ENS Dauntless,
En route to Naval Shipyards,
Caelus IV
Jasmine stared at the console as the ship came to the end of the long hyperspace flight. They had been travelling to the Alpha Persei Cluster for almost five weeks now. She was used to long tours, but she’d never been in constant transit for more than two weeks. She’d grown up on Earth while her family had emigrated to the Centauri colonies when she was in her late teens. She’d decided instead to stay in the home she had always known.
There were times she had regretted this and others she was grateful for the familiarity of home. The person she missed the most was her sister, though both of them had ended up in the Navy. Her last message said that she was at the Caelus IV shipyard, having been part of the team that had found the legendary battleship Trafalgar. Some siblings had all the luck.
The bridge was filled with people. Everyone with clearance wanted to be here as the remaining fleet came out of hyperspace. Ships had made the crossing in small groups to rally together here.
“Approaching the coordinates, Captain,” the helmsman said.
Jasmine looked around the bridge. She’d never seen it this busy, she was proud to be part of this mission to defend humanity’s foothold in the stars. They’d only received brief reports of a long-distance assault on a farming colony, but the Navy of Earth had rallied to its cause.
The captain ordered them to come to a full stop, and the forward view shifted from the bright-coloured abstract noise of hyperspace to the shipyard where dozens of other naval warships were in orbit and the port itself.
A spontaneous eruption of applause broke out across the bridge. The captain stood with a broad grin before ushering everyone to calm down.
The dockmaster was signalled, and an orbital flight plan was issued. The ship would soon be refuelled and assigned to a battle group.
Jasmine looked up the list of docked ships and skipped down to letter T. The Trafalgar was not among them, Something she’d feared might happen.
She pulled up the personal communication channel of her sister, and as expected, it was listed as not in range. Jasmine quickly typed out a message: Have arrived at the cluster. Speak soon.
She pressed send.
The screen went blank.
That was weird. She refreshed and tried again. Nothing.
The shipyard was now in the process of issuing shore leave to the crew. Unsurprisingly, they were overrun with personnel from the fleet, and only limited groups were being allowed at any given time. Jasmine had no need now to disembark. Whilst she had been cooped up on the ship for a damn long time without any respite, she called up the request list and took her name off it. Having spoken to the XO, she was given priority if it meant the chance to see her sister for the first time in a decade. But she saw no reason to get someone else off the list if it was just for the excursion.
She caught the XO’s eye; A single tear fell down her cheek. everyone else was still elated. She took a deep breath and attempted to regain her composure she while still on the bridge. Hopefully, she would see her sister before too long, but she also knew this separation was longer than either of them had anticipated and was likely to be the status quo going forward. But at least they’d made it to the cluster.
The bridge had started to empty now that the celebrations were over. A handful of people would go on to disembark in the next hour or so; the rest would continue with shipboard duties.
Looking over the roster, Jasmine volunteered to cover Ensign Smith’s bridge shift, letting her friend take her slot on the shore leave party. Being in port meant it would be light duties anyway, the usual housekeeping when any quiet time found.
“Captain, the Dockmaster is requesting we hold off on engine shutdown,” the comms officer was saying.
“What’s up?” the Captain replied.
“The outer system sensor relays are on the fritz. They’re asking if we could take a look?”
Taking over from Smith, Jasmine ran a sensor sweep which brought back list of names and registrations of every ship currently in port. She thought there were a few names she recognised from back home, either because they had made the crossing at some point earlier, or they had been part of the new fleet. It showed the various ships of the fleet in green around the shipyard. Suddenly, a red dot appeared on her readout. That wasn’t right. She was about to have the system run a self-diagnosis when it happened again and again. Until half-a-dozen red dots on the readout had appeared, blank listings now lining up by the naval ship registries. She wasn’t sure what was going on.
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“Captain, sensor contacts,” she blurted out.
Half the bridge looked at her as if she were an attention-seeking child.
But the captain took her seriously.
“Report, Lieutenant,” she said.
“I’ve got multiple unknown contacts on the board,” said Jasmine.
The captain got to his feet and walked around to Jasmine’s station, looking over her shoulder. Not out of distrust, but complete confusion. More dots were springing up, this time on the other side of the readout.
“Whatever it is, there’s a lot of them,” agreed the captain. “I’m hoping it’s just a meteor shower, and the sensors are out of whack?”
“Rocks would be more random. There’s a pattern to this.”
Suddenly, the bridge was blasted with a bright light as an explosion filled the forward viewport. She turned, as did the captain, to see the Wellington taken out by a shower of missiles, followed by strafing fighters firing compressed energy shots at the rest of the fleet.
“Red Alert, evasive manoeuvres!” yelled the captain.
“Message coming in from the shipyard. All ships, take defensive action,” reported a comms officer.
Jasmine held the side of her console as the ship started high-velocity manoeuvres.
Large, hostile vessels were now all over the shipyards. The readout was listing four or five red contacts for each naval ship, and that number was increasing as the list of Navy vessels, one by one, flickered off.
Holy shit! thought Jasmine. This is a massacre!
“Weapons!” yelled the captain, desperation in her voice.
The Dauntless started fighting back. The guns took out one or two fighters, but that just attracted more of them.
A lot of crews were on the station. No wonder the few ships couldn’t respond.
Jasmine yelled. “They’re swarming us. We have twenty fighters on us,” she said.
“Dammit!” yelled the captain. “Can you shake them?”
The pilot shook his head. “They’re more manoeuvrable than us and have more speed.”
The bridge shook like an earthquake, hull breach alarms pounding, and the weapons fire still raining down upon them. Despite taking out a few of the fighters, they just kept coming, more and more of them, wave after wave.
Yorktown moved in to cover their aft and helped clear the swarm, only for one of the larger vessels to move against her. Yorktown went down fighting. Some crew made it to pods made it out, others were brown out as the superstructure collapsed. Debris went in every direction and Dauntless shook with the impact.
“Hull breach, deck twelve through eighteen, engineering is reporting a potential overload.”
“All hands, abandon ship!” yelled the captain. “That means you Wokoma!”
Jasmine didn’t wait to be told twice. She headed down to the nearest assigned pod to the rear of the bridge. The helmsman and communication officers took the other empty seats. Once they were strapped down in the cramped space, she reached up and pulled the emergency release. From the small porthole in the door, they saw the ship fall away from them. The thrusters kicked in, and as they turned, the shipyard came into view, aflame.
One of the larger hostile vessels was moving in, and Jasmine watched Dauntless go up in one bout of flame. She felt sick.
A final cacophony hit the shipyard, devastation that tore it apart. Whatever military foothold humanity had in the cluster had gone up in flames
Those that remained were on their own.
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The End of Pulsar Sky
The Battleship Trafalgar Will Return.