Eric Olafson, Fleet Cadet 17

Chapter 17: An Enemy Returns Interlude

The communications officer of the Devastator reported to Stahl. “Sir we have no contact to Fornax Hub. The last message we received was a distress call and now it is silent on all channels.”

The old Admiral wished the huge ship could go any faster and glanced over to captain Harris, knowing full well that the ship was already pushing its engines close to the red line. He did not want to push them any further. The mighty Devastator would be of no help if she arrived at a crisis with damaged engines. Thankfully the Attikan Commonwealth was not only part of the Union now, but they had sent a full battle group to Fornax and all ships with the fast Attikan engines, but it would take them month to get there.

Attikan and Union engineers already worked on Attikan type engines big enough to fit the Devi but they would not be ready until next year.

The Devi still had the old Celtest Engines as well, but they had not been used in over 1500years, he had used them to fly the Devastator home, when he found that ship, but they had not been used since. As good and far advanced the Celtest technology was, age and wear affected it too.

He sighed and Harris reacted knowing his old friend to well and pushed the direct link to engineering. The Chief Engineer of the ship was one of the handpicked talents and he too already knew what his Captain wanted of him.” I ran some pretests. I think we can risk it.”

“Alright, Commander Dohan. Fire the old Celtest Engines up and give us what they got.”

Stahl walked up to the command balcony and sat in his chair on the left side behind the Captain. He trusted Harris, who commanded the Devi now almost twenty years and was her nineteenth captain since Stahl had brought the ship as he returned from his exile, and he was perhaps the finest Captain she had. Harris was more than that; he was one of the few real friends he had. He was afraid of making too many friends, because as an Immortal he had seen too many of them die.

In times like this he cursed the fact that he was an Admiral. He would much rather sit in the Command chair, heck he would not even mind manning Tactical. He was reduced to a passenger and he carefully avoided ever interfering with the Captain.

The Sirens of General Quarters sounded. The bridge was never brightly illuminated, but now the lights dimmed away and replaced by dim red light of battle stations. The Devi was 34 kilometers from bow to stern and almost as wide and over 9000 meters thick. It was an enormous machine and it carried the very elite of Union fleet talent. It took only three minutes and all stations reported ready. Captain Harris addressed the crew via Inter ship.” We are about to activate the Celtest Engines, damage control teams stand by.”

The Devastators normal Isah engines pushed the big ship to 99565 times the speed of light while traveling in Quasi Space, making her also the fastest long distance ship of the Union. At this speed the Devi could traverse the entire Milky Way galaxy in little over twelve month. It would still take her 20Years to reach the Andromeda Galaxy on her own. Normal Union Battle ships had a range of 5000 light years. After that they needed to refuel and the engines serviced. The Devi had a range of 15,000 light years. Still far short of the almost 460,000 light years to the Fornax Dwarf, or even to the Large Magellan Cloud where the Attikan Commonwealth was.

Yes there was a chain of stations every 5000 light years between the Milky way Galaxy and the Magellan Cloud, just like the Bridge to Andromeda and there was Space Train Connection to Attika. With the Space Train you could make the trip from Blue Moon Central Station to Attika Terminal in less than three days, but nothing bigger than ten meters across would fit in the space-short-cut made by the black light tunnel of the Space train technology.

There was no such train connection to Fornax. It would still take the Devastator over four years to reach the Fornax Cluster this way. While the Attikan had faster ships, their range was not better. The new ship yard in the Attika System had only begun producing new Uni Design battle ships, only 25 were ready and while a fleet was on its way, it would take too long to be of immediatehelp. The Devi could make it in less than a week with the Celtest Engines, but if it was a full scale Y’All attack even the Devastator was not enough. On one hand he was glad there was a Union presence in the Fornax Cluster as it looked like the Y’All might come from there and having a few outposts there gave the Union a warning, on the other hand it was too far to mount an effective defense for the colonies there. Maybe all they could do was evacuate as many as would fit in his big ship and make the stand in the Magellan Cloud.

The Devastator accelerated to speeds unimaginable by Union Engineers.

Alyica appeared silently next to him and put her hand on his shoulder, but said nothing.

It was the first time he went into battle with someone he really cared about by his side. He could not decide if he liked it or not.

The Helms man whistled.”We just went past 100,000 and we are still gaining speed. At this rate we will reach Fornax in 12 days.”

Stahl said nothing but he hoped the millennia old engines would hold and not have them be stranded in the middle of nowhere unable to help.