Battleship Trafalgar

Hemera

The elevator doors opened in time to see the forward viewport change from displaying a starscape to a flash of energy replaced seconds later with the planet Hemera. Somewhere down there was Captain Wessex, his former CO from the Nelson. Chase immediately called for red alert as he steadied himself against the bridge railing. The alarm klaxon sounded across the ship, the crew preparing for battle. Grace was already on his right as he sat in the command chair.

“Wokoma,” Chase said, “What are sensors showing?” Wokoma had returned to the helm console and was working her board.

“Hostiles have troops on the ground,” she reported. That was not good. Chase had hoped they would have arrived before the enemy had a chance to get anyone to the surface. What came next was now much more difficult.

“Human life signs?” asked Chase.

“Around two thousand.”

Chase nodded. That was in keeping with the previous number reported by the Nelson before they withdrew during the initial offensive.

A proximity alert rang out moments before the ship shook. Chase braced himself against the sides of his chair to steady himself. He turned to Martinez. He didn’t have to ask for the situation report.

“The hostile ships are firing on us,” replied Martinez. “There are still two of them left.”

“Evasive!” yelled Chase. The sub-light engines kicked in, and the Trafalgar moved to a high orbit.

“Hostiles are in pursuit and launching fighters,” reported Martinez.

Shit, thought Chase. If this was gonna work, they would have to be quick.

“Wokoma, have you had any success linking the translator to our communication systems?” Chase asked.

“We’ve not been able to integrate it at all. The best we can do is point the speaker at the communicator,” Wokoma said with a shrug.

“It’ll have to do,” agreed Chase. “The question is, what do we say to them?”

“Stop shooting at us,” suggested Grace.

“That won’t work. We’ve been shooting at them a fair amount ourselves. Okay,” he said, “prepare the translator and open a channel.” This was it. Whatever he was about to say would sway the course of Cluster history for the next few years. He had to make it count.

Wokoma had the cylinder and jury-rigged it into the side of the console. She tapped it and nothing happened. The lights that previously activated remained dormant.

She flicked it with her index finger and the lights down the side started blinking. She nodded for him to go ahead. Chase got to his feet and walked towards the forward viewport, looking at their ships across the void.

“This is Commander Nathan Chase of the battleship Trafalgar. We request a cessation of hostilities and the opening of diplomatic channels.”

Wokoma had an earpiece in and was listening for a response. She tapped her console, and the channel played across the bridge. There was slight static, but nothing came back. The bridge was silent, and then the ship shook again.

“Fighters are almost on top of us,” reported Martinez.

“Damn,” said Chase. “Keep us moving. Defensive fire, but only when necessary.” Winter turned away from her weapons console to Chase.

“Defensively in this case would mean taking as many of the bastards out as we can,” said Winter.

“I appreciate that, but it won’t help with our current attempts at diplomacy,” said Chase.

“Understood,” replied Winter.

The ship rocked as it went in for several harder turns to keep at a distance from the fighters. Chase wanted to get as much space between them as possible, but the fighters were much more manoeuvrable.

“Come on, Helm, do as much as you can.” He walked back to the command chair, tapping the screen on his armrest to signal the engine room.

“If you’re asking for another jump, you are in for a rude awakening,” Dryden’s firm reply came before he could even ask a question. “The Graviton Accelerator has burned out.”

“If this doesn’t work, I need options to get out of here,” Chase said.

“I appreciate that, Commander. I’ll give you any options I can come up with. Try to keep the ship from getting damaged in the meantime,” Dryden said, and the channel was cut off.

“Right,” said Chase, “keep repeating that transmission.”

“Aye,” replied Wokoma.

“What about your spare?” Grace asked as she walked over to Dryden. “Commander, Scott and I found another accelerator on the SS Nomadic. He’s probably got it under his bunk.”

“Dryden, do you have another unit in your quarters?” Chase asked into the comm. “Grace, search his quarters and take it to engineering.” ordered Chase. She nodded and walked towards the elevator.

“Goddamn it, Grace Dakota, have you any idea how much you’ve just cost me?” Dryden’s reply came over the speaker.

“Of course I do,” Grace replied, giving Chase a wink as she entered the elevator.

“Not the time, Dryden,” Chase snapped.

“Whoa,” Wokoma said. Chase looked at her.

“I’ve just heard what we’re broadcasting. Whatever their language is, it’s not like ours,” said Wokoma.

“That will be one for the anthropologists, I’m sure,” said Chase. “How the hell does that translator know which language it should translate to across thousands of kilometres?” asked Grace.

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“You’re the archaeologist, you tell me,” said Chase with a shrug. The ship rocked again. “Now get that part to engineering!”

“I’m gonna have to shoot something,” said Winter, “or we’re done for.”

“Target engines and weapons,” said Chase.

The sublight engines kicked and the grand old warship went after the swarming fighter crafts. A sly grin crossed Winter’s face as she let the compressed energy rip in all directions, the ship's cannons targeting locking on to the rapidly moving targets.

They disabled a couple of fighters, but there were about a dozen still in play.

“Any response to the broadcast?” said Chase. Wokoma shook her head.

“It’s definitely going out to their ships and the fighters,” she said.

“Damn it. Why aren’t these guys responding? What is it they want?” Chase asked himself. “Okay,” he said, “sub-light engines’ full power, take us out to the edge of the system.”

“I think I know the problem,” said Martinez jumping up and running to one of the auxiliary control panels at the bridge’s aft.

Chase turned. “What is it?”

“They probably don’t have our communications operating frequencies,” said Martinez. “It’s standard throughout the cluster, but there’s no reason to assume that these hostiles would operate on those frequencies.”

“Hell,” said Wokoma, “there’s no reason to assume they hear the same frequencies.”

“There’s no reason to assume they hear,” said Chase.

Chase looked around the bridge. This wasn’t helping.

“Sure, that’s one way to look at it. In which case, what would you do about that? Let’s assume there is a way to use our communications with them and take it from there. When that doesn’t work, we’ll move over to the next problem,” said Chase.

Martinez walked over to the pilot station where Wokoma was sitting. She made room for him.

“May I?” he asked. He began tapping away. No obvious changes were made, but he then followed it up with, “Try that,” he said.

Wokoma grabbed the translation cylinder.

“I’m now broadcasting the message on all known frequencies,” she explained.

“What’s the position of the fighters?” asked Chase.

“They’re still on our tail,” said Martinez.

“Okay,” said Chase, “let’s assume we are going to come under fire any minute now.” The hostiles did not respond to the transmission, and again the Trafalgar shuddered with the impact of compressed energy weapons fire.

“Damn it,” Chase muttered to himself under his breath. He’d hoped that would work. Chase racked his brains on where they could go next.

“Wokoma, naval ships have an emergency protocol in case of communications failure, right?” asked Chase.

“That’s right,” Wokoma agreed. “If there’s a loss of communication, there are options for light patterns on the hull, and if those don’t work, the ship is to make a constant starboard turn to indicate communications failure and a port turn to indicate hostile takeover attempt.”

Chase nodded. “Can we do anything like that? Would the Trafalgar have such systems in place yet?” he asked.

She thought for a moment and then consulted the database.

“Oh yes,” she said. “Yes, sir. The hull has a holographic projector in case of communications failure.”

“What, so it projects words into space?” asked Chase.

“Exactly,” said Wokoma. “If communications were down, they could literally have the phrase ‘communications down’ on the outside of the hull for any ships in visual range to simply read.”

“Great,” said Chase, “but it doesn’t exactly help us. We need something that says, ‘We are trying to talk to you,’ even if they have no concept of what any of those words written down mean.”

Martinez nodded. “We need something basic.”

“Communication Request?” said Wokoma. “With our standard frequency below?”

“Could that be too complicated?” Asked Chase.

“We’ll run it through the translator.” Wokoma replied.

“Do it,” said Chase. “It’s either that or we try a hydrogen atom?”

“Well, that is the least complex thing in the universe…” said Martinez.

The view out the front viewport shifted as written text appeared directly in front of the ship. The rear thrusters brought them around to face back towards the enemy cruisers.

“We’re taking an awful risk here,” said Winter. “They’re still trying to kill us.”

“I know it,” said Chase, “but we’ve gotta try.”

The Trafalgar sat there in space with the fighters swarming around it. One hundred metres high in front of a single electron orbited an atom.

The Express elevator opened and Grace stepped out.

“Engineering are swapping out the Graviton accelerators.” She looked at the holographic display. “Do we know what that says? Are they likely to take it as a form of surrender?” asked Grace “Or are they just as likely to take it as a sign of us saying, ‘Come on then, we’ll take you all on’?” Grace leant an arm over the back of the Chase’s chair, her hand gently resting on Chase’s shoulder.

“The fighters are still attacking,” said Winter. “Do we return fire?” She asked, the panic starting to rise in her voice.

“Not yet,” said Chase. The bridge shook. “Hold it,” said Chase. “Just hold our nerve for the moment. Okay, we’re gonna get through this.”