by Terry Frost
COLOSSUS
Departure
Book 1
Chapter 1
2420 A.D. Six-hundred members of the Human Race were on board the largest spaceship ever built by man. The name of the gigantic spacecraft was Colossus. Being the first of her type the Colossus was labeled as a Generations Ship. Colossus contained all the atmosphere and resource needs capable of sustaining the Earthlings for generations.
She was 3,000 feet long, 600 feet wide and 150 feet tall. Located thirty-feet from the nose of Colossus sat the Command & Control center or bridge. Viewing her from the outside she had port and starboard side viewing windows on three levels running slightly below her midsection.
Colossus’s bridge had a 180-degree curved window that allowed the entire crew of the bridge to view forward space. The bridge had two levels with the helmsman, navigation’s chief, weapons station, and sensor control located on the first level.
The bridge housed a large pop-up screen for viewing of oncoming threats or predetermined destination sites when ordered to be put on screen from whoever was commanding Colossus at any given time, and a variety of other operatives sitting at their stations spaced evenly next to the lower portion of the 180-degree view window.
Located on the second level, and twelve feet higher than the first level, positioned in the center, and several feet farther back from the stations and crew members below was the admiral’s chair, and next to his was his second in command, that being Rear Admiral Anatoly Petrov. Along the wall to the back and right of the elevator to the lower decks of the massive ship was the admiral’s Ready Room, and on the other side of the elevator was Anatoly’s.
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The moon had been colonized by 2240 and the population had grown to 75,000. Mars became the first planet to be colonized and the first Martians began colonizing efforts in the year 2291. By 2360 there were nearly 220,000 Martians living and working on the planet.
Among those Martians were members of a newly formed space program known as the Unified Space Consortium (USC). The majority of the population consisted of mostly Americans with a mix of British, Russian, Chinese, French, Japanese, Australian, and a small group of Israelites, and a handful of German scientists.
Colonization of Mars had begun in earnest by the USC because of the mounting pressure of the continual rising seas on Earth.
By 2390 a new propulsion system had become a reality which gave the Human Race the ability to begin star based exploration. That new propulsion system was Faster Than Light Drive or (FTL) made possible by a state of the art Hyperdrive and would allow the futuristic Colossus and its two Battlecruisers the USC Striker and USC Perseus to obtain Jump speed with their hyperdrives.
With the discovery of FTL becoming a reality the USC began building the Colossus. It was decided early on that the gigantic spacecraft had to be assembled in space as it would be too enormous to ever get off Mars.
Finally, Colossus was completed in the middle of the year 2414 and the selection of those participating in the most magnificent challenge of the Human Race had begun with the selection process being performed by the USC. By the time Colossus was finished many of the people selected were considered to have the most intelligent minds on the Earth, Moon, and Mars.
On board for the initial flight were scientists of every discipline in the science community. There were also linguistics personnel, teachers, biologists, botanists, technical engineers, doctors and others related to health sciences, just to name a few.
Also on board was a battalion of military personnel consisting of battle-hardened soldiers and a new breed of space pilots. The need for Colossus to have a strong military presence on board was mostly precautionary because of what the universe might present while exploring worlds far beyond the solar system. The ground troops were to be used during exploratory missions on newly discovered planets.
Colossus’s atmospheric sensors and topographic imagery systems could easily define a planet’s potential for Human colonization as well as the discovery of any aliens if they were detectable.
The man responsible for navigating Colossus into the vastness of space was Admiral Arvin Allen. And if anything happened to Admiral Allen or Rear Admiral Petrov the next in command would be General Alias Dubois, commander of all military personnel.
The general’s right-hand man and superior officer on most all exploratory missions was the infamous, Colonel Jak Hammer, and though he was outranked by those with the rank of Commander he only answered to Admiral Allen and General Dubois, which sometimes put him in awkward positions with those higher ranking officers.
Hammer was an enigma as well as a throwback from the Mountain Wars on Earth that lasted a little over four years. The Earth’s land masses were slowly being taken over by years of not heeding the warnings from climatologists about the impending flooding by rising seas caused by global warming.
At the time of the Mountain Wars, almost a third of the Earth’s land had been covered in water as several glaciers and pack ice had melted leaving only a few mountain ranges and their high altitude valleys as places for the remaining Human population to live. Millions of people had died because of the loss of land which caused starvation and drowning.
Jak was young at the age of thirty-four for the rank and command he was given by General Dubois. Dubois knew of Jak’s reputation from his participation in the Mountain Wars. He was born in Choctaw, Oklahoma, a small town twelve miles east of Oklahoma City. He was six-foot tall, weighed 220 pounds, brown eyes, brown hair, which he kept in a short military style cut, a well-maintained mustache, strong biceps and ripped abs. He also had a small white scar that traced his left eyebrow, something he received in a fight with Commodore Jeeves while training in hand to hand combat.
Early on and during the planning for the construction of Colossus, Admiral Allen fought a hard fight with the USC in reference to the importance of the ship’s weaponry. But in the end, the USC sided with Admiral Allen and gave him everything he wanted.
Colossus’s weapons included an Annihilator Beam (better known as a Death Ray) that dissolves matter. Disruptor Bombs that sends out false vectors so no alien ship can track the gigantic ship. Forty-eight Ion Cannons (distortion beams) located along the mid-section of the vessel just below the view windows from front to back on both sides that shoot charged particles used for taking out attack vessels.
Located on the bow and stern sits a single Subtle Knife, a powerful weapon that slices through every metal known to Humans. Lastly, located on the starboard and port sides, sat its Rail Guns that tracks on a rail that allows the gun to move to different locations along the sides of the ship. The Rail Gun shot non-explosive projectiles at fantastic speeds and is used against short and long range targets.
The ships complement of foot soldiers, all Marines, were experienced veterans with the youngest being twenty-six. There were no rookies on board the Colossus as General Dubois made sure of that. Every soldier was equipped with a Blaster pistol and a Quassrifle that would shoot projectiles driven by an electromagnetic force.
Colonel Hammer’s second in command and the Colossus’s Chief Science Officer was an AI ( artificial intelligence) data master, linguistics, battle bot, who he affectionately named Jeeves. Commodore Jeeves was five times stronger than any Human. His body was fashioned to look like a Human Being with the exception of the color of his skin which was an aquamarine color, platinum colored hair cut in a short spike. His eyes were a light purple which Hammer always said freaked him out when he looked directly into them.
The hangar bay of the Colossus carried one twenty passenger and four eight-passenger shuttlecrafts. These were used to move from ship to ship and for planetary landings. Also in the hangar bay wer
e ninety state of the art Combat Wasps. There were three fighter wings with thirty fighters assigned to each wing. The wasps were two-seat attack and defend fighters built to resemble red wasps. Lastly, two fast speed recon Darts.
The USC Battlecruisers Striker and Perseus were fitted with every weapon on board of the Colossus with the exception of the Rail Guns and Subtle Knife. In their hanger bays sat twelve combat wasps and one Combat Hornet. Looking head-on at the hornet it resembled the frontal view of giant killer hornets known to have been prevalent in the country of Japan back on earth.
The hornets were sleek fighters fitted with four ion cannons (two on each wing) a nose-mounted particle beam machine gun and two wing-fitted plasma bombs. They were twice the size of the wasps, could seat three and could carry a few supplies such as first aid, MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat), on-world survival gear, etc. Colossus kept ten hornets in reserve in her bay if needed.
Whether piloting a wasp or a hornet each pilot wore weaponized armor that was close to being indestructible. Once out of the fighter each pilot carried a pulse rifle, a holstered handheld blaster (energy pistol), and two small nuclear grenades attached to their armor.
Chapter 2
Jak Hammer and Jeeves were stationed on the USC Striker and his counterpart Major Brik Hoser and Captain Jeff Teaser were on the USC Perseus and both two-man teams flew the Combat Hornets. Also on the much smaller Battlecruisers in relation to the gigantic Colossus were a dozen Combat Wasps and their pilots.
The boss of the USC Striker was Captain Kenner Slain and of the USC Perseus was Captain Mikail Sokolov. Captain Slain was a well-respected officer and loved by all that served under his command.
Captain Slain was forty-three, stood at 6’5” with gray hair cut in a flat-top style, piercing green eyes and a pleasant smile unless you pissed him off and no one wanted to do that. He was born and raised in Mobile, Alabama. Slain’s southern accent remained part of his charm among his men.
Captain Sokolov was forty-one, stood at 6’2” with sandy brown hair cut in the standard short military style, dark brown eyes, and was born in Kiev, Russia. Sokolov spoke English extremely well for a Russian.
The second of the two combat hornets and stationed on the USC Perseus and piloted by Hammer’s counterpart was Major Brik Hoser, who flew many missions with Jak during the Mountain Wars.
Hoser was thirty-six, stood at 5’11” 210 lbs, with jet black hair with a patch of premature gray in the middle of his crew cut hairstyle, blue eyes, and a no-nonsense attitude about following military procedures and protocols. He didn’t care for Jak’s nonchalant attitude for the later.
Now Hoser’s number one man and co-pilot was Captain Jeff Teaser and he was made from a similar mold more like Hammers. Teaser didn’t show it around Major Hoser as it would only bring him grief but would occasionally let his real thoughts slip out.
Teaser was twenty-eight and the youngest captain in the fleet but his quick reactions in time of trouble elevated him to captain fairly quickly. He was six feet tall, 190 lbs with red hair and green eyes.
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Colossus had its own agriculture dome for growing food and food replicators throughout the giant ship. There were four salons and three barbershops, shopping mall, gambling hall, one giant social bar and two smaller dance clubs, movie theater, laser tag course, four health clinics, one cryogenic lab, a sonic football arena and a 30x30 swimming pool.
Almost every adult on the Colossus had a specific job, either relating to ship maintenance, science labs, weapon’s design and testing, as well as many other assigned jobs by Colossus’s Administrative and Public Relations Department or APR for short.
Colossus and her Battlecruisers left Mar’s virgin, terraformed atmosphere in the year 2420, making her way through the Orion Spur. The Orion Spur is the location where the Earth’s Solar System rests nearly two-thirds from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The next arm of the spur further out in the Milky Way is Perseus at a distance of 6,400 light years away, which was the heading the Colossus and her vulnerable inhabitants were headed for once Admiral Allen decided they had properly scanned every planet for intelligent life forms and those that sensors indicated their atmospheres could sustain life.
Admiral Allen orders the Battlecruisers to make relatively short jumps from planet to planet while in specific star systems. Unfortunately, the vast majority of planets they came upon were gas giants and the planets with a rocky core were either too cold or too close to their host sun.
Colossus’s goal was to only look at those planets in more detail when it was determined their orbits put them in what is known as the Goldie Locks zone. A Goldie Locks zone is one that isn’t too close to its sun but not too far out so the planet isn’t frozen most of the time.
After two years of disappointments related to not finding a single planet capable of sustaining Human life, Allen had his crews perform test after test for a period of almost six months throughout Colossus to make sure she was 100% ready to go where ever she was needed.
It was to be standard procedure to announce to the entire complement of people on board all ships that they are notified the ships were going FTL. During the initial Jump sequence, it was common for the sudden acceleration to tussle those people about if not sitting or hanging on to something during the jump. After the first ten seconds of jump, everyone could go about their business as usual. The same practice was needed for the deceleration when coming out of FTL.
When given the time allotted before the jump and with the jump points locked in, Admiral Allen gave the command to his helmsman, a young Lieutenant Gordo McManus, and said, “Make her jump, Gordy.”
Gordo smiled at his admiral and said, “Aye aye, sir.”
Down in engineering the two-story hyperdrive hummed and turned an extremely bright bluish green that without proper eyewear anyone looking at would be blinded. Just as it seemed to a few so-called ‘rookies’ in engineering that the hyperdrive was going to explode they felt the ship jump.
The man in charge of the Colossus’s powerful propulsion system was a fifty-year-old propulsions genius whose name was Commander Gavin McManus, Gordo’s father. Gavin was born in Scottland, stood at 5’10”, 185 lbs, green eyes and kept his head shaved so close his skull shined like the Earth’s moon at its brightest.
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Chapter 3
The three Earthling ships came out of FTL and immediately slowed their ships to OS (orbital speed), which is about 17,000 miles an hour. OS was the slowest speed that could be obtained without shutting down the drives altogether. The Colossus had handled herself perfectly through the jump sequence and all hands were pleased, especially, Admiral Allen.
The admiral’s jump coordinates brought them out of hyperspace and into a system known as the Burus System and their first view of the unexplored system was one of wonder. There were two stars within the Burus and long-range sensors were showing a variety of planets near the smallest of the two stars.
The star Burus was twice the size of Earth’s sun and though many miles from Colossus it loomed large in the spatial skies. Just how many planets were under Burus’s control remained to be seen as the solar system was too far away for the ship's sensors.
The second star was one-third smaller than Earth’s sun and was designated as Potmus. Potmus was a lot closer to Colossus. The ship’s sensors showed six planets within the sensors range and that was where Admiral Allen wanted to begin exploring for alien life.
He made a call to his Excutive Officers, to come to a meeting in the officer’s Room Forward. The room was located in the aft section of the first floor of the bridge.
With all present and seated in Room Forward, Allen started the meeting.
“As we begin preparations to explore the unexplored Burus System we will be making ready to start this mission in the Potmus sub-system. As I’m sure you are already aware, Colossus’s sensors have shown us at least six planets within her sensor range.
“The further we move into the syste
m and the closer we will be to the star Potmus, I feel sure we will locate more planets. Our sensors already tell us that of the six planets within sensor range two of them are giant gas planets incapable of sustaining life as we know it.
“But we also know there are four rocky core planets further into the system and those are the targets of our immediate mission. The Colossus will continue deeper into this solar system on our way to the four rocky core planets. General Dubois, continue the debriefing.”
“Thank you, Admiral. As the Colossus moves inward Captain Slain, you will take the Striker to the first rocky planet and Captain Sokolov, you will go to the second planet further into the system.
“Gentlemen, your orders are to scan the planets for any signs of life. Naturally, our hopes are you will find some kind of life, and in a perfect world, we want that to be intelligent life. But regardless, if it moves we will go down and investigate.
“Under no circumstance are either of you to enter a planet’s atmosphere if you do pick up signs of life.”
General Dubois looks at Colonel Hammer and says, “That order includes you too, Colonel Hammer.”
Though none of the staff in the meeting said a word almost everyone with the exception of Commodore Jeeves was glad the general made that clear to Colonel Hammer. Jeeves knows Jak as well as anyone and knew he wasn’t happy with being singled out by General Dubois.
Turning to look at the admiral, General Dubois said, “That’s all I have, Admiral.”
“Gentlemen, you have your orders. Good luck and good hunting.”
As everyone left Room Forward Jak held Jeeves back long enough for the others to get out of hearing range from what he was going to say.
“I hate having my hands tied. What good does it do to find alien life and have to wait and hold hands?”
“I agree, Colonel, but those were the orders and I might remind you that General Dubois made a conscious effort to instruct you to do so.”
