The Dawn of Chaos: Part IV
"Sir, the positron signature leaves off somewhere near Eridaan. I'm not sure of..."
"And if you look at the navigator you will see, lieutenant, that we are already there. I am six parsecs ahead of you, go fetch me something to drink."
"Yessir!" replied the lieutenant, scuffling through the back door of the bridge.
The admiral then produced an inquisitive look on his face, slowly pulling his gaze away from the sensors and to the window. "What in Capella..." he whispered under his breath, viewing a blue and green planet bustling with orbital activity.
"Those are Aphorite ships..."
Just then, his lieutenant rushed back into the room. "Sir! You seem to be short on sleep, so I thought you would like a Mountain Frost™ to help you get through the Standard."
"Good... Enjoy it, and come over here and tell me why I didn't know about this."
"But I don't like Mountain Frost..."
"Then get rid of it, I don't care. Tell me why the Aphorites aren't destroyed."
"I don't know, sir, maybe it has something to do with the positron discharge we detected in the Regulus system."
"And what do positrons have to do with this..."
"Well, positrons are broken antimatter particles... Fundamentally like positively charged electrons. They annihilate matter and can produce rifts in spacetime. Our scientists have been working on translocation technology, and it seems that positrons..."
"So the Aphorites developed translocators... We need to crush them before they can move yet again."
"No, sir, they did not necessarily develop that technology. Strangely, our stations have found nodes of this stuff on Eartheia... And believe me, I doubt"
"... That those insignificant sword-flinging finger-wiggling people outside Corroria would develop such technology?"
"Yessir!"
"Well that's not good enough, I want something solid. Go tell HQ about this, and let's get some reinforcements while we're at it."
"Yessir!"
A moment later, a message came through the comm unit...
"YOU ARE ENCROACHING ON APHORITE SPACE. SURRENDER AND PREPARE TO BE BOARDED, OR YOU WILL BE DESTROYED."
"Holy fizzlin... Everyone to their posts and prepare to defend! We need to make the jump to hyperspace, NOW!"
The lone Corrorian Frigate turned to its 6 o'clock and started taking evasive maneuvers, guns blazing to the rear at the incoming fighters. The nearby battlestation started taking shots at the frigate with its laser batteries, and the Corrorians took many direct hits during its desperate attempt to leave the system. As the fighters passed the frigate and prepared for a strafing run, there was a brief moment of silence in the bridge, save the muffled alarms gyrating in the crew quarters.
"Sir, it seems that the computer found a logical jump point, we should be safe if we can last another minute or so..."
"Excellent, and pilot, do watch for those fighters..."
Suddenly blue and violet lasers started returning to the battered frigate, creating an almost blinding strobe effect in the forward-facing bridge.
"Sir, our shields are failing! When they're gone it won't be long before they manage to punch holes in us."
"Divert all energy to the shields and weapons! Our engines can't outrun them, we need to last until the hyperdrive decides to activate..."
Three crewmen reply in unison, "Yessir!"
The Aphorite fighters returned for what would probably be the final pass, all aiming for the wrecked Corrorian ship, when the light started rippling around the Corrorians from the activation of the hyperdrive. A bright flash of white light came, and the Corrorians vanished into the depths of the cosmos...
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Coughing, the admiral picked himself off of the floor. Looking around at the flickering lights and the smoke coming from the shield modulator, he knew that the hyperdrive activated, but knew not where the ship ended up. Gazing through the window, he saw a rather brilliant spectacle of glowing red strands of gas, with static charges going off randomly in all directions. No stars were visible through the ravaged cloud.
"... Lieutenant," the admiral started, "Did the navigator take us into a... supernova remnant... again?"
"Uh, yessir... It tells us that we will be home in seven weeks, it just needs to pass through the cloud."
"Seven weeks? WE COULD HAVE BEEN BACK IN SEVEN SECONDS! Stinkin' good-for-nothing computers, think they're so intelligent..."
With that, the admiral pulled the plug on the navigator and kicked it to the floor.
"Sir?!?! How will we get home?"
"... I'll leave that up to you..." |
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