules were large ships, much larger than the Battlecruisers Striker and Perseus, and each carried twenty members of the USC’s Navy and twenty-four Marines. Each starship would be commanded by Marine aviators with the rank of Lt. Colonel.
****
Chief McManus and his team of engineers had replaced the hyperdrive actuator and wiring in the conduit leading to the actuator. Colossus was nearing the first planet in the Goldie Locks Zone in the Jovan System. The Red Dwarf had six planets orbiting it; one gas giant and five rocky planets. Of those rocky planets, only three were within the habitable zone.
Two of the three were a blue with one being a darker shade of blue than the other. The third planet was an odd one. None of the crew on the bridge had ever seen a rocky planet with a ring around it. The planet was quickly eliminated from the favored list as sometime not too long ago it had a collision with a large heavenly body and the remnants of that body was what made up the ring.
Before moving further into the system and to the other two planets, Admiral Allen was wondering if the system was a good candidate for a new home. His concern was where did the thing that caused the damage to the planet come from and what was it.
Allen decided to do some investigating of the Jovan System out past the other side of the star. He wanted to see if there might possibly be a large asteroid field behind the star they couldn’t see on Colossus’s sensors.
He sent the Perseus and Captain Sokolov and his crew on the investigating mission while Colossus and her crew ran maintenance checks shipwide while waiting for the return of Perseus. Colossus stayed in the area of the ringed planet for three days until Perseus completed the investigation.
Captian Sokolov came back with encouraging news that stated he had traveled nearly fifty-million kilometers out past Jovan and found no asteroid or comet field. Hearing the news, Allen ordered his ship and the Perseus to move to the next light blue planet. The Striker had been having some electronic issues and was out of action until Chief McManus and one of his engineers were able to run diagnostics on the Battlecruiser.
He called the Aborian Commander Sulin and ordered the Predator to take Colonel Hammer and Commodore Jeeves out to the dark blue planet to begin running scans for life, after all, Empress Katin said to use the three Predators she loaned him for anything that he may need them for other than overwatch for the massive Colossus.
Colonel Hammer thought it was about damn time he was able to get back to a mission of exploration. He hadn’t been off Colossus since returning from Planet Huron and was eager to be back in the mix with his old buddy Jeeves, even if it was the first time he would be exploring while on an Aborian warship.
Prior to heading out on their mission, Allen ordered Commander Sulin to keep the Predator cloaked upon arrival at the dark blue planet. He understood the value of cloaking and knew it would lessen the chance of being attacked by undiscovered races that may not be friendly.
In the back of his mind, Allen thought it was about time for Colonel Hammer to figure out how he was going to ask the Empress for the cloaking technology the next time the Empress called for him to pay her a visit.
Colossus made it to the light blue planet and begin scanning it while Colonel Hammer and the Predator had jumped to the dark-colored planet that was quite a distance from the planet the Colossus was scanning. Allen knew it would be at least twelve hours before he would hear the Predator had made its destination.
The blue planet was a beautiful sight to see from space. It was ringed with white clouds and blue skies. After an hour of running the sensors for readings such as atmosphere, temperatures, and wind velocities, the readings came back with everything suitable for colonization.
Being the first to read the sensor results, the crew on the bridge became excited about the planet, as did the two admirals. After completing two orbits, Allen ordered the Perseus to atmosphere for topography graphs and sensor readings for signs of life.
Chapter 26
On their way down into the atmosphere of the blue planet, Major Hoser was pumped up about the opportunity to finally be in the forefront of exploring a new alien world that just might be the one they had been looking for. Up to now, the Striker team had been the lucky crew, but that was about to change.
I sure hope this isn’t going to be another Planet Ogre Major Hoser thought. When the Perseus penetrated the thick cloud base the sight was amazing. They managed to break the clouds in an area where the planet’s ocean waves were rolling onto a long and wide beach.
The beach was a half-mile wide and stopped at the edge of a magnificent green forest that leads into the interior. Captain Sokolov stayed on a heading that kept them flying over the middle of the beach that looked as if it ran for at least a hundred miles.
“What do you think about turning inward and flying over the forest to see what the lay
of the land looks like, Captain?” Hoser asked.
Over his shoulder came a remark from one of the combat wasp pilots and he said, “Yeah, Captain, what the Major said.”
There were six combat wasps and their pilots on the Perseus and for one of them to come up to the bridge was a rare event. Sokolov started to remind the pilot that protocol stated the wasp pilots were to remain in the bay should he need to order them to quickly fly out of the ship, but decided just to answer his plea.
“I guess it won’t hurt to check out the interior, besides, I’ve seen enough beach,” Sokolov said as he began turning the Battlecruiser in a direction that would take them over the forest.
Perseus was flying at an altitude of 2100 feet which gave the captain a long-range view out ahead of them. The forest ran for twenty miles, then stopped abruptly at the edge of a deep raven that ran as far as the eye could see running east and west. A light fog was slowly rising from the river below. Across the raven, the forest continued in a northerly direction.
Down in the raven, the crew could make out the raging river filled with white water rapids that gradually dropped deeper into the raven. The captain turned his ship to follow the raven for a few miles and came to a point where the river dropped three hundred feet, creating a beautiful waterfall before leveling out and continuing on.
“Damn that’s beautiful, Captain,” Major Hoser said.
“I agree, Major, but our sensors haven’t registered any signs of life yet. I would think we might have seen a few winged animals at least.”
“Well, it is early in the day, Captain. The sun isn’t high enough to cast its rays on the raven yet. Maybe life on this planet is slow to rise for the day,” the wasp pilot offered.
Just as the pilot had completed his sentence, Captain Teasor came up from the hangar bay and said, “Lieutenant, what are you doing on the bridge? Get back to the bay where you are supposed to be.”
“Yes, sir,” the Lieutenant said and climbed down the ladder.
“Grumpy this morning, are we, Captain?” Hoser said.
“No sir, just following protocol. Are the sensors showing anything?”
“Nothing,” Major Hoser said.
Sokolov flew another ten miles as the sun started showing on the northern side of the ravine. As the sun climbed higher and began warming the northern bank they began to see entrances to small caves with outcroppings several feet down from the surface of the forest’s edge.
The outcroppings looked like perfect places for an animal or groups of animals to sit and warm themselves in the morning sun. It was weird to see they were so evenly spaced at a distance Sokolov estimated to be twenty to thirty feet apart.
“There has to be something living in those caves, Captain. I’ll bet whatever lives in those come out and sit on them before flying off for the hunt for their morning meal. But why aren’t there any on the southern side?” Captain Teasor asked.
“Don’t have an answer for you, Captain. I am confused about the fact that the southern wall doesn’t at least have the outcroppings though,” Sokolov admitted.
As Perseus continued to follow the ravine they began to see their suspicions come to life. Hundreds of winged animals resembling extremely large bat-like creatures began exiting the caves and sat on the outcroppings.
Within a few minutes of sunning the creatures took off flying upward then turned to the north flying over the beginning of the forest. Captain Sokolov told Major Hoser to call Colossus and tell them they found life on the planet and had him ask if the admiral wanted them to continue on with their search.
Of course, the answer was for them to continue with their search. Sokolov said he wanted to take the ship up another thousand feet and started to climb again and flew away from the ravine and continued their way above the forest, still on a northerly heading.
This time the forest seemed to span a much larger area and off in the distance the crew could make out a strange looking area of mountains. What was strange about the mountains was their formations.
Instead of a continuous mountain range, the mountains seemed to be that of individual mountains. Each one starting from left to right were several miles apart with wide gaps between each, which there were a total of eleven, at least that many as far as they could see from their location.
Every individual mountain was snow-capped and the Perseus’s scanner registered them at an altitude running from the smallest one to the west at a height of 26,900 to the tallest reaching up through the of clouds, making it nearly 48,000 feet tall.
At the altitude the Perseus was flying, Captain Sokolov saw another ravine a few miles in front of them. He couldn’t tell how wide the ravine was yet but it was at least twice as wide as the first one they flew over and then noticed the forest had stopped and the terrain changed to a wide swath of flowing gold colored grasses about a foot tall.
When they made it to the ravine they saw it wasn’t nearly as deep as the other one, but was twice as wide and had another river racing from east to west. There weren’t any caves or outcroppings on the walls of the ravine but it was unique.
In too many areas to count there were narrow waterfalls pouring out of the forest and down into the ravine. They couldn’t see where the water was coming from as the forest canopy covered it from their view.
Captain Sokolov made the decision to continue on towards the mountains instead of following the ravine as he did over the first one. Three miles from the vast open plains the Perseus was rocked hard by a sudden blast of hurricane strength winds.
Nothing on Perseus’s sensors indicating the presence of the blast of wind coming in their direction. The wind was so strong it made flying the Battlecruiser extremely difficult. Alarms starting going off and he began to lose altitude rather quickly.
In a very excitable voice, which was a rarity for the Russian captain, he pushed the intercom and told the combat wasp pilots to strap themselves in because he was going for the open area to try and land the Battlecruiser before they crashed, as they were going to be coming in hot.
“Strap yourselves in gentlemen. This is going to be a rough landing,” Sokolov said to the major and captain.
“Major, I need your help controlling her. I can’t do it alone.”
Major Hoser did as ordered but the ship was still rocking and rolling and at one point it tried to roll but they managed to keep it flying right side up. A few more minutes to the opening but Perseus was almost clipping the treetops, and the captain wasn’t sure if they were going to make it past the trees.
The Battlecruiser’s rear end brushed a couple tree tops, which jarred the entire crew. The ship flew a mile further, landed hard in the grassy area and slid for 300 feet before coming to a full stop.
“Put out that fire, Major,” Sokolov ordered.
The right half of the weapons console was burning and its housing was spitting sparks and making popping sounds. Hoser pulled a small extinguisher from the two clips holding it on a panel just behind the major’s head and gave the fire two short bursts, putting the fire out.
“You men alright?” the captain asked.
“I hit the top of my head on something when we hit those damn trees but I’ll make it,” Hoser said.”
“How about you, Captain?” Hoser asked Captian Teasor.
“Yeah, I’m okay. My right arm slammed into this panel but I don’t think I broke anything.”
Captain Sokolov called down to the bay area to check on the combat wasp pilots and got a favorable answer from one of the pilots.
Major Hoser pressed his comlink and said, “Major Hoser to General Dubois, do you copy?”
He waited thirty seconds for a response and when it didn’t come he repeated the call. After another few seconds, he tried again, still no answer.
“Captain, something might be wrong with my comlink. You want to try to get in touch with Colossus?”
Sokolov made a couple attempts to contact anyone on Colossus without success. “We must have damaged Perseus’s comm
unication uplink. I need for one of you to exit the ship and see how much damage was done when we clipped those trees. Meanwhile, I’ll run diagnostics to see if anything else is not functioning.”
“Well, at least the wind stopped howling. Where the hell did that come from? Our sensors didn’t show any storms in the area. As a matter of fact, it is an absolutely clear day,” Teasor said.
“Your guess is as good as mine, Captain. I’ve got two numbers in my head and they are one and two. Pick the right number and I’ll go outside to check on the damage. Pick the wrong one and you go outside,” Hoser said.
“So, how am I going to know if you cheat me or not?”
“Captain. I’m a Major in the USC Marines. I have way too much integrity to ever cheat one of my subordinates.”
“This ought to be a no-brainer. You being my superior the only choice you would make would be number one, so I pick one.”
“Damn, Jeff, you were so close.”
Teasor rolled his eyes, then stared at the major while going down the ladder until Hoser couldn’t see him anymore. Captain Sokolov looked at Hoser and said, “Only a Jarhead would fall for that, Captain.”
Hoser laughed and said, “Yeah, that’s true, but I better go out with him to keep an eye out for something hiding in the grass that might want to take a bite of a juicy jarhead. By the way, Captain, I don’t appreciate you calling us Jarheads, Swabby.”
Chapter 27
On Colossus’s bridge, and sitting at his station, Ensign Cherny spoke, “Admiral, I’ve lost Perseus. I don’t have her signature on my sensors. I don’t have any sign of a distress beacon either, sir. One second she was there, flying around 3000 feet, then in an instant, I lost contact with her.”
