The Crillon’s beams had ripped holes in the Garoden’s protective screen and penetrated her hull. Causing a series of explosions throughout her internal weapons energy containment spheres, and their feed reactors.
This, in turn, creating fireballs that spread rapidly through the center of the ship, melting bulkheads as the fireballs fed on the remains of the ship’s atmosphere.
Then the Crillon’s Box formation finished passing over the first Garoden ship… Until, finally, and well away from the Crillon fleet, the Garoden ship’s warp core exploded in a blinding flash, sending life forms and debris outward, into space.
With just the mangled skeleton of the Garoden Star Destroyer remaining.
“One down… One incoming.”
The Crillon ship’s box formation was now rapidly approaching the second Garoden Star Destroyer, which opened up with a hail of particle beams aimed at the four Crillon ships. But the Garoden ship’s beams just flared against the Crillon ships protective screens.
“We can hold off long enough to get past them,” Dranton, confidently stated as their particle beams continued stabbed out at the second Garoden ship’s protective screen, sending boiling swirls of raw energy around her. But the Garoden’s protective screen held.
Then, Tannic breathed a sigh of relief, as their box formation finished passing over the Garoden ship.
For the moment his Crillon ships were no longer in danger. Both their ships and the Garoden ship were temporarily out of combatant range.
“Jump drive back on-line in three, Commander.” Lieutenant Dranton reported, thankful to still be alive.
Then, Commander Tannic sensed something, just for a split second. But his AI didn’t seem to react. Instead, she calmly informed him that eight wormholes were forming, dead ahead, and nine kilometers out.
Tannic then realized that the AI wasn’t operating correctly.
“Bloody hell,” Tannic yelled, annoyed at his AI, and cursing at their bad luck as eight Garoden Star Destroyers suddenly exited from their hyperspace wormholes into normal space.
The Garoden ships, then hung stationary, in a Cone-shaped configuration for a few seconds, while their sensors updated their ships tactical systems.
Tannic could see that the large open end of the Cone was facing the Crillon ships.
It took a few seconds for him to realize what was about to happen.
“Break-Break,” Tannic yelled the command, but it was too late.
The Garoden ships, still in the Cone-shaped configuration, appeared to light up as they fired a mass of Particle beams that seemed to merge into one devastating killer beam. This beam penetrated one Crillon ship’s protective screen. And, in a matter of seconds, its hull rippled as several explosions tore gaping holes along the length of the ship’s hull.
The remnants of the now wrecked ship carried on, then started to slowly roll in Space. Venting smoke and debris as she went.
Commander Tannic didn’t wait for his AI to do something. He hit the AI disengage tab on his command chair.
Immediately, a manual control stick rose up out of his armrest. Tannic shoved the Photon drive to maximum, then swung his ship around so that the drive faced the Garoden ships.
He was convinced that his ship’s High-Energy photon beam would disrupt the Garoden’s weapons targeting systems long enough for his warp drive to come online.
He set an exit point, even though, he knew full well that he had no time to establish a specific destination. It could only be approximate.
“Twenty seconds to jump, Commander,” Dranton advised.
“I see that,” Tannic stated, then felt sick as he looked at his tactical display, to see yet another of his ships had been destroyed.
“Ten seconds.”
Commander Tannic knew he would need to jump well away this time. Nevertheless, he was sure that he would then be able to jump again, and this time directly to Crilla.
Tannic suddenly sighed with relief as his ship warped space, then created its wormhole. Everything seemed to stretch for a split second before his ship plunged into the wormhole.
Tannic felt as if he’d left part of himself behind, as did the rest of his crew. It was almost as if he was surging past a catapult’s arms under immense power.
Then, for a moment, nothing. It felt almost as if he was stationary. Then the rest of his body caught up, and Tannic knew they were in the wormhole, and in transit.
Tannic wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but before entering the wormhole, he thought that Tactical had registered the remaining Crillon Battle-Cruiser as it attempted to jump out of the battle zone.
Chapter 5
The Time Ship
The Time-ship had come from Delta’s Temporal Anchor 2725. And, as the ship finally eased itself towards its predicted location, at the crucially exact millisecond in the Timeline, its solidity fluctuated until it looked almost transparent.
Once in place, it would give the appearance of being stationary, as it waited for the intersect to occur.
The ship was just ninety-eight meters long and was similar in shape to a Dumbell. The time-ship didn’t have any weapons, nor did it have any shields to protect itself. Nevertheless, the Time ship had a massive warp rating. And, of course, it had the ability to shift in time, making it virtually impossible for any hostile weapon’s systems to sustain a lock on the ship. Therefore, it was regarded as one of the best technological achievements of the 27th Century.
The ship’s crew was small, comprising of a pilot and a flight technician, plus a group of predictors who worked with Platos, Delta’s senior Temporal Predictor.
Platos studied his Temporal grid display. It was currently showing the temporal intersection point as it moved slowly towards the center of the screen. With, an array of symbols, that scrolled down both sides of his screen in a continuous sequence.
While, six of his Temporal Technicians, sitting in a line in front of their own consoles, moved symbols around on their screens, in a seemingly random fashion to achieve the critical intersection.
‘We are close,” Delta’s pilot Acron reported, as his ship followed the predicted Temporal line.
Meanwhile, Platos, Delta’s senior Temporal Predictor, pondered on what he and Supervisor Javon had spoken about, way back.
‘There’s something amiss with the original prediction that Supervisor Traning’s team made,’ He’d told Javon, at the time.
‘And with your calculations,’ Javon had mentally replied. ‘Your team had better revisit Traning’s original mathematical interpretation of events,’ Javon had then ordered him.
Then Platos had replied, ‘We are. My team is already analyzing the first correction that was predicted as necessary to bring about the required timeline adjustment.’
‘You have also assumed that Richardson will succeed, Platos,’ Javon had then stated.
‘No, you should rethink your supposition, Javon. I see no reference as to what will need to be done if Richardson fails in his task,’ Platos remembered replying.
Then Javon had gone on to say, ‘In that event, Platos, a Garoden victory would change everything that Delta has worked for. So much so, that Uptime would cease to exist.’
Platos sighed, he knew that Supervisor Javon had had a valid point. Maybe this had been a mistake on my part, Platos thought to himself. It was well-known that Javon’s team had been the best predictors around in their day. Even so, that was many years ago, since when Javon had not felt the need to be involved in the official prediction side of operations.
Then, Platos dismissed the thoughts from his mind. Now, he and his team of Predictors had finalized the actions that were needed to correct the divergence. Platos knew that his part of the plan had to work, or all would be lost.
Without the correction, the Humans’ chances of survival were only 33.78 percent. And, Charlotte and Cindy’s parts were also critical to correct his team’s error regarding Solvera, the Solveron’s home planet.
“Sequence, live,” Second
Predictor Anon, calmly announced.
“Temporal drone, ready,” the ship's technician, Robert, confirmed.
“Time-fringe… Now,” Acron warned.
Then the ship shuddered for a split second.
“Solvera beacon disrupted,” another verified.
Seconds passed as the Predictors fine-tuned the symbols on their screens, for a temporal match.
Suddenly, the Solveron ship was next to them and locked into sync time.
“Where’s the Garoden Tracker?” Platos shouted out loud, having been unable to locate it on his display.
“Got it,” another predictor signaled.
“Temporal Drone’s on the ship… Package delivered,” Robert confirmed.
“Sync’s slipping,” the pilot warned Platos.
“Get a move on then,” Platos snapped at both the pilot and technician.
“Get our drone out and that Garoden tracker off the ship before we lose total sync.”
“We're doing it as fast as we can,” Robert snapped back.
Seconds had passed before Robert spoke again.
“Both Drone and Tracker are secure.”
Then, there was a flash as the Time-Ship disrupted the Solveron’s recent wormhole thread.
“Just in time,” Platos grumbled, as the Solveron ship’s image on his screen flickered, and was gone.
“That was close,” Pilot Acron stated relief sounding in his voice.
“Your predictors had better make sure that we can hold the time-sync longer, next time, Platos,” Robert ordered.
“It’s not easy maintaining sync on a ship traveling at speed,” Platos sharply replied.
Platos’ team was already calculating the next temporal intersection point that would be needed, to ensure they could intersect with the first Garoden destroyer, Z187.
He was aware that he needed to hold time-sync long enough for Robert to get their Temporal drone inside one of the Garoden star-destroyers.
Then to get the Drone to open an airlock, to enable them to transfer a Delta operator aboard, without the Garoden crew realizing it.
Undoubtedly, the most dangerous part of the operation would be when the Delta operator blew the two main power conduits. Especially, as she would have to blow them precisely at a point in time when the Garoden ship was still traveling within its wormhole.
This, part of the operation, was crucial to their plan, as it would ensure that the Garoden ship would be forced to drop out of warp at the exact point that Plato’s team expected. At which point, the Garoden ship, although intact, wouldn’t be able to use its weapons or its protective shield power.
Thus, guaranteeing there wouldn’t be any military opposition.
Chapter 6
Lord Dankel
Excellency Plank watched the arrival of his father’s flagship from the bridge of his own Star Destroyer, Z185. He was looking forward to seeing his father, Lord Dankel, who was head of the Garoden Space-Navy.
The flagship was accompanied by four escort vessels as it dropped into normal space, well away from the main Garoden fleet. A few moments later, the five Garoden ships began to move closer to the fleet. But stopped five kilometers out.
The past few years had been difficult for Excellency Plank, in trying to come to grips with not being able to use his ‘companion’ brain. And, of course, not having the ability to Teleport anywhere, anymore.
Plank had also felt lacking, of late. As the rest of his crew. And the crews of the other Garoden ships that had been in this area when the aliens killed off their companion brains had been replaced by Garoden Navy personnel from elsewhere. All of whom still had functioning companion brains.
Nevertheless, his father had seen something in him and had given him command of this fleet. At first, he had felt at a disadvantage in being the only one on his ship without a companion brain. Because of this fact, he had also found it difficult to be authoritative, and firm enough with his new crew. But that feeling had only lasted for the first few weeks. Then, he’d begun to feel the thrill of being the fleet commander, having replaced Viceroy Verice.
Excellency Plank didn’t know what had happened to Viceroy Verice. But, he was thankful to Verice for having shown him how to think and act like someone capable of command. He still remembered the time he had been chastised by Verice.
Verice had said, ‘So, Plank, you’d jump without attempting to find out more about the opposition. Or, even without a ‘what-if,’ backup plan?’ Hearing those comments had made Plank realize that he should have always thought things through properly, in the first place.
Nevertheless, to date, Plank’s ships had not been able to engage in a head-on battle with this elusive enemy. So, he knew that Lord Dankel would certainly be looking closely at his strategies to bring about the extermination of these alien creatures.
Plank had to admit that he’d been reluctant to engage his whole fleet in one powerful strike. His reasoning being that these aliens had proved to possess some mental abilities. Even so, was he being too cautious?
On the other hand, did these aliens have more ships than they thought? He wondered. Especially since, there seemed to be a separate group of them, who were having some success in picking on any lone Garoden ship that could be lured away from the fleet.
He continued watching on his main screen, as his father’s ships finally slid to a halt. Half expecting the ship to ship comms to blare out at him, even though Plank knew that his father’s crew would be analyzing the current situation before even thinking about communicating with him.
Excellency Plank had seen the basic design of the fleet’s flagship come to fruition, long before he’d left for this campaign. And, he knew that the fleet’s flagship was certainly more than two hundred meters longer than the standard Star Destroyers, even though its diameter was almost the same.
He studied his father’s flagship again, looking to see any new design features. The first thing he noticed, was that the ship didn’t have any Stealth capability. Evidently, the designers had realized that, with the Solverons cohesion-disruptor system operational, their own stealth function would be virtually useless.
Plank. Could see considerably more emitters embedded across the ship’s silvery gray hull than the other four ships had. But that was, of course, because the other ships were standard Star-Destroyers.
Just then, Plank’s Comms Officer, Ensign Palvric, received a call from Lord Dankel. Palvric then routed the call directly to Plank’s own console, even though it was usual, for non-personal items, or subjects of a tactical nature, to be displayed on the bridge’s central projector.
Plank immediately energized his audio damping field, and a small, real-time, Holoprojection of Lord Dankel’s face appeared on the top left side of Plank’s console display.
Plank, knew that while Captain Tisk, and his Science officer, Lieutenant Isko could see Lord Dankel’s face, they couldn’t hear his words, so it was safe to speak out loud.
“Good day, my Lord,” Plank said, bowing his head slightly out of respect.
“Plank, I gave this command to you, over Viceroy Verice, because I thought that, deep down you had what it took to be in command.” Lord Dankel said, his voice sounding irritated.
“I do sir,” Plank snapped back.
“Humph. You may think so, Plank. But the lack of action on your part leaves my officers and me somewhat bewildered.”
“But sir, we must be careful. I’m certain these aliens have mental powers that we do not possess.”
“Bah. That’s no excuse. You know where their home planet is located. Surely, our forty Star Destroyers would overwhelm them, mental geniuses, or not!” Dankel sharply retorted.
“We could all lose the use of our Companion brains,” Plank argued.
“That argument is not valid, as per your own records, Plank.”
“But they manipulated our Companion brains.”
By now, Lord Dankel was beginning to show his annoyance at Plank’s reticent behavior.
/> “Plank, even if they did? Why didn’t they destroy all your ships instead of targeting one ship at a time? No. It’s clear that they have a limited capability.”
“That’s a very dangerous assumption, sir.”
“Damn it, Plank. We know how your companion brains died. And it wasn’t by, these... creatures. Whatever it was, came out of a wormhole thread.”
Plank gave up, he knew that was true. And, he had seen the expression on Lord Dankel’s face as it changed to anger.
Plank knew, that now was the time to agree with what Lord Dankel expected of him. And, to show more enthusiasm for a massive and overwhelming attack on the Alien’s home planet.
“Very well, my Lord. I will bow to your wisdom.”
“Good. And, be warned. I’ll be watching every move you make, Plank… If I have to intervene?” Lord Dankel finished, letting his meaning sink in.
Excellency Plank fully understood the inference, and immediately re-routed Lord Dankel’s transmission to the central Holo-projector, then selected all-ships broadcast.
“All ships. Strategy AI’s. Create full-battle scenarios and a scenario for the destruction of Planet 10375. Do it, now. Then submit your recommendations to my Strategy AI,” Plank instructed.
Plank, then looked again at Lord Dankel, as his face displayed on the main bridge’s Holoprojector, and was relieved to note that his father seemed pleased to see that his son had actually done the right thing.
Moments later, all Garoden Star Destroyer’s Tactical AI’s, presented their scenarios to Plank’s AI. Who, in turn, transmitted its own interpretation and recommendations to both Excellency Plank’s, and Lord Dankel’s AI’s for evaluation.
The Garoden War. (SpaceFed StarShips Series) Book 7. An exciting, action-packed SpaceFed Series finale that also concludes the Garoden War.: ‘Military Gamble.’ Page 4
