The Demise

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

-----CHAPTER THREE: HAZARD-----

Ensign Durryn acted quickly. Within seconds, the stunned Tamarillho sensed the ship change course and she felt the familiar slight lurch as the vessel accelerated. She was surprised that the Vulture reacted so quickly. This design was old, and its engines far outdated. The antimatter plasma engines – primitive by today’s standards – provided less than half the thrust a semi-reactionless photon drive, as was currently widely used in the merchant navy, did. Yet, the ship accelerated faster than Tamarillho had expected. Taking into consideration the fact that the ship was slow (or so she thought), she had Durryn take them to the warp point at point five first-grade. She thought she was already pushing the ship’s engine capacities slightly, but as she saw the variable-speed indicator on the helm console display one point five max, she knew she had been wrong. What was going on?

At first she thought she was in command of an old-fashioned garbage scow, but now she realized there was more to the Scrap Vulture than met the eye. First her bridge helm console looked like it was transplanted from the newest destroyer class in the fleet, then the engines turned out to be better even than the current standard in merchant shipping….. There was more, she knew, there had to be more. She knew about the sealed-off corridors in outlying sectors of the ship, but she thought that was because of the fact that there were supposed to be test labs and armories there, and they hadn’t been built at the yard. Now she doubted that.

There was also something strange about the hull….. She did recognize it as the old Star Hauler-class, but it also reminded her of something, of something – she couldn’t remember, the image had been vague, but she had dismissed it as being a result of the curved cockpit screen of her transport shuttle. She didn’t take the opto-digital correctors into account then.

She awoke with a start from her ponderous mood when her TO shouted across the bridge.
“Ma’am! Unknown ship entering the system! It’s headed for New Carina!”
“Run a max-res deep-scan – for as far as your sensors permit – and check it with all known friendly and enemy vessels in the database!”
“Deepscanning….. I’ve got a positive hull recognition,” Tamarillho was surprised, but not too much. She didn’t expect any result this fast, but with the realizations of the past few minutes she thought it’d be logical. “it’s one of our Kent-class combat landers. But, hey, this is strange…..”
“What, Lieutenant?”
“It….. it seems to be equipped with….. no, that can’t be right….. with Tarmalean pulse-cannon turrets. And….. torpedo launchers?”

This wasn’t right. Sure, the Kent combat landers were armed, but that was with point-defense repeaters and light tracker turrets. Not with heavy anti-capital ship turrets, of enemy design no less! And torpedoes?

“Can you get me an ID on her torpedo stock?”
“Already done, ma’am. Four launchers, two tubes per launcher, one magazine per tube. Fifty-torp capacity per mag.”

Fifty torpedoes? Not even the AEGIS Cruisers deployed by Central Command in long-range fire-support duty had magazines that large.

“ID on the torps?”
“Twenty standard high-explosives, twenty long-rangers, ten heavy-duty capship killers per mag.”
“Ensign Durryn, reverse course, now!”
“Aye aye. Reverse course. Brace yourself.”

Tamarillho nearly fell our of her command chair when the ship did a perfect 100 in about half a second. Most Scouts didn’t react that fast. The image of the slightly unusual contours of her hull flashed back again. She could almost grasp it.

“Course looking good, first-grade max back to the ‘point.”
“When we’ve put one thousand clicks between us and that….. thing, change course for C-Alpha 5 Devonshire. Two first-grade max.”
Durryn turned around and looked at her for a second, puzzled. When he turned back, he changed the ship’s course again. Tamarillho remembered to grab a nearby bracer beam just in time. The nav officer didn’t.

“Ensign Terlan, back to your station. And remember the bracer beams next time.” she said on a slightly amused tone. The nav officer flushed a deep red and went back to his station.

Tamarillho’s expression suddenly changed from amusement, to surprise, to wonder, to horror.

She recognized the hull contours.

She was on the bridge of the first top-secret Hunter Assault Craft.

-----END OF CHAPTER THREE-----