***No Need For Twisting Spacetime!***
Andrew Joshua Talon
DISCLAIMER: Meh.
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"Three more fighters closing from the port bow, range five hundred clicks sir!"
"Laser Batteries 4 and 5, fire!"
A flurrry of blue energy blasts burst from the hull of the silver skinned starship TAS Isis, lancing out across the emptiness of space and into the faces of three green and white-coloured gunships. All three exploded into a cloud of nuclear fire, a few last-minute blasts blowing puffs through the remains like cigarette smoke into clean air.
The Isis veered, the great, eagle-like starship pulling away like a fighter from the debris. Her anti-grav engines were flaring a whitish blue within her great wings, allowing the 5 million ton plus starship to execute manuvers a ship half her size could do.
Captain Sakura Blusai, a 40 year old Asianic woman, took a deep breath before glaring at the tactical situation monitor at the front of the circular bridge. Six more targets beeped into life upon the holographic screen, all heading toward the blue, bird-like symbol denoting the Iris.
"Missile tubes 4 through 9, full spread on my mark!" Behind and to starboard of her sat Michelle Gearing, a twenty-year old American brunette with cold blue eyes. She was the Isis's weapons officer, her fingers dancing upon her keyboard to prep the weapons.
The entire bridge was alive with activity, bathed in dull red battle light as crewmen typed, prodded, or cursed at their computer terminals and stations. Blusai narrowed her eyes sullenly as the six additional foes closed to one-thousand clicks.
"Incoming!" Shouted the sensor officer directly behind Blusai, Johann Musan. The stocky blond African male kept his eyes glued to his readings, watching the red pulses accelerating toward the battleship.
Boom... The dull impact barely shook the bridge, but those had been weak targeting laser shots. The gunships closed on the Isis, spitting missiles and additional beam fire at the great dreadnought.
BOOM! The combined impact made the Isis stir. Blusai's eyebrows went up.
"Fire!" Ten bright-green stars exploded out of the nose of the Isis, slamming into the gunships and vaporizing them without a second thought. The Isis roared through their debris, her anti-graviton sheilding lighting up momentarily but other than that, nothing more.
"Fighters destroyed. Our anti-fighter missiles have been exhausted, though, sir," reported Gearing, brushing her bangs off her sweaty brow. Blusai nodded.
"What about their mother ship?"
BOOM! In response, the Isis was rocked by a powerful blast directly behind. A console in back exploded, the crewman manning it managing to get away just in time. Blusai growled.
"They popped in for a second sir, then recloaked! I can't get a reading," Musan glowered at his instruments.
"Full laser spread, all turrets! Fire!"
The Isis became a demon, blue lightening rocketing everywhere from her long, tapered wings amidships, to her fan-like tail aft, and her pointed bow. She went into a barrel roll, striking everywhere she could around her like a swordsman on speed.
Suddenly, a bright flash of an outline: the tell-tale sign of a high-powered cloaking shield being struck.
"Got him! Directly aft!"
"All aft missile tubes, FIRE!" Several dozen larger green missiles exploded from Isis's tail, ramming into their unseen foe in a flurry of explosions. The enemy ship lost containment, sending it's stupefied crew to another dimension in a great fireball.
A deep sigh of relief echoed through the bridge. Musan's terminal bleeped, uring the young sensor officer to take notice. His eyes grew wide.
"Sir, we've got a Juraian task force dropping out of hyperspace three light minutes away!"
"Evasive manuvers, sir?" Asked Henry Lockhart, the helmsman, directly ahead of Blusai. He ran his fingers through his bright red hair, his freckled face pink from the stress of the past few hours.
"No, get us the hell out of here. We have cloak capability?" Blusai stiffly asked. The shielding/cloak officer, Rachel Sanchez, scrutinized her readings for a moment before raising her face to her captain.
"Aye sir. They're not in sensor range yet." Blusai nodded to Lockhart, which sent the young Canadian into a flurry of activity. He manuvered the great ship away from the debris, knocking a small insignia stamp out of the general wreckage and into the inifinite blackness of space. The letters "GP" were all that glinted in the starlight as the Isis blended in with the surrounding stars and leapt into hyperspace.
***********************
The solar system PX-988792 was one of nearly 200 billion to be found within the Milky Way galaxy proper. As such, it had no real distiguishing features, simply a main sequence primary and a few small, rocky planets devoid of life. The entire system was littered with debris from comets, asteroids, and proto-planets that hadn't made it past the embryo stage. A junkyard, worthless, ignored.
Thus, the perfect hiding place.
"Report, Lieutenant."
"No enemy vessels within GRADAR or LIDAR range, sir. The task force looking for us has apparently headed off."
"Very well." Blusai groaned quietly, and rubbed some of the sweat off her forehead.
"Okay, captain?" Blusai laughed in a resigned sort of way, before smiling sadly at Musan.
"Okay? I haven't gotten a wink of sleep for three days, Musan. Should I feel okay?" Musan smiled sheepishly, studying his instrumentation.
"Er... I guess not. Sorry sir."
"No apologies needed," Blusai groaned again, futilely attempting to give herself a massage. She gave up with a sigh, before surveying her ship. The vessel's specs ran through her head.
The Isis was of the Royal Sovereign class, a powerful dreadnought. She was, in fact, a carrier in addition to a battleship, capable of deploying one hundred space craft (a mix of both manned and unmanned vehicles) for a wide range of missions. The Isis herself was large but elegant, a silvery grey starship of ferro-titanium, aluminum, steel, tungsten and various other metals and alloys to be found in the Sol system and elsewhere. She measured roughly 1,000 meters from bow to stern in length, 1,500 meters in width, and 250 meters in height. The Isis, and her sisters had all been built along bird-like lines, resembling great gliding eagles in the eternal night of space.
The Isis' stern was a rounded spine for the primary hull and the "wings", housing an incredibly powerful network of anti-gravimetric field generators. This allowed the starship to reduce or increase her mass for greater manuverability, provide artificial gravity and inertial dampening for her crew, create powerful defensive shields to absorb or deflect weapons fire, and reach extremely high sub-light speeds. Also contained within her great spine were hyperspace engines, allowing her to slip in and out of normal space at will.
Her primary weapons consisted of several dozen heavy partical beam cannons (essentially graviton-enhanced lasers), in turreted and linear batteries. The majority of them possessed a top charge rating of 100 terrawatts or higher, with a range of around one light minute. Aided by advanced mass and LIDAR tracking systems, they could hit almost any target at sublight speeds.
The secondary weapons of the Isis were numerous kinetic missile launchers. Instead of wasting resources in building complicated missiles with their own engines, the Isis simply accelerated either small but extremely dense spheres of common metals, or anti-matter "bottles" to 0.99c. The mass of essentially anything accelerated to such a high speed increases by approximately 66,000 times, meaning that even grains of sand at velocity have the same power as nuclear weapons when they impact a target. And, since these missiles could be made out of almost anything, the Isis would virtually never need to come back to port for rearmament.
To power all this were six Pratt and Whitney AADG-2000 Antimatter Reactors, fed by large gravimetric/electromagnetic bussard hydrogen collectors in her wings. All six reactors were capable of producing enough raw energy to outshine a small moon. Should her shields fail, she was packing six meters worth of woven ferro-tungsten-titanium armor, one of the strongest materials in the Galaxy. With a light electro-magnetic field running through it, the armour also served to as a cloaking device against light-based sensor systems.
She was big, powerful, fast, and stealthy. She and her sisters made up the backbone of the Terran Space Navy, some of the most powerful ships ever fielded by humanity.
And she, along with her sisters, had been fighting a losing war for the last three years.
Humans on Planet Earth united together into the Terran Alliance after the devestation of World War III, and began using sub-light ships with fission and fusion drives to establish colonies within their solar system, on Proxima Centauri, and a few other neighboring systems. However, it wasn't until 2130, when the first hyperspace drive was successfully tested, that the Terrans began to expand into a major power. Their first hyperdrives were only able to cut down the transit time between stars to about a lightyear per month, but it was enough for them to take possession of Barnard's Star, Wolf 359, Alpha Centauri, and the other 33 stars (some with systems, some without) within what the humans called "The Local Star Group". Thus, by 2150, approximately 9.5 billion humans were living away from Earth, whose own population leveled out at approximately 10 billion.
It was at about this point the Terrans met the Feral, a feline-like race that was known for brutality. The first contact between the two cultures, thus, soon escalated into full-scale war.
Unfortunately for the Terrans, the Feral had far better FTL engines, weapons, and shielding, and while humans were exceptionally good at waging war, their foe soon beat them back to their home system. By 2153, the humans were on the verge of defeat.
It was at this point that the Juraian Empire, who had considered Earth to be a subject planet to them, saw their predictament and (as they'd never really been on friendly terms with the Feral) started equipping their subjects with better technology. They then turned their "puppets" onto the Feral, driving them back to their homeworld in less than two years.
The victorious Terrans were congratulated by the Jurai and several other powers they quickly became friends with... But it soon became apparent that their war was nothing but a tool through which the Juraians had sought to expand their empire. They summarily declared the Terran Alliance and all their holdings "theirs". The Terrans refused to give up their freedom, and tensions between the two powers mounted, until finally, when a Galaxy Police starship (under Jurai's orders) launched an attack against an unarmed scientific colony, it was the last straw.
On New Year's Eve, 2157, the Terran Alliance officially declared war against the Jurai, leading us finally to the present.
Blusai had to acknowledge the irony that her ship existed in the first place thanks to Juraian technology. And the only reason the Juraians hadn't annihilated them by now was thanks to this technology, the Terran's war experience, and the cruel imperial system the Jurai operated under. Well that, and the fact that Jurai's own ships, biological terrors that were virtually unstoppable, were few in number. The Terrans had mainly been fighting Galaxy Police starships, which they could handle more easily than the horrifyingly powerful treeships. And even with superior numbers and mass-production capabilities, they could simply not stop even a single Jurai treeship without taking severe casualties over these three bloody years.
Three years. Three years, in which thousands of Terran crew, troops, and pilots had been killed. Three years in which nine colonies had been conquered. Three years in which 40 million civilians had been murdered...
Captain Blusai groaned, sighing heavily. The Isis was part of the Third Terran Fleet, generally stationed around the Terran/Feral Border. They'd been involved in large-scale border skirmishes for the better part of the last month. They'd lost ten major fleet engagments out of ten during the war. Even with more experience, better training, and superior numbers, the humans could simply not defeat even a small task force of Jurai battleships. Not only were they nearly invulnerable to Terran weapons, not only could their beam cannons rip though their shields like they weren't even there, but the Juraian's most powerful weapon, the Light Hawk Wings, could mow down entire squadrons of their capital ships.
Thus, the Terran's mode of battle changed: Instead of large-scale fleet battles, the Terrans would approach an attacking force, engage them enough to get their attention, and then split into dozens of different directions, forcing the Juraians to go after the humans one by one. This did even the odds considerably, as the Juraians were reluctant to split their treeships
up, but no one was fooled. The Terrans were now fighting to keep from being overrun, nothing more.
Their best opportunity to win had come a few hours after war was declared. The entire Fifth fleet slipped over the border into enemy space, heading straight for Jurai herself. They didn't encounter any patrols or opponents, and it looked as though they might have actually captured Jurai...
... Until they got into orbit. Waiting for them was the reason the Terrans had encountered no resistance: The Tsunami, the Jurai flagship. She was also called the most powerful starship in the Universe.
And the fact that she destroyed all 207 vessels of the Fifth Fleet by herself just made this claim all the more stronger. As long as the Jurai had Tsunami, the best end the Terran Alliance could hope for in this conflict was a stalemate. She'd only interfered once, and it seemed she would only enter combat if Jurai itself was threatened, so only reconnaissance ships went anywhere near the capital system now.
"Captain, we've received a low-band subspace transmission from the Ulysses," stated the comm officer, a young Ukranian woman named Uri Geshgov from the far aft of the bridge. Blusai nodded.
"Patch it through." The foward section of the bridge was dominated by four large holographically projected screens. One displayed the sensor range of the starship, another displayed the Isis' location with regard to the Galactic Core that was used for fixed-point navigation by all the races of the Galaxy, another displayed everything the Isis could "see" within normal human vision (i.e. cameras ^_^), and the last simply displayed the ship's logo along with the seal of the TA. This last screen flickered and soon displayed the image of a middle-aged American, with swiftly greying hair and a stern, military air about him. The bridge of the TAS Ulysses, a sister ship to the Isis, bustled behind him.
"This is Admiral Leyton of WESTGAC, Third Fleet, to all allied vessels. Report to Point Likeness as soon as is prudent. Repeat, this is Admiral Leyton of WESTGAC, Third Fleet, to all allied vessels. Report to Point Likeness as soon as is prudent. Ulysses out." The screen flickered back into the logo "screensaver", as Captain Blusai stood up slowly.
"Engineering, restart reactor, I want all systems online in two minutes."
"Aye sir, reactor start-up sequence engaged!"
"Helm, bring us out of this mess and to the nearest safe location for hyperspace jump. Navigation, initiate auto-plot for "Point Likeness". It should already be programmed."
"Aye sir!" The bridge calmly leapt into action, Lockhart urging the great ship into a slow "ascent", the navigation officer Sarah Doi quickly calculating along with the ship's powerful Quantum Cray 20 computers for the needed vectors to safely accelerate the ship past lightspeed, and the captain, as always, praying to Allah for safety in silence. Her crew had fought wonderfully, worked together seamlessly for the three years they'd been together. She smiled inwardly at the memories they'd built. Hopefully, they'd have more ahead of them, but not of war. That was all she prayed for as she faced in the general direction Earth was-
WHAOO! WHAOO! WHAOOO! WHAOOO! The alert klaxons blared as the bridge darkened, the red battle light instantly illuminating the compartment. Blusai cursed and looked to Musan. He looked pale, all the color drained from his face.
"Report!" The man seemed to have turned to stone.
"Report, goddammit!" Musan slowly looked into Blusai's eyes, brown meeting black. His terror lanced out through the windows of his soul, sending a shiver down the captain's spine.
"Sir... It's Tsunami!" The bridge froze as a look of horror arose in every pair of eyes.
Tsunami. The butcherer of the Fifth Fleet.
If over two hundred starships had failed to defeat her, what chance did one measly vessel possibly stand against her? Blusai took a deep breath.
"What is she doing?" The sensor officer stared at his reports in complete disbelief.
"She's... Just sitting there." Everyone blinked.
"Sitting?"
"Yes. Minimal energy output, no movement-Nothing." Blusai breifly considered this. Tsunami, sitting there, hopefully having failed to notice them...
"Light Hawk Wings?"
"None, sir. She's completely defenseless," reported Gearing.
"Aware of us?" Musan shook his head.
"Nothing that I can see with passive."
Blusai scratched her chin. What the hell was the most powerful starship in the Universe doing, sitting out in a worthless system, completely defenseless?
*************
Tsunami, the First Tree of Jurai, the patron goddess of said world, stood silently on the bridge of her namesake flagship. Her pink eyes scanned softly around her.
"Sister?" A pause. Tsunami's brow furrowed for a moment.
"I am here," said a soft, silky voice. Moments later, a woman appeared in front of the blue-tressed goddess. Her hair was the color of a willow tree, framed by an orange, spiked crest below which two green dots adorned her forehead. A pair of green stripes decorated her cheeks, above which sat two narrowed, ocean blue eyes. Her dress was much like Tsunami's elaborate robes, only more revealing, and colored as if from a photo negative.
The two sisters stared at eachother for a few moments.
"Tokimi, why did you bring me here?" Tsunami asked calmly. Tokimi scowled at her sibling goddess.
"The Juraian Terran war must end. Now." Tsunami sighed deeply, closing her eyes.
"I cannot interfere directly-"
"Oh, and I suppose equipping the Jurai with their damned trees wasn't direct?" Tokimi asked scathingly. Tsunami stared at her sister, hardening her gaze.
"Why do you care? You withdrew yourself from the Universe, remember?" Tokimi kept the visual contact, her scowl deepening even more.
"I did so because that was the only way for us to preserve ourselves from our great foe, remember? Washuu became a mortal, you put your power in your damn tree people, and I withdrew. Our enemy draws nearer, does he not?" The goddess of Jurai looked considerate for a moment.
"He does. But what of it? We will be able to meet and defeat him with what we have amassed," Tsunami said. Tokimi sniffed disdainfully.
"Your Juraians have grown greedy and corrupt. Their powers are not what you intended them to be. The Terrans are more complex than the Jurai. A latent power within them, a strength I've never seen before, lies dormant within them as a whole. If they are assimilated by the Jurai, this power will never be known. And we may lose our only chance to defeat the darkness that is coming! We need both races, seperate and yet united to win!" Tsunami sighed again, shaking her head.
"I cannot. The Jurai need to find their own destiny. I cannot force them to my every whim."
"So you'd rather they be conquerers and tyrants, is that it?" Tokimi growled. Tsunami glared at her sister.
"You never cared about mortals before! Why now?"
"Because I NEED to care, sister," Tokimi answered, turning to face the stars, "or all of this will be destroyed." Tsunami sighed, turning to stare at the star she now orbited. Her brow furrowed again.
"Hm?" Tokimi turned to look at her sister.
"What is-?"
*************
"All weapons armed, captain. We're ready to throw everything we have at them," reported Gearing, her console glowing bright green as every missile tube finished loading and every beam cannon finished charging. Blusai nodded, stepping over to a darkened console on the far end of the bridge and activating it. She held out a plastic ID card, held it up to the display board, then submitted herself to a retinal scan.
"Voice print identification please," the feminine computer voice stated.
"This is Captain Sakura Blusai, commanding officer, TAS Isis, Terran Navy."
"Voice print recognized. Please specify instructions and identification codes." Blusai smirked slightly to herself before proceeding.
"Computer, unlock singularity bomb in Containment Armory 3. Authorization code Blusai Omega-Omega-Fox-3398." The computer beeped for a moment.
"Authorization confirmed. Singularity device is now unlocked." Blusai nodded before tapping a button on the display.
"Blusai to arming control: Load the singularity bomb into Tube," Blusai checked Gearing's readouts, "19. Gearing, get ready to fire." The young woman nodded as the captain settled back into her chair. Musan bent closer to Blusai, lowering his voice.
"Sir? Are you sure? You know the singularity bomb has never been used in a combat situation be-" Blusai raised her hand, cutting off the sensor officer.
"Yes. Besides Musan, you know as well as I do that conventional weaponry can't hurt these things. The Singul is supposed to finally even the odds with those tree-loving sons of bitches. So far as we know, nothing can take a quantum singularity being shoved down their throat. So, get tracking." Musan sighed, before nodding and returning to his station.
"Firing control to Blusai: Singularity bomb loaded and armed," reported a voice over the intercom. Blusai nodded.
"Very good. Gearing? Are we ready?" Gearing did one last checkover of her readings, before giving a thumbs up. Blusai drew in a deep chestful of air.
"Drop cloak and open fire."
***********
"A Terran warship? Here?" Tsunami asked, staring in surprise as the Isis decloaked less than ten million kilometers away. Immediately the ship unleashed a furious hail of blue particle beams and green kinetic missiles.
BOOM... BOOM... BOOM... The Tsunami barely shook, the Terran weaponry bouncing off the Juraian flagship's shields like rise grains. Tokimi shook her head at her sister.
"Hm... The Isis," noted Tokimi quietly as Tsunami continued staring at the blazing Terran starship.
"Why are they attacking? They should know they can't destroy me," Tsunami murmured, watching the barrage with a detached air. Tokimi shrugged.
"They're unwilling to give up, these humans. Can't you feel the power emitting from them? That spiritual energy floating just under our dimension? They're determined." Tsunami then saw a purple missile streak toward her. She narrowed her eyes. Something felt wrong about this weapon, something...
BOOM! The purple missile exploded into a twirling cyclone of all the colors of the rainbow. The initial shockwave made the Tsunami shudder violently.
"Oh no," Tsunami muttered as she activated all ten of her Light Hawk Wings. The nearly unstoppable weapons materialized just as the brunt of the detonation rammed into the gigantic treeship.
"What?!" Tsunami felt her Wings being twisted and pulled. The Light Hawk Wings
began to distort and fuse with the crackling singularity. Tsunami began to twist and tug herself, screaming in agony as her own power worked against her.
"Hold on, sister!" Tokimi summoned all of her vast power, and called upon her own version of the Light Hawk Wings. She sent a powerful beam of light into the spiraling vortex, but soon found herself being drawn in as well.
"WHAT?!" Tokimi roared, throwing more energy into the disaster, but she only succeeded in making it worse. Together, the sisters screamed as the super singularity drew them into it's gaping maw.
********
"Uh... Sir? Is it supposed to do that?" Asked Lockhart aboard the Isis, as the bridg crew watched the Tsunami being roped in by her own Light Hawk Wings and into the singularity.
"The thing was supposed to exist for only a matter of nanoseconds!" Cursed Blusai under her breath.
"Lockhart, get us the hell out-" FWOOM! The Isis shook violently, sending everyone to the deck. The Terran starship's engines were flaring at maximum power, but the wildly unstable black hole drew them in all the more faster.
"AH! Sir, we're being sucked in! Shields are gone! I'm trying to reactivate the-" BOOM! A huge blast of radiation from the Tsunami herself knocked the smaller human vessel into a spiral. Blusai stared in horror as the distorted Tsunami loomed in the main veiwer.
"SIGNAL COLLISION! ALL HANDS-!" The two ships collided, but rather than destroying eachother, the vessels began to twist and tug on eachother like puddy. A particulary violent fusion resulted in a massive shockwave being released.
PX-988792's primary, hit by the shockwave, promptly went nova, sending a huge blast of energy through and into the struggling starships. The Isis and Tsunami were distorted almost to the point that spacetime ceased to exist around them, and with a flash brighter than twenty supernovas vanished as the huge explosion made sensors go screaming around the quadrant. Outside the galaxy, an observer could see a flash in the outer rim of the Orion arm of the galaxy, and then nothing.
***************
Well, here's the rewritten version! I just hope it's better for everyone else. I love reveiws, so please, just drop a line, okay? And feel free to make suggestions!
Andrew Joshua Talon
DISCLAIMER: Meh.
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"Three more fighters closing from the port bow, range five hundred clicks sir!"
"Laser Batteries 4 and 5, fire!"
A flurrry of blue energy blasts burst from the hull of the silver skinned starship TAS Isis, lancing out across the emptiness of space and into the faces of three green and white-coloured gunships. All three exploded into a cloud of nuclear fire, a few last-minute blasts blowing puffs through the remains like cigarette smoke into clean air.
The Isis veered, the great, eagle-like starship pulling away like a fighter from the debris. Her anti-grav engines were flaring a whitish blue within her great wings, allowing the 5 million ton plus starship to execute manuvers a ship half her size could do.
Captain Sakura Blusai, a 40 year old Asianic woman, took a deep breath before glaring at the tactical situation monitor at the front of the circular bridge. Six more targets beeped into life upon the holographic screen, all heading toward the blue, bird-like symbol denoting the Iris.
"Missile tubes 4 through 9, full spread on my mark!" Behind and to starboard of her sat Michelle Gearing, a twenty-year old American brunette with cold blue eyes. She was the Isis's weapons officer, her fingers dancing upon her keyboard to prep the weapons.
The entire bridge was alive with activity, bathed in dull red battle light as crewmen typed, prodded, or cursed at their computer terminals and stations. Blusai narrowed her eyes sullenly as the six additional foes closed to one-thousand clicks.
"Incoming!" Shouted the sensor officer directly behind Blusai, Johann Musan. The stocky blond African male kept his eyes glued to his readings, watching the red pulses accelerating toward the battleship.
Boom... The dull impact barely shook the bridge, but those had been weak targeting laser shots. The gunships closed on the Isis, spitting missiles and additional beam fire at the great dreadnought.
BOOM! The combined impact made the Isis stir. Blusai's eyebrows went up.
"Fire!" Ten bright-green stars exploded out of the nose of the Isis, slamming into the gunships and vaporizing them without a second thought. The Isis roared through their debris, her anti-graviton sheilding lighting up momentarily but other than that, nothing more.
"Fighters destroyed. Our anti-fighter missiles have been exhausted, though, sir," reported Gearing, brushing her bangs off her sweaty brow. Blusai nodded.
"What about their mother ship?"
BOOM! In response, the Isis was rocked by a powerful blast directly behind. A console in back exploded, the crewman manning it managing to get away just in time. Blusai growled.
"They popped in for a second sir, then recloaked! I can't get a reading," Musan glowered at his instruments.
"Full laser spread, all turrets! Fire!"
The Isis became a demon, blue lightening rocketing everywhere from her long, tapered wings amidships, to her fan-like tail aft, and her pointed bow. She went into a barrel roll, striking everywhere she could around her like a swordsman on speed.
Suddenly, a bright flash of an outline: the tell-tale sign of a high-powered cloaking shield being struck.
"Got him! Directly aft!"
"All aft missile tubes, FIRE!" Several dozen larger green missiles exploded from Isis's tail, ramming into their unseen foe in a flurry of explosions. The enemy ship lost containment, sending it's stupefied crew to another dimension in a great fireball.
A deep sigh of relief echoed through the bridge. Musan's terminal bleeped, uring the young sensor officer to take notice. His eyes grew wide.
"Sir, we've got a Juraian task force dropping out of hyperspace three light minutes away!"
"Evasive manuvers, sir?" Asked Henry Lockhart, the helmsman, directly ahead of Blusai. He ran his fingers through his bright red hair, his freckled face pink from the stress of the past few hours.
"No, get us the hell out of here. We have cloak capability?" Blusai stiffly asked. The shielding/cloak officer, Rachel Sanchez, scrutinized her readings for a moment before raising her face to her captain.
"Aye sir. They're not in sensor range yet." Blusai nodded to Lockhart, which sent the young Canadian into a flurry of activity. He manuvered the great ship away from the debris, knocking a small insignia stamp out of the general wreckage and into the inifinite blackness of space. The letters "GP" were all that glinted in the starlight as the Isis blended in with the surrounding stars and leapt into hyperspace.
***********************
The solar system PX-988792 was one of nearly 200 billion to be found within the Milky Way galaxy proper. As such, it had no real distiguishing features, simply a main sequence primary and a few small, rocky planets devoid of life. The entire system was littered with debris from comets, asteroids, and proto-planets that hadn't made it past the embryo stage. A junkyard, worthless, ignored.
Thus, the perfect hiding place.
"Report, Lieutenant."
"No enemy vessels within GRADAR or LIDAR range, sir. The task force looking for us has apparently headed off."
"Very well." Blusai groaned quietly, and rubbed some of the sweat off her forehead.
"Okay, captain?" Blusai laughed in a resigned sort of way, before smiling sadly at Musan.
"Okay? I haven't gotten a wink of sleep for three days, Musan. Should I feel okay?" Musan smiled sheepishly, studying his instrumentation.
"Er... I guess not. Sorry sir."
"No apologies needed," Blusai groaned again, futilely attempting to give herself a massage. She gave up with a sigh, before surveying her ship. The vessel's specs ran through her head.
The Isis was of the Royal Sovereign class, a powerful dreadnought. She was, in fact, a carrier in addition to a battleship, capable of deploying one hundred space craft (a mix of both manned and unmanned vehicles) for a wide range of missions. The Isis herself was large but elegant, a silvery grey starship of ferro-titanium, aluminum, steel, tungsten and various other metals and alloys to be found in the Sol system and elsewhere. She measured roughly 1,000 meters from bow to stern in length, 1,500 meters in width, and 250 meters in height. The Isis, and her sisters had all been built along bird-like lines, resembling great gliding eagles in the eternal night of space.
The Isis' stern was a rounded spine for the primary hull and the "wings", housing an incredibly powerful network of anti-gravimetric field generators. This allowed the starship to reduce or increase her mass for greater manuverability, provide artificial gravity and inertial dampening for her crew, create powerful defensive shields to absorb or deflect weapons fire, and reach extremely high sub-light speeds. Also contained within her great spine were hyperspace engines, allowing her to slip in and out of normal space at will.
Her primary weapons consisted of several dozen heavy partical beam cannons (essentially graviton-enhanced lasers), in turreted and linear batteries. The majority of them possessed a top charge rating of 100 terrawatts or higher, with a range of around one light minute. Aided by advanced mass and LIDAR tracking systems, they could hit almost any target at sublight speeds.
The secondary weapons of the Isis were numerous kinetic missile launchers. Instead of wasting resources in building complicated missiles with their own engines, the Isis simply accelerated either small but extremely dense spheres of common metals, or anti-matter "bottles" to 0.99c. The mass of essentially anything accelerated to such a high speed increases by approximately 66,000 times, meaning that even grains of sand at velocity have the same power as nuclear weapons when they impact a target. And, since these missiles could be made out of almost anything, the Isis would virtually never need to come back to port for rearmament.
To power all this were six Pratt and Whitney AADG-2000 Antimatter Reactors, fed by large gravimetric/electromagnetic bussard hydrogen collectors in her wings. All six reactors were capable of producing enough raw energy to outshine a small moon. Should her shields fail, she was packing six meters worth of woven ferro-tungsten-titanium armor, one of the strongest materials in the Galaxy. With a light electro-magnetic field running through it, the armour also served to as a cloaking device against light-based sensor systems.
She was big, powerful, fast, and stealthy. She and her sisters made up the backbone of the Terran Space Navy, some of the most powerful ships ever fielded by humanity.
And she, along with her sisters, had been fighting a losing war for the last three years.
Humans on Planet Earth united together into the Terran Alliance after the devestation of World War III, and began using sub-light ships with fission and fusion drives to establish colonies within their solar system, on Proxima Centauri, and a few other neighboring systems. However, it wasn't until 2130, when the first hyperspace drive was successfully tested, that the Terrans began to expand into a major power. Their first hyperdrives were only able to cut down the transit time between stars to about a lightyear per month, but it was enough for them to take possession of Barnard's Star, Wolf 359, Alpha Centauri, and the other 33 stars (some with systems, some without) within what the humans called "The Local Star Group". Thus, by 2150, approximately 9.5 billion humans were living away from Earth, whose own population leveled out at approximately 10 billion.
It was at about this point the Terrans met the Feral, a feline-like race that was known for brutality. The first contact between the two cultures, thus, soon escalated into full-scale war.
Unfortunately for the Terrans, the Feral had far better FTL engines, weapons, and shielding, and while humans were exceptionally good at waging war, their foe soon beat them back to their home system. By 2153, the humans were on the verge of defeat.
It was at this point that the Juraian Empire, who had considered Earth to be a subject planet to them, saw their predictament and (as they'd never really been on friendly terms with the Feral) started equipping their subjects with better technology. They then turned their "puppets" onto the Feral, driving them back to their homeworld in less than two years.
The victorious Terrans were congratulated by the Jurai and several other powers they quickly became friends with... But it soon became apparent that their war was nothing but a tool through which the Juraians had sought to expand their empire. They summarily declared the Terran Alliance and all their holdings "theirs". The Terrans refused to give up their freedom, and tensions between the two powers mounted, until finally, when a Galaxy Police starship (under Jurai's orders) launched an attack against an unarmed scientific colony, it was the last straw.
On New Year's Eve, 2157, the Terran Alliance officially declared war against the Jurai, leading us finally to the present.
Blusai had to acknowledge the irony that her ship existed in the first place thanks to Juraian technology. And the only reason the Juraians hadn't annihilated them by now was thanks to this technology, the Terran's war experience, and the cruel imperial system the Jurai operated under. Well that, and the fact that Jurai's own ships, biological terrors that were virtually unstoppable, were few in number. The Terrans had mainly been fighting Galaxy Police starships, which they could handle more easily than the horrifyingly powerful treeships. And even with superior numbers and mass-production capabilities, they could simply not stop even a single Jurai treeship without taking severe casualties over these three bloody years.
Three years. Three years, in which thousands of Terran crew, troops, and pilots had been killed. Three years in which nine colonies had been conquered. Three years in which 40 million civilians had been murdered...
Captain Blusai groaned, sighing heavily. The Isis was part of the Third Terran Fleet, generally stationed around the Terran/Feral Border. They'd been involved in large-scale border skirmishes for the better part of the last month. They'd lost ten major fleet engagments out of ten during the war. Even with more experience, better training, and superior numbers, the humans could simply not defeat even a small task force of Jurai battleships. Not only were they nearly invulnerable to Terran weapons, not only could their beam cannons rip though their shields like they weren't even there, but the Juraian's most powerful weapon, the Light Hawk Wings, could mow down entire squadrons of their capital ships.
Thus, the Terran's mode of battle changed: Instead of large-scale fleet battles, the Terrans would approach an attacking force, engage them enough to get their attention, and then split into dozens of different directions, forcing the Juraians to go after the humans one by one. This did even the odds considerably, as the Juraians were reluctant to split their treeships
up, but no one was fooled. The Terrans were now fighting to keep from being overrun, nothing more.
Their best opportunity to win had come a few hours after war was declared. The entire Fifth fleet slipped over the border into enemy space, heading straight for Jurai herself. They didn't encounter any patrols or opponents, and it looked as though they might have actually captured Jurai...
... Until they got into orbit. Waiting for them was the reason the Terrans had encountered no resistance: The Tsunami, the Jurai flagship. She was also called the most powerful starship in the Universe.
And the fact that she destroyed all 207 vessels of the Fifth Fleet by herself just made this claim all the more stronger. As long as the Jurai had Tsunami, the best end the Terran Alliance could hope for in this conflict was a stalemate. She'd only interfered once, and it seemed she would only enter combat if Jurai itself was threatened, so only reconnaissance ships went anywhere near the capital system now.
"Captain, we've received a low-band subspace transmission from the Ulysses," stated the comm officer, a young Ukranian woman named Uri Geshgov from the far aft of the bridge. Blusai nodded.
"Patch it through." The foward section of the bridge was dominated by four large holographically projected screens. One displayed the sensor range of the starship, another displayed the Isis' location with regard to the Galactic Core that was used for fixed-point navigation by all the races of the Galaxy, another displayed everything the Isis could "see" within normal human vision (i.e. cameras ^_^), and the last simply displayed the ship's logo along with the seal of the TA. This last screen flickered and soon displayed the image of a middle-aged American, with swiftly greying hair and a stern, military air about him. The bridge of the TAS Ulysses, a sister ship to the Isis, bustled behind him.
"This is Admiral Leyton of WESTGAC, Third Fleet, to all allied vessels. Report to Point Likeness as soon as is prudent. Repeat, this is Admiral Leyton of WESTGAC, Third Fleet, to all allied vessels. Report to Point Likeness as soon as is prudent. Ulysses out." The screen flickered back into the logo "screensaver", as Captain Blusai stood up slowly.
"Engineering, restart reactor, I want all systems online in two minutes."
"Aye sir, reactor start-up sequence engaged!"
"Helm, bring us out of this mess and to the nearest safe location for hyperspace jump. Navigation, initiate auto-plot for "Point Likeness". It should already be programmed."
"Aye sir!" The bridge calmly leapt into action, Lockhart urging the great ship into a slow "ascent", the navigation officer Sarah Doi quickly calculating along with the ship's powerful Quantum Cray 20 computers for the needed vectors to safely accelerate the ship past lightspeed, and the captain, as always, praying to Allah for safety in silence. Her crew had fought wonderfully, worked together seamlessly for the three years they'd been together. She smiled inwardly at the memories they'd built. Hopefully, they'd have more ahead of them, but not of war. That was all she prayed for as she faced in the general direction Earth was-
WHAOO! WHAOO! WHAOOO! WHAOOO! The alert klaxons blared as the bridge darkened, the red battle light instantly illuminating the compartment. Blusai cursed and looked to Musan. He looked pale, all the color drained from his face.
"Report!" The man seemed to have turned to stone.
"Report, goddammit!" Musan slowly looked into Blusai's eyes, brown meeting black. His terror lanced out through the windows of his soul, sending a shiver down the captain's spine.
"Sir... It's Tsunami!" The bridge froze as a look of horror arose in every pair of eyes.
Tsunami. The butcherer of the Fifth Fleet.
If over two hundred starships had failed to defeat her, what chance did one measly vessel possibly stand against her? Blusai took a deep breath.
"What is she doing?" The sensor officer stared at his reports in complete disbelief.
"She's... Just sitting there." Everyone blinked.
"Sitting?"
"Yes. Minimal energy output, no movement-Nothing." Blusai breifly considered this. Tsunami, sitting there, hopefully having failed to notice them...
"Light Hawk Wings?"
"None, sir. She's completely defenseless," reported Gearing.
"Aware of us?" Musan shook his head.
"Nothing that I can see with passive."
Blusai scratched her chin. What the hell was the most powerful starship in the Universe doing, sitting out in a worthless system, completely defenseless?
*************
Tsunami, the First Tree of Jurai, the patron goddess of said world, stood silently on the bridge of her namesake flagship. Her pink eyes scanned softly around her.
"Sister?" A pause. Tsunami's brow furrowed for a moment.
"I am here," said a soft, silky voice. Moments later, a woman appeared in front of the blue-tressed goddess. Her hair was the color of a willow tree, framed by an orange, spiked crest below which two green dots adorned her forehead. A pair of green stripes decorated her cheeks, above which sat two narrowed, ocean blue eyes. Her dress was much like Tsunami's elaborate robes, only more revealing, and colored as if from a photo negative.
The two sisters stared at eachother for a few moments.
"Tokimi, why did you bring me here?" Tsunami asked calmly. Tokimi scowled at her sibling goddess.
"The Juraian Terran war must end. Now." Tsunami sighed deeply, closing her eyes.
"I cannot interfere directly-"
"Oh, and I suppose equipping the Jurai with their damned trees wasn't direct?" Tokimi asked scathingly. Tsunami stared at her sister, hardening her gaze.
"Why do you care? You withdrew yourself from the Universe, remember?" Tokimi kept the visual contact, her scowl deepening even more.
"I did so because that was the only way for us to preserve ourselves from our great foe, remember? Washuu became a mortal, you put your power in your damn tree people, and I withdrew. Our enemy draws nearer, does he not?" The goddess of Jurai looked considerate for a moment.
"He does. But what of it? We will be able to meet and defeat him with what we have amassed," Tsunami said. Tokimi sniffed disdainfully.
"Your Juraians have grown greedy and corrupt. Their powers are not what you intended them to be. The Terrans are more complex than the Jurai. A latent power within them, a strength I've never seen before, lies dormant within them as a whole. If they are assimilated by the Jurai, this power will never be known. And we may lose our only chance to defeat the darkness that is coming! We need both races, seperate and yet united to win!" Tsunami sighed again, shaking her head.
"I cannot. The Jurai need to find their own destiny. I cannot force them to my every whim."
"So you'd rather they be conquerers and tyrants, is that it?" Tokimi growled. Tsunami glared at her sister.
"You never cared about mortals before! Why now?"
"Because I NEED to care, sister," Tokimi answered, turning to face the stars, "or all of this will be destroyed." Tsunami sighed, turning to stare at the star she now orbited. Her brow furrowed again.
"Hm?" Tokimi turned to look at her sister.
"What is-?"
*************
"All weapons armed, captain. We're ready to throw everything we have at them," reported Gearing, her console glowing bright green as every missile tube finished loading and every beam cannon finished charging. Blusai nodded, stepping over to a darkened console on the far end of the bridge and activating it. She held out a plastic ID card, held it up to the display board, then submitted herself to a retinal scan.
"Voice print identification please," the feminine computer voice stated.
"This is Captain Sakura Blusai, commanding officer, TAS Isis, Terran Navy."
"Voice print recognized. Please specify instructions and identification codes." Blusai smirked slightly to herself before proceeding.
"Computer, unlock singularity bomb in Containment Armory 3. Authorization code Blusai Omega-Omega-Fox-3398." The computer beeped for a moment.
"Authorization confirmed. Singularity device is now unlocked." Blusai nodded before tapping a button on the display.
"Blusai to arming control: Load the singularity bomb into Tube," Blusai checked Gearing's readouts, "19. Gearing, get ready to fire." The young woman nodded as the captain settled back into her chair. Musan bent closer to Blusai, lowering his voice.
"Sir? Are you sure? You know the singularity bomb has never been used in a combat situation be-" Blusai raised her hand, cutting off the sensor officer.
"Yes. Besides Musan, you know as well as I do that conventional weaponry can't hurt these things. The Singul is supposed to finally even the odds with those tree-loving sons of bitches. So far as we know, nothing can take a quantum singularity being shoved down their throat. So, get tracking." Musan sighed, before nodding and returning to his station.
"Firing control to Blusai: Singularity bomb loaded and armed," reported a voice over the intercom. Blusai nodded.
"Very good. Gearing? Are we ready?" Gearing did one last checkover of her readings, before giving a thumbs up. Blusai drew in a deep chestful of air.
"Drop cloak and open fire."
***********
"A Terran warship? Here?" Tsunami asked, staring in surprise as the Isis decloaked less than ten million kilometers away. Immediately the ship unleashed a furious hail of blue particle beams and green kinetic missiles.
BOOM... BOOM... BOOM... The Tsunami barely shook, the Terran weaponry bouncing off the Juraian flagship's shields like rise grains. Tokimi shook her head at her sister.
"Hm... The Isis," noted Tokimi quietly as Tsunami continued staring at the blazing Terran starship.
"Why are they attacking? They should know they can't destroy me," Tsunami murmured, watching the barrage with a detached air. Tokimi shrugged.
"They're unwilling to give up, these humans. Can't you feel the power emitting from them? That spiritual energy floating just under our dimension? They're determined." Tsunami then saw a purple missile streak toward her. She narrowed her eyes. Something felt wrong about this weapon, something...
BOOM! The purple missile exploded into a twirling cyclone of all the colors of the rainbow. The initial shockwave made the Tsunami shudder violently.
"Oh no," Tsunami muttered as she activated all ten of her Light Hawk Wings. The nearly unstoppable weapons materialized just as the brunt of the detonation rammed into the gigantic treeship.
"What?!" Tsunami felt her Wings being twisted and pulled. The Light Hawk Wings
began to distort and fuse with the crackling singularity. Tsunami began to twist and tug herself, screaming in agony as her own power worked against her.
"Hold on, sister!" Tokimi summoned all of her vast power, and called upon her own version of the Light Hawk Wings. She sent a powerful beam of light into the spiraling vortex, but soon found herself being drawn in as well.
"WHAT?!" Tokimi roared, throwing more energy into the disaster, but she only succeeded in making it worse. Together, the sisters screamed as the super singularity drew them into it's gaping maw.
********
"Uh... Sir? Is it supposed to do that?" Asked Lockhart aboard the Isis, as the bridg crew watched the Tsunami being roped in by her own Light Hawk Wings and into the singularity.
"The thing was supposed to exist for only a matter of nanoseconds!" Cursed Blusai under her breath.
"Lockhart, get us the hell out-" FWOOM! The Isis shook violently, sending everyone to the deck. The Terran starship's engines were flaring at maximum power, but the wildly unstable black hole drew them in all the more faster.
"AH! Sir, we're being sucked in! Shields are gone! I'm trying to reactivate the-" BOOM! A huge blast of radiation from the Tsunami herself knocked the smaller human vessel into a spiral. Blusai stared in horror as the distorted Tsunami loomed in the main veiwer.
"SIGNAL COLLISION! ALL HANDS-!" The two ships collided, but rather than destroying eachother, the vessels began to twist and tug on eachother like puddy. A particulary violent fusion resulted in a massive shockwave being released.
PX-988792's primary, hit by the shockwave, promptly went nova, sending a huge blast of energy through and into the struggling starships. The Isis and Tsunami were distorted almost to the point that spacetime ceased to exist around them, and with a flash brighter than twenty supernovas vanished as the huge explosion made sensors go screaming around the quadrant. Outside the galaxy, an observer could see a flash in the outer rim of the Orion arm of the galaxy, and then nothing.
***************
Well, here's the rewritten version! I just hope it's better for everyone else. I love reveiws, so please, just drop a line, okay? And feel free to make suggestions!