<Post Warp: 3 months 20 days>
<First Contact + 5 minutes>
“Let’s go!” said James, as he pushed off from the floor and shot down the curved hall towards the section of the station where the VIP’s were housed.
Ares followed after him, and James could hear the Martian suit going into combat mode, the mechanisms crackling to life making the air around him hum.
There was a momentary buzz in James’s earpiece and he winced, the buzz cleared in and with the recognizable chirp the communication line opened.
“Unknown Hostile, 2 Km off of Aldrin Station, all forces converge on the unknown!” the fleet message repeated.
“What the hell!?” breathed James as he caught a glimpse of the ship through one of the small portholes, space always made it difficult to gauge the scale of objects, but from what he could tell the ship whatever it was more massive by far than anything the Martians or his own government had ever created.
His com buzzed again and Red cut into the line, “We’ve got incoming fighters, whatever that thing is it’s a carrier!” said the pilot.
“What the hell is going on?” said Ares.
“Red, I want our transport up and running!” shouted James.
“I’m on my way to it now, get a suit on!” shouted Red through the communication channel.
Flying past an emergency kit on the wall James grabbed a helmet and slid it over his head, it attached to the mechanical counter pressure suit he was wearing underneath his civvies and pulling the gloves from his pocket James shoved them onto his hands.
“They’ve fired!” shouted Ares.
James glanced out just in time to see a gout of light and energy carve its way through space towards the station, from his perspective it was aiming above them, right at the core of the station.
James didn’t even feel the station move, but a quarter second later the bulkheads leading to the center of the station sealed. Whatever had been fired wasn’t kinetic, when a kinetic shot hit you felt it.
“Jesus Christ! The entire core it gone!” shouted Red through the channel.
“Get to the fucking transport! We’re getting to the VIP’s!” said James.
“Roger!” said Red.
James and Ares flew down the corridor and coming to the bulkhead at the end of the hall found the hatch to the presentation hall open, a man without a protective suit looking out of it down the corridor.
Ares and James both bounced one final time off of a wall and seeing them approaching the man quickly drew away from it and back into the room. Charging through James did a quick once over of the room.
There were several green looking Martian and Terran guards, several older higher ranked military officials, and quite a few people whom James could only assume were politicians. Most were still working to pull on their helmets as well, looking at the other side of the room James could see the large airlock doors that led to the presentation platform where the Longboat IV would have docked, at the moment the ship was hanging behind the transport that was towing it, a slight haze around it from the vacuum drive thrusters keeping it in place.
“What the hell is going on?” asked General Collin, a Terran commander who had been in charge of the defense of Earth during the war, he had retired the day hostilities had ended and no one blamed him the job had visibly taken years off of the already aged man.
“A hostile ship appeared out of nowhere and fired on the station sir, the core of Aldrin is gone,” said James as he turned around and shut the hatch, sealing it.
“Everyone got helmets on!?” shouted Ares.
There were a few murmured replies and shouts of affirmation, “Get them on we’re venting the compartment!” shouted Ares.
It was standard procedure in the event of a battle, vent the compartments before a weapon could do so and you eliminated the possibility of getting blown out into space. Not that it would matter if you got struck by an accelerated round, but in that case your really wouldn’t have time to worry about the hit.
There was a hiss of air as James hit the control panel to vent the atmosphere, under normal conditions it took at least three people’s verification to vent a compartment. Under emergency procedure though safeties were disengaged so that anyone could do it, a concession that had been made after to many accidents leaving people in sealed pressurized rooms only to be blown out into space.
“We’re not sure, not the Martian’s that’s for sure,” said James.
General Collin frowned, “what make you sure?” he asked.
“Turn around sir,” said James grimacing.
The man did so, and James couldn’t see his face but he could easily imagine the look on it, surprised and fearful.
“I would have to agree with that assessment,” breathed General Collin as he stared out at the Alien ship.
It was Alien, no one had said the word yet, no one wanted to be the first to say it. The ship was gigantic, and despite its size it possessed a fluidity in form that no other ship anyone had ever seen possessed, she was lethal like a creature from the deep ocean, a creature that knew only destruction.
“We’re depressurized,” said Ares.
James nodded, he could feel the oppressive silence around him from the lack of atmosphere, the only sound was people breathing on the public com channel.
“I’m coming into the dock!” said Red, now close enough for the public channel to pick him up.
The people in the room turned to look out the window and at the military transport cutting in front of the larger hauler that was towing the Longboat IV in.
A blast of energy lanced out from the alien ship, narrowly missing Red, the hauler was not as lucky, and a moment latter the entire font half of the vessel was gone, no debris or particles, it was simply gone.
“Shit!” shouted Red. The transport twisted to the side, and crashed violently into the docking bay, the station shook from the impact and James grunted as the floor came back up and hit his feet sending him and nearly everyone else in the room up into the ceiling.
“Sorry about that! Let’s go!” shouted Red.
The inner airlock doors to the room opened, had everything been normal the Captain of the towing transport and several of the scientists’ excluding Dr. Lincoln who was indisposed at the moment, whom had helped to develop the FTL drive would have entered through it and given a speech about the importance of Martian and Earth relations. That speech was now canceled.
Now that proximity was an advantage, the transport Red had crash landed had opened its back bay door, and was only about ten meters from the airlock a small push and you could make it, he couldn’t get any closer without extending a docking tube, something that took at least ten minutes and with the Alien ship looming directly in front of them it was not something James wanted to deal with.
“Let’s go!” shouted James.
<First Contact + 20 minutes>
[Charles] looked out the large window of the bridge at the station, it was designed like a ring with what had been the central command center and power distribution systems in the center. The design was crude but effective, and if he was remembering his classes from when he was a child correctly a ring like that would provide artificial gravity simply by spinning it. The Class C species was resourceful it seemed.
The [Singer] had disengaged the cloaking systems and disabled the power generation capabilities of the station first, to prevent them from communicating distress. That plan had gone out the window however, the station had multiple communication systems which had for some reason been inactive up until main power had been lost.
Why someone would design such an intricate and unnecessary system for the unlikely event of power loss was beyond [Charles], all he knew was that they had lost the element of surprise on the rest of the system. Not that it was that large of an issue, but the tactician inside of him loathed giving up such a valuable element so early.
“The ship towing the FTL prototype has been disabled,” said [Jack] the current weapons officer.
“Tell the fighters to go in and retrieve it, once we have it in the bay we’ll jump out of the system and let the reserves clean up the rest of the species,” said [Charles].
“Aye, they are moving in now sir.”
[Charles] watched as the fighters moved in towards the FTL prototype, the station looked to be dead, the lights that had been radiating from it only a [minute] ago were gone. The thing had absolutely no refractive shielding, the low power shot from the ship-to-ship guns had completely disintegrated the core of the station.
“Good, make sure the prototype is not damaged,” said [Charles].
As the fighters moved in towards the station [Charles] turned to look at the tactical readout, just in time to see the incoming barrage.
The [Singer] shuddered as several large kinetic rounds struck her shields, “Damage?” asked [Charles].
“None sir! Our shields are down to 80% and regenerating!” said [Jack].
“Move us to intercept the incoming ships, they might be able to punch through the fighters shields with their main guns if that barrage was anything to go by, once we’re in range weapons free,” said [Charles].
The front view shifted as the [Singer] turned away from the crippled station and back towards open space, the ships were slowly moving towards them from what [Charles] could see on the tactical readout. An alert on the console told him that the package had hit the atmosphere, and [Charles] winced. There was no turning back now.
<First Contact + 22 minutes>
Earth had been host to humanity for nearly 100,000 years, it was her crowning achievement, a species so ruthlessly intelligent, ruthlessly violent, and ruthlessly clever that she feared they would destroy her. They had come close several times over, and her face showed the scars of only the most recent attempt.
She had endured far worse pains though, gone through so many extinction events that they were almost routine. After every event the life on her surfaced survived only to flourish again in the future, the life on Earth was not efficient or needlessly complex, it was hardy.
Humans were earth’s most recent evolutionary enhancement, and her gift to the Universe at large. A species that would not matter the cost or the consequences, survive.
3 months 20 days 15 hours and 43 minutes after they made the largest step towards the stars and spreading the unique form of life that had evolved on Earth to the heavens the Earth watched as her children faced their greatest challenge since their separation from their long lost cousins on the plains of Africa.
The bomb had split into thirty different pieces, each carrying a small but extremely effective portion of the compound designed to destroy anything not deemed worthy, the pieces entered the atmosphere around the equator equidistance from one another covering the Earth’s entire surface.
Within a span of ten minutes the Earth was void of all Human life save for those inside sealed environments. The bodies fell to the ground and were consumed by the compound, the Earth watched as her hardiest and most proficient accomplishment collapsed back into the dirt from which they were made, defeated by an enemy not even brave enough to face them head on.
Seeping into the ground of Earth the compound found the remains of every human whom had ever died on the surface of the planet, and consumed them as well erasing their legacy. It found the heroes and the cowards, the Kings and the Serfs, the powerful and the weak, the young and the old, the forgotten and the remembered, it consumed them all. Every physical trace of Humans ever living on Earth was gone in an hour, leaving behind only their impeccable ruins.
Mother Earth watched as the last human fell to the dirt, clutching at her like a child begging a mother for help. The Earth did nothing, she need not do anything, her children were already among the stars, already spreading through the wider Universe like they had across her surface.
They would not be stopped, they would not be denied, Humanity would return to Earth, and she would welcome her conquering children home.
<First Contact + 30 minutes>
“Jump!” shouted Ares, as he motioned for the stubborn politician to jump.
“Throw me a rope!” shouted the man as he tightened his grip on the handrail.
“Oh for fucks sake, incoming!” shouted James as he pushed himself off of the floor and slammed into the guy carrying the both of them towards the transport.
“We’re all onboard!” shouted Ares.
The back door to the transport slowly began to rise and James leaving the man to complain pushed himself up to the cockpit.
“What’s going on?” he asked Red as he sat down at the weapons station.
“The big guy just pulled a turn that should have torn it apart, it’s facing off against the entire Earth defense fleet! I saw it absorb their long distance barrage like it was nothing!” said Red as he twisted the transport around.
“The small guys?” asked James.
“Heading right for us,” said Red.
“Get us to the accelerator rail then,” James turned around in his seat, “Ares get everyone strapped in or against the far bulkhead we’re going for a max-g jump!” shouted James.
“Got it!” shouted Ares.
The transport swung around and James heard several people hit the walls as they rotated, “We’re gone!” shouted Red and he punched the accelerator, several more thunks from the back of the transport said that not everyone had managed to strap themselves in.
For several tense seconds James stared at the tactical radar in front of him watching the smaller alien fighters dart around, before he let out a sigh of relief.
“They’re still on track for the station, they’re not following us,” he said.
Red nodded but kept his gaze locked forwards, General Collin floated forwards into the cockpit, “Report?” he asked.
“We’re clear for now, the fighters are still on track for the station,” Said Red.
The General glanced down at him and then back at James.
“Have they fired on it?”
“No sir, they have not.”
General Collin’s nodded, “Alright give me access to the communication system. I want a link to Earth command,” he said.
James nodded and turned to the communication system, and froze.
“Sir.”
“What?”
“The beacon sir, it’s gone,” said James.
The General paled, for the beacon to be down meant that the eight separate military command structures where the modules were kept were gone, or no one was at their stations.
“Com’s now! Get me the fleet!” said the General Collin, his voice low but urgent.
James passed it back to him and the older man slipped it on over his head, for a moment James saw the professional veneer crack, and the fear in the old man’s eyes mirroring his own.
<First Contact + 60 minutes>
“Five, Four, Three, Two, One!” said the Ken the pilot of the Yamato.
Takuya felt the now familiar jolt as the ship jumped through the antimatter strange matter explosion and into the rift in reality it created, outside the ship he saw the fantastical lights and images bleed in and out of reality, for those few infinite moments Takuya watched them along with the rest of his crew. The instruments still had no idea what they were, and were still unable to record anything but blackness.
The Yamato dropped out of FTL near Saturn, and Takuya breathed a sigh of relief, they were home.
“All stations report.”
The various officers waited a moment as they collected information from their sections of the ship.
“We’re all green, a slight irregularity in the vacuum drive but well within standard deviances.” Said Ken as he read off the reports from the other departments.
Takuya nodded, whenever Ben and Megan were off ship they always had issues with the vacuum drives, which was odd considering the system had been replaced several times over by this point and each time that small irregularity cropped up.
“Alright then, get us on the rail and launch us back towards Mars,” said Takuya.
“Aye!” said the Ken.
Releasing the straps from around his waist holding him in place Takuya drifted up from his seat, “I’m going to get some sleep, you’ve got the watch Ken.”
The pilot nodded and held up his thumb.
Takuya looked around at the other officers and they all nodded in agreement, he had been on the bridge for two shift changes already. The stress of being in a completely alien system without any backup was keeping him from getting any sleep.
Drifting back through the ship Takuya opened the hatch to his small cabin and slipped inside. The bunk on the wall, a thermos, and the ever present pads and reports were the only things adorning the space.
The current status of the ship was overlaid on the fake window he had in the room, for a moment Takuya stared out at the familiar visage of Saturn.
Drifting over to the thermos Takuya lifted it from its cradle and took a sip of the scalding hot liquid. Coffee was not the best thing to drink right before trying to get some sleep but it was a habit.
Putting the thermos back in its cradle Takuya closed his eyes, a slight rumbled through the ship told him that they had launched from the accelerator, and they were back on track to Mars. Drifting back to the wall Takuya quickly slid himself into his bed and cinched the straps down to hold himself in place.
Letting out another sigh Takuya flipped the lights in his cabin off.
<First Contact + 75 minutes>
The alarms in every compartment of the Yamato went off, not the red alert signaling a ship emergency but the yellow alert signaling immediate military action was needed, an alert that had not been used in over a year, an alert that Takuya had hoped he would never see again.
Running on autopilot he was out of his bunk and flying down the halls of the Yamato not caring he was dressed only in his underwear, the rest of the crew was in a similar state of precise panic, every crew member not already on duty rushing to their stations as the alarm continued to blare.
“The beacon is offline!” said Ken as Takuya shot into the bridge, rebounding off of the forward display before making it to his seat.
“What?!” said Takuya.
“The Earth beacon is gone! We’re getting general distress calls from all over the Earth Moon system, reports of,” Ken hesitated for a moment, “reports of an alien vessel launching some sort of biological weapon at Earth and then attacking Aldrin station,” said Ken.
He turned to Takuya, “All hails to the surface have failed, no one is responding on Earth’s surface.”
The bridge was silent, no one was quite sure what to say, and the implication of the communication blackout was extreme.
“How soon can we get to Earth?” asked Takuya.
“Four days, we’re already on our trajectory to Mars,” said Ken.
Takuya turned to him, “Do we have any antimatter left?” he asked.
Ken hesitated but turned to look at his console, “A sliver, it might be enough, I’m not sure. Dr. Lincoln’s calculation left us some margin for error,” said Ken.
“Is that a yes or no?” asked Takuya angrily.
Ken turned around to look at the Captain, “It’s a maybe!” he said.
Takuya glared at him for a moment, then nodded, “Put the engines into attack run speed, get us as much acceleration as possible,”
Takuya turned to the officers who were now looking at him and at the data from Earth as it streamed in, “We’re 80 minutes behind, I want all stations battle sealed, someone get me a suit. We’re jumping as soon as all stations report ready.”
The department heads turned to their consoles, and Takuya started to sift through the data as it came in, they were 80 minutes behind the time and the battlefield would be completely different when they hit it, still it was data, and he would take everything he could.
A crewman drifted into the bridge and quickly tossed Takuya and the few other officers who had been off duty their suits and before continuing on through the ship.
Slipping into the suit Takuya felt his stomach tightening, the alien ship had survived a hit from every main gun in the Earth defense fleet and shrugged it off like it was nothing, the latest data showed that fighters were being directed towards Aldrin station and that the main alien ship was turning to face the fleet.
“I want all of the nukes primed, take the limiters out. Prep the guns and load heavy rounds, we’re going to have to go in firing.” Said Takuya as he sealed the helmet.
“Aye, Weapons reports ready sir!”
“Engineering reports ready!”
“Venting atmosphere,” said Ken.
The air inside of the Yamato slowly vented and Takuya felt the oppressive silence close in around him leaving him with only his own heartbeat and the hum of the ship beneath him as the
Takuya took a breath and nodded his head, “Let’s do it. Jump us in.”
<First Contact + 72 minutes>
“We’re almost to the rail! Where are we going?” said Red.
“We’re heading to Mars!” said General Collin,
James turned to look at him, “what about Earth sir?” he asked.
The General slowly shook his head, “Earth,” the man paused and brought his head up, James could see the tears inside of them that were unable to fall, “All reports show that Earth is devoid of all Human life, a biological weapon designed specifically for us. Everything else, the infrastructure and other forms of life remain untouched. Some scattered communication from people who were working in sealed environments but that’s about it. Earth is lost.”
“We’re not even going to fight?” asked James.
General Collin slammed his fist into the metallic wall next to James, “We’re going to damn well fight, but there is no point in rushing into a battle to get yourself killed!” said the General.
James nodded, “yes sir.”
“We’ve got incoming, I need you on the guns James!” said Red.
“How many?”
“One small fighter, normally I would say we could take them out but if they have the same shields like the big one I doubt we can, we’re going to have to hope it can’t follow us on the rail,” said Red.
“Time to intercept?” asked James.
“One minute, we need six to get to the rail, and there are other ships in similar situations, from what I can tell those fighters did something at Aldrin and then bugged out to chase us down.”
“Ares tell everyone to hang on!”
“Roger!” said Ares.
James turned back to his display and reaching into the console grabbed the wire jack and shoved it into his helmet, it flashed and he got the momentary sense of nausea as his view was replaced with the tactical feeds from the hull of the ship making it appear like he was floating in the void of space speeding along the surface of the moon, which was getting closer.
“Red what are you doing?” asked James.
“Slingshot,” growled Red as they dove closer to the surface of the moon.
“I see the guy, here we go!” said James as he brought the guns of the transport around and placed the small fighter in its reticule, the ship was small and shaped like a dart with a green tinge to it, with a crisscrossing of lines across the hull.
Zooming in James got his first look at the Aliens, they looked almost human, their skin was bright red and the specimen inside of the cockpit at least was bald. The pilot was sitting in a cockpit reminiscent of old earth fighter jets a clear canopy over him with the controls in front of him, an engineering standard that both Earth and Mars had moved away from in favor of actually armoring the hulls of their ships instead of relying on easily punctured transparent materials.
From what James could tell the pilot looked board, and that made him angry.
“Die you bastard,” growled James as he pulled the trigger.
A stream of magnetically accelerated rounds shot from the back of the transport towards the pursuer, crossing the space in less than a quarter of a second, too fast for any human pilot or as it was apparent alien pilot to dodge out of the way.
The rounds disintegrated in small flashed of fire and plasma about above the hull of the fighter, the pilot looked startled for a moment but didn’t show fear, instead simply looking startled.
James poured on the rounds, holding the trigger down he watched as they continued to be eaten away by whatever was protecting the thing, Red continued to dive towards the surface of the moon and the fighter continued to close.
“We have anything else? He’s not even dodging and I haven’t even scratched his paint!”
“This is a transport!” said Red.
“Fuck!” said James as he continued to lay in on the ineffective fire. The guns were being pushed into the red the magnetic coils beginning to overheat.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” shouted James as the fighter crept forwards towards them.
“Whoa!” shouted Red, James was jerked to the side as Red spun off away across the surface of the moon.
James glanced up in time to see the Terran Frigate bearing down on them, its main gun lighting up along with ever ship-to-ship guns along her hull.
“The Yamato!” said Red reading the IFF signal even as James spotted the name on the side of her hull.
James turned to see the small fighter that had been tailing them get hit with the concentrated fire from the frigate, James continued his own small barrage, and he watched satisfied as the small ship seemed to stutter under the fire, the protection around it apparently failing.
The Fighter let out a small burst of pure white light and James watched as it began to violently tumble through space all semblance of attitude control gone.
The Yamato didn’t change her course her nose pointed directly at the small fighter, her armor was built to withstand multiple orbital kinetic hits, and she plowed into the alien fighter which began to slowly drift.
“I hope everyone is alright in their!” said a voice over the com, the Captain of the Yamato James guessed.
“We’re alright, thanks for that!” said General Collin, “Where the hell were you? You just appeared out of nowhere on the sensors, were you on the surface?”
There was a pause, “No sir! We were around Saturn when we heard the beacon go dead, decided to use our new FTL system and join the fight!” said the Captain.
General Collin looked confused for a moment, “FTL system? Like the Longboat IV?” he asked.
“Yes sir! Dr. Lincoln was kind enough to give us the specs! We had some antimatter lying around so we figured why the hell not!” said the Captain.
General Collin looked like he was at a loss for what to say, “Uh, Alright. Give them hell.” Said the General.
“Yes sir!” said the Captain and the line went dead.
James watched as the battleship’s engines glowed and the haze formed around them the Yamato began to accelerate past them, back towards Aldrin Station and the battlefield.
“We’re almost to the rail,” said Red.
General Collin nodded, James disengaged his display pulling the wire from his helmet and he turned to Red, “Where’s the wreckage of that thing?” he asked.
Red glanced down at his display, “About ten klicks behind us catching up quick, we have to slow down as we approached the rail,” he said.
“This might be the only opportunity we have to get our hands on their tech. Grabbing a functioning Martian suit was what helped us turn the ground wars, this might be the same,” said James
General Collin nodded, “Once we have it we can replicate or find weaknesses in it, I’ll have that Martian solider clear the bay, it should fit.”
“Jesus,” breathed Takuya as they go their first look at the battlefield around Aldrin Station.
The station was a wreck and debris was floating in every direction. A small squadron of enemy fighters were retreating from it dragging what at first Takuya thought was a piece of the station behind them.
“Sir, I’m getting an IFF signal, those fighters have the Longboat,” said the sensor officer.
Takuya glanced back at her and then at the display, “These are aliens, we have to assume they have FTL, why do they want our FTL ship?” he asked.
There was no response from anyone on the bridge, and Takuya shrugged.
“Arm a nuke, target the Longboat,” said Takuya.
“Sir?” asked Ken.
“They want it for some reason. I don’t know what it is but I’m not going to let them take anything else,” said Takuya.
“Nuke ready!” said weapons.
“Ken, fire when we’re in range,” said Takuya.
“Yes sir!” said Ken.
The Yamato accelerated again, quickly bearing down on the small fighters as they dragged the Longboat IV through space behind them with what looked like tendrils of light or plasma. As they approached several of the small craft broke off from their task of pulling the Longboat IV and turned to face the Yamato.
“All guns open fire!” said Takuya.
The multiple weapons officers along the hull of the Yamato gleefully took to the order, all of the point defense turrets rotating and opening fire their small ammunition contributing to the power of the five larger 75 mm rail guns. Ken and the weapons officer on the bridge coordinating with one another brought the main gun to bear on their target, the main gun of the Yamato was of a 100 mm bore, only 25 mm more than the medium ship to ship guns rotating on the hull, but the accelerator track for the ammunition spanned the entire belly of the ship and her record speed was just a hair over 2% the speed of light, a shot that would be devastating to any Martian ship, the challenge was lining up the shot.
“Firing!” said weapons.
The main gun fired and Takuya felt the slight jolt and lights inside the ship flickered from the power drain, the fighter that was unfortunate enough to be in the reticule violently spun as it was impacted, Takuya glimpsed the damage which as opposed to being physical appeared to be electrical judging by how sporadically the ship was now moving.
The fighter slowly spun and firing what looked like reserve thrusters judging by the propellant now being expelled it started to limp back to its mothership.
Takuya grimaced, if what were presumably the weakest ships in the alien fleet could take a direct hit from the Yamato’s main gun and live the mothership would be a whole hell of a lot tougher. They had only managed to disable the first one by surprising it and focusing all fire, now all of the point defense weapons were targeting the other fighters as they approached.
“We’re in range!” said Ken, “Firing the nuke!”
The missile carrying what was actually a hydrogen based warhead, modified for use within space launched from the Yamato and fired off its chemical rockets. In combat with the Martian’s nuclear devices were rarely used, kinetic weapons being far more effective and more difficult to stop than a warhead. Still they were useful for the destruction of larger structures that a kinetic would simply punch a hole in. With the amount of radiation shielding in a modern ship all that you had to do was ensure you were outside of the initial blast radius and EMP range.
Takuya watched as the missile streaked towards its target, the fighter still towing it turned, and a lance of energy burst from it arcing towards the missile, missing it by only a hair the missile impacted. For a moment all sensor data streaming into the Yamato was blinded and even through the display screen which was filtering out all of the harmful light and radiation Takuya had to close his eyes. As the light from the reaction died off and data began to stream back in Takuya let out a small whistle, the Longboat IV was gone, but the ship which had been only a few hundred meters away seemed to have survived the nuclear blast.
“How the hell did it do that?” asked Takuya. The small ship turned and no longer burdened with the need to carry the FTL ship trained its guns on the Yamato. The ship froze, and the guns which had been glowing slowly tapered back off to cool metal.
The other small fighters that were charging towards them stopped as well, and then slowly began to retreat, joining their injured comrade in their flight back towards the mothership now at L1 where the rest of the Earth fleet was.
“Follow them!” ordered Takuya.
<First Contact + 85 minutes>
“What?!” growled [Charles].
The pilot inside of the fighter hesitated, “We lost the target sir, a Class C ship appeared and destroyed it,” said the man.
[Charles] was resisting throwing several choice words now, they were unbecoming of an Empire officer if not appropriate at the moment.
“But the ship that attacked, it had a similar reading as the ship we were towing, the FTL signature was actually more pronounced!” said the pilot.
“You’re saying the ship dropped out of FTL and surprised you?” asked [Charles], it was not a tactic unheard of in the Empire, rare though considering the proximity of a tachyon beacon needed to execute a jump.
“Yes sir, I’ve lost contact with one member of my wing, I fear the ship might have gotten him. Their energy weapons are crude, they detonated some sort of nuclear device to destroy the FTL prototype. The kinetics are strong though, they were able to knock out the shield generators of another ship in my wing.” said the pilot.
“You left this second ship, the one with the FTL signature intact, right?” said [Charles] hoping the pilot had some semblance of a brain.
“Yes sir, as soon as I got the reading we stopped our attack run, it’s following us right now presumably to join the rest of its fleet,” said the pilot.
[Charles] breathed a sigh of relief, “the bays are open, land your wing. We’ll have to figure out how to get our hands on the ship without damaging it.”
[Charles] cut the line, and turned back to the front view port looking out at the Class C fleet in front of the [Singer], they were continuing with their ineffective attack, the forward shields of the [Singer] were now bathed in plasma and energy, but were holding at 60%.
“Weapons, we have one ship near the moon marked as an objective, I want every other primitive ship gone in [five minutes].” Said [Charles].
Getting up from his command chair [Charles] strode over to the workstation [Sam] was at and pulling out another chair sat down and leaned over to her.
“Could you crack the data encryption on their networks if you had access to the hardware?” asked [Charles]. [Sam] frowned and shook her head, “No, from the public records I’ve been able to translate both groups of the Class C species had incredibly redundant but complex data security. We can’t crack the encryption, not for another [hundred years] or so,” said Sam.
“Alright, what about a translation program, for communication?” asked [Charles].
Same blinked, “A translation program sir? You want to talk to them?” she asked, for a Class A species to communicate with a Class C was unheard of.
“I want their FTL technology, if we can negotiate with them in some way for the tech, then our mission is complete. The colonization fleet can get rid of the rest of them when they move in,” said [Charles].
[Sam] considered this for a moment but nodded, “Alright, It’ll take me a few hours.”
“Get to work, call in anyone you need. I want it ready as soon as possible.”
Takuya watched in horror as the energy streaked out from the alien ship in a concentrated beam, it quickly swept through each ship in the Earth defense fleet in quick succession, cutting through the armor and mechanisms of the ship shearing many of the most advanced combat vessels in Earth’s fleet completely in half.
There were multiple internal explosions on each ship as the beam moved away to the next, within the span of thirty seconds the entire fleet of twenty ships was gone.
“Fucking hell!” said Ken as the ships exploded.
Takuya stared at the destruction for a moment and then forlornly looked back at the Earth behind the wreckage, “Turn us around Ken.”
Ken silently brought the Yamato around and pointed it back towards the moon. A message flashed on the pad next to Takuya’s hand.
“We’ve received orders, all ships Martian and Terran are regrouping at Mars.” Said Takuya as he read the report that was coming in to his command terminal, “At the moment the causality list for this attack is at 10.5 billion, with the entire population of earth in that count.” Said Takuya, he felt his throat closing up but he continued, “The command structure for the Terran fleet is in disarray, at the moment standing orders are to fall in line with Martian command until such a time as we can reorganize what commanders are left,” aid Takuya.
Takuya closed the message and looked up at the screen, the alien ship with the wreckage floating around her and the Earth, now devoid of human life behind her.
“God damn it!” Takuya threw the pad at the nearest wall and it shattered.
No one on the bridge said anything, and the only noise were small sobs from different members of the crew as they moved away towards the lunar launch rail. Earth was gone, Humanity’s cradle was vacant, and for all the grief that there was in that fact anger was the more prominent emotion. An unknown enemy had simply dropped in and destroyed them, none of them had even had the opportunity to fight for their lives.
Humanity was angry, they were furious, but like every other challenge they had faced in their long evolutionary history they were not broken, they were not defeated so long as a single human still lived. Like every other challenge they had faced they would defeat it and grow stronger.
Lincoln stared at the display for a moment and then turned around in her chair, “General, I need to talk to the Martian government.”
The General tore his eyes from the screen and the data streaming in, and looked at the Mathematician. He had thought the news was terrifying, but the look on Lincoln’s face was something of nightmares, the determination in her eyes mixed with what he knew was a very developed sense of vengeance the General found her more terrifying than the aliens for a moment.
“Do I want to know why?” he asked.
“We’re going to make sure they regret the day they attacked humanity General, and make sure the Ark completes her mission.”