CHAPTER 10: INDEPENDENCE

The experience could only be described as nothing short of spectacular, but given the dire circumstances, no one would dare to openly admit that. Hurtling through the vastness of space at an astonishing thirty-five thousand kilometers per hour, this behemoth chunk of metal seemed to spin and rotate out of control while circling the outer reaches of planet Earth. Orbiting at a carefully calculated distance, just outside the gravitational grip of Luna, the once-mighty warship Independence moved not under its own power, but propelled by the force of the celestial body humanity called home. Despite the ship's daunting appearance, the Juggernaught was not a derelict adrift in the void; rather, it had been strategically powered down and placed in a controlled spin to generate .45g of artificial gravity, allowing workers to retrofit the megalithic vessel as swiftly as possible. Without access to the Jupiter Juggernaught Dry Dock facility, their options were dreadfully limited. Meanwhile, the rest of the fleet, including the last remaining Juggernaught in the system, the FWS Constitution, stood guard over the defenseless command ship. Work crews were pulling multiple shifts, driven by a sense of urgency, to install the final Anti-Matter reactors in hopes of creating a stable anchor point for reinforcements to finally arrive. Under normal circumstances, the ship's commanding officer would never dream of attempting such a precarious maneuver, especially with an overwhelming enemy presence lurking in the same system, but the situation was dire and demanded extreme measures. The local Hyperbuoy was being jammed, and no one could fathom how it had happened. The only viable counter to the local block was a theory proposed by the Federation's top Hyperspace scientists, a desperate grasp at hope amidst chaos.

Admiral Briggs stood quietly, admiring the speed and efficiency of the workers who were installing a power source not originally designed for his ship, all the while operating under the intense pressure of their circumstances. "It simply amazes me how they can move about," he mused, noting the absence of grav boots and propulsion suits. "They just..." He hesitated for a moment, searching for the right word to capture the extraordinary sight unfolding before him. "Fly!" For those accustomed to the constant pull of 1g, working in an environment where gravity was less than half that of Earth’s was a formidable challenge.

"You must have been born dirt-side," the chief engineer of the retrofit project quipped, glancing at the Admiral with an amused expression.

"Mobile, Alabama. It can be lovely down there. Where were you born?"

"Ah, that explains the boots." The engineer pointed at the gravity-assisted boots Briggs was wearing. Grav boots were a remarkable advancement, far superior to their earlier magnetic counterparts. By manipulating gravitons, these nifty pieces of technology generated a gravitational field that alternated the polarity of the strange particles, allowing the user to grip the floor or any surface on whatever plane they desired as if the pull of gravity descended naturally. Unlike the hard pull of magnetic boots, these allow for fluid movement, a necessity in low-gravity environments. "I was born on Ceres."

"Ah, a member of the miners' union. I never did well in low-g. But you and your men—my god, it’s astonishing. It’s like..."

The engineer interrupted the Admiral with a wry grin. "You merely adopted the low-g. We were born in it, molded by it."

Briggs smiled, feeling an odd kinship with the engineer’s strange words. "How much longer do we need?"

"I can't say."

Briggs shot him a look, the tension in the air palpable despite the sparks flying all around them. "That's not an answer I can work with, Captain."

"It's something you will have to accept, Admiral. Listen, you are asking me to take four highly advanced reactor cores that operate on a totally different set of physical rules than what this ship was originally designed for. Then you want me to install them all over this colossal vessel—a ship that is the size of a continent on your planet. These reactors that you provided me are tiny in comparison to this ship."

Briggs glanced at the reactor they were currently installing, the sheer size of it striking him with a mix of awe and confusion at what the captain was trying to convey.

"Oh, that? No, no. That isn't one of the puny WarpStar reactors, no sir. That is what we had to build. In order for the reactors to work to spec and to operate within this ship's massive structure, we had to make them over twenty times bigger. See this room here, the makeshift reactor room? Yeah, four WarpStar-class ships can fit in here, and the reactors you provided are even smaller than that. Those reactors were impressive, there is no doubt; however, they were not powerful enough for this ship."

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"That's not possible."

"You do realize you carry around fifteen small stars in your fusion reactors, right? They are literally stars. The reactors have to be spread all over the ship, or the gravitational pull from the reactors themselves would tear the ship apart. You have insane power output; one Anti-Matter reactor couldn't match the fifteen stars being burned throughout the ship. Four of them just barely peaked higher. It wasn't enough to cut through the jamming signal, so we found a way to produce a metric ton more anti-protons and then figured out a way to enlarge the reaction chamber of the reactor. Thus, the Anti-Matter Reactor Mk II was born. One of these bad boys pumps out enough power to make Sol itself look like a fading memory, and you will have four of them. Admiral, you are asking the impossible in such a short time. I fear I could literally shit out Titan from my own backside faster than I could install brand new reactors in a ship that was never designed for them."

The Admiral was about to interject, but his wrist com unit chirped urgently, signaling an important message. "Sir," a bridge duty officer's voice crackled through the wrist unit. "You are urgently needed on the bridge. It's the Alliance, sir; they have begun their assault."

Briggs looked at the engineer, about to respond, when the officer cut him off. "I have 24 hours, got it!"

The bridge was a whirlwind of activity, more chaotic than the Admiral had ever witnessed. Most of the officers on duty were frantically coordinating repairs and retrofits throughout the ship, hastily adapting the systems to accommodate the new power source while installing modifications to the hyperdrive unit. The section he was headed to housed the most senior staff, their faces etched with urgency. "Captain, what do you have for me?"

Captain Olivia Smith, the commanding officer of the Independence, began her report with a steely determination. "We have been monitoring fleet communications, traffic, and all stops since we went dark. Several hours ago, we started noticing movement from Alliance ships; they began to slowly enclose their perimeter across the system. They are tightening their net. Based on our best estimates of their speed, we figure they will reach Earth in a few months, plus or minus a month. And then, there's this." Captain Smith activated a holo recording captured from the Neptune deep space observation platforms. The Federation had stationed a small fleet on the outer edges of the system, prepared to make a stand and defend the platform from any potential attack. However, that fleet, consisting of four battleships, thirteen cruisers, twenty destroyers, and eleven frigates, was quickly overwhelmed when the wall of Alliance ships descended upon Neptune. The video feed was harrowing to watch, as the Federation fleet was mercilessly slaughtered, along with the observation platform. Tragically, not a single Alliance ship was lost in the assault.

"Did the civilian crew evacuate in time?" Briggs asked, his voice tinged with concern.

"Yes, sir. They were the first to evacuate. The lead scientist informed us that the captain of the Armstrong ordered them to leave the moment Alliance ships were detected in the system."

"Almost a day before the official order came through."

"Yes, sir. That man is a hero; he saved hundreds of lives."

"At the cost of thousands." Briggs's mind raced at the thought of the military lives lost in that fleet, totaling in the few thousand. "Why were they still there?"

"Sir, the Chief of Naval Operations requested them to remain at station. Apparently, one scientist remained behind. He was convinced that the observation platform could penetrate the disruption field."

"Another theory." Briggs was upset, but more than that, he felt a profound sadness. He did not agree with the decision made by the Chief of Naval Operations, yet he understood the rationale behind it. The decision was rooted in the same principle he had made himself with the Independence. He had put a few hundred thousand lives at risk by powering down the ship to install new power systems, while the captain of that fleet had only sacrificed a few thousand. It was not out of revenge, anger, or justice, but out of hope—a hope for a possibility to end the conflict and save humanity's homeward. Both commanders had risked lives for that hope, and those lives had volunteered to be placed in harm's way. The only thing Briggs wished for was that those sacrifices not be in vain. "Let us pray and hope the Russians will arrive before any more lives are lost." A critical thought struck him. "Wait. What are the Legion doing?"

"Nothing, sir. They are just sitting there, fifteen AU's away from Sol, orbiting on an opposite path from the planets. Just... sitting there." Captain Smith pulled up the feed monitoring the Legion's activity.

"I don't understand it. Why are they not doing anything? I understand the Legion will attack anything, including Alliance ships."

"That is the standing theory, sir. We even speculate that is why Alliance forces took so long to initiate their attack—they didn’t know what the Legion would do either."

"Then why start now?"

"Our best guess is that they are rolling the dice. They are either going to provoke the Legion or steamroll us. Either way, they are tired of waiting."

"Tired of waiting..." The Admiral let out a slight, bitter laugh. "Tired of waiting for our deaths, our extinction. The end of us all." Admiral Briggs glanced upwards and closed his eyes, murmuring a silent prayer to God, desperately asking for a miracle.