The Reign_Destiny_The Life Of Travis Rand

by Lance Berry

  The other Heavy Cruiser was a fair distance away, but Travis could just make out its name, painted in black block letters outlined in red: Ambato. He tried to recall whether he might know anyone serving aboard that ship, but didn’t think so. His schedule for the day made no mention of a rendezvous with other ships, but such information was generally on a need-to-know basis, which was decided by the captain and his senior staff. Then again, the pairing might have been a last minute thing, totally unplanned.

  Travis wondered if there were any other ships in proximity, but since there were no windows on the port side of the ship except for the ones in the war room, there was no way to know until he began his shift. Unless…

  He quickly finished his breakfast, returned the tray to the bar, then headed to the far end of the mess hall. There was a large Plexiglas sheet dividing the mess hall from the arboretum, another recent addition to the ship’s design. Travis opened the single door and was greeted by a rush of pleasantly warm, summer-like air. He stepped inside, the sounds of morning conversation and the clinking of forks against metal trays disappearing instantly as the door swung shut behind him.

  The arboretum had been placed aboard the Horizon nearly a year before Travis came on board. UEF realized how homesick their troops sometimes got, and so decided to segregate a large part of the mess hall deck and place a park-like setting inside it in an attempt to boost morale. The experiment apparently worked, and UEF was expected to begin placing more such oases on board other ships any time.

  The lighting was adjusting to simulate an early morning as Travis quickly made his way along the winding path, past the large trees, benches placed at irregular intervals and the small artificial pond. He reached the end of the small babbling brook. To his left was the exit out to the main corridor, but just to his right was the only other window aboard ship, with a bench placed before it so personnel could sit and pretend they were looking up at the stars on a summer night as they sat amidst the flowers.

  Travis looked out the window…sure enough, there were two more Heavy Cruisers rotating into view, both just far enough away that he couldn’t make out their registries. Something was going on all right, but what? “Computer, what’s the time?”

  “Zero-three hundred hours, thirty-seven minutes.”

  Travis took a deep breath, let it out. His first shift as helmsman aboard Earth’s flagship, and it appeared the Horizon was linking up with a convoy of some type. Well, come what may, Travis decided, he was ready for it. He allowed himself a moment to listen to the soothing gurgle of the babbling brook, then stepped out into the main corridor to head for the bridge.

  Chapter 33

  “Main bridge, command deck,” the synthesized female voice announced as the lift bearing Travis came to a halt. He stepped out onto the bridge and immediately moved to the left side of the lift, in order to allow any others who might arrive to exit unimpeded. He felt a surge of excitement and pride as he looked around the Horizon’s bridge. It was state-of-the-art, one of the newest to be designed. After a disastrous incident several years before, when a Heavy Cruiser’s bridge command was destroyed in battle and its command unit killed, rendering the ship unable to function, UEF engineers decided to redesign all future ships of the line to take into account the possibility of such a catastrophe reoccurring. Now, all bridges were tri-level, with three separate and independently functional departments at the ready. On the topmost level was tactical command, wherein the chief of security and a crew of officers under his watch operated all ship’s weapons and tactical functions such as sensor sweeps. The bottom level was auxiliary command, which was set up exactly like the command deck of the bridge. This compartment contained standby redundancies of all primary consoles. The section where Travis stood now, the command deck, was where Captain Christenson and his primary support crew made all decisions directly affecting the operation of the ship. Should any one of the three levels become catastrophically non-functional or uninhabitable, once evacuated, a plate of forced titanium would slide into place, separating that deck. Then either of the other two levels could be used to command the ship from that point.

  Travis glanced around the bridge, noting that it was superior in design and functionality–as far as he could tell–to the bridge of the Victory he had seen in news footage back when he was at Sanderson. A few of his fellow officers stood around the bridge, waiting for the duty shift change. An officer wearing lieutenant-commander’s stripes was in the center seat, observing calmly as the central viewscreen showed one warp exit after another opening, each spewing out a Heavy Cruiser. A tingle of anticipation shot up Travis’ spine; he was right, something was going on. No doubt about it, they had to be going into combat.

  He was taken out of his reverie as the lift doors opened once more, allowing David and Mara Christenson to step out. Travis noticed that they had been holding hands as the lift doors opened, but their fingers untwined the second they set foot onto the bridge. Travis nodded to himself, and noted that the couple briefly invoked the image of a king and queen entering their court. Tanner Matthews was also in the lift, but remained inside as the doors closed and he continued upward to tactical.

  “Captain on the bridge,” the officer in the center seat announced as he turned the chair to face the captain as he approached. There was an announcing chime. “Oh-four hundred hours. Change of the watch. Evening shift ends. First duty shift begins,” the ODC smart ware announced. Like the officers around him, Travis headed to his assigned station. In turn, each officer already seated stood up, allowing their counterparts to relieve them. A young Asian woman was seated at helm and got to her feet as Travis waited patiently. “Not much to report. The helm’s in good shape and already linked in with navigation,” she told him. “If you need to hit the head, make sure you’re already at light speed, otherwise the autopilot won’t take over for you. Good luck,” she said with a smile and strutted off.

  Travis took his seat, which turned out to be a great deal more comfortable than he had imagined it would be. The seats aboard the Archimedes’ bridge were all hard-backed and he had always had to adjust himself. He glanced over the helm’s settings as he flexed his fingers, cracking his knuckles as quietly as he could underneath the console.

  “All officers, sound off,” Mara called out. One by one around the bridge, the officers on duty listed their last name and what station they were at. When this was done, Mara tabbed a few commands into her operations console and nodded to her husband. “All officers present and accounted for this shift, Captain.”

  “Noted, Commander,” Christenson said, completely businesslike. “Speaker,” he called out to the ODC. There was an answering chime which signaled the captain was now connected to all decks simultaneously. He got to his feet, his voice echoing throughout the decks as he spoke:

  “This is the Captain. Just two hours ago, an intelligence report came in of an enemy fleet massing within the Capella star-system. Apparently, a new base is being built there to spy on our own fleet movements. We have currently rendezvoused with ten of our own ships, and shall meet up with more along the way. Our goal is to engage and overwhelm the enemy fleet and destroy their base. These codgers have become a bit too cocky, seeking to position themselves so close to our claimed space. They don’t own our star-system yet and never will, if I have anything to say about it. It’s time for us to show these fellows once more that they’ve chosen to pick on the wrong species. Christenson out.”

  The ODC shut off and Christenson sat down once more. The communications officer half-turned her chair to face him. “Sir, messages are coming in from our sister ships. All parties accounted for. They’re ready to move out on your mark.”

  “Very good, Buttlefield. Tell them to form up into arch formation. We’ll be moving out immediately. Navigation, plot a course to Epsilon Eridani.”

  The navigator worked her console with practiced ease. “Course lain in, sir,” she said assuredly.

  “Helm…”

  “Aye, Capt
ain,” Travis said, readying his console.

  “Set our hyperspace field to level four and take us in,” Christenson ordered.

  “Yes, sir,” Travis replied. He pre-adjusted the hyperspace field entry as ordered and tapped commands in which would allow a warp entrance to be channeled through the ship’s forward navigational deflectors. With a low reserved hum, a “hole” began to form in the space directly in front of them. The hole quickly widened to a portal large enough for the ship to pass through. Travis double-checked his attitude and pitch controls, and with a gentle adjustment of the directional settings, moved the ship forward and into the warp entrance. As soon as the ship entered, it immediately began to pick up speed at a geometric rate until it was easily cruising through the fourth-dimensional realm. There really wasn’t much more for Travis to do now, except to occasionally check with the navigator to make certain the ship was staying on course. Other than that, simply traveling from one set of coordinates to another was almost a sleeper job.

  The trip took nearly two and a half hours, and when they exited into the Eridani system, twenty more Heavy Cruisers awaited them. Once all ships were accounted for, the task force proceeded to Altair, where another forty ships joined in, for a combined total of eighty-one ships. As the fleet was about to make its final entry into hyperspace en route to Capella, Christenson casually strolled over to the helm. He set a friendly hand on Travis’ shoulder and leaned down slightly. “You’re overcompensating for inertial drag when we come out of hyperspace, Travis. That’s why the ship is shaking just a bit when it comes to a halt. The Horizon’s systems automatically take into account the transitional discrepancies between fourth and third dimensions…you don’t have to worry about that. Let the controls do the work as we exit, and it’ll be smooth sailing.”

  Travis nodded, feeling duly chastened, although Christenson had spoken in a familial tone much like Garroway. “Yes, sir. Sorry, Captain,” he answered.

  Christenson waved dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. You’re doing a good job otherwise.” He strolled back to his command chair and gave the order for the fleet to enter hyperspace once more, this time at maximum velocity. They did, each ship diving into their own personal warp entrances, their directional vectors set to the same coordinates.

  Three hours later, Travis recalled the captain’s words as they prepared to exit back into normal space. He adjusted the controls to shut down power to the forward deflectors, which would in turn slowly break down the wormhole. The warp exit needed to leave hyperspace was created as a result, and Travis eased up on the controls, allowing the ship to do its work. As the captain had said, the transition from fourth to third dimensional space was much smoother this time, and the ship did not shudder appreciably as the crossover was completed.

  Travis tensed up slightly as the ship’s combat alert klaxon sounded, and the bridge lights flashed red. On the main viewer, a huge asteroid was hovering a few billion kilometers out from one of the twin suns, a large base clearly visible on its surface, even from this distance. There were at least three dozen Calvorian battle cruisers surrounding the outpost–the usual Calvorian practice when such an installation was near completion, before a standard complement of a half-dozen cruisers would be left in place permanently as protection.

  The navigational and helm command boards had minor tactical displays on them, used more for evasive maneuvers and avoiding natural interstellar objects than full-on combat assessment. But now Travis glanced at his and was relieved to see there were no dreadnoughts present. In all his military career, he had never been aboard a ship which faced off against dreadnoughts, and hoped that by some happy circumstance it would never happen. There were very few encounters against enemy dreadnoughts that turned out with happy endings for UEF’s side.

  “You’re tied in, sir,” communications officer Buttlefield announced, and Travis made himself focus on the present situation as his captain started to send a message across the gulf of space.

  “This is Captain David Christenson of the United Earth Force flagship Horizon, to commander, lead Calvorian vessel. Please acknowledge.”

  There was a brief pause and then a gruff, guttural Calvorian voice answered: “This is Vakol, Captain of the Snare. I have surmised why you are here, and I advise you to turn away from this course of action, if you value the lives of those under your command.”

  “If you know why I’m here, you also know I can’t do that, Captain.”

  Another pause, this time much briefer. “I have heard your name mentioned often, Christenson. Much has been made of your skills as a tactician and your defeat of General Tholin. I have heard that you have taken our practice of knowing an enemy captain’s name before they are killed, and have made it your own. I intend to reclaim that ritual from you.”

  Travis allowed himself a brief glance over his shoulder. The captain sat confidently in his chair, and a brief, almost cocky smile curled his lips upward. “Good hunting then, Captain,” he said in reply, and quickly looked at Buttlefield as he made a sharp cutting gesture across his throat, signaling for her to cut the channel. She did, and Christenson looked forward again. He took note of Travis’ stare with a wink, then began to take control of the situation. “Patch me in to the fleet,” he ordered without looking back at the com officer. She adjusted her console once more. “You’re on, Captain.”

  “This is Captain Christenson to all ships. Attack pattern Beta-Roger, with the Calypso and Prometheus on my port and starboard wing. On my mark–attack!”

  The Earth fleet divided into pre-selected groups of six, with the Horizon and its two flanking ships leading the charge directly into the enemy’s ranks. Almost immediately, the area of space occupied by both forces was lit up almost as clearly as a bright summer day by the interchanged weapons fire and bright sparkling shimmers of coherent energy being deflected by powerful repulsion fields.

  On the bridge of the Horizon, David Christenson observed the initial stages of the battle via a tactical dsp integrated into the arm of his command chair. “Attack groups three through six, begin flanking maneuvers! All ships, begin generating transpace interference nets and switch to fleet-wide signal eight-four-seven.” He turned to Buttlefield at the communications console and nodded once. In turn, she let her fingers fly across her board, then nodded back. “Transpace net initialized, Captain.”

  At the helm, Travis worked his controls in an attempt to dodge blasts from the Calvorians’ guns, so the shields wouldn’t take too much damage early on. He heard Buttlefield’s report and considered the fact that once a transpace net–an emission through a ship’s forward deflectors of highly ionized protons–was initialized, the Calvorians wouldn’t be able to call for reinforcements. However, if the battle began to go south for the Earth fleet’s side, they wouldn’t be able to signal for help either.

  “Helm,” Christenson snapped, “Stop dancing around the light! Let the shields take it on the chin a bit, that’s what they’re there for! Concentrate on moving us through the thinner parts of the enemy herd. We have to get to that base and destroy it!”

  “Yes, Captain,” Travis responded, and gave up on trying to reduce shield damage. The ship began to shudder a bit more from the pounding, but he was able to find small weak links in the Calvorians’ defense perimeter, making it easier for Tanner Matthews to target with the forward lasers.

  The Calvorians were aggressive in their defense, determined to keep their new base sacrosanct from the intruders. But Christenson had mapped out his plan well, and kept his forces more unified in their press forward.

  When an enemy ship would make an offensive strike against one of his vessels, Christenson would order two more to swoop in and hammer at it. If the enemy sent two more to even the odds, another Cruiser would alleviate the pressure while the rest of the Earth force continued its advance. There were losses on both sides, but Christenson’s stratagems were sound, and the captains under his command carried out every order without hesitation. They knew his reputation
for victories against seemingly unbreachable odds and if he had asked, they would have followed him thru Perdition’s entrance and out the other side.

  A constant barrage of lasers and antimatter torpedoes turned one Calvorian ship into a flaming husk, followed soon after by another. With each ship damaged and drifting or destroyed entirely, Travis moved the vessel forward, mindful of the fact that there wasn’t much space to begin with between such massive vessels in such close quarters. On his sensor board, in fact, he noticed as a Heavy Cruiser and a Calvorian warship accidentally collided. Their impact caused multiple explosions on both hulls, meshing them together into some ungodly conjoined twin which hurtled end-over-end helplessly through the void of space.

  Mara turned to face her husband. “Shields in forward defensive grids A through J are beginning to show signs of buckling. Computer estimates twelve minutes until they fail altogether.”

  “Re-route power from amid-ships to forward,” Christenson replied as he tried to remain focused on the battle.

  “Tactical to bridge,” Matthews’ voice called out over the ODC, “the Tango and the Renaissance in attack group seven have been destroyed.”

  “Attack groups eight and nine, pick up the slack back there,” Christenson ordered without missing a beat, his voice as sturdy as an iron rod. “We need someone to keep those bastards off our backs. Tend to it!”

  Ahead of them on the main viewscreen, several of the enemy ships closed ranks in an attempt to bar the path to the outpost. Travis kept the Horizon on a steady course, even though the ship was buffeted by fire from the most forward vessels’ masers. He wanted desperately to wipe away the sweat that had formed on his upper lip but didn’t dare; one slip at the controls could send the ship right into the path of the shot which might end it for all of them. From behind him, he could hear Christenson giving an order…something about two groups executing the “final option”. Before Travis knew it, the enemy vessels in his ship’s path suddenly gave way under intense fire from a source not fully in reach of the viewscreen. He glanced at his tactical readout: attack groups ten and fourteen had apparently cleared themselves of the battle in a feigned retreat, jumped to light speed using their fusion backup engines, then turned and jumped back to the battle so fast that the enemy ships’ sensors couldn’t keep up. And now, as more of the Calvorian vessels turned to free-floating debris, several of the Earth ships did indeed come into view, firing continually at the enemy ships until none in the rear of the enemy fleet were left intact.