[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Hey! Another update! Finally!



-----CHAPTER SIX: DEEP LEGACY-----

Tamarillho felt utterly secure as she approached the Devonshire warp point. She had told her computer to warn her in case of any approaching ships. On her way here, she raided an unmanned ammo depository in the asteroid belt, restocking her seismic charges and cluster torpedoes. Nothing could stop her now, short of the warp point suddenly and inexplicably collapsing on itself, which was plainly impossible astrophysically speaking.

She had checked the fact that the fighter was jump-capable and equipped with Tanner-shift compensators.

She reached the warp point’s event horizon.

Suddenly, she was standing on a plateau of rock, approximately thirty meters in diameter, surrounded by fog and smoke.

*****

“REPORT!!!” Commodore Ghettex bellowed. The grandson of Grand Admiral Ghettex, CC member, commanded the defense forces in and around the Kytheran System Asteroid Belt. He just heard he’d lost all of his brand-new Hunter fighters to one stolen prototype fighter piloted by a fugitive that had returned from the dead some days previous.

“I dunno how she did it, but she managed to outmaneuver and outfight all of our Hunters. Long-range scanners suggests she even went inside an asteroid, how she managed to come out alive I don’t know, but I think she dropped a seismic charge or two in it. We’ve got a chain reaction, think like a nuclear fission bomb only then with asteroids instead of atoms.”
“Pull out all ships in the Belt! Now! Estimated time till total destruction?”
“My guess is three weeks.”
“Any rocks headed our way?”
“Nope. Not now, anyway.”
“Commodore!” the station’s comms officer called. “Incoming call from Central Command!”

Great, he thought. I’d best start packing now.

*****

Tamarillho looked around, but everywhere thick white fog surrounded her. The platform seemed to dive straight downwards at the edges, but she didn’t feel the need to check it. She couldn’t have, anyway; when she tried to walk around, she found that her feet failed to respond. She had completely lost control of her lower body.

Then, suddenly, a deep, resounding voice burst through the ominous silence.

“Captain. We have been expecting you.”

*****

Commodore Ghettex didn’t need to pack after all, though a CC liaison officer would be placed on his bridge, limiting his freedom to act. He also got some replacement fighters – not Hunters, this time, but normal, manned fighters, also designed for asteroid work. He – or rather his scanners officer – informed Central Command that the asteroid belt was disintegrating, but the fighters were stationed in his base anyway – after the disintegration, the belt would still exist, only then in smaller fragments, which were wider apart. It would still be too tricky for regular Heavy Interceptors.

On an impulse, Jurihaan Ghettex III shouted across his bridge:
“Get me a fighter! I’m going after her!”

*****

“Expecting me? But..... how? Why?”
“It will be explained to you. First, let me tell you the history of the human race.”
“I know that. I’ve studied it myself.”
“The real history of the human race.”

*****

His engineers having just finished rigging a standard DT-13 Fasthawk heavy interceptor with Tanner-shift compensators, beefed-up engines and an increased weapons loadout, Commodore Ghettex climbed into his newly-appointed personal fightercraft and took off. It took him only a few seconds to reacquaint himself with the controls and handling of the fast fighter. “Six years in the Space Fighter Force are finally paying off,” he muttered to himself as he veered past a large chunk of rock and iron in the process of getting hit by a smaller chunk of rock and iron and splitting apart into similarly-sized chunks of rock and iron, which would then move on to impact against other chunks of rock and iron.

Zig-zagging through a more stable region of the asteroid belt, he sometimes still had to evade flying debris from asteroids which had been hit suddenly. He sometimes saw one or more miner-bots falling prey to the explosion, exploding themselves or flying away spinning.

As he cleared the belt, Ghettex opened up the throttle and kicked in the afterburners, speeding to the Devonshire Warp Point with such a speed that if he would have hit anything which was not moving he’d explode with the force of a multi-gigaton fusion nuke. Two thirds of the way to the warp point, he activated the retro-thrusters to reduce his speed so that he would fly into the transpace tunnel and not be launched into a different dimension, as was known to happen at certain speeds, relative to the size of the object going through.

“Approaching warp point. See you on the other side!”
“Sir, please remember that you can only fire direct-fire projectile weapons while in the tunnel! Missiles won’t work and energy weapons will only destabilize the tunnel!”
“I know, I know. See you later.”

A blue flash later he disappeared from the scanners and entered the transpace tunnel.

*****

“What do you mean, the real history of the human race?”
“You think the human race has originated on Earth, right?”
“Why?”
“Because Earth was once just a remote border colony of the Human Confederation.”
“What?!?”
“The planet Humana lies – lay – near the Galactic Core. The planet was half the size of Jupiter; it had a warmer climate than Earth. The human race evolved there. The Confederation once controlled 80% of the Galaxy when-” A sigh.
“When what?”

*****

Scanning the transpace tunnel, Ghettex discovered a small blip in the distance.
“HA! Got you now!” he shouted aloud to the softly humming instruments in the crowded cockpit.

Taking his chances, he locked Tamarillho's fighter as a target and fired a volley with the two rapidfire railguns that were his only weapons in the transpace tunnel. Seeing that every single one of the depleted uranium slugs missed their target by a wide measure, he pushed the throttle to maximum and kicked in his afterburners; and even then he didn't have much of an edge speed-wise over the running thief.

*****

“When the Confederation was at its peak- oh [censored].”
Realizing that these creatures, she wasn't yet prepared to call them “humans”, apparently had great powers, hearing one say “oh [censored]” made for one of the most terrifying moments of her life.
“Some fool is chasing you! In the Gateway Lane!”
“In the what? Wait- chasing me? Oh damn. That's gotta be a task force from New Kythera.”
“No, it's just one fighter – single pilot model, by the looks of it – and it's firing at you.”
“Then lemme get the hell back to my fighter and I'll blast him all over the tunnel!”
“No, we've got a far better way of dealing with situations like this- see you soon.....”

Suddenly, Tamarillho found herself back in her fighter. She lifted her head up from the controls and wiped a spot of drool away. She'd fallen asleep. Apparently the Tanner-shift whatsits in this fighter weren't properly calibrated or someth-

Suddenly, the fighter lurched forward at what had to be relativistic speeds. She was pushed violently back into her chair, and the G-force-meter went haywire, as did the speed indicator. Within seconds she was on the other side of the warp point, something which would normally take days.

*****

Closing in, Ghettex re-locked the fighter in his target reticule, and was just about to pull the trigger in a victorious ecstasy, when the experimental fighter shot forward and disappeared within a second. Reviewing his scanner logs in a rage that would have made his bridge crew jump into the lifeboats and run, he saw that the fighter had reached-

What?

3.0 C?

Three times the speed of LIGHT?!?

That was plainly impossible.

He ran a self-diagnostic on the scanner relays and checked again.

He ran a self-diagnostic on the onboard computer and checked again.

He ran self-diagnostics of every system on the ship up to the oxygen recycling plant, and checked again.

[censored].

Apparently, the experimental fighter had just reached a speed which was, physically speaking, utterly impossible.

-----END OF CHAPTER SIX-----