E.D.F Chronicles - E.D.F resurgent

by Ian. J. Smethurst

  “Yes, as always, one shot for each man; no more.”

  In unison, the crew threw up a great loud cheer.

  “We get the ship prepped and ready first. Then the drink,” Michael said as he dismissed the crew.

  Later that day, the Liberty became a hive of activity, as supplies were brought aboard and loaded, systems checks were made, and the ship generally made ready to depart.

  The chief weapons officer onboard, Lieutenant Logan Jones, ran through the various systems checks on the main fusion cannon with two tall Solarian assistants. He checked the magazines on the high energy torpedo launchers were full and the reactive hull armour was functioning properly. When he and the assistants were happy, they gave the weapons systems the all clear.

  Eldathar, the Solarian navigation officer checked over all the thruster and pilot systems on board. Once this was complete he gave the piloting systems the all clear also.

  Johnson Logameier, the ship’s chief engineer checked over all the engineering systems with his accompanying Solarian assistants. Three quarters of the engineering staff were Solarian, and he found this frustrating at times. He checked over the plasma drive systems, sub-light engine, and the Solarian power core. After a slight re-calibration on one of the power feeds to the sub-light engine, he also gave the all clear.

  Kathryn Jacobs, the only medical officer onboard, was busily stocking the small, rather rudimentary sickbay with appropriate medical supplies she had brought on board. There was no doubt in her mind she would need them, she always did on missions like this.

  Michael and Quinn were busily checking over all the command functions, internal and external communications, the sensor suite and holographic viewscreen.

  Once everybody was happy they all assembled in the command centre. All those checks and all that work had taken 57 minutes precisely to complete. Now the Liberty was ready for departure.

  Michael went into his quarters, and contacted Admiral Mc’kenzie on the station, informing him that the Liberty was ready to get under way. Once the communication had ceased, he hefted a large bottle of rum out of an under-seat storage locker, and a tray full of shot glasses, before heading back out onto the command centre.

  As he arrived back an expectant crew greeted him. Passing the rum to Quinn, he rested the tray of glasses on his own chair.

  “As in the old navy tradition, 1 shot of rum each for the crew. May it warm your hearts before the coming of battle. Mr Kinraid, if you would like to pour the measures.”

  “Aye cap’n,” he replied as he set about filling the glasses.

  The crew formed a long queue around the periphery of the command centre, and Lieutenant Commander Kinraid poured each in turn 1 measure of rum. The crew refrained from drinking until all had a glass in their hand as per the ritual. Michael then lifted up his glass and exclaimed. “To the mission, and to victory!” he then promptly emptied his glass.

  In unison the rest of the crew shouted, “to victory!” and together they all drank. Some drained their measure slowly, savouring the liquid, for they never knew if it would be their last taste. Others downed the rum in one gulp, hoping it would numb their senses to the horror that would most likely unfold.

  Once the crew had finished, Kinraid collected the empty glasses and returned them to the tray. Michael then returned the bottle and the glasses back inside the storage locker in his quarters.

  Kinraid then addressed the crew, “now ‘t’ ya’ stations.”

  The crew complied, and everyone took to their positions across the various decks of the ship.

  Michael, upon returning to the command centre, took up his position in the famous centre seat. Kinraid took up the second officer’s position at the sensory data console.

  Michael pressed his wrist comm. “engineering, bring main power to maximum.”

  “Aye sir, bringing main power online.” Logameier responded from engineering, simultaneously speaking into his wrist comm. and with his free hand, working the controls.

  “Contact Delta base fleet command; request clearance to depart and join the fleet,” Michael announced.

  “Delta base responds, clearance is granted.” Kinraid said as he turned in his seat to catch a last glimpse of the enormous naval installation, which apart from the Liberty was like a second home to him. It was largely repaired, though still the wounds of battle could be seen in certain areas. Small single man maintenance pods scoured over the damaged sections, like small ants constantly tending to a wounded giant. Men in environment suits also worked on the damaged sections. The flashes of their welding torches lit up the surrounding areas of space in tiny white bursts of light.

  “Release the docking hatch.”

  With a whoosh of escaping air, the small hatch detached from the station with a dull metallic clunk, and slowly began to retract inside the one hundred and forty meter long, streamlined wedge shaped matt black and silver outer hull of the Liberty, where a panel slid over the exposed hatch, covering it and maintaining the ships stealth abilities at the same time.

  “Main engines at ten percent reverse power, and thrusters at user’s discretion.” Michael said as he looked at the holographic viewscreen shimmering in front of the bridge crew. As the Liberty gradually reversed, thousands of viewports slowly became visible dotting the outer hull of the station, like tiny pin pricks of light across a vast metallic sea. A massive docking arm swung into view as Eldathar maneuvered the comparatively tiny ship underneath it. The lattice of girders, and pylons could clearly be seen. The Liberty continued reversing, and yet more of the station was revealed to the viewer. Its huge oval surface looked almost like a patchwork, some areas were newly repaired and the bright new metal shone with the light given off by passing ships and lights. Other areas still looked crumpled, blackened and scorched, where the repairs were still in progress.

  Gradually, as the Liberty reversed yet more, the outer defence perimeter came into view, surrounding the station like a giant halo. This had taken the worst of the damage by the Krenarans, and large parts of it remained under repair. Nearly all of the giant rail-cannon turrets had been destroyed, as repairs continue they are to be replaced by the new high power, long range laser batteries.

  Michael remembered when they first brought the Liberty to Delta base. A Solarian battlecruiser was on fire and adrift, out of control, the ship smashed through the perimeter. An entire section of the defence ring had given way under the impact, and even now a ragged, gaping hole was still there, a testament to the devastation.

  The perimeter gradually receded as the Liberty continued to reverse, the flash of welding torches blinked across its entire structure.

  At last Eldathar announced, “we are clear.”

  “Bring the ship about, and match formation with the fleet, bearing 160 elevation 2; One half sub-light.”

  “Yes captain,” the softly spoken Solarian replied, his blue tinged skin flushing a slight shade of purple as he smiled.

  The Liberty rapidly spun around, its powerful Solarian ionic thruster systems lit up a bright electric blue along the indented sides of the ship as it did so.

  The negative ion propulsion system that was its main sub-light engine also glowed a similar colour as power was shunted to it.

  Ahead of the small but lethal vessel, the silhouettes of the seventy or so ships loomed, all of them dwarfed the tiny Liberty as it made its way towards them. Massive lumbering Danitza class battleships came into view, their port and starboard sides lined with gigantic rail-cannons, their twin dorsal primary weapons turrets each one several times larger than the Liberty glinted in the light thrown out by the bright Orion sun, mingled with smaller, faster and far more advanced Solarian battlecruisers, their unmistakeable silver crescent shaped forms with their raised angular beak-like centre structures shone resplendently in the sunlight. Smaller, lighter Ghandhi class destroyers flitted between the larger ships taking up escort positions within the fleet.

  At the head of this vast flotilla of ships, backlit aga
inst the Orion sun was the enormous wedge shape of a Jupiter class assault carrier, the largest ship in the entire E.D.F fleet. The shadows of the doors of its four large fighter bays gently indented into its dorsal hull were clearly visible, and together with its vast raised command superstructure all manner of complicated communications and tracking antennae extended out from the top of its structure like small silvery strands. Its raw size dwarfed everything around it, only the Danitza class battleships could hope to compare.

  “The Hermes,” Michael said quietly to himself, in awe of the almighty vessel and flagship of the flotilla. He had only ever seen one other throughout his entire career, and only four of these massive vessels were ever built.

  “It must be one hell o’ a fight if they’re sending a Jupiter, cap’n,” Kinraid said.

  “Well they did say to expect heavy resistance,” Michael replied, although he never imagined the scale of the battle that was to come.

  The fleet grew in size as the Liberty neared, the small ship deftly flew under the massive, rectangular hull of a hulking Danitza class, and up over the shape of a Jefferson class heavy destroyer, the running lights of its communications and sensor towers reflected dimly off the dark matt black hull of the Liberty, just for an instant turning it a slight shade of green, and then red in colour as the lights blinked.

  Finally, it took up a position somewhere in the middle of the fleet, amongst some Alexander class medium cruisers that; although they were nowhere near the size of the battleships or carriers of the fleet, still dwarfed the small Liberty.

  There they waited for the all clear to commence operations, everyone on the command centre of the Liberty all looked towards the viewscreen, seeing only the aft and giant turbines of the inter-system boosters of the multitude of ships in front of them.

  The viewscreen switched to the form of a dark haired, bearded man of Japanese descent. “This is Admiral Takeda Sato of the Hermes to the fleet, clearance has been given, prepare to enter plasma drive matching speed and course.”

  The image of the man quickly swapped to the view of the fleet ahead as the communication ended.

  “You heard the man,” Michael said.

  Slowly but surely, the entire fleet fired their inter-system boosters, building up speed before unleashing a multitude of charged plasma beams from their forward plasma emitters. The positively and negatively charged plasma energy beams collided with one another, releasing tremendous bursts of energy in the form of a cacophony of bright white flashes that even lit up delta base now far in the distance.

  The swirling multi-hued plasma wakes opened up in front of each vessel, surrounded by a fringe of bright white light as the fleet careered towards them at full speed. As the multitude of vessels entered the plasma wakes the energy collapsed in on themselves in an equally blinding flash, lighting up delta base once again, and leaving nothing but the starry blackness of deep space, the fleet had now shifted into plasma drive, and hurtled toward their destination.

  2. A gathering of power.

  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 latté 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 a
ll 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, “6th 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.