History of the Galaxy II

[Dead Meat]

“Caption on the bridge. Time is 06:30 2403.2.” The ships computer called out as Caption John Bentford’s boot landed on T.C.N. George Bass metal deck with a slight thump and walked to his command chair.

“Morning Caption”

“Morning XO,” Commander Turner appeared at his right shoulder as she always did when he came onto the bridge after the night watch. “I trust all went well with the night shift?”

“Yessir, Astro has completed the scans of the system. The scanners can’t penetrate this nebula, but we’ve located the Last warp point and have been able to scan it. Astro says that it’s a normal wrap point, all gravimetric fields are within specs.”

“That’s good; we don’t want to turn into another Lucky Mishap.” Bentford thought back to George Bass sister ship Lucky as he sat in his command chair and went over the reports from the night watch. The Terran Confederation Navy’s first ship, Lucky, was lost with all hands when they tried passing through Sol’s southern most warp point. Little did they know that this warp point was different than the other ones found in the system. The R&D people said that the high gravimetric fields tore the ship apart before anyone knew what was happening.

The Terran Confederation was much different back then. Instead of consisting of the hand full of intra-system tug boats to protect Earth, the T.C.N now had five combat ship with more being built every month. Hard to believe that the Terran Confederation now controls 20 planets in 8 systems. Nope, things we very much different than they where when we left home.

“How long does Astro think it will take us to get back to the nearest re-supply base?”

“About 3 year’s sir, give or take a few months. We received our reply to our message. The Admiralty suggests that we continue our original mission sir, in spite of our lack of fuel.”

“Ah, I see. That would be the ‘…to explore new worlds, and seek out new life...’ part of their dispatch wouldn’t it. Seems to me that we have the beginning of a great holo show doesn’t it commander?”

“My guess sir, is that they are hoping that we will encounter another race and be able to get more fuel. Otherwise it would be too expansive to send out a re-supply fleet to retrieve us.”

“No doubt. But I don’t like the idea of having to beg a new race for fuel when we just meet them. God for bid that their armed and attack us.” Caption Bentford thought for a few moments, thinking about his chooses, “Hmm, very well commander. Well go through this warp point and see where it leads. Perhaps we can find a short cut back home.”

“Yessir. Helm, set course for the warp point at coordinates (0,10). All ahead one third, rig ship for warp.”