The water parted around the hull of the USS Lincoln as it left the coast behind, sailing into the open sea with its escorts. On its flight deck, dozens of aircraft sat, ready to take off at a moment's notice.
Inside on the radar screens, something suddenly popped up from nowhere, confusing everyone. The carrier group went into alert, launching a couple aircraft to see what had appeared. When they got within visual range, they only saw a very large ring floating in the water. As they watched, however, the ring started to glow and spin, quickly going so fast that it formed a sphere of lights. In a massive flash, it disappeared, leaving an inky black hole where it was and a large wave propagating in all directions.
Only a moment later, the hole was replaced by ocean again, but this ocean looked slightly different. The waves seemingly did not match the waves in the rest of the ocean. As everyone scrambled to figure out what had happened, the word "wormhole" popped up. This was just before a medieval ship with a folded mast appeared through where the sphere was, and then started towards the coast of America, seemingly not seeing the carrier group on the horizon or the aircraft up in the air.
The captain of the carrier summed up everyone's thoughts in one sentence, "What the fuck?"
- - - - -
After the expeditionary group went through the portal, they headed towards where the nearest land should be. It would be about a day's journey, so they were joined by the rest of the fleet of 8. The larger ships stayed on the other side of the portal, because the larger ships couldn't fit through the portal, as it was only 15 meters in diameter and the larger ships couldn't fold their masts. Captain Crafa of the first ship saw a bird circling up in the sky but ignored it as he was called by the spotter in the crows nest.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"Captain! I can see a large island off to the north."
"Really? I was informed that the closest land was to the west. Did the magicians do something wrong?"
"Um, Captain, I think you should see this. You won't believe me otherwise."
He sighed and started climbing up, a lot slower than he had in his youth. He got to the top and grabbed the spyglass.
"A massive metal ship? Maybe it is closer than it seems? No, the angle is for that far away." The captain handed the spyglass back, "if it seems to be getting closer, call me. I'll be in a meeting with the other captains."
- - - - -
"They're not answering on any radio frequencies," stated the radio operator, "and they're not emitting on any frequencies we can detect."
"Alright," the captain of the Lincoln ran a hand through his beard, "send in a helicopter. We need to make contact."
"Sir," one of his advisors said, "they could be hostile. A helicopter would be vulnerable to weapons we know we used on ships when our ships looked like that."
"We have to make contact," he restated, "but if they are hostile then we need to prepare for that, too."
- - - - -
"They're not answering on any manacomm channels," stated the manacomm operator.
"Great," stated captain Crafa, "well, we need to come up with plans if they attack."
The meeting was interrupted by the spotter yelling about a bird. The captain quickly returned to the deck of the ship, only to see a large metal construction hovering in the air a couple dozen meters away, creating a large wind and a loud roar. It suddenly spoke, loud enough to be easy to hear over its roar Evan at distance.
"Unknown vessel. This is the United States Navy. Please identify yourself and your intentions."
The captain turned to the magician assigned to his ship. "Uninhabited planet, you said?"